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VOLUMES 1 and 2
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
1831-1891
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
AUTHOR OF "
"There is no Religion higher
than Truth."
VOL. I. -- COSMOGENESIS.
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
LIMITED.
7,
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
117,
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar,
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1888.
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"Entered according to Act of
Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of the Librarian of
Congress at Washington, D. C."
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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.
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PREFACE.
THE Author -- the writer, rather --
feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay which has occurred in the
appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude
of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme,
and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large
quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of
occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and
showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and
as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favourable reception,
no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety.
The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so.
This scheme, it must be added, was
not in contemplation when the preparation of the work was first announced. As
originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret Doctrine"
should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled." It was,
however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already
put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric
science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and consequently
the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from
"Isis Unveiled."
The author does not feel it necessary
to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for the many defects of
literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in these pages.
She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired late in
life. The English tongue is employed because it offers the most widely-diffused
medium for conveying the truths which it had become her duty to place before the
world.
These truths are in no sense put
forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the position of a revealer
of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world's history. For
what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of
volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European
religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because
of this veil. What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and
to make of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the
writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal
speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what she
herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a few
details only, by the results of her
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own study and observation. The
publication of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary by
the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and students of
mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their endeavour to, as
they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the few facts
previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this
book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a select number of
fragments of its fundamental tenets, special attention being paid to some facts
which have been seized upon by various writers, and distorted out of all
resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state
unequivocally that the teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, contained
in these volumes, belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean,
nor the Egyptian religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity
exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in
their origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into
their original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown,
developed, and become materialised.
It is more than probable that the
book will be regarded by a large section of the public as a romance of the
wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of the book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully
prepared to take all the responsibility for what is contained in this work, and
even to face the charge of having invented the whole of it. That it has many
shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she claims for it is that, romantic
as it may seem to many, its logical coherence and consistency entitle this new
Genesis to rank, at any rate, on a level with the "working
hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science. Further, it claims
consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but because
it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and analogy.
The aim of this work may be thus
stated: to show that Nature is not "a fortuitous concurrence of
atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the scheme of the
Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of
all religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which
they all spring; finally, to show that the occult side of Nature has never been
approached by the Science of modern civilization.
If this is in any degree
accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in the service of humanity,
and by humanity and the future generations it must be judged. Its author
recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she
is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in silent contempt.
De minimis non curat lex.
H.P.B.
London, October, 1888.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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PAGE.
INTRODUCTION ... xvii.
The Need of such a Book ... xix.
The Antiquity of Documents and MSS.
... xxiii.
What the Book is intended to do ...
xxviii.
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VOLUME FIRST.
COSMOGENESIS.
PROEM ... 1
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its
Symbolism ... 2
The One Life, Active and Passive ...
4
The Secret Doctrine -- Pantheism --
Atheism ... 6
"Space" in all Religions
and in Occultism ... 9
Seven Cosmic Elements -- Seven Races
of Mankind ... 12
The Three Postulates of the Secret
Doctrine ... 14
Description of the Stanzas from the
Book of Dzyan ... 20
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BOOK I. -- PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
SEVEN STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN
... 27
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STANZA I. -- THE NIGHT OF THE
UNIVERSE... 35
The Seven Eternities ... 36
"Time" ... 37
The Universal Mind and the Dhyan
Chohans ... 38
Nidana and Maya: The Causes of Misery
... 39
The Great Breath ... 43
Being and Non-Being ... 45
The Eye of Dangma ... 47
Alaya, the Universal Soul ... 49
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STANZA II. -- THE IDEA OF
DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
The Absolute knows Itself not ... 55
The Germ of Life was not yet ... 57
The Universe was still concealed in
the Divine Thought ... 61
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STANZA III. -- THE AWAKENING OF
KOSMOS ... 62
The Great Vibration ... 63
Nature's Symbols ... 65
The Power of Numbers ... 67
The Logoi and the Dragon ... 73
The Astral Light ... 75
Primeval Radiations from Unity ... 79
The Web of Being ... 83
Conscious Electricity: Fohat ... 85
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STANZA IV. -- THE SEPTENARY
HIERARCHIES ... 86
The Sons of the Fire ... 86
The Vehicle of the Universe -- the
Dhyan Chohans ... 89
The Army of the Voice ... 93
Speech and Mind ... 95
The Ogdoad and the Heptad ... 99
The Stellar "Sons of Light"
... 103
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STANZA V. -- FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE
SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
The Fiery Whirlwind and the
Primordial Seven ... 106
They Produce Fohat ... 108
The Correlation of the
"Gods" ... 113
Evolution of the
"Principles" of Nature ... 119
The Mystery of the Fire ... 121
The Secret of the Elements ... 123
The Square of the Tabernacle ... 125
The Planetary Spirits and the Lipika
... 129
The Ring "Pass Not" ... 130
The Sidereal Book of Life ... 131
The Soul's Pilgrimage and its
"Rest" ... 134
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STANZA VI. -- OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH
AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
The Logos ... 136
Mystery of the Female Logos ... 137
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The Seven Layu Centres ... 138
The "Elementary Germs" ...
139
The Evolution of the Elements ... 140
The Building of the Worlds ... 145
A Neutral Centre ... 147
"Dead" Planets -- The Moon
... 149
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THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
The Planetary Divisions and the Human
Principles ... 153
The Moon ... 155
Transmigrations of the Ego ... 159
The Septenary Chain ... 161
Relation of the other Planets to the
Earth ... 163
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EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES
AND THE MONADS ... 170
The Lunar Chain and the Earth Chain
... 172
The Earth, the Child of the Moon ...
173
Classification of the Monads ... 175
The Monad Defined ... 177
The Lunar Monads -- the Pitris ...
179
A Triple Evolution in Nature ... 181
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STANZA VI. -- CONTINUED ... 191
"Creation" in the Fourth
Round ... 191
The "Curse,"
"Sin," and "War" ... 193
The Struggle for Life and the Birth
of the Worlds ... 202
The Adepts and the Sacred Island ...
207
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STANZA VII. -- THE PARENTS OF MAN ON
EARTH ... 213
Divisions of the Hierarchies ... 214
Correlations of Beings ... 223
What incarnates in Animal Man ... 233
Formation of Man: the Thinker ... 238
Occult and Kabalistic Pneumatics ...
243
Akasa and Ether ... 257
The Invisible "Lives" ...
259
Occult Vital Chemistry and
Bacteriology ... 261
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PAGE.
The Watcher and his Shadow ... 265
Earth peopled by the Shadows of the
Gods ... 267
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SUMMING UP ... 269
The pith and marrow of the Secret
Doctrine ... 273
Hermes in Christian Garb ... 285
Some Occult Aphorisms ... 289
The Seven Powers of Nature ... 293
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BOOK I. -- PART II.
THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS
APPROXIMATE ORDER.
§§
I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
Emblem and Symbol differ ... 305
Magic Potency of Sound ... 307
Mystery Language ... 309
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II. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS
... 310
Egypt's many Religions ... 311
The Jews and their System ... 313
Moses copied from Sargon ... 319
Identity of Ancient Symbols ... 323
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III. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE
THOUGHT ... 325
Divine Thought, or Cineritious
Matter? ... 327
Ether and Intelligence ... 330
The Seven Prakritis ... 335
The Mystic Fire ... 339
One Tree of Knowledge ... 341
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IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342
The Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343
The Birth of Mind ... 345
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V. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND
GLYPHS ... 349
The Gnostic Idea ... 351
International Correlation of Gods ...
355
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§§ PAGE.
VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
Egg-born Logoi ... 363
The Winged Globe ... 365
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VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA
... 368
Human Gods and Divine Men ... 369
The Rebirth of Gods ... 371
The Puranic Prophecy ... 377
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VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL
... 379
Exoteric and Esoteric ... 381
The Purity of early Phallicism ...
383
The Egyptian Lotus ... 385
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IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386
A Glance at the Lunar Myth ... 387
A Key-note to the Moon ... 389
Copies and Originals... 393
The Moon Bi-sexual ... 397
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X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE
WORSHIP ... 403
Degeneration of the Symbol ... 405
The Seven-headed Dragons ... 407
Dragon and Crocodile ... 409
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XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
Death is Life ... 413
The Fall of the Angels ... 418
Transformation of the Legend ... 421
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XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE
GODS ... 424
The Point within the Circle ... 426
The Logos or Verbum ... 429
The Factors of Creation ... 432
Identity of the Hierarchies in all
Religions ... 438
Difference between the Aryan and
Semitic Systems ... 444
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§§ PAGE.
XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
The Gnostic and the Hindu Versions
... 449
The Seven Puranic
"Creations" ... 450
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XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460
The "Gods" and the
"Elements" ... 463
The Language of the Elements ... 464
Pagan and Christian Worship of the
Elements ... 467
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XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ...
470
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Phallicism ... 471
The Real Meaning ... 472
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BOOK I. -- PART III.
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE
CONTRASTED.
§§
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism versus Materialism ... 479
The Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481
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II. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT
BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
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III. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ...
483
The Hypothetical Ether ... 485
Scientific Theories of its
Constitution ... 489
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IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
Intelligences or Blind Forces? ...
493
The Cause of Attraction ... 498
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§§ PAGE.
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE
... 500
Conflicting Hypotheses ... 502
More Hypotheses ... 505
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VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
What are the "Forces?" ...
508
The View of the Occultists ... 510
Scientific and Occult Theories on
Heat ... 515
The Atoms of Science ... 519
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VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC
THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether and Atoms ... 527
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VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ...
529
Dr. Richardson on Nervous Ether ...
531
The Senses and their Action ... 535
Too much "Life" may Kill
... 539
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IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
The Primordial Element ... 542
Elements and Meta-Elements ... 546
The Tree of Life and Being ... 549
Prof. Crookes on the Elements ... 552
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X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
Mr. Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist
... 557
Inter-Etheric Waves ... 561
The Secrets of Sound and Odour ...
565
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Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
Metaphysical Chemistry ... 569
What are the Seven Planets? ... 575
The Cyclic Fall of the Gods ... 577
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§§ PAGE.
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS
... 579
All-Potential Unity ... 583
The "Seventh" in Chemistry
... 585
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XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ...
588
Forces are Emanations ... 591
What is the Nebula? ... 595
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XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR
INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The Vital Principle ... 603
Occult and Physical Science ... 605
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XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
The Gods of the Ancients -- the
Monads ... 613
The Monad and the Duad ... 617
The Genesis of the Elements ... 621
Hermes and Huxley ... 625
The Teaching of Leibnitz ... 627
The Monads according to Occultism ...
632
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XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ...
634
Karmic Cycles and Universal Ethics
... 637
Destiny and Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis ... 643
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XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY
... 647
The Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs
of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal Cycles ... 656
Hindu Astronomy ... 661
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XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION
... 668
Science Confesses her Ignorance ...
669
Materialism is leading Europe towards
a catastrophe ... 675
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N.B. -- The Index and Glossary will
be found at the close of Volume II.
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INTRODUCTORY.
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"Gently to hear, kindly to
judge."
-- SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE the appearance of Theosophical
literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings
"Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit -- as an old proverb
based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down an inclined plane,
while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill."
Old truisms are often the wisest. The
human mind can hardly remain entirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are
often formed before a thorough examination of a subject from all its aspects
has been made. This is said with reference to the prevailing double mistake (a)
of limiting Theosophy to Buddhism: and (b) of confounding the tenets of the
religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines
broadly outlined in "Esoteric Buddhism." Any thing more erroneous
than this could be hardly imagined. It has enabled our enemies to find an
effective weapon against theosophy; because, as an eminent Pali scholar very
pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named "neither esotericism
nor Buddhism." The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett's work, had
ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did it contain
the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a hitherto hidden teaching
which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and explained in the present
volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many fundamental tenets from the
SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small corner of the dark veil. For no
one, not even the greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could --
even if he would -- give out promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving world,
that which has been so effectually concealed from it for long aeons and ages.
"Esoteric Buddhism" was an
excellent work with a very unfortunate
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title, though it meant no more than
does the title of this work, the "SECRET DOCTRINE." It proved
unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging things by their
appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now become so
universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have
fallen victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests
were raised by Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to
myself, I must add that "Esoteric Buddhism" was presented to me as a
completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware of the manner in which the
author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism."
This has to be laid directly at the
door of those who, having been the first to bring the subject under public
notice, neglected to point out the difference between "Buddhism" --
the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord Gautama, and named after
his title of Buddha, "the Enlightened" -- and Budha, "Wisdom,"
or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root
"Budh," to know. We theosophists of India are ourselves the real
culprits, although, at the time, we did our best to correct the mistake. (See
Theosophist, June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the
spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both
pronounced and written "Budhism," instead of "Buddhism."
Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it ought to be
called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries "Buddhaists."
This explanation is absolutely
necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The "Wisdom
Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over, though
the statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface to the
original Edition) that "two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other
European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put
into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept in through
inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is
"divulged" in "Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many
years before it became her duty (in 1880) to impart a small portion of the
Secret Doctrine to two European gentlemen, one of whom was the author of
"Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the present writer has the undoubted,
though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and
education. Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy
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expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught
in America, even before Isis Unveiled was published, to two Europeans and to my
colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three teachers the latter gentleman has
had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an Egyptian, the third a
Hindu. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out some of this teaching in
various ways; if the other two have not, it has been simply because they were
not allowed: their time for public work having not yet come. But for others it
has, and the appearance of Mr. Sinnett's several interesting books is a visible
proof of the fact. It is above everything important to keep in mind that no
theosophical book acquires the least additional value from pretended authority.
In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the
one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is a term used by Aryasanga
in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic Northern Buddhists. It is a
Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the earliest Aryans to the Unknown
deity; the word "Brahma" not being found in the Vedas and the early
works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and "Adi-bhuta" is translated "the
primeval uncreated cause of all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of untold
duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so
to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to mortals and finally
appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him to
receive the title of the "Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the
innate possession of divine intellect or "understanding";
"Buddha," the acquirement of it by personal efforts and merit; while
Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the channel through which divine knowledge
reaches the "Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine
conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of
Atma. "When Buddhi absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras,
Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is
reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from
the trammels of "Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the
name of a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which
the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those who, in their blind
and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, by re-action, of
"Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which are those also of the
Brahmins), simply because the name
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suggests what to them, as
Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use in their
case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in this age
of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and everything
man holds most dear and sacred, in his inner spiritual life. The true
philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of
personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions. Moreover, Esoteric
philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward, human
garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of every other
great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in
nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has never
rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only
refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods
created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry
caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place
before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the
beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein only its
legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the
"Dan" or Jan-na"* ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics
-- grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom
Religion of antiquity -- are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu
Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and physiological
aspect of the Wisdom Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen and
incorporeal," the mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the
great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the
hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats. The latter received their
Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near
Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali MSS.). This cave was in Rajagriha, the
ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as rightly
suspected by some archaeologists.**
Time and human imagination made short
work of the purity and philo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dan, now become in modern Chinese
and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and
their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as "to
reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second inner birth.
Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan."
** Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at
Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archaeologist, was the first, we believe, to
discover it.
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sophy of these teachings, once that
they were transplanted from the secret and sacred circle of the Arhats, during
the course of their work of proselytism, into a soil less prepared for
metaphysical conceptions than India; i.e., once they were transferred into
China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the pristine purity of these grand
revelations was dealt with may be seen in studying some of the so-called
"esoteric" Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb, not
only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even in not a few
schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian
innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in
mind the very important difference between orthodox Buddhism -- i.e., the
public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret
Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of the initiated Brahmins of
his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and
a disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated Brahmins) or Dwijas.
His teachings, therefore, could not be different from their doctrines, for the
whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a portion of that which
had been kept secret from every man outside of the "enchanted" circle
of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that had been imparted to
him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a philosophy built upon the
ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to the world only
its outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See also Volume
II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the "Soul
Doctrine." None seem to have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly
-- too secretly, perhaps -- within the sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its
chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana -- has so tried and irritated the
curiosity of those scholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it
logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian knot, they cut it through,
by declaring that Nirvana meant absolute annihilation.
Toward the end of the first quarter
of this century, a distinct class of literature appeared in the world, which
became with every year more defined in its tendency. Being based, soi-disant,
on the scholarly researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was
held scientific. Hindu, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and
emblems were made to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to
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yield, thus often giving out the rude
outward form in place of the inner meaning. Works, most remarkable for their
ingenious deductions and speculations, in circulo vicioso, foregone conclusions
generally changing places with premisses as in the syllogisms of more than one
Sanskrit and Pali scholar, appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding the
libraries with dissertations rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real
symbology, and each contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why
the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic
ages is now permitted to see the light, after long millenniums of the most
profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few truths," advisedly, because
that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes,
nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the
little that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital
truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown -- which it
is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the
grasp of the physicist -- is rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane
of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena -- a true valley of discord and
of eternal strife -- a necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most
holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new
generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The "amiable infidels and accomplished
profligates" of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival
of the dead sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest
students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to them
now; and now much more than ten years ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or
even the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were
published.
One of the greatest, and, withal, the
most serious objection to the correctness and reliability of the whole work
will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can the statements contained in them
be verified?" True, if a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and
Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are known to some Orientalists,
the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas are given -- is not in the
possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or "Dzan") is
utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them
under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback
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to those who follow the methods of
research prescribed by official Science; but to the students of Occultism, and
to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main body of the
Doctrines given is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands of
Sanskrit MSS., some already translated -- disfigured in their interpretations,
as usual, -- others still awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an
opportunity of verifying the statements herein made, and of checking most of
the quotations. A few new facts (new to the profane Orientalist, only) and
passages quoted from the Commentaries will be found difficult to trace. Several
of the teachings, also, have hitherto been transmitted orally: yet even those
are in every instance hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical,
Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is
in store for the writer through malevolent criticism, one fact is quite
certain. The members of several esoteric schools -- the seat of which is beyond
the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet,
and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim to have in their possession
the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the
works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or
characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs
down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.
It has been claimed in all ages that
ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library (see Isis Unveiled, Vol.
II., p. 27), every work of a character that might have led the profane to the
ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret
Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods,
diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once
found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all
destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were secured and
hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.*
It is maintained, furthermore, that
every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not sufficiently veiled in
symbolism, or which had any
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Max Muller shows that no
bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the Brahmans the original text of
the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the
"Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether Europe has the complete text
is very doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises in store
for the Orientalists.
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direct references to the ancient
mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such
as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed
to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at
the Emperor's sinful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves
helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badaoni, who had an
undisguised horror for Akbar's mania for idolatrous religions.*
Moreover in all the large and wealthy
lamasaries, there are subterranean crypts and cave-libraries, cut in the rock,
whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the
Western Tsay-dam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun** there are several such
hiding places. Along the ridge of Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has
ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is
a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a
poor-looking temple in it, with one old lama, a hermit, living near by to watch
it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a
collection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given, is
too large to find room even in the British Museum.***
All this is very likely to provoke a
smile of doubt. But then, before
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Badaoni wrote in his Muntakhab at
Tawarikh: "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) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned men in
their treatises on morals, 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." This work "was kept secret, and was not published till the
reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104,
note.)
** Karakorum mountains, Western
Tibet.
*** According to the same tradition
the now desolate regions of the waterless land of Tarim -- a true wilderness in
the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days of old covered with flourishing and
wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few verdant oases relieve its dead
solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a vast city swallowed by and
buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to no one, but is often
visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition speaks of immense
subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and cylinders. It may
be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.
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the reader rejects the truthfulness
of the reports, let him pause and reflect over the following well known facts.
The collective researches of the Orientalists, and especially the labours of
late years of the students of comparative Philology and the Science of
Religions have led them to ascertain as follows: An immense, incalculable
number of MSS., and even printed works known to have existed, are now to be
found no more. They have disappeared without leaving the slightest trace behind
them. Were they works of no importance they might, in the natural course of
time, have been left to perish, and their very names would have been
obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as now ascertained, most
of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and entirely
incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without those
additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for instance,
the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.*
He is said to have written 930 books
on Ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, one thousand in all. His great
work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the "Tao-te-King," or the
sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only
"about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.), hardly a dozen of
pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that "the text is unintelligible
without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than sixty
commentators for the purpose of his translation," the earliest going back
as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries
and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time
to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The
Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and
followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of the
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which
our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but
intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the
texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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." (Lectures on the "Science of
Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they have not fathomed it -- and this
is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body,
in Paris, complained in 1881.
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If one turns to the ancient
literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures, the elder
sister and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the Mosaic Bible, the
basis and starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To
perpetuate the memory of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record the vast
cycle of astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the
tradition of their splendid and eminently occult literature, what now remains?
-- only a few fragments, said to be by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless,
even as a clue to the character of what has disappeared. For they passed
through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop of Caesarea -- that
self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of other men's
religions -- and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his eminently
veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of this treatise on the
once grand religion of Babylon?
Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest
of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, from the astronomical and
chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple, and covering a
period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander
Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it -- also lost. Eusebius used these
extracts in writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.). The points of resemblance --
almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the
latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of defender and champion of the
new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd
chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian
Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen** charges him with
mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the fifth
century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both
denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.
Is it likely, then, that he dealt
more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which were already menacing the new
religion, so rashly accepted?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Found out and proven only now,
through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide 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!
** Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in History,"
vol. i. p. 200
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So that, with the exception of these
more than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean sacred literature has
disappeared from the eyes of the profane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A
few facts that were contained in the Berosian History are given in Part II. of
Vol. II., and may throw a great light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels,
personified by Bel and the Dragon.
Turning now to the oldest Aryan
literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find, following strictly in this the
data furnished by the said Orientalists themselves, that, although the Rig-Veda
contains only "about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns," in spite of the
Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood
correctly to this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the Brahmanas,
"the scholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive hymns,"
themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed to secure.
What do the scholars say of Buddhist
literature? Have they got it in its completeness? Assuredly not.
Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and the Tanjur of the Northern
Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from four to five
pounds," nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred canon of
the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the Saddharma
alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or six times
the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the latter, in the words
of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters. Notwithstanding,
then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333, Kanjur
comprising 108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead of
supplying us with correct versions, have interwoven them with their own
commentaries, for the purpose of justifying the dogmas of their several
schools."** Moreover, "according to a tradition preserved by the
Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist Canon
comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so
that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences. "Lost"
as usual for Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they are likewise lost
for Buddhists and Brahmins?
Considering the sacredness for the
Buddhists of every line written
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Spence Hardy, "The Legends and
Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66.
** "Buddhism in Tibet," p.
78.
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upon Buddha or his "Good
Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem miraculous. Had it been
vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course of events would
subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six thousand
treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions in, and emigrations
from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist Arhats began their
religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir
and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,* and reached China
in the year 61 A.D.** when Kashyapa, at the invitation of the Emperor Ming-ti,
went there to acquaint the "Son of Heaven" with the tenets of
Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss
as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the
possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for themselves; or,
that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to keep their
most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to deliver
them to the profanation and misuse of races even so "vastly superior"
to themselves.
Owing to the expressed regrets and
numerous confessions of almost every one of the Orientalists (See Max Muller's
Lectures for example) the public may feel sufficiently sure (a) that the
students of ancient religions have indeed very few data upon which to build
such final conclusions as they generally do about the old religions, and (b)
that such lack of data does not prevent them in the least from dogmatising. One
would imagine that, thanks to the numerous records of the Egyptian theogony and
mysteries preserved in the classics, and in a number of ancient writers, the
rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt ought to be well understood at least;
better, at any rate, than the too abstruse philosophies and Pantheism of India,
of whose religion and language Europe had hardly any idea before the beginning
of the present century. Along the Nile and on the face of the whole country,
there stand to this hour, exhumed yearly and daily, fresh relics which
eloquently tell their own history. Still it is not so. The learned Oxford
philologist himself confesses the truth by saying that "Though . . . we
see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and labyrinths, their
walls
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lassen, ("Ind.
Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected in
the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than that.
** Reverend T. Edkins, "Chinese
Buddhism."
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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 that 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."* Here again
the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they
become intelligible have disappeared.
Nevertheless, having found that
"there is a natural connection between language and religion"; and,
secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before the separation of the
Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of the Semitic
race; and a common Turanian religion before the separation of the Chinese and
the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class; having, in fact, only discovered
"three ancient centres of religion" and "three centres of
language," and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive religions
and languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to declare
"that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those
principal religions of the world has been gained!"
A "scientific treatment" of
a subject is no guarantee for its "historical basis"; and with such
scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the most eminent, is
justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the
eminent Orientalist has proved thoroughly to the world's satisfaction, that
according to Grimm's law of phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha are two different
personages, quite distinct from each other, and he has shown it scientifically.
When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin
"was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the
age of the Veda and of Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the
slightest "historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact
subservient to his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So little acquainted are our
greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward
marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies, that it has led to the
most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one of that kind was
discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had been considered the wife of
an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an inscription found on an
amulet hung on his neck, to be that of Sesostris -- the greatest King of Egypt!
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own conclusions, which may be very
"scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of
the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the subject of chronology,
in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent philologists and Orientalists,
from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself, are an evident proof that the
statement has no historical basis to stand upon, "internal evidence"
being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has
the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better proof to show, that
those learned writers, who have insisted for the last century or so that there
must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the
ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of
Greece and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern
Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time.
While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the writer that it was well known
that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were
stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits, the
late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India,
assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard
to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared
to the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that
there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the
human race, finds but few supporters at present," -- the holy and learned
man laughed. His answer was suggestive. "If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he
pronounced the name, were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a
gupta cave (a secret crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would
soon find out that what crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean)
from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages
from our sacred books. There was a "primeval revelation," and it
still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reappear; though
the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait."
Questioned further on this point, he
would say no more. This was at Meerut, in 1880.
No doubt the mystification played, in
the last century at Calcutta, by the Brahmins upon Colonel Wilford and Sir
William Jones was a cruel one. But it had been well deserved, and no one was
more to be blamed
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in that affair than the Missionaries
and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former, on the testimony of Sir William
Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly enough to maintain
that "the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma,
Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the Christian trinity."* It was a
good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it
has also made some of them too shy, and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum
of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For "that first
supply on the Brahmanical market," made for Colonel Wilford, has now
created an evident necessity and desire in the Orientalists to declare nearly
every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give to the missionaries full
justification for availing themselves of the opportunity. That they do so and
to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of
late to prove that the whole Puranic story about Chrishna was plagiarized by
the Brahmins from the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his
Lectures on the "Science of Religion," concerning the now famous
interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of Col. Wilford,
do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who studies the Secret
Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither the New
nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of
the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed
all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by
Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from
the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early
mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly declared that
Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning. But
all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the latest theory
worked out by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic
laws has now become a universal solvent for every identification and
"connection" between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Introduction
to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False Analogies in comparative
Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever forgery (on leaves
inserted in old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the
Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his
three sons, etc., etc
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the gods of many nations. Thus,
though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maia, the mother
of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the mother of Jesus, likewise Maya
(illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great illusion symbolically) -- yet
these three characters have no connection, nor can they have any, since Bopp,
has "laid down his code of phonetic laws."
In their efforts to collect together
the many skeins of unwritten history, it is a bold step for our Orientalists to
take, to deny, a priori, everything that does not dovetail with their special
conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and
sciences having existed far back in the night of time, even the knowledge of
writing is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited
with barbarism instead of culture. Yet the traces of an immense civilization,
even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This civilization is undeniably
prehistoric. And how can there be civilization without a literature, in some
form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the
broken links in the history of departed nations. The gigantic, unbroken wall of
the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper course
of the river Khuan-Khe down to the Kara-Korum hills, witnessed a civilization
during millenniums of years, and would have strange secrets to tell mankind.
The Eastern and Central portions of those regions -- the Nan-Schayn and the
Altyne-taga -- were once upon a time covered with cities that could well vie
with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the land, since those
cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting sand, and the sterile and
now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin of Tarim testify. The
borderlands alone are superficially known to the traveller. Within those
table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases are found blooming there,
wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous
soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible
even to the native profane traveller. Hurricanes may "tear up the sands
and sweep whole plains away," they are powerless to destroy that which is
beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean
stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such oases, there is
little fear that any one should discover them, even should several armies
invade the sandy wastes where --
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"Not a pool, not a bush, not a
house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged
screen
Round the parch'd flats of the dry,
dry desert. . . . ."
But there is no need to send the
reader across the desert, when the same proofs of ancient civilization are
found even in comparatively populated regions of the same country. The oasis of
Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000 feet above the level of the
river Tchertchen-D'arya, is surrounded with the ruins of archaic towns and
cities in every direction. There, some 3,000 human beings represent the relics
of about a hundred extinct nations and races -- the very names of which are now
unknown to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would feel more than embarrassed
to class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as the respective descendants
of all these antediluvian races and tribes know as little of their own
forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the moon. When questioned
about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their fathers had
come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were ruled by the great
genii of these deserts. This may be put down to ignorance and superstition, yet
in view of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, the answer may be based upon
primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe of Khoorassan claims to have come from
what is now known as Afghanistan, long before the days of Alexander, and brings
legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The Russian traveller, Colonel
(now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the oasis of Tchertchen, the
ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was, according to local
tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and the other by the
Mongolians in the tenth century of our era. "The emplacement of the two
cities is now covered, owing to shifting sands and the desert wind, with
strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken china and kitchen utensils and
human bones. The natives often find copper and gold coins, melted silver,
ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most remarkable -- broken
glass. . . . ." "Coffins of some undecaying wood, or material, also,
within which beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are found. . . . . The male
mummies are all extremely tall powerfully built men with long waving 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
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woollen garment, her bosom was
covered with golden stars, the feet being left naked." (From a lecture by
N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the famous traveller adds that all along their way
on the river Tchertchen they heard legends about twenty-three towns buried ages
ago by the shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition exists on the
Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and
these and like traditions, give us the right to credit other legendary lore
warranted by well educated and learned natives of India and Mongolia, when they
speak of immense libraries reclaimed from the sand, together with various
reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have all been safely stowed away.
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine
was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world.
Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of
documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the
teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of
libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more
credible by a consideration of the following facts: the tradition of the
thousands of ancient parchments saved when the Alexandrian library was
destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the
reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and Japan that the true old
texts with the commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible -- amounting
to many thousands of volumes -- have long passed out of the reach of profane
hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon;
the loss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of the
Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret
commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though no longer visible
to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in secret caves and crypts;
and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard to their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these
exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear in some more
enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati,
"the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of Aryan
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
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any desire to monopolise the
life-giving sacred lore. There were portions of the Secret Science that for
incalculable ages had to remain concealed from the profane gaze. But this was
because to impart to the unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous
importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle in a powder
magazine.
The answer to a question which has
frequently arisen in the minds of students, when meeting with statements such
as this, may be outlined here.
"We can understand," they
say, "the necessity for concealing from the herd such secrets as the Vril,
or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but
we cannot understand how any danger could arise from the revelation of such a
purely philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of the planetary
chains."
The danger was this: Doctrines such
as the planetary chain, or the seven races, at once give a clue to the
seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a plane, a
planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane, correlated to
seven-fold occult forces -- those of the higher planes being of tremendous
power. So that any septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult
powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity. A clue,
which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation -- especially the Westerns
-- protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic
disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would, nevertheless, have been very
real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to people fully convinced of
the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation, which made them
rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description.
The documents were concealed, it is
true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence had never been made a
secret of by the Hierophants of the Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever been
made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was
repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to
the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a
change for the worse -- in the policy of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well-known fact,
a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a reverend gentleman attached
for years to a Russian Embassy -- namely, that there are several documents in
the St. Peters-
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burg Imperial Libraries to show that,
even so late as during the days when Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of
Mystics flourished unimpeded in Russia, i.e., at the end of the last and the
beginning of the present century, more than one Russian Mystic travelled to
Tibet via the Ural mountains in search of knowledge and initiation in the
unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than one returned years later, with a
rich store of such information as could never have been given him anywhere in
Europe. Several cases could be cited, and well-known names brought forward, but
for the fact that such publicity might annoy the surviving relatives of the
said late Initiates. Let any one look over the Annals and History of
Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis, and he will assure
himself of the fact stated.
This is a corroboration of that which
has been stated many times before, and, unfortunately, too indiscreetly.
Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent charges of deliberate invention
and imposture with a purpose thrown at those who asserted but a truthful, if
even a little known fact, have only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But
now the mischief is done, and truth should no longer be denied, whatever the
consequences. Is it a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a
religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as already stated, it is as old as
thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time, but have
been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one European Initiate --
especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has
stated that there never was a religious founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or
Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed a new truth. These
founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They were the authors of
new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the latter were
based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand verities --
actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer -- out of the
many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the
adyta of the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES and by personal
transmission -- they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus every nation
received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its own local
and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more or less
philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is Confucius,
a very ancient
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legislator in historical chronology,
though a very modern Sage in the World's History, shown by Dr. Legge* -- who
calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a maker" -- as saying:
"I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and
therefore I love them."** (Quoted in "Science of Religions" by
Max Muller.)
The writer loves them too, and
therefore believes in the ancients, and the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And
believing in both, she now transmits that which she has received and learnt
herself to all those who will accept it. As to those who may reject her
testimony, -- i.e., the great majority -- she will bear them no malice, for
they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is right in hers in
affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two entirely different stand-points.
Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject
a priori whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a
Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed,
that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from
written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based
upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is
claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said to
emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are
offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all
those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of their own to
defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must
be accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever
department of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings
seriously. They will be derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only
in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to
recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated,
but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate
the Vedas.*** Have not the latter been derided, rejected, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lun Yu (§ I a) Schott.
"Chinesische Literatur," p. 7.
** "Life of Confucius," p.
96.
*** This is no pretension to
prophecy, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of facts. Every century
an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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called "a modern forgery" even
so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit proclaimed at one time the
progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek, according to Lempriere and
other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells us, the sacred books of the
Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists, "were all but unknown,
their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single scholar who could
have translated a line of the Veda . . . of the Zend Avesta, or . . . of the
Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be the work of the highest
antiquity whose 'preservation amounts almost to a marvel' (Lecture on the
Vedas).
The same will be said of the Secret
Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of its undeniable existence and
records. But it will take centuries before much more is given from it. Speaking
of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was
remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten years ago that:
"The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is
divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one
glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!"
The same may be said of the whole
Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and no more, was given in
"Isis." Much more is explained in these volumes. In those days the
writer hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the
disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. In Century
the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent
by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists
a Science called Gupta-Vidya; and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the
Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world has
been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found.
Such a work as this has to be
introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume rather; one that would
give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise,
or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the
world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to
publish in these pages even those
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted to be kept a little
ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times are ripe for a
more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very limited, so far.
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portions of the esoteric teachings
that have now escaped from confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity
-- at any rate, the probability -- of the existence of such teachings was first
established. Such statements as will now be made, have to be shown warranted by
various authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even certain
learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had
studied them, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had
even been personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the
performance of which the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The
writer will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to cite
well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good judgment,
and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients in the secret
arts and science, along with the mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged,
or, rather, partially presented before the public in their strange archaic
form.
How is this to be done? What is the
best way for achieving such an object? was the ever-recurring question. To make
our plan clearer, an illustration may be attempted. When a tourist coming from
a well-explored country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a terra incognita,
hedged in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks,
he may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans.
Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if he cannot visit the mysterious region
personally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a distance
as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he
can get a general and pretty correct idea of the transmural view, if he will
only climb to the loftiest summit of the altitudes in front of him. Once there,
he can gaze at it, at his leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives with
that which he has just left below, now that he is, thanks to his efforts,
beyond the line of the mists and the cloud-capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary
observation, for those who would like to get a more correct understanding of
the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in the texts, cannot be offered
to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has patience, and would glance
at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe, compare and check it with
what is known to history of the ages directly preceding and
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following the Christian era, then he
will find all this in Volume III. of this work.
In that volume a brief recapitulation
will be made of all the principal adepts known to history, and the downfall of
the mysteries will be described; after which began the disappearance and final
and systematic elimination from the memory of men of the real nature of
initiation and the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became Occult,
and Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading
name of Hermetic philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among the
Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or rather
Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of Christianity.
However great and zealous the
fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate every trace of
the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, it was a failure; but the
same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has perverted
systematically and ever since, every bright page written in the pre-Christian
periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has preserved enough of that
which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the
reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot of observation
selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium which
divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by the year ONE of
the Nativity. This event -- whether historically correct or not -- has
nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold
bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated
religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing such a vivid light
on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the
"New Dispensation."
However superhuman the efforts of the
early Christian fathers to obliterate the Secret Doctrine from the very memory
of man, they all failed. Truth can never be killed; hence the failure to sweep
away entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom,
and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only think of
the thousands, and perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their
too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverised to dust; of the
bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming about among the ruined cities of
Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and
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mountain, valleys and highlands,
seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, scroll or parchment
they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the symbol of the tau, or any
other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith; and he will then see
plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the Past.
Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediaeval Christianity
and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and
both have made
"-------------- the sun like
blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a
murkier gloom!"
Both creeds have won their proselytes
at the point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven-kissing
hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. of our era, the
ominous words "the KARMA OF ISRAEL," fatally glowed. Over the portals
of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will point to the
Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY, for events purposely perverted, and for
great characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between
the two cars of Jagannatha -- Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much,
the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid-point, who
believes in the eternal justice of things. Says Faigi Diwan, the "witness
to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker 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 Muller 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."*
In other words -- "THERE IS NO
RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- "SATYAT NASTI PARO
DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah 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 a volume explanatory of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Lectures on the Science of
Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257.
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it rather, and, though entirely
independent of the earlier work, an indispensable corollary to it. Much of what
was in Isis could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. The
Secret Doctrine will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the
first work, especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.
Concerned simply with the
philosophies within our historical times and the respective symbolism of the
fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be thrown at the panorama of
Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present work, detailed Cosmogony
and the evolution of the four races that preceded our Fifth race Humanity are
given, and now two large volumes explain that which was stated on the first
page of ISIS UNVEILED alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and
thither throughout that work. Nor could the vast catalogue of the Archaic
Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such
tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the gradual
development of the mysterious Humanities and races that preceded our
"Adamic" Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some
mysteries of the Esoteric philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the
earlier work. As an instance, the writer must be allowed to illustrate what is
said.
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 Siphrah 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* 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is used in the sense of
the Greek word [[anthropos]].
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The "very old Book" is the
original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only
this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah,* the work
attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of
Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian
Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the
Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition
says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the
words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central
Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when
its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the
forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the
lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race,
the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. The
"illustration" spoken of in "Isis" relates to the evolution
of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in the Vaivasvata
Manvantara or "Round"; each Round being composed of the Yugas of the
seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the
middle point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical,
as every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The
old book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of
everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of
the races from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further. It
stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 years ago at the death
of Krishna, the bright "Sun-god," the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None
of its possessors regard it as very ancient, as it was born with, and is only
as old as the Black Age,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who
died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed "miracles"
by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, 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," pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval Occultists,
Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late modern Magus,
Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic.
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namely, about 5,000 years. In about
nine years hence, the first cycle of the first five millenniums, that began
with the great cycle of the Kali-Yuga, will end. And then the last prophecy
contained in that book (the first volume of the prophetic record for the Black
Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to wait, and many of us will
witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will
be settled and squared between the races. Volume II. of the Prophecies is
nearly ready, having been in preparation since the time of Buddha's grand
successor, Sankaracharya.
One more important point must be
noticed, one that stands foremost in the series of proofs given of the
existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom -- at any rate for the Christian
Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least, partially known to
several of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on purely historical
grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and even Clemens Alexandrinus, had been
themselves initiated into the mysteries before adding to the Neo-Platonism of
the Alexandrian school, that of the Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More
than this, some of the doctrines of the Secret schools -- though by no means
all -- were preserved in the Vatican, and have since become part and parcel of
the mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to the original
Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now materialised dogma of
the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great persecutions set on foot
by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism, Masonry, and heterodox
mysticism generally.
The days of Constantine were the last
turning-point in history, the period of the Supreme struggle that ended in the
Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new one, built on
their bodies. From thence the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the
"Deluge" and the Garden of Eden, began to be forcibly and
relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze
of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that hands could be laid
upon, destroyed. Yet there remains enough, even among such mutilated records,
to warrant us in saying that there is in them every possible evidence of the
actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and
political cataclysms to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence that
the now Secret Wisdom was once the
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one fountain head, the ever-flowing
perennial source, at which were fed all its streamlets -- the later religions
of all nations -- from the first down to the last. This period, beginning with
Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and the Neo-Platonists and Gnostics at the
other, is the only focus left in History wherein converge for the last time the
bright rays of light streaming from the aeons of time gone by, unobscured by
the hand of bigotry and fanaticism.
This accounts for the necessity under
which the writer has laboured to be ever explaining the facts given from the
hoariest Past by evidence gathered from the historical period. No other means
was at hand, at the risk even of being once more charged with a lack of method
and system. The public must be made acquainted with the efforts of many
World-adepts, of initiated poets, writers, and classics of every age, to
preserve in the records of Humanity the Knowledge of the existence, at least,
of such a philosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would
indeed remain incomprehensible and ever a seemingly impossible myth, were not
like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age of history. This could be
done only by naming Chapter and Verse where may be found mention of these great
characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and interminable line of
other famous Antediluvian and Post-diluvian Masters in the arts. Thus only
could be shown, on semi-traditional and semi-historical authority, that
knowledge of the Occult and the powers it confers on man, are not altogether
fictions, but that they are as old as the world itself.
To my judges, past and future,
therefore -- whether they are serious literary critics, or those howling
dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity or
unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten
like lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing to say.
Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained slanderers -- fortunately
very few in number -- who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing
discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and
bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the
doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in "Esoteric
Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer, have finally
turned round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest as a
plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile
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dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!)
As well charge Renan with having stolen his Vie de Jesus from the Gospels, and
Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or his "Chips"
from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But to the
public in general and the readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may
repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in the words of
Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS,
AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."
Pull the "string" to pieces
and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of FACTS -- you will
never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, and no more.
We may close with a parting word
concerning this Volume I. In an INTRODUCTION prefacing a Part dealing chiefly
with Cosmogony, certain subjects brought forward might be deemed out of place,
but one more consideration added to those already given have led me to touch
upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the
stand-point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, based on what
he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly obliged to bear in
mind: hence, also the frequent references in this first Book to matters which,
properly speaking, belong to a later part of the work, but which could not be
passed by in silence, lest the reader should look down on this work as a fairy
tale indeed -- a fiction of some modern brain.
Thus, the Past shall help to realise
the PRESENT, and the latter to better appreciate the PAST. The errors of the
day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more than probable -- and in
the present case it amounts to certitude -- that once more the testimony of
long ages and of history will fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional
-- which is equal to saying the very few. But in this as in all like cases, the
true and the faithful may console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern
Sadducee with the mathematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and
bigotry. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy,
the famous law of probabilities worked out by an algebraical process for the
benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians. It runs thus: If two persons
give their evidence to
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a fact, and thus impart to it each of
them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; i.e., its
probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three such
evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The agreement
of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce 1023/1024, etc., etc.
The Occultist may remain satisfied, and care for no more.
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PROEM.
-------
PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.
AN Archaic Manuscript -- a collection
of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific
unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page is an
immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the
same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows to represent
Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still slumbering Energy, the
emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate
Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is
the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The Mundane Egg"), the
germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless,
periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by
turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all
returns. Its circumference -- a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the
limitation of the human mind -- indicates the abstract, ever incognisable
PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the
face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly
that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is
attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations
begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine
Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and
Theogony.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is hardly necessary to remind
the reader once more 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 the Vedantic language would mean absolute
Wisdom. Only those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy
processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible,
yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular
manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being;
unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one
self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the
reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless
Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath,"* which is
the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE.
That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact
and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus,
the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space was filled eternally with
atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter generating in due course of
time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual collisions
producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only
adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity -- an occult
teaching.
From the beginning of man's
inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives
in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and considered under its only
philosophical aspect -- universal motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in
Nature. Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus: "Deity is an
arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen
Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," -- this trinity including, and being
the cause of, every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 Maya. 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.
* Plato proves himself an Initiate,
when saying in Cratylus that [[theos]] is derived from the verb [[theein]],
"to move," "to run," as the first astronomers who observed
the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets [[theoi]], the gods. (See
Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the word
produced another term, [[aletheia]] -- "the breath of God."
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phenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic
motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or that which is
subject to perception) is finite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it
is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction
and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of successive
reconstructions. Kosmos -- the NOUMENON -- has nought to do with the causal
relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the
intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we
may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it have an end." With
regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had
a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its
organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it
evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . .
A few years ago only, it was stated
that:--
"The esoteric doctrine teaches,
like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the Kabala, that the one infinite and
unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious
successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu
these conditions are called the "Days" and the "Nights" of
Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or "asleep." The
Svabhavikas, 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 Svabhavat, and deem it foolish to theorise
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley
that "it is impossible . . . to form the abstract idea of motion distinct
from the body moving" ("Prin. 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 the Addendum to this Book;
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?" 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 Life and Motion of the Universe, to know
which in 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, Dec. 27th, 1885.)
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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 became 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 Svabhavikas 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
maintained 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." -- (See "Isis Unveiled"; also "The
Days and Nights of Brahma" in Part II.)
This passage will be explained, as
far as it is possible, in the present work. Though, as it now stands, it
contains nothing new to the Orientalist, its esoteric interpretation may
contain a good deal which has hitherto remained entirely unknown to the Western
student.
The first illustration being a plain
disc [[diagram]] the second one in the Archaic symbol shows [[diagram]], a disc
with a point in it -- the first differentiation in the periodical
manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite "Aditi in
THAT" (Rig Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within
abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter,
thus [[diagram]] It now symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the
all-embracing absolute Infinitude.
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When the diameter line is crossed by
a vertical one [[diagram]], it becomes the mundane cross. Humanity has reached
its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin of human life to begin. When
the circumference disappears and leaves only the [[diagram]] it is a sign that
the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH race begins. The
Cross within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism; when the Cross was left
uninscribed, it became phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a TAU
inscribed within a circle [[diagram]] or as a "Thor's hammer," the
Jaina cross, so-called, or simply Svastica within a circle [[diagram]]
By the third symbol -- the circle
divided in two by the horizontal line of the diameter -- the first
manifestation of creative (still passive, because feminine) Nature was meant.
The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation is feminine,
because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence female deities were
more sacred than the male. Nature is therefore feminine, and, to a degree,
objective and tangible, and the spirit Principle which fructifies it is concealed.
By adding to the circle with the horizontal line in it, a perpendicular line,
the tau was formed -- [[diagram]] -- the oldest form of the letter. It was the
glyph of the third root-race to the day of its symbolical Fall -- i.e., when
the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place -- when the figure
became [[diagram]], the circle, or sexless life modified or separated -- a
double glyph or symbol. With the races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology
the sacr', and in Hebrew n'cabvah, of the first-formed races;* then it changed
into the Egyptian [[diagram]] (emblem of life), and still later into the sign
of Venus, [[diagram]] Then comes the Svastica (Thor's hammer, or the
"Hermetic Cross" now), entirely separated from its Circle, thus becoming
purely phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five-pointed star
reversed, thus [[diagram]] -- the sign of human sorcery, with its two points
(horns) turned heavenward, a position every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, which have now become synonyms of "holiness," though
purely phallic!
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Occultist will recognise as one of
the "left-hand," and used in ceremonial magic.*
It is hoped that during the perusal
of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in general with regard to
Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and unjust to regard the Buddhists and
Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at
any rate, all logicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict
reasoning. Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the Hindus may be taken as a
representative of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this
absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others
were copied. Parabrahm is not "God," because It is not a God.
"It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains
Mandukya Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as
effect. Parabrahm is simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the
all-inclusive Kosmos -- or, rather, the infinite Cosmic Space -- in the highest
spiritual sense, of course. Brahma (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free,
undecaying supreme Root, "the ONE true Existence, Paramarthika," and
the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (intelligence, consciousness) cannot be a
cogniser, "for THAT can have no subject of cognition." Can the flame
be called the essence of Fire? This Essence is "the LIFE and LIGHT of the
Universe, the visible fire and flame are destruction, death, and evil."
"Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat, their essence makes him
immortal." (Bodhi-mur, Book II.) "The knowledge of the absolute
Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught else
than the absolute Essence itself," says Sankaracharya. IT -- is "the
Spirit of the Fire," not fire itself; therefore, "the attributes of
the latter, heat or flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of
which that Spirit is the unconscious cause." Is not the above sentence the
true key-note of later Rosicrucian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are told by the Western
mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in the Kabala 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 Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and
you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic transformations this
name, androgynous in the first chapters of Genesis, becomes in its
transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and phallic. The fact of choosing 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 proclaim 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 now
demonstrated to be.
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philosophy? Parabrahm is, in short,
the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and eternity, the
"THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive aggregates can not
be applied.* "In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only" (Aitareya
Upanishad); the great Sankaracharya, explains that "THIS" referred to
the Universe (Jagat); the sense of the words, "In the beginning,"
meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal Universe.
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo
the Upanishads, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine, that "this"
cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of
creators, but only refuse, very logically, to attribute "creation"
and especially formation, something finite to an Infinite Principle. With them,
Parabrahmam is a passive because an Absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It
is only limited Omniscience and Omnipotence that are refused to the latter,
because these are still attributes (as reflected in man's perceptions); and
because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL," the ever invisible spirit
and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes; absoluteness
very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned from being
connected with it. And if the Vedantin postulates attributes as belonging
simply to its emanation, calling it "Iswara plus Maya," and Avidya
(Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it is difficult to find any
Atheism in this conception.** Since there can be neither two INFINITES nor two
ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless, this Self-Existence can
hardly be conceived of as creating personally. In the sense and perceptions of
finite "Beings," THAT is Non-"being," in the sense that it
is the one BE-NESS; for, in this ALL lies concealed its coeternal and coeval
emanation or inherent radiation, which, upon becoming periodically Brahma (the
male-female Potency) becomes or expands itself into the manifested Universe.
Narayana moving on the (abstract) waters of Space, is transformed into the
Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes the manifested WORD
or Logos.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Vedanta Sara," by
Major G. A. Jacob; as also "The Aphorisms of S'andilya," translated
by Cowell, p. 42.
** Nevertheless, prejudiced and
rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would like to prove this pure Atheism.
For proof of this, see about Major Jacob's "Vedanta Sara." Yet, the
whole Antiquity echoes this Vedantic thought:--
"Omnis enim per se divom natura
necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace
fruatur."
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The orthodox Brahmins, those who rise
the most against the Pantheists and Adwaitees, calling them Atheists, are
forced, if Manu has any authority in this matter, to accept the death of
Brahma, the creator, at the expiration of every "Age" of this
(creative) deity (100 Divine years -- a period which in our years requires
fifteen figures to express it). Yet, no philosopher among them will view this
"death" in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the
manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists are, therefore, at one
with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers as to the above tenet. They show the
impossibility of accepting on philosophical grounds the idea of the absolute
ALL creating or even evolving the "Golden Egg," into which it is said
to enter in order to transform itself into Brahma -- the Creator, who expands
himself later into gods and all the visible Universe. They say that Absolute
Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the limitless extension
of something, and the duration of that "something"; and the One All
is like Space -- which is its only mental and physical representation on this Earth,
or our plane of existence -- neither an object of, nor a subject to,
perception. If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent
Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation
a manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be
one. Locke's idea that "pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor
Motion" -- is incorrect. Space is neither a "limitless void,"
nor a "conditioned fulness," but both: being, on the plane of
absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity, which is void only to finite
minds,* and on that of mayavic perception, the Plenum, the absolute Container
of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested: it is, therefore, that
ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference between the Christian Apostle's "In
Him we live and move and have our being," and the Hindu Rishi's "The
Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The very names of the two chief deities,
Brahma and Vishnu, ought to have long ago suggested their esoteric meanings.
For the root of one, Brahmam, or Brahm, is derived by some from the word Brih,
"to grow" or "to expand" (see Calcutta Review, vol. lxvi.,
p. 14); and of the other, Vishnu, from the root Vis, "to pervade," to
enter in the nature of the essence; Brahma-Vishnu being this infinite SPACE, of
which the gods, the Rishis, the Manus, and all in this universe are simply the
potencies, Vibhutayah.
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return to, Brahma (Brahma)": for
Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe in abscondito, and Brahma,
the manifested, is the Logos, made male-female* 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 the esoteric symbolism "the
Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father." It is composed from its
undifferentiated to its differentiated surface of seven layers.
"What is that which was, is, and
will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or
none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is --
SPACE.
It is not the One Unknown
ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito, that is rejected, but the
God of human dogma and his humanized "Word." In his infinite conceit
and inherent pride and vanity, man shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand
out of the material he found in his own small brain-fabric, and forced it upon
mankind as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.** The Occultist
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Manu's account of Brahma separating
his body into male and female, the latter the female Vach, in whom he creates
Viraj, and compare this with the esotericism of Chapters II., III., and IV. of
Genesis.
** Occultism is indeed in the air at
the close of this our century. Among many other works recently published, we
would recommend one especially to students of theoretical Occultism who would
not venture beyond the realm of our special human plane. It is called "New
Aspects of Life and Religion," by Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric
dogmas and philosophy, the latter rather limited, in the concluding chapters,
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 recognised as, and identified with, the
primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and impalpable" --
(abstract space, granted); "and because invisible and impalpable,
therefore incognisable. And this incognisability 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." (p. 5.)
This is precisely what has been done
by the believers in an anthropomorphic Creator, an extracosmic, instead of an
intracosmic God. Many -- most of Mr. Pratt's subjects, 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 "Un- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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accepts revelation as coming from
divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested lives, never from the
Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called Primordial Man,
Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajapati" of the
Hindus, the Elohim or "Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all
nations, who have become Gods for men. He also regards the Adi-Sakti -- the
direct emanation of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female
aspect of the Creative Cause Brahma, in her A'kasic form of the Universal Soul
-- as philosophically a Maya, and cause of human Maya. But this view does not
prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for
one Mahamanvantara; nor from applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti,* to
practical purposes, connected as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena,
known or unknown to science.
The oldest religions of the world --
exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one -- are the Indian, the
Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these --
entirely lost to the world now, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at
present rendered by the archaeologists; then, passing over a number of
religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically, as in
the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism; exoterically, as in
Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends. Read by the
light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the fragment
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] known Causeless Cause," is the oldest dogma in Occultism,
millenniums earlier than the Pater-AEther of the Greeks and Latins. So are the
"Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and the Unknown
revealers of the Unknown." They are all found in Aryan philosophy
personified by Visvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are expressed
very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects, in the work referred to.
* In contradistinction to the
manifested universe of matter, the term Mulaprakriti (from Mula, "the
root," and prakriti, "nature"), or the unmanifested primordial
matter -- called by Western alchemists Adam's Earth -- is applied by the
Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious metaphysics, and
septenary in esoteric teachings, like everything else in the universe. As
Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as Vyakta, it becomes
differentiated and conditioned, according to Svetasvatara Upanishad, I. 8, and
Devi Bhagavata Purana. The author of the Four Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita,
says, in speaking of Mulaprakriti: "From its (the Logos') objective
standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . . Of course this
Mulaprakriti is material to it, as any material object is material to us. . . .
Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a
sort of veil thrown over it." (Theosophist, Vol. VIII., p. 304.)
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of a highly philosophical page in the
World's Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta Vidya and the Zohar.) Left in their
symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of
science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue
to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better
what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation,
and the Jews have certainly now the better of their traditional persecutors.
The above-named exoteric creeds will be explained in the light of the Universal
doctrine as we proceed with it.
The Occult Catechism contains the
following questions and answers:
"What is it that ever is?"
"Space, the eternal Anupadaka."* "What is it that ever
was?" "The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is ever
coming and going?" "The Great Breath." "Then, there are
three Eternals?" "No, the three are one. That which ever is is one,
that which ever was is one, that which is ever being and becoming is also one:
and this is Space."
"Explain, oh Lanoo
(disciple)." -- "The One is an unbroken Circle (ring) with no
circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless plane
of the Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric periods; the
One is the indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those
periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, the
summit and base of the Father, the two extremities of the Mother, reaching in
reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the rings that are within that
Ring. Light in darkness and darkness in light: the 'Breath which is eternal.'
It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within
outwardly, when it is nowhere -- (i.e., maya,** one of the centres***). It
expands and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Meaning "parentless" --
see farther on.
** Esoteric philosophy, regarding as
Maya (or the illusion of ignorance) every finite thing, must necessarily view
in the same light every intra-Cosmic planet and body, as being something
organised, hence finite. The expression, therefore, "it proceeds from
without inwardly, etc." refers in the first portion of the sentence to the
dawn of the Mahamanvantaric period, or the great re-evolution 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 portion,
to the partial or local manvantara, which may be a solar or even a planetary
one.
*** 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
the Occultists LIFE and by Science "energy," then the process takes
place [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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contracts (exhalation and
inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and scatters; when it
contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the periods of
Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya. The Germ is invisible and
fiery; the Root (the plane of the circle) is cool; but during Evolution and
Manwantara her garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who
devours the progeny of the many-faced Element (heterogeneous); and leaves the
single-faced ones (homogeneous). Cool Breath is the Mother, who conceives,
forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to reform them at
the Dawn (of the Day of Brahma, or Manvantara). . . . ."
For clearer understanding on the part
of the general reader, it must be stated that Occult Science recognises Seven
Cosmical Elements -- four entirely physical, and the fifth (Ether)
semi-material, as it will become visible in the air towards the end of our
Fourth Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of the Fifth.
The remaining two are as yet absolutely beyond the range of human perception.
These latter will, however, appear as presentments during the 6th and 7th Races
of this Round, and will become known in the 6th and 7th Rounds respectively.*
These seven elements with their numberless Sub-Elements
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] from within outwardly, every atom being said to contain in itself
creative energy of the divine breath. Hence, whereas after an absolute pralaya,
or when the pre-existing material consists but of ONE Element, and BREATH
"is everywhere," the latter acts from without inwardly: after a minor
pralaya, everything having remained in statu quo -- in a refrigerated state, so
to say, like the moon -- at the first flutter of manvantara, the planet or
planets begin their resurrection to life from within outwardly.
* It is curious to notice how, in the
evolutionary cycles of ideas, ancient thought seems to be reflected in modern
speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer read and studied ancient Hindu
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 co-existent 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."
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far more numerous than those known to
Science) are simply conditional modifications and aspects of the ONE and only
Element. This latter is not Ether,* not even A'kasa but the Source of these.
The Fifth Element, now advocated quite freely by Science, is not the Ether
hypothesised by Sir Isaac Newton -- although he calls it by that name, having
associated it in his mind probably with the AEther, "Father-Mother"
of Antiquity. As Newton intuitionally says, "Nature is a perpetual
circulatory worker, generating fluids out of solids, fixed things out of
volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of gross, and gross out of
subtile. . . . . Thus, perhaps, may all things be originated from Ether,"
(Hypoth, 1675).
The reader has to bear in mind that
the Stanzas given treat only of the Cosmogony of our own planetary System and
what is visible around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with
regard to the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they
could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be
very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate upon
this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the highest
Dhyani-Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that
separate the milliards of Solar systems from the "Central Sun," as it
is called. Therefore, that which is given, relates only to our visible Kosmos,
after a "Night of Brahma."
Before the reader proceeds to the
consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the
present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with
the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of
thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number,
and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows;
therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar
with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Whatever the views of physical
Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching for ages that A'kasa
-- 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 former 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.
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The Secret Doctrine establishes three
fundamental propositions:--
(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal,
Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since
it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any
human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought --
in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."
To render these ideas clearer to the
general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute
Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and
Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and
"Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the rootless root
of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of
all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite
Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is
beyond all thought or speculation.
This "Be-ness" is
symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute
abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human
mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the
other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even
our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart
from change, and motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic. This
latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolised by the term "The
Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further
elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is
this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite intelligence
as the theological Trinity.
It may, however, assist the student
if a few further explanations are given here.
Herbert Spencer has of late so far
modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of the "First
Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives from the
"Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the
"Unknowable," may be essentially the same as that of the
Consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal reality
pervading
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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" [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of
thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to the esoteric and
Vedantin tenet.*
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the
Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is
out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence
is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us)
Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or
consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter
are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two
facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of
conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.
Considering this metaphysical triad
as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, the great Breath assumes the
character of precosmic Ideation. It is the fons et origo of force and of all
individual consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast
scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, precosmic root-substance (Mulaprakriti)
is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of
Nature.
Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the
root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum
of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.
Hence it will be apparent that the
contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential to the existence of
the "Manifested Universe." Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic
Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since it is only
through a vehicle** of matter that consciousness wells up as "I am
I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind
at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic
Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness
could ensue.
The "Manifested Universe,"
therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of
its EX-istence as "manifestation."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] cannot be the absolute, for it is a manifestation. Therefore, Eastern
Occultism calls the Abstract All the "Causeless One Cause," the
"Rootless Root," and limits the "First Cause" to the Logos,
in the sense that Plato gives to this term.
* See Mr. Subba Row's four able
lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, "Theosophist," February, 1887.
** Called in Sanskrit:
"Upadhi."
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But just as the opposite poles of
subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in
which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is
"that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object.
This something, at present unknown to
Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the
"bridge" by which the "Ideas" existing in the "Divine
Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance as the "laws of
Nature." Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded
from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all
manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made manifest
through the Dhyan Chohans,* the Architects of the visible World. Thus from
Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the
several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self
-- or reflective -- consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations,
is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle
electrifying every atom into life.
The following summary will afford a
clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of
the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, as Hegel says, both Absolute
Being and Non-Being.
(2.) The first manifestation, the
impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the precursor of the
"manifested." This is the "First Cause," the
"Unconscious" of European Pantheists.
(3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the
"Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and Prakriti, or the second
Logos.
(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or
Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the
basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called MAHA-BUDDHI.
The ONE REALITY; its dual aspects in
the conditioned Universe.
Further, the Secret Doctrine
affirms:--
(b.) The Eternity of the Universe in
toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the playground of numberless
Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing," called "the
manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity." "The
Eternity of the Pilgrim"** is like a wink
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Called by Christian theology:
Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
** "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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of
Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular
tidal ebb of flux and reflux." (See Part II., "Days and Nights of
Brahma.")
This second assertion of the Secret
Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and
reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all
departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and
Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and
without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the
absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine
teaches:--
(c) The fundamental identity of all
Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the
Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a spark of the
former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in
accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words,
no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious)
existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal
Sixth principle, -- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every elemental
form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired
individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and
self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the
degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and
plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the
Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those
won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series
of metempsychoses and reincarnations. This is why the Hindus say that the
Universe is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in every atom of the universe, the
six principles in Nature being all the outcome -- the variously differentiated
aspects -- of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in the Universe whether
Cosmical or micro-cosmical; and also why the permutations (psychic, spiritual
and physical), on the plane of manifestation and form, of the sixth (Brahmâ the
vehicle of Brahma) are viewed by metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has to be used, for lack of
appropriate words in English. The Vedantins call it Sutratma (Thread-Soul), but
their explanation, too, differs somewhat from that of the occultists; to
explain which difference, however, is left to the Vedantins themselves.
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antiphrasis as illusive and Mayavic.
For although the root of every atom individually and of every form
collectively, is that seventh principle or the one Reality, still, in its
manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an
evanescent illusion of our senses. (See, for clearer definition, Addendum
"Gods, Monads and Atoms," and also "Theophania,"
"Bodhisatvas and Reincarnation," etc., etc.)
In its absoluteness, the One
Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti) is sexless,
unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical (manvantaric) emanation -- or primal
radiation -- is also One, androgynous and phenomenally finite. When the
radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations are also androgynous, to
become male and female principles in their lower aspects. After Pralaya,
whether the great or the minor Pralaya (the latter leaving the worlds in statu
quo*), the first that re-awakes to active life is the plastic A'kasa,
Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the plane on the surface of the
Circle. Space is called the "Mother" before its Cosmic activity, and
Father-Mother at the first stage of re-awakening. (See Comments, Stanza II.) In
the Kabala it is also Father-Mother-Son. But whereas in the Eastern doctrine,
these are the Seventh Principle of the manifested Universe, or its
"Atma-Buddhi-Manas" (Spirit, Soul, Intelligence), the triad branching
off and dividing into the seven cosmical and seven human principles, in the
Western Kabala of the Christian mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and with their
occultists, the male-female Jehovah, Jah-Havah. In this lies the whole
difference between the esoteric and the Christian trinities. The Mystics and
the Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists, synthesize their
pregenetic triad in the pure divine abstraction. The orthodox, anthropomorphize
it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara -- the three hypostases of the manifesting
"Spirit of the Supreme Spirit" (by which title Prithivi -- the Earth
-- greets Vishnu in his first Avatar) -- are the purely metaphysical abstract
qualities of formation, preservation, and destruction, and are the three divine
Avasthas (lit. hypostases) of that which "does
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not the physical organisms
that remain in statu quo, least of all their psychical principles, during the
great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only their Akasic or astral
"photographs." But during the minor pralayas, once over-taken by the "Night,"
the planets remain intact, though dead, as a huge animal, caught and embedded
in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.
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not perish with created things"
(or Achyuta, a name of Vishnu); whereas the orthodox Christian separates his
personal creative Deity into the three personages of the Trinity, and admits of
no higher Deity. The latter, in Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the
orthodox, the perfect Cube. The creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded
by the Eastern philosopher as Bhrantidarsanatah -- "false
apprehension," something "conceived of, by reason of erroneous appearances,
as a material form," and explained as arising from the illusive conception
of the Egotistic personal and human Soul (lower fifth principle). It is
beautifully expressed in a new translation of Vishnu Purana. "That Brahma
in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and
unevolved (Mulaprakriti), and also the aspect of Spirit and the aspect of Time.
Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the Supreme Brahma.* The next is
a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved, and is the time
last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic theogony as being also a generated
god or agent.
At this stage of the re-awakening of
the Universe, the sacred symbolism represents it as a perfect Circle with the
(root) point in the Centre. This sign was universal, therefore we find it in
the Kabala also. The Western Kabala, however, now in the hands of Christian
mystics, ignores it altogether, though it is plainly shown in the Zohar. These
sectarians begin at the end, and show as the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos this
sign [[diagram]], calling it "the Union of the Rose and Cross," the
great mystery of occult generation, from whence the name -- Rosicrucians (Rose
Cross)!
As may be judged, however, from the
most important, as the best known of the Rosicrucians' symbols, there is one
which has never been hitherto understood even by modern mystics. It is that of
the "Pelican" tearing open its breast to feed its seven little ones
-- the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross and a direct outcome from
the Eastern
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 recognise 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.
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Secret Doctrine. Brahma (neuter) is
called Kalahansa, meaning, as explained by Western Orientalists, the Eternal
Swan or goose (see Stanza III., Comment. 8), and so is Brahma, the Creator. A
great mistake is thus brought under notice; it is Brahma (neuter) who ought to
be referred to as Hansa-vahana (He who uses the swan as his Vehicle) and not
Brahma the Creator, who is the real Kalahansa, while Brahma (neuter) is hamsa,
and "A-hamsa," as will be explained in the Commentary. Let it be
understood that the terms Brahma and Parabrahmam are not used here because they
belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but simply because they are more familiar
to the students in the West. Both are the perfect equivalents of our one,
three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand for the ONE ALL, and the One
"All in all."
Such are the basic conceptions on
which the Secret Doctrine rests.
It would not be in place here to
enter upon any defence or proof of their inherent reasonableness; nor can I
pause to show how they are, in fact, contained -- though too often under a
misleading guise -- in every system of thought or philosophy worthy of the
name.
Once that the reader has gained a
clear comprehension of them and realised the light which they throw on every
problem of life, they will need no further justification in his eyes, because
their truth will be to him as evident as the sun in heaven. I pass on,
therefore, to the subject matter of the Stanzas as given in this volume, adding
a skeleton outline of them, in the hope of thereby rendering the task of the
student more easy, by placing before him in a few words the general conception
therein explained.
Stanza I. The history of cosmic
evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, the abstract algebraical
formula of that Evolution. Hence the student must not expect to find there an
account of all the stages and transformations which intervene between the first
beginnings of "Universal" evolution and our present state. To give
such an account would be as impossible as it would be incomprehensible to men
who cannot even grasp the nature of the plane of existence next to that to
which, for the moment, their consciousness is limited.
The Stanzas, therefore, give an
abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to all evolution: to
that of our tiny earth, to
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that of the chain of planets of which
that earth forms one, to the solar Universe to which that chain belongs, and so
on, in an ascending scale, till the mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The seven Stanzas given in this
volume represent the seven terms of this abstract formula. They refer to, and
describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, which are spoken
of in the Puranas as the "Seven Creations," and in the Bible as the
"Days" of Creation.
---------------------
The First Stanza describes the state
of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first flutter of re-awakening
manifestation.
A moment's thought shows that such a
state can only be symbolised; to describe it is impossible. Nor can it be
symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the state of Absoluteness per
se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to describe
objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the
negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than
conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.
The stage described in Stanza II. is,
to a western mind, so nearly identical with that mentioned in the first Stanza,
that to express the idea of its difference would require a treatise in itself.
Hence it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader
to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed
it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties
rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain.
Stanza III. describes the
Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts the emergence of
the "Monads" from their state of absorption within the ONE; the
earliest and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds," the term
Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the
tiniest atom.
Stanza IV. shows the differentiation
of the "Germ" of the Universe
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into the septenary hierarchy of conscious
Divine Powers, who are the active manifestations of the One Supreme Energy.
They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the
manifested Universe, in the only sense in which the name "Creator" is
intelligible; they inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who
adjust and control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of
the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws of Nature."
Generically, they are known as the
Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various groups has its own designation in the
Secret Doctrine.
This stage of evolution is spoken of
in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the Gods.
In Stanza V. the process of
world-formation is described:--- First, diffused Cosmic Matter, then the fiery
"whirlwind," the first stage in the formation of a nebula. That
nebula condenses, and after passing through various transformations, forms a
Solar Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet, as the case may be.
The subsequent stages in the
formation of a "World" are indicated in Stanza VI., which brings the
evolution of such a world down to its fourth great period, corresponding to the
period in which we are now living.
Stanza VII. continues the history,
tracing the descent of life down to the appearance of Man; and thus closes the
first Book of the Secret Doctrine.
The development of "Man"
from his first appearance on this earth in this Round to the state in which we
now find him will form the subject of Book II.
---------------------
NOTE.
The Stanzas which form the thesis of
every section are given throughout in their modern translated version, as it
would be worse
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than useless to make the subject
still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of the original,
with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from the Chinese Thibetan
and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar Commentaries and Glosses on
the Book of DZYAN -- these being now rendered for the first time into a
European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only portions of the
seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete they would remain
incomprehensible to all save the few higher occultists. Nor is there any need
to assure the reader that, no more than most of the profane, does the writer,
or rather the humble recorder, understand those forbidden passages. To
facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too frequent reference to foot-notes,
it was thought best to blend together texts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and
Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, in preference to giving
the originals. The more so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, the
former only being used between a Master and his chelas (or disciples).
Thus, were one to translate into
English, using only the substantives and technical terms as employed in one of
the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I 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; Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang
not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of
Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna), &c., &c.," which would
sound like pure Abracadabra.
As this work is written for the
instruction of students of Occultism, and not for the benefit of philologists,
we may well avoid such foreign terms wherever it is possible to do so. The
untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible unless explained in their
meanings, are left, but all such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form. Needless
to remind the reader that these are, in almost every case, the late
developments of the later language, and pertain to the Fifth Root-Race.
Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the
philosophical terms used in the systems of the India of the post-Mahabharatan
period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met with in the original
Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not a Theosophist, is
once more invited to regard all that which follows as a fairy tale, if he
likes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of
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dreamers; and, at the worst, as an
additional hypothesis to the many Scientific hypotheses past, present and
future, some exploded, others still lingering. It is not in any sense worse
than are many of the so called Scientific theories; and it is in every case
more philosophical and probable.
In view of the abundant comments and
explanations required, the references to the footnotes are given in the usual
way, while the sentences to be commented upon are marked with figures.
Additional matter will be found in the Chapters on Symbolism forming Part II.,
as well as in Part III., these being often more full of information than the
text.
---------------------
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PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH
COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
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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 not 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 knew no change, when time shall
be no more.
Oh! endless thought, divine
ETERNITY."
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COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the
Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
STANZA I.
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER
EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN
THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE
WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT.
THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS
ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT
AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE
SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS
IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT.
NAUGHT WAS.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN
DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN
ETERNAL NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE
STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED
UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY
THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE
ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?
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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 DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING.
2. . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE
EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE
CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE
RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR
THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.
5. THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN
FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT; AND
SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE
GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE
DIVINE BOSOM. . . .
-------
STANZA III.
1. . . . THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE
SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE. THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM
WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG,
TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN
DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE. . .
3. DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT
DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN
EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM,
WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG.
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4. THEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR.
THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG,
WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT
THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT
REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP
OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE,
AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS
OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OR FATHER AND MOTHER.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT
CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK
SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO
THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE
DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE,** AND THE
UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR
THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL AND UNFURLING IT FROM
EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE
GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES, AND TURNS THE UPPER
INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED INTO THE GREAT WATERS.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM AND WHERE WAS
NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH
LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK
HIDDEN FATHER.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS
FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER: THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE
GREAT MOTHER.
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE
UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT -- THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS -- AND THE
LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF
THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHAVAT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** In the English translation from
the Sanskrit the numbers are given in that language, Eka, Chatur, etc., etc. It
was thought best to give them in English.
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11. IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF
FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN
THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END
OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS COOLING IT BECOMES
RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS;
THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO
HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A PART OF THE WEB. REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT
LORD" LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.
-------
STANZA IV.
1. . . . LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE
EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE FIRE. LEARN, THERE IS NEITHER
FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: NUMBER ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER.
2. LEARN WHAT WE WHO DESCEND FROM THE
PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM
OUR FATHERS. . . .
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT --
THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED 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 ARUPA, THE RUPA, AND THE
FORCE OF DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE
FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS, AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS
WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE --
THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE
SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE
SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN. THESE "SPARKS" ARE CALLED
SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL
NIDANA -- THE OEAOHOO, WHICH IS:
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5. "DARKNESS" THE
BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT:--
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE
IS ONE.
II. THE VOICE OF THE LORD SVABHAVAT,
THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE."
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE
[[diagram]] ARE THE SACRED FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA UNIVERSE. THEN COME
THE "SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS
BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER.
6. THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE
LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE. THE REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE
"SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
-------
STANZA V.
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST
SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY
CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND.
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF
THEIR WILL. THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT, THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS WHOSE SONS
ARE THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE STEED AND THE THOUGHT IS
THE RIDER. HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS; TAKES THREE, AND
FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW.
HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS, AND JOINS THEM.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND
LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM
THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS, AND FORMS THEREWITH
THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN
THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL.
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE
THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN; AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT
EACH ANGLE, AND THE LIPIKA IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL, THEY SAY: THIS IS GOOD, THE
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FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE
FIRST IS NOW THE SECOND. THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA" REFLECTS ITSELF IN
CHHAYA LOKA, THE FIRST GARMENT OF THE ANUPADAKA.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES AND
BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE, FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES AND
THEIR ARMIES.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE
TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE, THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE
EGG. IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT" FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND
ASCEND. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING TOWARDS THE GREAT
DAY "BE WITH US." THUS WERE FORMED THE RUPA AND THE ARUPA: FROM ONE
LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE
WHEELS WATCH THE RING. . . . .
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STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF
MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE -- KWAN-YIN -- THE "TRIPLE" OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN,
RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN, FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE
SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER ABYSS, THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF
SIEN-TCHANG AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:*
2. THE SWIFT AND RADIANT ONE PRODUCES
THE SEVEN LAYA CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY
"BE-WITH-US," AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS
SURROUNDING TSIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS.
3. OF THE SEVEN -- FIRST ONE
MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED, TWO MANIFESTED, FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED,
FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED, THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN REVEALED, TWO
AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE LAID ASIDE. LASTLY, SEVEN
SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verse 1 of Stanza VI. is of a far
later date than the other Stanzas, though still very ancient. The old text of
this verse, having names entirely unknown to the Orientalists would give no
clue to the student.
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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 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. THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO
THE OTHER, DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.
5. AT THE FOURTH, THE SONS ARE TOLD
TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES -- TWO OBEY.
THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED; THEY WILL BE
BORN ON THE FOURTH, SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING; THIS IS THE FIRST WAR.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARDS
AND UPWARDS. . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE. THERE WERE BATTLES
FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR SPACE;
THE SEED APPEARING AND RE-APPEARING CONTINUOUSLY.
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, LANOO, IF
THOU WOULDEST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL. ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR
MOTHER. REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT
LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR THOU SHALT SEE . . . . .
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STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT
FORMLESS LIFE.
FIRST THE DIVINE, THE ONE FROM THE
MOTHER-SPIRIT; THEN THE SPIRITUAL; THE THREE FROM THE ONE, THE FOUR FROM THE
ONE, AND THE FIVE FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE, AND THE SEVEN. THESE ARE THE
THREE-FOLD, THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE "MIND-BORN" SONS OF THE FIRST
LORD; THE SHINING SEVEN.
IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, OH
LANOO. THEY, WHO WATCH OVER THEE, AND THY MOTHER EARTH.
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2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER
RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM OF FORM. THROUGH THE
COUNTLESS RAYS PROCEEDS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY
JEWELS.
3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE
THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE THREE ARE ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, OH LANOO, THE
HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA.
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES;
THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS. THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW
FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN -- THEIR FLAME -- THE BEAMS
AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF
EARTH.
5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY
THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT
STOPS IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND AND
BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN CHANGES AND BECOMES A SACRED
ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO
FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE. WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD
LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA. . . . .
6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN THE THREAD
BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE STRONG AND RADIANT WITH
EVERY CHANGE. THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY. . . . .
7. THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL, SAID
THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE, AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE
CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN TO THE DAY, "BE WITH
US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND ME. THEN THE
BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON RADIANT EARTH AND REIGN
OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES. . . .
Thus ends this portion of the archaic
narrative, dark, confused, almost incomprehensible. An attempt will now be made
to throw light into this darkness, to make sense out of this apparent
NON-SENSE.
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COMMENTARIES
ON THE SEVEN STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS,
ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SLOKAS.
STANZA I.
1. "THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space),
WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN
ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent Space" is the
eternal, ever present cause of all -- the incomprehensible DEITY, whose
"invisible robes" are the mystic root of all matter, and of the
Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine,
immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence
in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and
self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT, the causeless
cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric catechism,
neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was and ever will
be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.)
Thus, the "Robes" stand for
the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it,
but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space
in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible
properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite
Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial
substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon,
whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from which Akasa
radiates.
(a) By the Seven
"Eternities," aeons or periods are meant. The word
"Eternity," as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to
the Asiatic ear, except in its application to the ONE existence; nor is
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the term sempiternity, the eternal
only in futurity, anything better than a misnomer.* Such words do not and
cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of
ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven Eternities meant are the seven periods,
or a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara,
and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the "Great Age" -- 100 years
of Brahma -- making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each year of
Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and of the same number of
"nights" of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year); and
a "Day of Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These
"Eternities" belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in
order to arrive at the true total, every figure must be 7x (7 to the power of
x); x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the subjective or real
world; and every figure or number relating to, or representing all the
different cycles from the greatest to the smallest -- in the objective or
unreal world -- must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this cannot
be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and for the
purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. "The number seven,"
says the Kabala, "is the great number of the Divine Mysteries;"
number ten is that of all human knowledge (Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is the
number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also
symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure and number 4 are the male symbol
only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the
masculine and the 4 the female: the upright and the horizontal in the fourth
stage of symbolism, when the symbols became the glyphs of the generative powers
on the physical plane.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN
THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION (a).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is stated in Book II., ch.
viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is meant existence to the end of
the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the translator, remarks in a footnote: "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 re-absorbed.
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(a) Time is only an illusion produced
by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal
duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the
illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The present is only a
mathematical line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the
future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real
duration, for nothing remains without change -- or the same -- for the
billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the
division of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring of
that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses
give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we call the future,
to the region of memories that we name the past. In the same way we experience
a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by
reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person
or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but
is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its
appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It is
these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the
"future," and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity
in the "past." No one could say that a bar of metal dropped into the
sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered
the water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof
which at any given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates,
and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons
and things, which, dropping out of the to-be into the has-been, out of the
future into the past -- present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as
it were, of their total selves, as they pass through time and space (as matter)
on their way from one eternity to another: and these two constitute that
"duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were our
senses but able to cognize it there.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
3. . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR
THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT (a).
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(a) Mind is a name given to the sum
of the states of Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will, and Feeling. During
deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance;
thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through
which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has
temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane
of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or
vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya, when all the
existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL MIND" remains as a permanent
possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which
mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the
Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the
manifestation of the divine or universal thought and will. They are the
Intelligent Forces that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while
themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by
still higher Powers; but they are not "the personifications" of the
powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This hierarchy of spiritual Beings,
through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an army -- a
"Host," truly -- by means of which the fighting power of a nation
manifests itself, and which is composed of army corps, divisions, brigades,
regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or life, and its
limited freedom of action and limited responsibilities; each contained in a
larger individuality, to which its own interests are subservient, and each
containing lesser individualities in itself.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha*
or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY (Nidana** and Maya) 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-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nippang in China; Neibban in
Burmah; or Moksha in India.
** The "12" Nidanas (in
Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes of existence, effects generated by
a concatenation of causes produced (see Comment. II).
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ence, which is absolute Being,
Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the Universe was, so far,
empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought. For it is . . .
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of
being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to
its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based on the four truths, a
doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana System.* They belong to the
theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and demerit, and
finally brings Karma into full sway. It is based upon the great truth that
re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this world only entails upon
man suffering, misery and pain; Death itself being unable to deliver man from
it, since death is merely the door through which he passes to another life on
earth after a little rest on its threshold -- Devachan. The Hinayana System, or
School of the "Little Vehicle," is of very ancient growth; while the
Mahayana is of a later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet
the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such
schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the
latter, that of the "Great Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in
reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic expression, both
"vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of rebirths
and even the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which
alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya or illusion is an element which
enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative,
not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon
assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. To the untrained
eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and
daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape.
Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in
itself the noumena of all realities. The existences belonging to every plane of
being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in degree, of the nature of
shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless screen; but all things are
relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the things cognised
are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things possess must
be looked for in them
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Wassilief on Buddhism, pp.
97-950.
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before or after they have passed like
a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognise any such existence
directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material
existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness
may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the
time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we
perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows
for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive
awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached
"reality;" but only when we shall have reached the absolute
Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions
produced by Maya.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE
BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON
HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON (b).
(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother:
light their son," says an old Eastern proverb. Light is inconceivable
except as coming from some source which is the cause of it; and as, in the
instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though as strongly
demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by
us, from an intellectual point of view. As to borrowed or secondary light,
whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary mayavic character. Darkness,
then, is the eternal
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That which is called
"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 Maha Kalpa, i.e., the whole
revolution of our special chain of seven planets or Spheres from beginning to
end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of which there are also
Seven.
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matrix in which the sources of light
appear and disappear. Nothing is added to darkness to make of it light, or to
light to make it darkness, on this our plane. They are interchangeable, and
scientifically light is but a mode of darkness and vice versa. Yet both are
phenomena of the same noumenon -- which is absolute darkness to the scientific
mind, and but a gray twilight to the perception of the average mystic, though
to that of the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. How far we
discern the light that shines in darkness depends upon our powers of vision.
What is light to us is darkness to certain insects, and the eye of the
clairvoyant sees illumination where the normal eye perceives only blackness.
When the whole universe was plunged in sleep -- had returned to its one
primordial element -- there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to
perceive light, and darkness necessarily filled the boundless all.
(b) The Father-Mother are the male
and female principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all
things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical
aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. They are "once
more One" when in "The Night of Brahma," during Pralaya, all in
the objective Universe has returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to
reappear at the following Dawn -- as it does periodically. "Karana"
-- eternal cause -- was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana is alone during
the "Nights of Brahma." The previous objective Universe has dissolved
into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in
space, to differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvantaric
dawn, which is the commencement of a new "Day" or new activity of
Brahma -- the symbol of the Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is
Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being
symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated
efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and
evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary
chain and the earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary
Spirit, and Man -- the Son of the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a
manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth during the
"wheels," or the Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days and
Nights of Brahma.")
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
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 (b) (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is
Yong-Grub) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c).
(a) The seven sublime lords are the
Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim.
It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and
others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance,
is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the promontories and
gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the
Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are, moreover,
said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of
whom vide infra) during every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and
Revelations, or rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as
we are still in the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas,
so far. This is a very complicated question, and will receive more ample
treatment later on.
So far "There are only Four
Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus and Buddhists. For a similar
reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four Gospels. But as every new
Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the
next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on.
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the
absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of a great
period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they rest during the
succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called Yong-Grub. Up to the day
of the Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana was taught publicly,
but since then it has become entirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory
interpretations of it. It is only a true Idealist who can understand it.
Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the exception of Paranirvana, by him
who would comprehend that state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non Ego,
Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent and perfect. It
is absolute, however, only in a relative
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sense, for it must give room to still
further absolute perfection, according to a higher standard of excellence in
the following period of activity -- just as a perfect flower must cease to be a
perfect flower and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat
Irish mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the
progressive development of everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this
stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end.
Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of
them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of
Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its
predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of
the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great
Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three
aspects of the Absolute -- Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.
When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine Breath,
and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity -- the One Existence
-- which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. (See
"Isis Unveiled.") So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired
again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great Mother,"
who then sleeps "wrapped in her invisible robes."
(c) By "that which is and yet is
not" is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as
absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of
existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence. The three periods -- the
Present, the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric philosophy a compound
time; for the three are a composite number only in relation to the phenomenal
plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity. As said in the
Scriptures: "The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which,
though it has not come into existence, still is"; according to a precept
in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas have been known ever since it
broke away from the purely esoteric schools.* Our ideas, in short, on duration
and time are all derived from our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Dzungarian "Mani
Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts." Also consult
Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc.
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sensations according to the laws of
Association. Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they
nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the individual
ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of phenomenal
existence. What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our
states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, "I feel irritated at
having to use these three clumsy words -- Past, Present, and Future --
miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are
about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving." One has
to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a prey to Samvriti -- is
a philosophical axiom.*
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN
DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN
ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The Causes of
Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to science, but the
metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist, an outcome of
Nidana and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything,
from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into
objective existence, into a law that the Universe should exist. According to
esoteric teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of all
existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most
complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity
be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to
the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate
powers of Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and
gods by the common herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without
a cause; the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In clearer words: "One has to
acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to understand Samvriti, or the 'origin
of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of the Sanskrit term
Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses itself." There is a
difference in the interpretation of the meaning of "Paramartha"
between the Yogacharyas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain
the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See further, sloka No. 9.
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This is virtually the condition to
which the mind must come at last when we try to trace back the chain of causes
and effects, but both science and religion jump to this condition of blankness
much more quickly than is necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical
abstractions which are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions.
These abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of
existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the material
Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics, analogous to
that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being,
which is the One Being, will appear a paradox to anyone who does not remember
that we limit our ideas of being to our present consciousness of existence;
making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An unborn infant, could it
think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily limit its conception
of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life which alone it knows;
and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness the idea of life after
birth (death to it), it would, in the absence of data to go upon, and of
faculties to comprehend such data, probably express that life as
"Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the One Being is the
noumenon of all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give
them whatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses
or the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered
through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the
naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but
that they alone give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the
gold to the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the
phenomenon. But the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted
from the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality
of things separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are
hidden. Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless
generations of his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward
the essence of things in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that
the teachings of esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four
Truths become of the greatest importance; but they are secret.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE
STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (a); AND LIFE
PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS
SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"* OF THE DANGMA (b).**
(a) The tendency of modern thought is
to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for apparently widely
different things -- heterogeneity developed from homogeneity. Biologists are
now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for their protyle,
while science is looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat,
and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea
into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of
Existence" as the basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase,
the "One Form of Existence," is not altogether correct. The Sanskrit
word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather plane, whence emerges the
origination, and into which is the resolution of all things," says a
commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World," as translated by
Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as shown by FitzEdward Hall)
is scarcely so much "the Mother of the World" or "the Womb of
the World" as the "Material Cause of the Universe." The Puranic
Commentators explain it by Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric
philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause. It is, in its secondary stage,
the Svabhavat of the Buddhist philosopher, the eternal cause and effect,
omnipresent yet abstract, the self-existent plastic Essence and the root of all
things, viewed in the same dual light as the Vedantin views his Parabrahm and
Mulaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It seems indeed extraordinary to find
great scholars speculating on the possibility of the Vedanta, and the
Uttara-Mimansa especially, having been "evoked by the teachings of the
Buddhists,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In India it is called "The Eye
of Siva," but beyond the great range it is known as "Dangma's opened
eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means a purified soul, one
who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, or rather a Mahatma 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. Fuller explanations
will be found in Book II.
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whereas, it is on the contrary
Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that was "evoked" and entirely
upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial sketch is
here attempted, and on which, also, the Upanishads are made to rest.* The
above, according to the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable.
(b) Dreamless sleep is one of the
seven states of consciousness known in Oriental esotericism. In each of these
states a different portion of the mind comes into action; or as a Vedantin
would express it, the individual is conscious in a different plane of his
being. The term "dreamless sleep," in this case is applied
allegorically to the Universe to express a condition somewhat analogous to that
state of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in a waking state,
seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject seems to him an unconscious
blank when he returns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and
acting as a conscious individual would.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE
ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA
(a) (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and
Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA (b)?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And yet, one, claiming authority,
namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just
denied this 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.
** It is even argued that all the Six
Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show traces of Buddha's influence, being
either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See Weber, Max Muller,
etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke, "the highest
authority" in such matters, had long ago settled the question by showing,
that "the Hindus were in this instance the teachers, not the
learners."
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(a) Here we have before us the
subject of centuries of scholastic disputations. The two terms
"Alaya" and "Paramartha" have been the causes of dividing
schools and splitting the truth into more different aspects than any other
mystic terms. Alaya is literally the "Soul of the World" or Anima
Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, and according to esoteric teaching
it changes periodically its nature. Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its
inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods
(Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the active life-period with respect to the
lower planes, ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are
one with Alaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic
meditation) "is able to merge his soul with it" (Aryasanga, the
Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition next to it. Hence the
disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana school) say that
Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya (Nyingpo and Tsang
in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible thing, and that, though
it is eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object
of the Universe "like the moon in clear tranquil water"; other
schools dispute the statement. The same for Paramartha: the Yogacharyas
interpret the term as that which is also dependent upon other things
(paratantra); and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to
Paranishpanna or absolute perfection; i.e., in the exposition of these
"two truths" (out of four), the former believe and maintain that (on
this plane, at any rate) there exists only Samvritisatya or relative truth; and
the latter teach the existence of Paramarthasatya, the "absolute
truth."* "No Arhat, oh mendicants, can reach absolute knowledge
before he becomes one with Paranirvana. Parikalpita and Paratantra are his two
great enemies" (Aphorisms of the Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan
Kun-ttag) is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and
illusionary nature of all; who believe something to exist which does not --
e.g., the Non-Ego. And
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Paramartha" is
self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the "self-analysing
reflection" -- from two words, parama (above everything) and artha
(comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse. In Tibetan
Paramarthasatya 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, Maya; in
Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating appearance."
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Paratantra is that, whatever it is,
which exists only through a dependent or causal connexion, and which has to
disappear as soon as the cause from which it proceeds is removed -- e.g., the
light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears.
Esoteric philosophy teaches that
everything lives and is conscious, but not that all life and consciousness are
similar to those of human or even animal beings. Life we look upon as "the
one form of existence," manifesting in what is called matter; or, as in
man, what, incorrectly separating them, we name Spirit, Soul and Matter. Matter
is the vehicle for the manifestation of soul on this plane of existence, and
soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of spirit, and
these three are a trinity synthesized by Life, which pervades them all. The
idea of universal life is one of those ancient conceptions which are returning
to the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation from
anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with tracing or
postulating the signs of universal life, and has not yet been bold enough even
to whisper "Anima Mundi!" The idea of "crystalline life,"
now familiar to science, would have been scouted half a century ago. Botanists
are now searching for the nerves of plants; not that they suppose that plants
can feel or think as animals do, but because they believe that some structure,
bearing the same relation functionally to plant life that nerves bear to animal
life, is necessary to explain vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems
possible that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of
terms such as "force" and "energy," the fact that things
that have life are living things, whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the belief of the inner
esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What are the doctrines taught on this
subject by the Esoteric "Buddhists"? With them "Alaya" has
a double and even a triple meaning. In the Yogacharya system of the contemplative
Mahayana school, Alaya is both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of
a progressed adept. "He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will
his Alaya by means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." The
"Alaya has an absolute eternal existence," says Aryasanga -- the
rival of Nagarjuna.* In one sense it is Pradhana; which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept
and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though Csoma di Koros places him,
for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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is explained in Vishnu Purana as:
"that which is the unevolved cause, is emphatically called by the most
eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., that
which is eternal, and which at once is (or comprehends) what is and what is
not, or is mere process." "Prakriti," however, is an incorrect
word, and Alaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the
"uncognizable Brahma."* It is a mistake of those who know nothing of
the Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human
races, and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a
"primordial revelation," to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life
or "Universal Soul," was made known only by Anaxagoras, or during his
age. This philosopher brought the teaching forward simply to oppose the too
materialistic conceptions on Cosmogony of Democritus, based on his exoteric
theory of blindly driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomene was not its inventor
but only its propagator, as also was Plato. That which he called Mundane
Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the principle that according to his views is
absolutely separated and free from matter and acts on design,** was called
Motion, the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only
the Aryan philosophers never endowed the principle, which with them is
infinite, with the finite "attribute" of "thinking."
This leads the reader naturally to
the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and the German Transcendentalists as a
contrast that it may be useful to point out. The schools of Schelling and
Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive archaic conception of an
ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored only an aspect of the basic idea of the
Vedanta. Even the "Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth by von Hartman in
his pessimistic philosophy of the Unconscious, while it is, perhaps, the
closest approximation made by European speculation to the Hindu Adwaitee
Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who lived during the first centuries
of our era and the Hungarian scholar most probably confuses the two.
* "The indiscreet cause which is
uniform, and both cause and effect, and which those who are acquainted with
first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was
before all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does not put forth evolution
itself or create, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is
Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
** Finite Self-consciousness, I mean.
For how can the absolute attain it otherwise than as simply an aspect, the
highest of which known to us is human consciousness?
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According to Hegel, the
"Unconscious" would never have undertaken the vast and laborious task
of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear
Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in mind that in
designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to
Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that expression of
"Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to symbolise a
profound mystery -- the connotation it usually bears.
The "Absolute
Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena, which is only
termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, transcends
human conception. Man, unable to form one concept except in terms of empirical
phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution of his being to raise the
veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is
able to faintly realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither
it must eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan Chohan, however, can but
bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in
that culmination of conscious existence -- "the merging of the individual
in the universal consciousness" -- to use a phrase of Fichte's -- the
Finite cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of
mental experiences, how can it be said that the "Unconscious" and the
Absolute can have even an instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the
Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the
Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal world as the first aspect
of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter,
or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless,"
we are taught.
The matter-moving Nous, the animating
Soul, immanent in every atom, manifested in man, latent in the stone, has
different degrees of power; and this pantheistic idea of a general Spirit-Soul
pervading all Nature is the oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was
the Archaeus a discovery of Paracelsus nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is
again the same Archaeus or "Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Schwegler's "Handbook of
the History of Philosophy" in Sterling's translation, p. 28.
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and source of the innumerable
phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series of the numberless speculations
of this kind are but variations on this theme, the key-note of which was struck
in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
(b) The term Anupadaka,
"parentless," or without progenitors, is a mystical designation
having several meanings in the philosophy. By this name celestial beings, the
Dhyan-Chohans or Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these correspond mystically
to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the "Manushi (or human)
Buddhas," the latter are also designated "Anupadaka," once that
their whole personality is merged in their compound sixth and seventh
principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have become the
"diamond-souled" (Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The
"Concealed Lord" (Sangbai Dag-po), "the one merged with the
absolute," can have no parents since he is Self-existent, and one with the
Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),** the Svabhavat in the highest aspect. The
mystery in the hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being the
universal Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every
Soul-endowed man is an Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was
fashioned by the "Builders" -- the expression, "the Universe was
Anupadaka." (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vajra -- 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
"Anupadaka" given in the Kala Chakra, the first in the Gyu(t) division
of the Kanjur, is half esoteric. It has misled the Orientalists into erroneous
speculations with respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and their earthly
correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at in a
subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), and will be more
fully explained in its proper place.
** To quote Hegel again, who with
Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic conception of periodical Avatars
(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 Vedantins and some Adwaitees) 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.
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STANZA II.
COMMENTARY.
1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS,
THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? . . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN
THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM
(rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI* AND
SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b).
(a) The "Builders," the
"Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real creators of the Universe;
and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the
architects of the latter, are also called the "Watchers" of the Seven
Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven
earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also. The opening sentence of Stanza
I., when mentioning "Seven Eternities," is made to apply both to the
Maha-Kalpa or "the (great) Age of Brahma," as well as to the Solar
pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane.
There are many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be
shown elsewhere.
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the
summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvana. Besides being the
final state it is that condition of subjectivity which has no relation to
anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya) on its plane. It is that
state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being,
which, as explained, is absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now seemingly
exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But
there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious
"being." The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the
Self-analys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
"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 abscondito.
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ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is
no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven Eternities). Thus, an iron ball
placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will
not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will. It is only "with a
mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an assimilation of the merit of
manifold existences devoted to being in its collectivity (the whole living and
sentient Universe)," that one gets rid of personal existence, merging
into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* and continuing in full possession of
Paramartha.
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STANZA II. -- Continued.
2. . . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE
WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE, NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT
SAVE CEASELESS, ETERNAL BREATH (Motion) WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT (b).
(a) The idea that things can cease to
exist and still BE, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this
apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to realise which
in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A
familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The
question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form
water, is still a moot one, some arguing that since they are found again when
the water is decomposed they must be there all the while; others contending
that as they actually turn into something totally different they must cease to
exist as themselves for the time being; but neither side is able to form the
faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become
something else and yet has not ceased to be itself. Existence as water may be
said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is "more
real being" than their existence as gases; and it may faintly symbolise
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence Non-being is "ABSOLUTE
Being," in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Adi-Budha
(first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an illusion,
Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die at the end of the
"Age of Brahma"; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone -- whether we
call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer's Unknowable -- being "the One
Absolute" Reality. The One secondless Existence is ADWAITA, "Without
a Second," and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Adwaita philosophy.
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condition of the Universe when it
goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the "Nights of Brahma" -- to
awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to
what we call existence.
(b) The "Breath" of the One
Existence is used in its application only to the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony
by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced by its equivalent in the
material plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or element-containing
Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent with which are --
endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible) matter, and motion --
absolute "perpetual motion" which is the "breath" of the
"One" Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease, not even during
the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," in Part II.)
But the "Breath of the One
Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the One Causeless Cause or the
"All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to All-Being, which is Brahma, or
the Universe). Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced god who, after lifting the Earth
out of the waters, "accomplished the Creation," is held to be only
the instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the ideal Cause. No Orientalist,
so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the verses in
the Purana, that treat of "creation."
Therein Brahma is the cause of the
potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the work of
"creation." When a translator says, "And from him proceed the
potencies to be created, after they had become the real cause": "and
from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become the real
cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more correct? Save that
one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can be
referred. "Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency -- i.e., through the
potency of that cause -- every created thing comes by its inherent or proper
nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as
contrasted with upadana, the material cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhana
implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles
all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as
expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be speculated
upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as the
ideal in contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can find
no room in published speculations, since
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that ideal even is a misnomer, when
applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself,
necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited faculties in relation
to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized. Hence the "Eternal
Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness. The
Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned. In the
occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing,
is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and
Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who describe this
indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness. Concrete
consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more than the
quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own attribute and
the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness implies limitations
and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious
of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and
the cognition, all three in itself and all three one. No man is conscious of
more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to
his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we
have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from
knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with not
to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms to
describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or
differences. It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things
according to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute
consciousness "unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must
necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because
to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully
that our perception of such things does not do them justice. We involuntarily
distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious absolute
consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some
indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can
reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any
kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us
as unconsciousness.
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STANZA II. -- Continued.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE
RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a); THE MATRI-PADMA (mother lotus) HAD
NOT YET SWOLLEN (b).*
(a) The ray of the "Ever
Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent light or life, and
flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the Mundane Egg, represented
by matter in its abstract sense. But the term "Point" must not be
understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in
the centre of every atom, and these collectively form "the Germ;" or
rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of
these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite)
forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.
(b) One of the symbolical figures for
the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is
Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and
water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious
system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,** the active, male,
generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the light of the fire,
for the passive female principle from which everything in this Universe
emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and Fire is the Father. Sir W.
Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that the seeds of the Lotus
contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the miniature
shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving
us a specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seed of all
phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready
formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus Flower as an Universal Symbol.")
This explains the sentence "The Mother had not yet swollen" -- the
form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a
very ancient and favourite
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An unpoetical term, yet still very
graphic. (See foot-note to Stanza III.)
** Even in Christianity. (See Part
II., "Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.")
*** Gross, "The Heathen
Religion," p. 195.
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simile for the Kosmos itself, and
also for man. The popular reasons given are, firstly, the fact just mentioned,
that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect miniature of the future
plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things
exist in the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.
Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant grows up through the water, having its
root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus
typifies the life of man and also that of the Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine
teaches that the elements of both are the same, and that both are developing in
the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud represents material
life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies existence in the astral
world, and the flower floating on the water and opening to the sky is
emblematical of spiritual being.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR
THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA (a).
(a) The Primordial Substance had not
yet passed out of its precosmic latency into differentiated objectivity, or
even become the (to man, so far,) invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the
hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine
Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart
opens. It differentiates, and the THREE (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed
into four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the
immaculate Conception. The first and Fundamental dogma of Occultism is
Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects. This led to a possible
conception of Deity, which as an absolute unity must remain forever
incomprehensible to finite intellects. "If thou wouldest believe in the
Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root concealed
under the soil, 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. . . ." (Precepts for Yoga). The
idea of Absolute Unity
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would be broken entirely in our
conception, had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that
Unity. And the deity being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not an atom but
contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three
distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is
one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because it is ever manifesting."
This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it requires, as Aristotle has
it, three principles for every natural body to become objective: privation,
form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of the great philosopher that
which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light -- the
lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles
depends upon a fourth -- the LIFE which radiates from the summits of the
Unreachable, to become an universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes
of Existence. And this QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son, as a UNITY, and a
quaternary, as a living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the
very archaic Idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a
dogma of the Christian Church, which carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond
any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabala and study its numerical
methods of interpretation to find the origin of that dogma. It is purely
astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical: the Male element in
Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj, or Brahma; Horus,
or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source,
personified by the "Mother"; because that Male having a Mother cannot
have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity being sexless, and not even a
Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this in the mathematical
language of the author of "The Source of Measures." Speaking of the
"Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes
that in Genesis, ch. iv., v. 1, "It is called the 'Man even Jehovah'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Vedantin of the Visishtadwaita
philosophy would say that, though the only independent Reality, Parabrahmam is
inseparable from his trinity. That He is three, "Parabrahmam, Chit, and
Achit," the last two being dependent realities unable to exist separately;
or, to make it clearer, Parabrahmam is the SUBSTANCE -- changeless, eternal,
and incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and Achit (Anatma) are its qualities, as
form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the garment, or
body, or rather attribute (Sarira) of Parabrahmam. But an Occultist would find
much to say against this claim, and so would the Adwaitee Vedantin.
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Measure, and this is obtained in this
way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be placed under the form of
expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man-number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x
10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, He,
Vau, He, or Jehovah. . . . The expansion of 565 into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to
show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to
speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate source, in other words,
an immaculate conception."
Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery
enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The "Son" of
the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the undifferentiated cosmic protyle, Matter
in its infinitude) is born again on Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve --
our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total -- past, present, and future
-- for Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he is androgyne, or both male and female. Above,
the Son is the whole KOSMOS; below, he is MANKIND. The triad or triangle
becomes Tetraktis, the Sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a
6-faced cube on Earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus
(the lesser face); or, as the Kabalists have it, the "Ancient of
Days," descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest through,
gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the "Lap of Maya,"
the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light,
the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless Knowledge through
Paramarthasatya comes to the rescue.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
5. THE SEVEN (Sons) WERE NOT YET BORN
FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT, AND
SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS (a).
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the
Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely, with our Solar
System, and especially with our planetary chain. The "Seven Sons,"
therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be explained more
fully hereafter. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.")
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Svabhavat, the "Plastic
Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is,
so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu
philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would
be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese
mystics have made of it the synonym of "being." In the
Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese the
Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is
"Being" or "Subhava," "the Substance giving substance to
itself," also explained by him as meaning " without action and with
action," "the nature which has no nature of its own." Subhava,
from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su "fair,"
"handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava,
"being" or "states of being."
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
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 -- which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite thought --
but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the absolute being,
with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought
itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter) as the
Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind.
Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic reflection, is
conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human
intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Primordial
Substance and Divine Thought.")
Hence the statement that during the
prologue, so to say, of the drama of Creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution,
the Universe or the "Son" lies still concealed "in the Divine
Thought," which had not yet penetrated "into the Divine Bosom."
This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms the origin of all the
allegories about the "Sons of God" born of immaculate virgins.
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STANZA III.
COMMENTARY.
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 sentence "Seventh Eternity," thus dividing the indivisible, is
sanctified in esoteric philosophy. The latter divides boundless duration into
unconditionally eternal and universal Time and a conditioned one (Khandakala).
One is the abstraction or noumenon of infinite time (Kala); the other its
phenomenon appearing periodically, as the effect of Mahat (the Universal
Intelligence limited by Manvantaric duration). With some schools, Mahat is
"the first-born" of Pradhana (undifferentiated substance, or the
periodical aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root of Nature), which (Pradhana) is
called Maya, the Illusion. In this respect, I believe, esoteric teaching
differs from the Vedantin doctrines of both the Adwaita and the Visishtadwaita
schools. For it says that, while Mulaprakriti, the noumenon, is self-existing
and without any origin -- is, in short, parentless, Anupadaka (as one with
Brahmam) -- Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a
phantasm of the former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born of Gnana
(or gnosis) knowledge, wisdom or the Logos -- is a phantasm reflected from the
Absolute NIRGUNA (Parabrahm, the one reality, "devoid of attributes and
qualities"; see Upanishads); while with some Vedantins Mahat is a
manifestation of Prakriti, or Matter.
(b) Therefore, the "last
vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was "fore-ordained" -- by no
God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal and changeless LAW
which causes the great periods of Activity and Rest, called so graphically, and
at the same time so poetically, the "Days and Nights of Brahma." The
expansion "from within without" of the Mother, called elsewhere the
"Waters of Space," "Universal Matrix," etc., does not
allude to an expansion from a small centre or focus, but, without reference to
size or limitation or area, means the development of limitless subjectivity
into as limitless objectivity. "The ever (to us) invisible and immaterial
Substance present in eternity, threw its periodical shadow from its own plane
into the lap
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of Maya." It implies that this
expansion, not being an increase in size -- for infinite extension admits of no
enlargement -- was a change of condition. It "expanded like the bud of the
Lotus"; for the Lotus plant exists not only as a miniature embryo in its
seed (a physical characteristic), but its prototype is present in an ideal form
in the Astral Light from "Dawn" to "Night" during the
Manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter of fact, in this
objective Universe; from man down to mite, from giant trees down to the tiniest
blades of grass.
All this, teaches the hidden Science,
is but the temporary reflection, the shadow of the eternal ideal prototype in
Divine Thought -- the word "Eternal," note well again, standing here
only in the sense of "AEon," as lasting throughout the seemingly
interminable, but still limited cycle of activity, called by us Manvantara. For
what is the real esoteric meaning of Manvantara, or rather a Manu-Antara? It
means, esoterically, "between two Manus," of whom there are fourteen
in every "Day of Brahma," such a "Day" consisting of 1,000
aggregates of four ages, or 1,000 "Great Ages," Mahayugas. Let us now
analyse the word or name Manu. Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that
the term "Manu" is from the root Man, "to think"; hence
"the thinking man." But, esoterically, every Manu, as an
anthropomorphized patron of his special cycle (or Round), is but the
personified idea of the "Thought Divine" (as the Hermetic
"Pymander"); each of the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the
creator and fashioner of all that appears during his own respective cycle of
being or Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus' (or Dhyan-Chohans') errands, and
causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within without -- viz., to cross
gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the
lowest phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity -- the
acme of illusion, or the grossest matter.
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STANZA III. -- continued.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG,
TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING (simultaneously) THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, AND THE GERM
THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES (moves) OVER THE
SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE (a).
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(a) The Pythagorean Monad is also
said to dwell in solitude and darkness like the "germ." The idea of
the "breath" of Darkness moving over "the slumbering Waters of
life," which is primordial matter with the latent Spirit in it, recalls
the first chapter of Genesis. Its original is the Brahminical Narayana (the
mover on the Waters), who is the personification of the eternal Breath of the
unconscious All (or Parabrahm) of the Eastern Occultists. The Waters of Life,
or Chaos -- the female principle in symbolism -- are the vacuum (to our mental
sight) in which lie the latent Spirit and Matter. This it was that made
Democritus assert, after his instructor Leucippus, that the primordial
principles of all were atoms and a vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of
empty space, as "Nature abhors a vacuum" according to the
Peripatetics, and every ancient philosopher.
In all Cosmogonies "Water"
plays the same important part. It is the base and source of material existence.
Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing, understood by water the definite
chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen, thus giving a specific meaning to
a term used by Occultists in a generic sense, and which is used in Cosmogony
with a metaphysical and mystical meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam,
although all three have precisely the same chemical composition.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
2. [[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 (periodical) GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO
THE WORLD EGG (a).
(a) The solitary ray dropping into
the mother deep may be taken as meaning Divine Thought or Intelligence,
impregnating chaos. This, however, occurs on the plane of metaphysical
abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that which we call a metaphysical
abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg being in one sense abstract Egg-ness,
or the power of becoming developed through fecundation, is eternal and for ever
the same. And just as the fecundation of an egg takes place before it is
dropped; so the non-eternal periodical germ which becomes later in
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symbolism the mundane egg, contains
in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol, "the promise and
potency" of all the Universe. Though the idea per se is, of course, an
abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a symbol truly, as it
suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings before the mind's
eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in boundless space, a Universe as
shoreless in magnitude if not as endless in its objective manifestation. The
simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught in Occultism that the
primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from man to
angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of
eternity and infinity -- a serpent swallowing its tail. To realize the meaning,
however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre. The field of
vision or of thought is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one's self in
every direction, and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all
around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists, "whose
centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere," a conception which enters
into the compound idea of this emblem.
The "Mundane Egg" is, perhaps,
one of the most universally adopted symbols, highly suggestive as it is,
equally in the spiritual, physiological, and cosmological sense. Therefore, it
is found in every world-theogony, where it is largely associated with the
serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere, in philosophy as in religious
symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation,
as well as of wisdom. (See Part II. "Tree and Serpent and Crocodile
Worship.") The mystery of apparent self-generation and evolution through
its own creative power repeating in miniature the process of Cosmic evolution
in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the efflux of the unseen
creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this graphic symbol. The
"Virgin Egg" is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic prototype
-- the "Virgin Mother" -- Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male
Creator (under whatever name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the
immaculate root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and natural
sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive Nature is an
Egg fructified -- yet left immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could
have no other representation than a spheroid. The Golden Egg was surrounded by
seven natural elements (ether, fire, air, water), "four ready, three
secret." It may be found
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stated in Vishnu Purana, where
elements are translated "Envelopes" and a secret one is added:
"Aham-kara" (see Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Book I., p. 40). The
original text has no "Aham-kara;" it mentions seven Elements without
specifying the last three (see Part II. on "The Mundane Egg").
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STANZA III. -- Continued.
4. (Then) THE THREE (triangle) FALL
INTO THE FOUR (quaternary). THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN
OUTSIDE (a). THE LUMINOUS EGG (Hiranyagarbha), WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE (the
triple hypostases of Brahma, or Vishnu, the three "Avasthas"),
CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE
ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE (b).
The use of geometrical figures and
the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient scriptures (see Puranas,
Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and even the Bible) must be
explained. In the "Book of Dzyan," as in the Kabala, there are two
kinds of numerals to be studied -- the figures, often simple blinds, and the
Sacred Numbers, the values of which are all known to the Occultists through
Initiation. The former is but a conventional glyph, the latter is the basic
symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely physical, the other purely
metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as matter stands to
spirit -- the extreme poles of the ONE Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist
of French literature, says somewhere, the Number is to Mind the same as it is
to matter: "an incomprehensible agent;" (perhaps so to the profane,
never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the great writer thought, an
Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from what he called God and
what we call the ALL; the breath which alone could organize the physical
Kosmos, "where naught obtains its form but through the Deity, which is an
effect of Number." It is instructive to quote Balzac's words upon this
subject:--
"The smallest as the most
immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from each other by their
quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all
begotten by the NUMBER? The infinitude of the Numbers is a fact proven to our
mind, but of which no proof can be physically
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given. The mathematician will tell us
that the infinitude of the 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 the Number 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 Number? What would you think, were I to
add that Motion and Number* 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 curdled
and spread throughout the depths" of Space. From an astronomical point of
view this is easy of explanation: it is the "milky way," the
world-stuff, or primordial matter in its first form. It is more difficult,
however, to explain it in a few words or even lines, from the standpoint of
Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the most complicated of glyphs. Herein
are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To begin with, the whole pantheon of
mysterious objects,** every one of them having some definite Occult meaning,
extracted from the allegorical "churning of the ocean" by the Hindu
gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, "Surabhi" the
"cow of plenty," called "the fountain of milk and curds,"
was extracted from this "Sea of Milk." Hence the universal adoration
of the cow and bull, one the productive, the other the generative power in
Nature: symbols connected with both the Solar and the Cosmic deities. The
specific properties, for occult purposes, of the "fourteen precious
things," being explained only at the fourth Initiation, cannot be given
here; but the following may be remarked. In the "Satapatha Brahmana"
it is stated that the churning of the "Ocean of Milk" took place in
the Satya Yug, the first age which immediately followed the "Deluge."
As, however, neither the Rig-Veda nor
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Number, truly; but never MOTION. It
is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in occultism.
** The "Fourteen precious
things." The narrative or allegory is found in the Satapatha Brahmana and
others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist Mystics, the Yamabooshi,
has "seven precious things." We will speak of them, hereafter.
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Manu -- both preceding Vaivasvata's
"deluge," that of the bulk of the Fourth Race -- mention this deluge,
it is evident that it is not the "great" deluge, nor that which
carried away Atlantis, nor even the deluge of Noah, which is meant here. This
"churning" relates to a period before the earth's formation, and is
in direct connection with that other universal legend, the various and
contradictory versions of which culminated in the Christian dogma of the
"War in Heaven," and the fall of the Angels (see Book II., also
Revelations chap. xii.). The Brahmanas, reproached by the Orientalists with
their versions on the same subjects, often clashing with each other, are
pre-eminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed
to survive for public use and property only because they were and are
absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared
from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT
REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO (a) IS ONE (b).
(a) OEAOHOO is rendered
"Father-Mother of the Gods" in the Commentaries, or the SIX IN ONE,
or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the accent
given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or even seven
syllables by adding an e after the letter "o." This mystic name is
given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it
remains for ever ineffectual.
(b) This refers to the
Non-Separateness of all that lives and has its being, whether in active or
passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the "Rootless Root of All";
hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the manifested
ONE LIFE, the Eternal living Unity. The "Root" means, as already explained,
pure knowledge (Sattva),*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The original for Understanding is
Sattva, which Sankara (acharya) renders antahkarana. "Refined," he
says, "by sacrifices and other sanctifying operations." In the Katha,
at p. 148, Sattva is said by Sankara to mean buddhi -- a common use of the
word. ("The BHAGAVATGITA with The Sanatsugatiya and The Anugita,"
trans- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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eternal (Nitya) unconditioned reality
or SAT (Satya), whether we call it Parabrahmam or Mulaprakriti, for these are
the two aspects of the ONE. The "Light" is the same Omnipresent
Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls
cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations. The curds are the
first differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic matter which is
supposed to be the origin of the "Milky Way" -- the matter we know.
This "matter," which, according to the revelation received from the
primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of the Universe, of
the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisatva -- this
matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion,
scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and
lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the
"Star-stuff."
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP
OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY (Amrita)* 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 (a).
(a) The essence of darkness being
absolute light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate allegorical representation
of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or the term of absolute rest,
or non-being, as it appears to our finite minds. The "fire,"
"heat," and "motion" here spoken of, are, of course, not the
fire, heat, and motion of physical science, but the underlying abstractions,
the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material manifestations --
the "things in themselves," which, as modern science confesses,
entirely elude the instru-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.; edited by Max Muller.) Whatever
meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is the name given among
Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the dual Monad or Atma-buddhi, and
Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti on the
higher plane.
* Amrita is "immortality."
** See Commentary No. 1 to this
Stanza.
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ments of the laboratory, and which
even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally little avoid the conclusion
that these underlying essences of things must exist. Fire and Water, or Father*
and Mother, may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and Chaos. "Chaos,
from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was
produced the Protogonos (the first-born light)," says a fragment of
Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis in "Theogony" -- "The disposer of
all things." (See Cory's "Ancient Fragments," p. 314.)
According to the Rosicrucian tenets,
as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly, if only partially,
so "Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible
in the human mind"; and according to Robert Fludd, "Darkness adopted
illumination in order to make itself visible" (On Rosenkranz). According
to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the
basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest
itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in
its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the
latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as
it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.
Even in the mind-baffling and
science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of darkness "and darkness
was upon the face of the deep" (ch. i. v. 2.) -- and not vice versa.
"In him (in darkness) was life; and the life was the light of men"
(John i. 4). A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they
may comprehend better than they do now, that verse in the Gospel of John that
says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it
not." They will see then that the word "darkness" does not apply
to man's spiritual eyesight, but indeed to "Darkness," the absolute,
that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient light, however transcendent
to human eyes. Demon est Deus inversus. The devil is now called Darkness by the
Church, whereas, in the Bible he is called the "Son of God" (see
Job), the bright star of the early morning, Lucifer (see Isaiah). There is a
whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the reason why the first Archangel, who
sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called Lux (Lucifer), the "Luminous
Son of the Morning," or man-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Kwan-Shai-Yin." The
real name from the text cannot be given.
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vantaric Dawn. He was transformed by
the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is higher and older than Jehovah,
and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma. (See Book II.)
---------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO!** THE RADIANT
CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY, BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK
SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO, THE
YOUNGER, THE * * * (whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin. -- Comment) (a). HE
SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN. HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM. THE EKA IS
CHATUR (four), AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE
SAPTA (seven) IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA*** (the thrice
ten) 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 (stars)
AND TURNS THE UPPER (space) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE
MANIFESTED (element) INTO THE GREAT WATERS (c).
"Bright Space, son of dark
Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the new
"Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges
differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the "new LIFE"), to become,
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 Judaeus. He is called the
"Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Lanoo is a student, a chela who
studies practical Esotericism.
*** "Tri-dasa," or three
times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round numbers, or more
accurately 33 -- a sacred number. They are the 12 Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11
Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky. This is the
root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or over three
hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
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because, firstly, he is that which
the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine; and
secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this first manifestation, being the
synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, "the Son of the
Son," contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (The Sephiroth), and is
thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. "He who bathes in the light of
Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the veil of Maya."
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and
an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokiteshwara, and as such he is an androgynous
deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi* of antiquity. It is only by
some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and represented with female
attributes,** when, under his female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the goddess
of mercy, called the "Divine Voice."*** The latter is the patron
deity of Thibet and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a
number of monasteries.**** (See Part II. Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-yin.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence all the higher gods of
antiquity are all "Sons of the Mother" before they become those of
the "Father." The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of Kronos-Saturn,
"Infinite Time" (or Kala), in their origin were represented as
male-female. Zeus is said to be the "beautiful Virgin," and Venus is
made bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is Brahma-Vach in Manu and the
Puranas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both sexes.
Finally St. John's vision in Revelation, that of the Logos, who is now
connected with Jesus -- is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female
breasts. So is the Tetragrammaton = Jehovah. But there are two Avalokiteshwaras
in Esotericism; the first and the second Logos.
** No religious symbol can escape
profanation and even derision in our days of politics and Science. In Southern
India the writer has seen a converted native making pujah with offerings before
a statue of Jesus clad in woman's clothes and with a ring in his nose. When
asking the meaning of the masquerade we were answered that it was Jesu-Maria
blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the Padri, as the
zealous convert had no money to purchase two statues or "idols" as
they, very properly, were called by a witness -- another but a non-converted
Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the
Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted
Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but in
exoteric theology he is male and female.
*** 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.
**** See "Chinese
Buddhism," by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives correct facts,
although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.
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(b) "The "Dragon of
Wisdom" is the One, the "Eka" (Sanskrit) or Saka. It is curious
that Jehovah's name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod. "His name is
Echod": say the Rabbins. The philologists ought to decide which of the two
is derived from the other -- linguistically and symbolically: surely, not the
Sanskrit? The "One" and the Dragon are expressions used by the
ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah -- esoterically (as
Elohim) -- is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve, and the
"Dragon" is an old glyph for "Astral Light" (Primordial
Principle), "which is the Wisdom of Chaos." Archaic philosophy,
recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or independent power, but
starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection eternally), traced both
through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into
form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant
Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of
this emblem (the Dragon) into the absurd superstition called the "Devil."
They took it from the later Zoroastrians, who saw devils or the Evil in the
Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus became by a double transmutation D'Evil in
every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always
shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of
the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always stood for
psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence -- Hermes, calling the serpent
the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of Hermes,
following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic's Serpent with the seven vowels over its
head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary
Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, "the Infinite,"
a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this
serpent.* Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent
(the Astral Light of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Like the logoi and the Hierarchies
of Powers, however, the "Serpents" have to be distinguished one from
the other. Sesha or Ananta, "the couch of Vishnu," is an allegorical
abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the germ and
throws off periodically the efflorescence of this germ, the manifested
Universe; whereas, the gnostic Ophis contained the same triple symbolism in its
seven vowels as the One, Three and Seven-syllabled Oeaohoo of the Archaic
doctrine; i.e., the One Unmanifested Logos, the Second manifested, the triangle
concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the rays of the latter on
the material plane.
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the Kabalists) -- between the former,
the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter,
Evil, on the plane of matter.* Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom,
and this formed part of his teaching: "Be ye wise as serpents," he
says. "In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery
Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone" (Book of Sarparajni.) The Aitareya
Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni, "the Serpent Queen," and
"the Mother of all that moves." Before our globe became egg-shaped
(and the Universe also) "a long trail of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) moved
and writhed like a serpent in Space." The "Spirit of God moving on
Chaos" was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent
breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated
cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail
in its mouth -- which symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the
globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery
mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically,
serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The
serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the
caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of
Psyche, the human soul. The "Dragon" was also the symbol of the Logos
with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In the "Book of Hermes,"
Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western
Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of "Light,
Fire, and Flame." Pymander, the "Thought Divine" personified,
says: The Light is me, 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.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Astral Light, or the AEther, of
the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is quite modern) is
Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as
it descends until it becomes the Maya or the tempting and deceitful serpent on
our plane.
** By "God, the Father,"
the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here unmistakeably 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 Avalokiteswara of
the esoteric Buddhists.
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The celestial Ocean, the 'Ether . . .
. 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 unmistakeable echo
of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. Only the latter does not
place at the head and Evolution of Life "the Father," who comes third
and is the "Son of the Mother," but the "Eternal and Ceaseless
Breath of the ALL." The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought,
etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahma or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says
Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has.
Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense,
Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, "That Mahat which was first
produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as "I," that
is said to be the second Creation" (Anugita, ch. xxvi.). And the
translator (an able and learned Brahmin, not a European Orientalist) explains
in a foot-note (6), "i.e., when Mahat develops into the feeling of
Self-Consciousness -- I -- then it assumes the name of Egoism," which,
translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when Mahat is transformed into
the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and becomes Aham-ship. Why
it is called the Mahat of the Second creation (or the ninth, that of the Kumara
in Vishnu Purana) will be explained in Book II. The "Sea of Fire" is
then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the first radiation from the
Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which becomes
Astral Matter. It is also called the "Fiery Serpent," as above
described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal
Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest -- as in
the world of phenomena -- are but so many various differentiated aspects and
transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from Cosmical
down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and sub-human
beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence -- then the first and
chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered.* All the
Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Egyptian as in the Indian
theogony there was a concealed deity, the ONE, and the creative, androgynous
god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and Osiris is, in his original primary
form, the "god whose name is unknown." (See Mariette's Abydos II., p.
63, and Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.)
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the identity of
"Father-Mother" with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and
(b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the "Son," cosmically
Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. "Fohat hardens and scatters the seven
brothers" (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric
Entity -- for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity --
electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into
atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. "There exists
an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob,
and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is
the first light in Creation" (Eliphas Levi's Kabala):--- the first Light
of the primordial Elohim -- the Adam, "male and female" -- or
(scientifically) ELECTRICITY AND LIFE.
(c) The ancients represented it by a
serpent, for "Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither" (in
zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth [[hebrew]], whose
symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the Mysteries. Its
universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the alphabet and the
ninth door of the fifty portals or gateways that lead to the concealed
mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and designates in
Hermetic philosophy "Life infused into primordial matter," the
essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form.
But there are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other
material-correlative, and for ever united. "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" (Hermes).
It was not Zeno alone, the founder of
the Stoics, who taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See next note.
** Od is the pure life-giving Light,
or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of death used by the 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 equally means "Sky" in an occult sense. Whence the root of the
word? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as will be shown.
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Universe evolves, when its primary
substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into
water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that
underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the
Universe is fire, and fires is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same
of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine
reconciles all those philosophers by showing that though each was right the
system of none was complete.
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STANZA III. -- Continued.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS
NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH
LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT; THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK
HIDDEN FATHER (a).
(a) The answer to the first question,
suggested by the second, which is the reply of the teacher to the pupil,
contains in a single phrase one of the most essential truths of occult
philosophy. It indicates the existence of things imperceptible to our physical
senses which are of far greater importance, more real and more permanent, than
those that appeal to these senses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to
understand the transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first
question he must be able to answer the second, while the very answer he gives
to the second will furnish him with the clue to the correct reply to the first.
In the Sanscrit Commentary on this
Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and the unrevealed Principle are many.
In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed, Abstract Deity has
no name. It is called generally "That" (Tad in Sanskrit), and means
all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind.
Among such appellations, given, of
course, only in esoteric philosophy, as the "Unfathomable Darkness,"
the "Whirlwind," etc. -- it is also called the "It of the
Kalahansa, the Kala-ham-sa," and even the "Kali Hamsa," (Black
swan). Here the m and the n are convertible, and
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both sound like the nasal French an
or am, or, again, en or em (Ennui, Embarras, etc.) As in the Hebrew Bible, many
a mysterious sacred name in Sanscrit conveys to the profane ear no more than
some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed anagrammatically
or otherwise. This word of Hansa or esoterically "hamsa" is just such
a case. Hamsa is equal to a-ham-sa, three words meaning "I am he" (in
English), while divided in still another way it will read "So-ham,"
"he (is) I" -- Soham being equal to Sah, "he," and aham,
"I," or "I am he." In this alone is contained the universal
mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man's essence with god-essence, for
him who understands the language of wisdom. Hence the glyph of, and the
allegory about, Kalahansa (or hamsa), and the name given to Brahma neuter
(later on, to the male Brahma) of "Hansa-Vahana," he who uses the
Hansa as his vehicle." The same word may be read "Kalaham-sa" or
"I am I" in the eternity of Time, answering to the Biblical, or
rather Zoroastrian "I am that I am." The same doctrine is found in
the Kabala, as witness the following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S.
Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist: "The three pronouns
[[hebrew]], Hoa, Atah, Ani; He, Thou, I; are used to symbolize the ideas of
Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah. Hoa, "He," is
applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Atah, "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 [[hebrew]], A, forms
the conclusion of the first word Hoa, and the commencement of Atah and Ani, as
if it were the connecting link between them. But [[hebrew]] is the symbol of
the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating
through all these. But behind the [[hebrew]] in the name Hoa are the letters
[[hebrew]] and [[hebrew]], 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, Hoa Atah Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key numbers
of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers, which is a form of the
exegetical rule of Temura."
It is useless to attempt to explain
the mystery in full. Materialists and the men of modern Science will never
understand it, since, in order
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to obtain clear perception of it, one
has first of all to admit the postulate of a universally diffused, omnipresent,
eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have fathomed the mystery of electricity
in its true essence; and thirdly, to credit man with being the septenary
symbol, on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great UNIT (the Logos), which is
Itself the Seven-vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the WORD.* He who
believes in all this, has also to believe in the multiple combination of the
seven planets of Occultism and of the Kabala, with the twelve zodiacal signs;
to attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each constellation an influence
which, in the words of Ely Star (a French Occultist), "is proper to it,
beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the planetary Spirit which rules it,
who, in his turn, is capable of influencing men and things which are found in
harmony with him and with which he has any affinity." For these reasons,
and since few believe in the foregoing, all that can now be given is that in
both cases the symbol of Hansa (whether "I," "He," Goose or
Swan) is an important symbol, representing, for instance, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom
in darkness beyond the reach of men. For all exoteric purposes, Hansa, as every
Hindu knows, is a fabulous bird, which, when given milk mixed with water for
its food (in the allegory) separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the
water; thus showing inherent wisdom -- milk standing symbolically for spirit,
and water for matter.
That this allegory is very ancient
and dates from the very earliest archaic period, is shown by the mention (in
Bhagavata Purana) of a certain caste named "Hamsa" or
"Hansa," which was the "one caste" par excellence; when far
back in the mists of a forgotten past there was among the Hindus only "One
Veda, One Deity, One Caste." There is also a range in the Himalayas,
described in the old books as being situated north of Mount Meru, called
"Hamsa," and connected with episodes pertaining to the history of
religious mysteries and initiations. As to the name of Kala-Hansa being the
supposed vehicle of Brahma-Prajapati, in the exoteric texts and translations of
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 (the
Adwaita doctrine) or universal Principle. 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 Dwaita, Adwaita, and Vedantic doctrines generally.
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Orientalists, it is quite a mistake.
Brahma, the neuter, is called by them Kala-Hansa and Brahma, the male,
Hansa-Vahana, because forsooth "his vehicle or Vahan is a swan or
goose" (vide "the Hindu Classical Dictionary.") This is a purely
exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahma, the infinite, is all
that is described by the Orientalists, namely, agreeably with the Vedantic
texts, an abstract deity in no way characterised by the description of any
human attributes, and it is still maintained that he or it is called Kala-Hansa
-- then how can it ever become the Vahan of Brahma, the manifested finite god?
It is quite the reverse. The "Swan or goose" (Hansa) is the symbol of
that male or temporary deity, as he, the emanation of the primordial Ray, is
made to serve as a Vahan or vehicle for that divine Ray, which otherwise could
not manifest itself in the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an
emanation of "Darkness" -- for our human intellect, at any rate. It
is Brahma, then, who is Kala-Hansa, and the Ray, the Hansa-Vahana.
As to the strange symbol chosen, it
is equally suggestive; the true mystic significance being the idea of a
universal matrix, figured by the primordial waters of the "deep," or
the opening for the reception, and subsequently for the issue, of that one ray
(the Logos), which contains in itself the other seven procreative rays or
powers (the logoi or builders). Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the
aquatic fowl -- whether swan or pelican,* with seven young ones for a symbol,
modified and adapted to the religion of every country. En-Soph is called the
"Fiery Soul of the Pelican" in the Book of Numbers.** (See Part II.
"The Hidden Deity and its Symbols and Glyphs.") Appearing with every
Manvantara as Narayan, or Swayambhuva (the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Rose-Croix is precisely this, though poetised later on
into the motherly feeling of the Pelican rending its bosom to feed its seven
little ones with its blood.
** The reason why Moses forbids
eating the pelican and swan, classing the two among the unclean fowls, and
permits eating "bald locusts, beetles, and the grasshopper after his
kind" (Leviticus xi. and Deuteronomy xiv.) 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 read and understood
literally, as it is esoteric like all the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Self-Existent), and penetrating into
the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine incubation as
Brahma or Prajapati, a progenitor of the future Universe into which he expands.
He is Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti (matter). Therefore it is only
after separating himself into two halves -- Brahma-vach (the female) and
Brahma-Viraj (the male), that the Prajapati becomes the male Brahma.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS
FIRE, AND THE FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER, THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE
GREAT MOTHER (Chaos) (a).
(a) It must be remembered that the
words "Light," "Fire," and "Flame" used in the
Stanzas have been adopted by the translators thereof from the vocabulary of the
old "Fire philosophers,"** in order to render better the meaning of
the archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would
have remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. But to a student of
the Occult the terms used will be sufficiently clear.
All these -- "Light,"
"Flame," "Hot," "Cold," "Fire,"
"Heat," "Water," and the "water of life" are all,
on our plane, the progeny; or as a modern physicist would say, the correlations
of ELECTRICITY. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol! Sacred generator of a
no less sacred progeny; of fire -- the creator, the preserver and the
destroyer; of light -- the essence of our divine ancestors; of flame -- the
Soul of things. Electricity, the ONE Life at the upper rung of Being, and
Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at its lowest; GOD and DEVIL, GOOD
and EVIL. . . .
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] rest, and may as well mean "holy" as not. It is a blind, very
suggestive 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.
** Not the Mediaeval 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.
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Now, why is Light called in the
Stanzas "cold flame"? Because in the order of Cosmic evolution (as
taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter after its first
formation into atoms is generated on our plane by Cosmic heat; and because
Kosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not, before that period. The
first primordial matter, eternal and coeval with Space, "which has neither
a beginning nor an end," is "neither hot nor cold, but is of its own
special nature," says the Commentary (Book II). Heat and cold are relative
qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all proceed
from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, is referred
to as the "cold Virgin," and when awakened to life, as the
"Mother." The ancient Western Cosmogonic myths state that at first
there was but cold mist which was the Father, and the prolific slime (the
Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane snake-matter, (Isis,
vol. i., p. 146). Primordial matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of
the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of
Fohat, is but "a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and
devoid of every quality and aspect." Even such are her first-born, the
"four sons," who "are One, and become Seven," -- the
entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists
called the four of the seven primal "centres of Forces," or atoms,
that develop later into the great Cosmic "Elements," now divided into
the seventy or so sub-elements, known to science. The four primal natures of
the first Dhyan Chohans, are the so-called (for want of better terms)
"Akasic," "Ethereal," "Watery," and
"Fiery," answering, in the terminology of practical occultism, to
scientific definitions of gases, which, to convey a clear idea to both
Occultists and laymen, must be defined as Parahydrogenic,* Paraoxygenic,
Oxyhydrogenic, and Ozonic, or perhaps Nitr-ozonic; the latter forces or gases
(in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances) being the most effective
and active when energising on the plane of more grossly differentiated
matter.** These are both electro-positive and electro-negative.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* [[para]], "beyond,"
outside.
** Each of these and many more are
probably the missing links of chemistry. They are known by other names in
Alchemy and to the Occultists who practise in phenomenal powers. It is by
combining and recombining in a certain way (or dissociating) the
"Elements" by means of astral fire that the greatest phenomena are
produced.
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STANZA III. -- Continued.
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE
UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha), THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND
THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the Spirit's) SHADOWY END; AND THIS WEB
IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT
(a).
(a) In the Mandukya (Mundaka)
Upanishad it is written, "As a spider throws out and retracts its web, as
herbs spring up in the ground . . . so is the Universe derived from the
undecaying one" (I. 1. 7). Brahma, as "the germ of unknown
Darkness," is the material from which all evolves and develops "as
the web from the spider, as foam from the water," etc. This is only
graphic and true, if Brahma the "Creator" is, as a term, derived from
the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahma "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."
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
11. IT (the Web) EXPANDS WHEN THE
BREATH OF FIRE (the Father) IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE
MOTHER (the root of Matter) TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS (the Elements with their
respective Powers, or Intelligences) DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO
THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END OF THE "GREAT DAY" AND REBECOME ONE
WITH HER (a). WHEN IT (the Web) IS COOLING, IT BECOMES RADIANT, ITS SONS EXPAND
AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. (b)
The expanding of the Universe under
the breath of FIRE is very suggestive in the light of the "Fire mist"
period of which modern science speaks so much, and knows in reality so little.
Great heat breaks up the compound
elements and resolves the
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heavenly bodies into their primeval
one element, explains the commentary. "Once disintegrated into its primal
constituent by getting within the attraction and reach of a focus, or centre of
heat (energy), of which many are carried about to and fro in space, a body,
whether alive or dead, will be vapourised and held in "the bosom of the
Mother" until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic matter
(nebulae) will, by giving it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the
required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new growth.
The expanding and contracting of the
Web -- i.e., the world stuff or atoms -- expresses here the pulsatory movement;
for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless
Ocean of that which we may call the noumenon of matter emanated by Swabhavat,
which causes the universal vibration of atoms. But it is also suggestive of
something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which is
now the puzzle of many scientists and especially of astronomers: the cause of
the first ignition of matter or the world-stuff, the paradox of the heat
produced by the refrigerative contraction and other such Cosmic riddles. For it
points unmistakeably to a knowledge by the ancients of such phenomena.
"There is heat internal and heat external in every atom," say the
manuscript Commentaries, to which the writer has had access; "the breath
of the Father (or Spirit) and the breath (or heat) of the Mother
(matter);" and they give explanations which show that the modern theory of
the extinction of the solar fires by loss of heat through radiation, is
erroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists' own admission. For
as Professor Newcomb points out (Popular Astronomy, pp. 506-508), "by
losing heat, a gaseous body contracts, and the heat generated by the
contraction exceeds that which it had to lose in order to produce the
contraction." This paradox, that a body gets hotter as the shrinking
produced by its getting colder is greater, led to long disputes. The surplus of
heat, it was argued, was lost by radiation, and to assume that the temperature
is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume under a constant pressure,
is to set at nought the law of Charles (Nebular Theory, Winchell). Contraction
develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from cooling) is incapable of
developing the whole amount of heat at any time existing in the mass, or even
of maintaining a body at a constant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries
to reconcile the paradox -- only a seeming one in fact, as
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Homer Lanes proved, -- by suggesting
"something besides heat." "May it not be," he asks,
"simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some
law of the distance?" But even this will be found irreconcileable, 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 shows it, notwithstanding its archaic phraseology, to be more
scientific than even modern science.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO
HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of these) IS A PART OF THE WEB (Universe). REFLECTING
THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" (Primeval Light) LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES
IN TURN A WORLD.* . . .
"Fohat hardens the atoms";
i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter.
"He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms" (MSS.
Commentaries.)
It is through Fohat that the ideas of
the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Some faint idea of the nature of
Fohat may be gathered from the appellation "Cosmic Electricity"
sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly known properties of electricity
must, in this case, be added others, including intelligence. It is of interest
to note that modern science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration
and brain-activity are attended by electrical phenomena. (For further details
as to "Fohat" See Stanza V. and Comments.")
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is said in the sense that the
flame from a fire is endless, and that the lights of the whole Universe could
be lit at one simple rush-light without diminishing its flame.
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STANZA IV.
COMMENTARY.
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) These terms, the "Sons of
the Fire," the "Sons of the Fire-Mist," and the like, require
explanation. They are connected with a great primordial and universal mystery,
and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a passage in the Bhagavatgita
(ch. viii.) wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and esoterically, says:
"I will state the times (conditions) . . . at which devotees departing
(from this life) do so never to return (be reborn), or to return (to incarnate
again). The Fire, the Flame, the day, the bright (lucky) fortnight, the six
months of the Northern solstice, departing (dying) in these, those who know the
Brahman (Yogis) 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 come back, by the other he
returns." Now these names, "Fire," "Flame,"
"Day," the "bright fortnight," etc., as "Smoke,"
"Night," and so on, leading only to the end of the lunar path are
incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are all names of
various deities which preside over the Cosmo-psychic Powers. We often speak of
the Hierarchy of "Flames" (see Book II.) of the "Sons of
Fire," etc. Sankaracharya the greatest of the Esoteric masters of India,
says that fire means a deity which presides over Time (kala). The able
translator of Bhagavatgita, Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay,
confesses he has "no clear notion of the meaning of these verses" (p.
81, footnote). It seems quite clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the
occult doctrine. With these verses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar
symbols are connected: the Pitris are lunar deities and our ancestors, because
they created the physical man.
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The Agnishwatha, the Kumara (the
seven mystic sages), are solar deities, though the former are Pitris also; and
these are the "fashioners of the Inner Man." (See Book II.) They
are:--
"The Sons of Fire" --
because they are the first Beings (in the Secret Doctrine they are called
"Minds"), evolved from Primordial Fire. "The Lord is a consuming
Fire" (Deuteronomy iv. 24); "The Lord (Christos) shall be revealed
with his mighty angels in flaming fire" (2 Thessal. i. 7, 8). The Holy
Ghost descended on the Apostles like "cloven tongues of fire," (Acts
ii. v. 3); Vishnu will return on Kalki, the White Horse, as the last Avatar
amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh will be brought down equally on a White Horse
in a "tornado of fire." "And I saw heaven open and behold a
white horse, and he that sat upon him . . . . is called the Word of God,"
(Rev. xix. 13) amid flaming Fire. Fire is AEther in its purest form, and hence
is not regarded as matter, but it is the unity of Aether -- the second
manifested deity -- in its universality. But there are two "Fires"
and a distinction is made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the
purely Formless and invisible Fire concealed in the Central Spiritual Sun, is
spoken of as "triple" (metaphysically); while the Fire of the
manifested Kosmos is Septenary, throughout both the Universe and our Solar
System. "The fire or knowledge burns up all action on the plane of
illusion," says the commentary. "Therefore, those who have acquired
it and are emancipated, are called 'Fires.' " Speaking of the seven senses
symbolised as Hotris, priests, the Brahmana says in Anugita: "Thus these seven
(senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound, etc., etc.) are the causes of
emancipation;" and the commentator adds: "It is from these seven from
which the Self is to be emancipated. 'I' (am here devoid of qualities) must
mean the Self, not the Brahmana who speaks." ("Sacred Books of the
East," ed. by Max Muller, Vol. VIII., 278.)
(b) The expression "All is One
Number, issued from No Number" relates again to that universal and
philosophical tenet just explained in Stanza III. (Comm. 4). That which is
absolute is of course No Number; but in its later significance it has an
application in Space as in Time. It means that not only every increment of time
is part of a larger increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged duration
conceivable by the human intellect, but also that no manifested thing can
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be thought of except as part of a
larger 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."
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STANZA IV. -- Continued.
(2) LEARN WHAT WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE
PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNED FROM
OUR FATHERS (a).
(a) This is explained in Book II.,
and this name, "Primordial Flame," corroborates what is said in the
first paragraph of the preceding commentary on Stanza IV.
The distinction between the
"Primordial" and the subsequent seven Builders is this: The former
are the Ray and direct emanation of the first "Sacred Four," the
Tetraktis, that is, the eternally Self-Existent One (Eternal in Essence note
well, not in manifestation, and distinct from the universal ONE). Latent,
during Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, the "Primordial"
proceed from "Father-Mother" (Spirit-Hyle, or Ilus); whereas the
other manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the Mother alone. It is
the latter who is the immaculate Virgin-Mother, who is overshadowed, not
impregnated, by the Universal MYSTERY -- when she emerges from her state of
Laya or undifferentiated condition. In reality, they are, of course, all one;
but their aspects on the various planes of being are different. (See Part II.,
"Theogony of the Creative Gods.")
The first "Primordial" are
the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence. They are the Archangels of
Christianity, those who refuse -- as Michael did in the latter system, and as
did the eldest "Mind-born sons" of Brahma (Veddhas) -- to create or
rather to multiply.
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STANZA IV. -- Continued.
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT --
THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES (Dhyan
Chohans): THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX AND THE FIVE (a); THEN THE THREE, THE
ONE,
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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, THE ARUPA (formless), THE RUPA (with
bodies), 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 (the Pitris) WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.*
(a) This relates to the sacred
Science of the Numerals: so sacred, indeed, and so important in the study of
Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed, even in such a large work as
the present. It is on the Hierarchies and correct numbers of these Beings
invisible (to us) except upon very rare occasions, that the mystery of the
whole Universe is built. The Kumaras, for instance, are called the
"Four" though in reality seven in number, because Sanaka, Sananda,
Sanatana and Sanat-Kumara are the chief Vaidhatra (their patronymic name), as
they spring from the "four-fold mystery." To make the whole clearer
we have to turn for our illustrations to tenets more familiar to some of our
readers, namely, the Brahminical.
According to Manu, Hiranyagarbha is
Brahma the first male formed by the undiscernible Causeless CAUSE in a
"Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun," as states the Hindu Classical
Dictionary. "Hiranyagarbha" means the golden, or rather the
"Effulgent Womb" or Egg. The meaning tallies awkwardly with the
epithet of "male." Surely the esoteric meaning of the sentence is
clear enough. In the Rig Veda it is said:-- "THAT, the one Lord of all
beings . . . . the one animating principle of gods and man," arose, in the
beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the Mundane Egg or
sphere of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and the allegory of
Brahma separating into two and recreating in one of his halves (the female
Vach) himself as Viraj, is a proof of it.
"The One from the Egg, the Six
and the Five," give the number 1065, the value of the first-born (later on
the male and female Brahma-Prajapati), who answers to the numbers 7, and 14,
and 21 respectively. The Prajapati are, like the Sephiroth, only seven,
including the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The 4, represented in the Occult
numerals by the Tetraktis, 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 Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Kabala and in the Egyptian, Chaldean and other
numerical systems.
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synthetic Sephira of the triad from
which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha or Prajapati, the triune (primeval
Vedic Trimurti, Agni, Vayu, and Surya), emanate the other seven, or again ten,
if we separate the first three which exist in one, and one in three, all,
moreover, being comprehended within that one "supreme" Parama, called
Guhya or " secret," and Sarvatma, the "Super-Soul."
"The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in Sarvatma like thoughts in one
brain." So are the Sephiroth. It is either seven when counting from the
upper Triad headed by Kether, or ten -- exoterically. In the Mahabharata the
Prajapati are 21 in number, or ten, six, and five (1065), thrice seven.*
(b) "The Three, the One, the
Four, the One, the Five" (in their totality -- twice seven) represent
31415 -- the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyan-Chohans of various orders, and of
the inner or circumscribed world.** When placed on the boundary of the great
circle of "Pass not" (see Stanza V.), called also the Dhyanipasa, the
"rope of the Angels," the "rope" that hedges off the phenomenal
from the noumenal Kosmos, (not falling within the range of our present
objective consciousness); this number, when not enlarged by permutation and
expansion, is ever 31415 anagrammatically and Kabalistically, being both the
number of the circle and the mystic Svastica, the twice seven once more; for
whatever way the two sets of figures are counted, when added separately, one
figure after another, whether crossways, from right or from left, they will
always yield fourteen. Mathematically they represent the well-known calculation,
namely, that the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is as 1
to 3.1415, or the value of the (pi), as this ratio is called -- the symbol
being always used in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Kabala the same numbers are
a value of Jehovah, viz., 1065, since the numerical values of the three letters
which compose his name -- Jod, Vau and twice He -- are respectively 10 (
[[hebrew]]), 6 ( [[hebrew]]) and 5 ( [[hebrew]]); 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 the means of the Temura, the anagrammatical method of
the Kabala, and the knowledge of 1065 (21), a universal science may be obtained
regarding Kosmos and its mysteries" (Rabbi Yogel). The Rabbis regard the
numbers 10, 6, and 5 as the most sacred of all.
** The reader may be told that an
American Kabalist has now discovered the same number for the Elohim. It came to
the Jews from Chaldaea. See "Hebrew Metrology" in the Masonic Review,
July, 1885, McMillan Lodge, No. 141.
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mathematical formulae to express it.
This set of figures must have the same meaning, since the 1 : 314,159, and then
again 1 : 3 : 1,415,927 are worked out in the secret calculations to express
the various cycles and ages of the "first born," or
311,040,000,000,000 with fractions, and yield the same 13,415 by a process we
are not concerned with at present. And it may be shown that Mr. Ralston
Skinner, author of The Source of Measures, reads the Hebrew word Alhim in the
same number values, by omitting, as said, the ciphers and by permutation --
13,514: since [[hebrew]] (a) is 1 : [[hebrew]] (l) is 3 (or 30); [[hebrew]] (h)
is 5; [[hebrew]] (i) 1 for 10; and [[hebrew]] (m) is 4 (40), and
anagrammatically -- 31,415 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
Anupadaka (parentless and numberless) -- viz., it can fall under no
calculation, -- in the manifested world the mundane Egg or Circle is
circumscribed within the groups called the Line, the Triangle, the Pentacle,
the second Line and the Cube (or 13514); and when the Point having generated a
Line, thus becomes a diameter which stands for the androgynous Logos, then the
figures become 31415, or a triangle, a line, a cube, the second line, and a
pentacle. "When the Son separates from the Mother he becomes the
Father," the diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle.
Therefore it is said: "In the world of being, the one Point fructifies the
Line -- the Virgin Matrix of Kosmos (the egg-shaped zero) -- and the immaculate
Mother gives birth to the form that combines all forms." Prajapati is
called the first procreating male, and "his Mother's husband."* This
gives the key-note to all the later divine sons from immaculate mothers. It is
greatly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna (the name of the Mother
of the Virgin Mary) now represented by the Roman Catholic church as having
given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way ("Mary conceived without
sin"), is derived from the Chaldean Ana, heaven, or Astral Light, Anima
Mundi; whence Anaitia, Devi-durga, the wife of Siva, is also called Annapurna,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 principle titles of the god being
"the husband of his mother." The goddess Mout, or Mut, 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).
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and Kanya, the Virgin;
"Uma-Kanya" being her esoteric name, and meaning the "Virgin of
light," Astral Light in one of its multitudinous aspects.
(c) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the
Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and Adityas; the Danavas and Gandharvas,
etc., etc., have all their synonyms in our Secret Doctrine, as well as in the
Kabala and the Hebrew Angelology; but it is useless to give their ancient
names, as it would only create confusion. Many of these may be also found now,
even in the Christian hierarchy of divine and celestial powers. All those
Thrones and Dominions, Virtues and Principalities, Cherubs, Seraphs and demons,
the various denizens of the Sidereal World, are the modern copies of archaic
prototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when transliterated and arranged
in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as will be proved in several
cases further on.
The "Sacred Animals" are
found in the Bible as well as in the Kabala, and they have their meaning (a
very profound one, too) on the page of the origins of Life. In the Sepher
Jezirah it is stated that "God engraved in the Holy Four the throne of his
glory, the Ophanim (Wheels or the World-Spheres), the Seraphim,* the Sacred
Animals, and the ministering angels, and from these three (the Air, Water, and
Fire or Ether) he formed his habitation." Thus was the world made
"through three Seraphim -- Sepher, Saphar, and Sipur," or
"through Number, Numbers, and Numbered." With the astronomical key
these "Sacred Animals" become the signs of the Zodiac.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This 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: Spirit 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 flowerbed, 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 and the ministering angels,
and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said, He makes his angels
spirits and his servants fiery flames!" Which words "founded his
dwelling" show clearly that in the Kabala, as in India, the Deity was
considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra-cosmic God he
is now.
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STANZA IV. -- Continued.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE --
THE DIVINE SEPTENARY. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS
OF, THE FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE
SEVEN (a). THESE ("sparks") ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES,
LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDANA -- THE OI-HA-HOU (the
Permutation of Oeaohoo) (b).*
(a) This Sloka gives again a brief
analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyan Chohans, called Devas (gods) in India,
or the conscious intelligent powers in Nature. To this Hierarchy correspond the
actual types into which humanity may be divided; for humanity, as a whole, is
in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression thereof. The
"army of the Voice" is a term closely connected with the mystery of
Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause -- Divine Thought. As
beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of "The History
of Magic" and of "L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries," the word spoken
by, as well as the name of, every individual largely determine his future fate.
Why? Because --
-- "When our Soul (mind) creates
or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that thought is self-engraved
upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of
all the manifestations of being.
"The sign expresses the thing:
the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of the sign.
"To pronounce a word is to evoke
a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency of the 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 or attributes of the IDEA as well as about the
attributes and properties of MATTER, is often fatal to us.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Karana, the ever-acting Cause.
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"Yes, names (and words) are
either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are, in a certain sense, either venomous
or health-giving, according to the hidden influences attached by Supreme Wisdom
to their elements, that is to say, to the LETTERS which compose them, and the
NUMBERS correlative to these letters."
This is strictly true as an esoteric
teaching accepted by all the Eastern Schools of Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as
also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning
and its rationale; it is a cause and an effect of a preceding cause and a
combination of these very often produces the most magical effect. The vowels,
especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies. The Mantras
(esoterically, magical rather than religious) are chanted by the Brahmins and
so are the Vedas and other Scriptures.
The "Army of the Voice," is
the prototype of the "Host of the Logos," or the "WORD" of
the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine "the One Number issued
from No-Number" -- the One Eternal Principle. The esoteric theogony begins
with the One, manifested, therefore not eternal in its presence and being, if
eternal in its essence; the number of the numbers and numbered -- the latter
proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vach, Satarupa "of the hundred
forms," or Nature. It is from this number 10, or creative nature, the
Mother (the occult cypher, or "nought," ever procreating and
multiplying in union with the Unit "I," one, or the Spirit of Life),
that the whole Universe proceeded.
In the Anugita a conversation is
given (ch. vi., 15) between a Brahmana and his wife, on the origin of Speech
and its occult properties.* The wife asks how Speech came into existence, and
which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind. The Brahmana tells her that the
Apana (inspirational breath) becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does
not understand Speech or Words, into the state of Apana, and thus opens the
mind. Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue between Speech and Mind.
"Both went to the Self of Being (i.e., to the individual Higher Self, as
Nilakantha thinks, to Prajapati, according to the commentator Arjuna Misra),
and asked him to destroy their doubts and decide which of them preceded and was
superior to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Anugita forms part of the Asvamedha
Parvan of the "Mahabharata." The translator of the Bhagavatgita,
edited by Max Muller, regards it as a continuation of the Bhagavatgita. Its
original is one of the oldest Upanishads.
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other. To this the lord said: 'Mind
is Superior.' But Speech answered the Self of Being, by saying: 'I verily yield
(you) your desires,' meaning that by speech he acquired what he desired.
Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two minds, the 'movable' and
the 'immovable.' 'The immovable is with me,' he said, 'the movable is in your
dominion' (i.e. of Speech) on the plane of matter. To that you are superior.
But inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally to speak to me (in the
way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, O, Sarasvati! you shall never speak
after (hard) exhalation." "The goddess Speech" (Sarasvati, a
later form or aspect of Vach, the goddess also of secret learning or Esoteric
Wisdom), "verily, dwelt always between the Prana and the Apana. But O
noble one! going with the Apana wind (vital air), though impelled, without the
Prana (expirational breath), she ran up to Prajapati (Brahma), saying, 'Be
pleased, O venerable sir!' Then the Prana appeared again, nourishing Speech.
And, therefore, Speech never speaks after (hard or inspirational) 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 Prana, and which then goes (is transformed) into Apana, and then
becoming assimilated with the Udana (physical organs of Speech) . . . then
finally dwells in the Samana ('at the navel in the form of sound, as the
material cause of all words,' says Arjuna Misra). 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."
This allegory is at the root of the
Occult law, which prescribes silence upon the knowledge of certain secret and
invisible things perceptible only to the spiritual mind (the 6th sense), and
which cannot be expressed by "noisy" or uttered speech. This chapter
of Anugita explains, says Arjuna Misra, Pranayama, or regulation of the breath
in Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition of, or
at least full understanding of the two higher senses, of which there are seven,
as will be shown, pertains rather to the lower Yoga. The Hatha so called was
and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It is injurious to the health and
alone can never develop into Raj Yoga. This story is quoted to show how
inseparably connected are, in the metaphysics of old, intelligent beings, or
rather "Intelligences," with every sense or
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function whether physical or mental.
The Occult claim that there are seven senses in man, as in nature, as there are
seven states of consciousness, is corroborated in the same work, chapter vii.,
on Pratyahara (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Pranayama being that
of the "vital winds" or breath). The Brahmana speaks in it "of
the institution of the seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris). He says: "The
nose and the eyes, and the tongue, and the skin and the ear as the fifth (or
smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing), mind and understanding are the seven
sacrificial priests separately stationed"; and which "dwelling in a
minute space (still) do not perceive each other" on this sensuous plane,
none of them except mind. For mind says: "The nose smells not without me,
the eye does not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all
elements (i.e., senses). Without me, the senses never shine, like an empty
dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me, all
beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or
objects even with the senses exerting themselves."*
This, of course, with regard only to
mind on the sensuous plane. Spiritual mind (the upper portion or aspect of the
impersonal MANAS) takes no cognisance of the senses in physical man. How well
the ancients were acquainted with the correlation of forces and all the
recently discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and functions,
with many more mysteries also -- may be found in reading chapters vii. and
viii. of this (in philosophy and mystic learning) priceless work. See the
quarrel of the senses about their respective superiority and their taking the
Brahman, the lord of all creatures, for their arbiter. "You are all greatest
and not greatest," or superior to objects, as A. Misra says, none being
independent of the other. "You are all possessed of one another's
qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support one another.
There is one unmoving (life-wind or breath, the 'Yoga inhalation,' so called,
which is the breath of the One or Higher SELF). That is the (or my) own Self,
accumulated in numerous (forms)."
This Breath, Voice, Self or
"Wind" (pneuma?) is the Synthesis of the Seven Senses, noumenally all
minor deities and esoterically -- the septenary and the "Army of the
VOICE."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This shows the modern
metaphysicians, added to all past and present Haegels, Berkeleys,
Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and even the modern Hylo-Idealists
to boot, no better than the pale copyists of hoary antiquity.
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(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 Akasa, the Anima Mundi or
Mother of Kosmos. "Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes, Circles" and
finally "Spheres" -- why or how? Because, says the Commentary, such
is the first law of Nature, and because Nature geometrizes universally in all
her manifestations. There is an inherent law -- not only in the primordial, but
also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane -- by which Nature
correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements; and
in which there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in
Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.* That which
seems rest is only the change of one form into another; the change of substance
going hand in hand with that of form -- as we are taught in Occult physics,
which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the "Conservation of
matter" by a considerable time. Says the ancient Commentary** to Stanza
IV.:--
"The Mother is the fiery Fish of
Life. She scatters her spawn and the Breath (Motion) heats and quickens it. The
grains (of spawn) are soon attracted to each other and form the curds in the
Ocean (of Space). The larger lumps coalesce and receive new spawn -- in fiery
dots, triangles and cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the
lumps detach themselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect
only when not interfered with by the others. After which, law No. * * * comes
into operation. Motion (the Breath) becomes the whirlwind and sets them into
rotation."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the knowledge of this law
that permits and helps the Arhat to perform his Siddhis, or various phenomena,
such as disintegration of matter, the transport of objects from one place to
another.
** These are ancient Commentaries
attached with modern Glossaries to the Stanzas, as the Commentaries in their
symbolical language are usually as difficult to understand as the Stanzas
themselves.
*** In a polemical scientific work,
"The Modern Genesis," the author, the Rev. W. B. Slaughter,
criticising the position assumed by the astronomers, asks:-- "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?" The question is
amply treated in the Addendum. 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 [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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STANZA IV. -- Continued.
5. . . . . . WHICH IS:----
"DARKNESS," THE BOUNDLESS
OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT: THE [[diagram]] (for x, unknown
quantity):
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE
IS ONE (a).
II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHAVAT,
THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.*
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE."
(Arupa.) (b).
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE
[[diagram]] (boundless circle), ARE THE SACRED FOUR, AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA
(subjective, formless) UNIVERSE (c); THEN COME THE "SONS," THE SEVEN
FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER
(Bhaskara) (d).
(a) "Adi-Sanat," translated
literally is the First or "primeval" ancient, which name identifies
the Kabalistic "Ancient of Days" and the "Holy Aged" (Sephira
and Adam Kadmon) with Brahma the Creator, called also Sanat among his other
names and titles.
Svabhavat is the mystic Essence, the
plastic root of physical Nature -- "Numbers" when manifested; the
Number, in its Unity of Substance, on the highest plane. The name is of
Buddhist use and a Synonym for the four-fold Anima Mundi, the Kabalistic
"Archetypal World," from whence proceed the "Creative,
Formative, and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] by the descent of FLAME into primordial matter causes its particles to
move, which motion becomes 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.
* 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 10
Sephiroth, who stand for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the
popularised Kabala. The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern
Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or Sephira,
Chochmah and Binah), which leaves seven Sephiroth. As for Svabhavat, 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. (Vide supra.)
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Material Worlds"; the Scintillae
or Sparks, -- the various other worlds contained in the last three. The Worlds
are all subject to Rulers or Regents -- Rishis and Pitris with the Hindus,
Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods, with the Ancients in general.
(b) [[diagram]] This means that the
"Boundless Circle" (Zero) becomes a figure or number, only when one
of the nine figures precedes it, and thus manifests its value and potency, the
Word or Logos in union with VOICE and Spirit* (the expression and source of
Consciousness) standing for the nine figures and thus forming, with the Cypher,
the Decade which contains in itself all the Universe. The triad forms within
the circle the Tetraktis or Sacred Four, the Square within the Circle being the
most potent of all the magical figures.
(c) The "One Rejected" is
the Sun of our system. The exoteric version may be found in the oldest Sanskrit
Scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, "The Boundless" or infinite
Space, translated by Mr. Max Muller, "the visible infinite, visible by the
naked eye (!!); the endless expanse beyond the Earth, beyond the clouds, beyond
the sky," is the equivalent of "Mother-Space" coeval with
"Darkness." She is very properly called "The Mother of the
Gods," DEVA-MATRI, as it is from her Cosmic matrix that all the heavenly
bodies of our system were born -- Sun and Planets. Thus she is described,
allegorically, in this wise: "Eight Sons were born from the body of Aditi;
she approached the gods with seven, but cast away the eighth, Martanda,"
our sun. The seven sons called the Aditya are, cosmically or astronomically,
the seven planets; and the Sun being excluded from their number shows plainly
that the Hindus may have known, and in fact knew of a seventh planet, without
calling it Uranus.** But esoterically and theologically,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "In union with the Spirit and
the Voice," referring 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 Kabala; therefore this triad answers in the latter to the
highest triangle of Kether, Chochmah and Binah, the last a female potency and
at the same time the male Jehovah, as partaking of the nature of Chochmah, or
the male Wisdom.
** 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, discovered only
by Herschel in 1781. But could it not be known by another name? Says the
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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so to say, the Adityas are, in their
primitive most ancient meanings, the eight, and the twelve great gods of the
Hindu Pantheon. "The Seven allow the mortals to see their dwellings, but
show themselves only to the Arhats," says an old proverb, "their
dwellings" standing here for planets. The ancient Commentary gives an
allegory and explains it:--
"Eight houses were built by
Mother. Eight houses for her Eight Divine sons; four large and four small ones.
Eight brilliant suns, according to their age and merits. Bal-ilu (Martanda) was
not satisfied, though his house was the largest. He began (to work) as the huge
elephants do. He breathed (drew in) into his stomach the vital airs of his
brothers. He sought to devour them. The larger four were far away; far, on the
margin of their kingdom.* They were not robbed (affected), and laughed. Do your
worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said. But the smaller wept. They complained
to the Mother. She exiled Bal-i-lu to the centre of her Kingdom, from whence he
could not move. (Since then) he (only) watches and threatens. He pursues them,
turning slowly around himself, they turning swiftly from him, and he following
from afar the direction in which his brothers move on the path that encircles
their houses.** 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 "Sun-Sons" refer not
only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies in general. Himself only a
reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, Surya is the prototype of all those
bodies that evolved after him. In the Vedas he is called Loka-Chakshuh,
"the Eye of the World" (our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] author of "Maconnerie Occulte":-- "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 only seems important, but was not so
in practical results, if the ancient 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." . . . . . . The nomenclature of the days of the week is thus
faulty. "The Sun-Day ought to be Uranus-day (Urani dies, Urandi),"
adds the learned writer, Ragon.
* Planetary System.
** "The Sun rotates on his axis
always in the same direction in which the planets revolve in their respective
orbits," astronomy teaches us.
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planetary world), and he is one of
the three chief deities. He is called indifferently the Son of Dyaus and of
Aditi, because no distinction is made with reference to, or scope allowed for,
the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as drawn by seven horses, and by one
horse with seven heads; the former referring to his seven planets, the latter
to their one common origin from the One Cosmic Element. This "One
Element" is called figuratively "FIRE." The Vedas
(Aitareya-Brahmana of Haug also; p. i) teach "that the fire verily is all
the deities." (Narada in Anugita).
The meaning of the allegory is plain,
for we have both the Dzyan Commentary and modern science to explain it, though
the two differ in more than one particular. The Occult Doctrine rejects the
hypothesis born out of the Nebular Theory, that the (seven) great planets have
evolved from the Sun's central mass, not of this our visible Sun, at any rate.
The first condensation of Cosmic matter of course took place about a central
nucleus, its parent Sun; but our sun, it is taught, merely detached itself
earlier than all the others, as the rotating mass contracted, and is their
elder, bigger brother therefore, not their father. The eight Adityas, "the
gods," are all formed from the eternal substance (Cometary matter* -- the
Mother) or the "World-Stuff " which is both the fifth and the sixth
COSMIC Principle, the Upadhi or basis of the Universal Soul, just as in man,
the Microcosm, Manas** is the Upadhi of Buddhi.***
(d) There is a whole poem on the
pregenetic battles fought by the growing planets before the final formation of
Kosmos, thus accounting for the seemingly disturbed position of the systems of
several planets, the plane of the satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus,
for instance, of which the ancients knew nothing, it is said) being tilted
over, thus giving them an appearance of retrograde motion. These planets are
called the warriors, the Architects, and are accepted by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, heterogeneous only in our manifested world.
** Manas -- the Mind-Principle, or
the human Soul.
*** Buddhi -- the divine Soul.
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Roman Church as the leaders of the
heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. Having evolved from Cosmic
Space, and before the final formation of the primaries and the annulation of
the planetary nebula, the Sun, we are taught, drew into the depths of its mass
all the Cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his weaker
"brothers" before the law of attraction and repulsion was finally
adjusted; after which he began feeding on "The Mother's refuse and
sweat"; in other words, on those portions of Ether (the "breath of
the Universal Soul") of the existence and constitution of which science is
as yet absolutely ignorant. A theory of this kind having been propounded by Sir
William Grove (see "Correlation of the Physical Forces," 1843, p. 81;
and "Address to the British Association, 1866"), who theorized that
the systems "are gradually changing by atmospheric additions or
subtractions, or by accretions and diminutions arising from nebular substances"
. . . and again that "the Sun may condense gaseous matter as it travels in
Space and so heat may be produced" -- the archaic teaching seems
scientific enough, even in this age.* Mr. W. Mattieu Williams suggested that
the diffused matter or Ether which is the recipient of the heat radiations of
the Universe is thereby drawn into the depths of the solar mass. Expelling
thence the previously condensed and thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes
compressed and gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven out in a rarified
and cooled state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to be in
this way taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed by the
Suns of the Universe.**
This is about as close an
approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ever imagined; for Occultism
explains it by "the dead breath" given back by Martanda and his
feeding on the "sweat and refuse" of "Mother Space." What
could affect Neptune,*** Saturn and Jupiter,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Very similar ideas in Mr. W.
Mattieu Williams' "The Fuel of the Sun;" in Dr. C. William Siemens'
"On the Conservation of Solar Energy" (Nature, XXV., p. 440-444,
March 9, 1882); and also in Dr. P. Martin Duncan's "Address of the
President of the Geological Society," London, May, 1877.
** See "Comparative
Geology," by Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 56.
*** 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 belong to it, his apparent connection with our sun and the influence
of the latter upon Neptune notwithstanding. This connection is mayavic,
imaginary, they say.
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but little, would have killed such
comparatively small "Houses" as Mercury, Venus and Mars. As Uranus
was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the name of the fourth
planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far, a mystery.
The "Breath" of all the
"seven" is said to be Bhaskara (light-making), because they (the
planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They evolve into Manvantaric
life from primaeval Chaos (now the noumenon of irresolvable nebulae) by
aggregation and accumulation of the primary differentiations of the eternal
matter, according to the beautiful expression in the Commentary, "Thus the
Sons of Light clothed themselves in the fabric of Darkness." They are
called allegorically "the Heavenly Snails," on account of their (to
us) formless INTELLIGENCES inhabiting unseen their starry and planetary homes,
and, so to speak, carrying them as the snails do along with themselves in their
revolution. The doctrine of a common origin for all the heavenly bodies and
planets, was, as we see, inculcated by the Archaic astronomers, before Kepler,
Newton, Leibnitz, Kant, Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the Breath), attraction and
repulsion -- the three great factors of Motion -- are the conditions under
which all the members of all this primitive family are born, developed, and
die, to be reborn after a "Night of Brahma," during which eternal
matter relapses periodically into its primary undifferentiated state. The most
attenuated gases can give no idea of its nature to the modern physicist.
Centres of Forces at first, the invisible sparks of primordial atoms
differentiate into molecules, and become Suns -- passing gradually into
objectivity gaseous, radiant, cosmic, the one "Whirlwind" (or motion)
finally giving the impulse to the form, and the initial motion, regulated and
sustained by the never-resting Breaths -- the Dhyan Chohans.
-------
STANZA IV. -- Continued.
6. . . . . THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO
ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE (Word, Voice, and Spirit). THE REJECTED
SON IS ONE, THE "SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
The Lipi-ka, from the word lipi,
"writing," means literally the
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"Scribes."* Mystically,
these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of Retribution, for they
are the Recorders or Annalists who impress on the (to us) invisible tablets of
the Astral Light, "the great picture-gallery of eternity" -- a
faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man, of all that was, is, or
ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe. As said in "Isis," this
divine and unseen canvas is the BOOK OF LIFE. As it is the Lipika who project
into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the
universe, upon which the "Builders" reconstruct the Kosmos after
every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the
Presence, whom the Christians recognise in the Seven "Planetary
Spirits" or the "Spirits of the Stars;" for thus it is they who
are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation -- or, as called by Plato,
the "Divine Thought." The Eternal Record is no fantastic dream, for
we meet with the same records in the world of gross matter. "A shadow
never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace which might
be made visible by resorting to proper processes," says Dr. Draper. . . .
"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 all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we
have done."** Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every thought,
displacing the particles of the brain and setting them in motion, scatters them
throughout the Universe, and they think that "each particle of the
existing matter must be a register of all that has happened." (Principles
of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.) Thus the ancient doctrine has begun to acquire
rights of citizenship in the speculations of the scientific world.
The forty "Assessors" who
stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers of the Soul before Osiris, belong
to the same class of deities as the Lipika, and might stand paralleled, were
not the Egyptian gods so
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* These are the four
"Immortals" which are mentioned in Atharva Veda as the
"Watchers" or Guardians of the four quarters of the sky (see ch.
lxxvi., 1-4, et seq.).
** "Conflict between Religion
and Science." -- Draper, pp. 132 and 133.
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little understood in their esoteric
meaning. The Hindu Chitra-Gupta who reads out the account of every Soul's life
from his register, called Agra-Sandhani; the "Assessors" who read
theirs from the heart of the defunct, which becomes an open book before
(whether) Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma -- are all so many copies of, and
variants from the Lipika, and their Astral Records. Nevertheless, the Lipi-ka
are not deities connected with Death, but with Life Eternal.
Connected as the Lipika are with the
destiny of every man and the birth of every child, whose life is already traced
in the Astral Light not fatalistically, but only because the future, like the
PAST, is ever alive in the PRESENT -- they may also be said to exercise an
influence on the Science of Horoscopy. We must admit the truth of the latter
whether we will or not. For, as observed by one of the modern adepts 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 them, 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."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Les Mysteres de l'Horoscope, p.
XI.
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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 (a).
COMMENTARY.
(a) This is, perhaps, the most
difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its language is comprehensible only to
him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory and its purposely obscure
phraseology. The question will surely be asked, "Do the Occultists believe
in all these 'Builders,' 'Lipika,' and 'Sons of Light' as Entities, or are they
merely imageries?" To this the answer is given as plainly: "After due
allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of
these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual humanity
within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light and 'Mind-born
Sons' of the first manifested Ray of the UNKNOWN ALL, are the very root of
spiritual man." Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a
specially created soul for every human birth -- a fresh supply of these pouring
in daily, since "Adam" -- we have to admit the occult teachings. This
will be explained in its place. Let us see, now, what may be the occult meaning
of this Stanza.
The Doctrine teaches that, in order
to become a divine, fully conscious god, -- aye, even the highest -- the
Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human stage. And when we
say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the
mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached
the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since
the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each
Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine, through
self-experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must have known or sensed
intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that the Unconscious evolved
the Universe only "in the hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness," of becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also
the secret meaning of the usual Puranic phrase about
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Brahma being constantly "moved
by the desire to create." This explains also the hidden Kabalistic meaning
of the saying: "The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant,
an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god."
The Mind-born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., were all men -- of whatever
forms and shapes -- in other worlds and the preceding Manvantaras.
This subject, being so very mystical,
is therefore the most difficult to explain in all its details and bearings;
since the whole mystery of evolutionary creation is contained in it. A sentence
or two in it vividly recalls to mind similar ones in the Kabala and the
phraseology of the King Psalmist (civ.), as both, when speaking of God, show
him making the wind his messenger and his "ministers a flaming fire."
But in the Esoteric doctrine it is used figuratively. The "fiery
Wind" is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as
the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the "Creative
Forces." Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the
Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the
Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an
angel.
In this connection it should be noted
that one of the luminaries of the modern Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R.
Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of "natural selection" as the
sole factor in the development of physical man, practically concedes the whole
point here discussed. He holds that the evolution of man was directed and
furthered by superior Intelligences, whose agency is a necessary factor in the scheme
of Nature. But once the operation of these Intelligences is admitted in one
place, it is only a logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and
fast line can be drawn.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
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,* RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. HE IS THE STEED, AND
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The difference between the
"Builders," the Planetary Spirits, and the Lipika must not be lost
sight of. (See Nos. 5 and 6 of this Commentary.)
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THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER (i.e., he is
under the influence of their guiding thought). HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH
THE FIERY CLOUDS (cosmic mists) (b); TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES
THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE AND THE SEVEN BELOW (the world to be). HE LIFTS
HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS (atoms) AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER
(c).
(a) This shows the "Primordial
Seven" using for their Vahan (vehicle, or the manifested subject which
becomes the symbol of the Power directing it), Fohat, called in consequence,
the "Messenger of their will" -- the fiery whirlwind.
"Dzyu becomes Fohat" -- the
expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one real (magical) knowledge, or Occult
Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and primal causes, becomes almost
omnipotence when applied in the right direction. Its antithesis is Dzyu-mi,
that which deals with illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric
modern sciences. In this case, Dzyu is the expression of the collective Wisdom
of the Dhyani-Buddhas.
(b) As the reader is supposed not to
be acquainted with the Dhyani-Buddhas, it is as well to say at once that,
according to the Orientalists, there are five Dhyanis who are the
"celestial" Buddhas, of whom the human Buddhas are the manifestations
in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however, the Dhyani-Buddhas are
seven, of whom five only have hitherto manifested,* and two are to come in the
sixth and seventh Root-races. They are, so to speak, the eternal prototypes of
the Buddhas who appear on this earth, each of whom has his particular divine
prototype. So, for instance, Amitabha is the Dhyani-Buddha of Gautama
Sakyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great Soul incarnates on earth
as He did in Tzon-kha-pa.** As the synthesis of the seven Dhyani-Buddhas,
Avalokiteswara was the first Buddha (the Logos), so Amitabha is the inner
"God" of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amita(-Buddha). They are,
as Mr. Rhys Davids
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See A. P. Sinnett's "Esoteric
Buddhism," 5th annotated edition, pp. 171-173.
** The first and greatest Reformer
who founded the "Yellow-Caps," Gyalugpas. He was born in the year
1355 A.D. in Amdo, and was the Avatar of Amitabha, the celestial name of
Gautama Buddha.
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correctly states, "the glorious
counterparts in the mystic world, free from the debasing conditions of this
material life" of every earthly mortal Buddha -- the liberated
Manushi-Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round. They are the
"Buddhas of Contemplation," and are all Anupadaka (parentless), i.e.,
self-born of divine essence. The exoteric teaching which says that every
Dhyani-Buddha has the faculty of creating from himself, an equally celestial
son -- a Dhyani-Bodhisattva -- who, after the decease of the Manushi (human)
Buddha, has to carry out the work of the latter, rests on the fact that owing
to the highest initiation performed by one overshadowed by the "Spirit of
Buddha" -- (who is credited by the Orientalists with having created the five
Dhyani-Buddhas!), -- a candidate becomes virtually a Bodhisattva, created such
by the High Initiator.
(c) Fohat, being one of the most, if
not the most important character in esoteric Cosmogony, should be minutely
described. As in the oldest Grecian Cosmogony, differing widely from the later
mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval trinity: Chaos, Gaea, Eros:
answering to the Kabalistic En-Soph (for Chaos is SPACE, [[chaino]],
"void") the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the
Holy Ghost; so Fohat is one thing in the yet unmanifested Universe and another
in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that Occult, electric,
vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings
together all forms, giving them the first impulse which becomes in time 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 Kosmos yet, since
Kosmos is not born, and the gods still sleep in the bosom of
"Father-Mother." He is an abstract philosophical idea. He produces
nothing yet by himself; he is simply that potential creative power in virtue of
whose action the NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to
reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray. When the
"Divine Son" breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force,
the active Power which causes the ONE to become TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic
plane of manifestation. The triple One differentiates into the many, and then
Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms
and makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval teaching
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in early Greek mythology. Erebos and
Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action of Eros, give birth in their
turn to Ether and Hemera, the light of the superior and the light of the
inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness generates light. See in the Puranas
Brahma's "Will" or desire to create; and in the Phoenician Cosmogony
of Sanchoniathon the doctrine that Desire, [[pothos]], is the principle of
creation.
Fohat is closely related to the
"ONE LIFE." From the Unknown One, the Infinite TOTALITY, the
manifested ONE, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates; and this is the
Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain-Source, is the Demiurgos or
the creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the four-faced Brahma of the
Hindu religion. In its totality, viewed from the standpoint of manifested
Divine Thought in the esoteric doctrine, it represents the Hosts of the higher
creative Dhyan Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal
Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha -- the One Supreme and eternal --
manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested Iswara), which is the Osiris
of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the
Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Atman of the
Vedantins.* By the action of the manifested Wisdom, or Mahat, represented by
these innumerable centres of spiritual Energy in the Kosmos, the reflection of
the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the intellectual Force
accompanying such ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of the Buddhist
esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of AKASA, acts
upon manifested substance or the One Element, as declared above, and by
differentiating it into various centres of Energy, sets in motion the law of
Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind,
brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar
System.
The Solar System, brought into
existence by these agencies, consists of Seven Principles, like everything else
within these centres. Such is the teaching of the trans-Himalayan Esotericism.
Every philosophy, however, has its own way of dividing these principles.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Subba Row seems to identify him
with, and to call him, the LOGOS. (See his four lectures on the
"Bhagavadgita" in the Theosophist.)
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Fohat, then, is the personified
electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic Energies,
on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which resembles -- on
an immense scale -- that of a living Force created by WILL, in those phenomena
where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective and propels it
to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but
is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity -- the forces he acts upon being
cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes
respectively. On the earthly plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and
active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic,
it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of
things -- from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy --
the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the
development and growth of that special thing. He is, metaphysically, the
objectivised thought of the gods; the "Word made flesh," on a lower
scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and human ideations: the active force in
Universal Life. In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar Energy, the
electric vital fluid,* and the preserving fourth
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In 1882 the President of the
Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken to task for asserting in one of
his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such, nevertheless, is the teaching of
the Occult Doctrine. "Force," "Energy," may be a better
name for it, so long as European Science knows so little about its true nature;
yet matter it is, as much as Ether is matter, since it is as atomic, though
several removes from the latter. It seems ridiculous to argue that because a
thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be called matter.
Electricity is "immaterial" in the sense that its molecules are not
subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be -- and Occultism says it is
-- atomic; therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to
speak of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of
Energy, Energy simply, and a Force -- where is that Force or that Energy which
can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a mathematician and one
of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its phenomena, said, years
ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion merely. "If we accept the
hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms we cannot avoid
concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into
definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity."
(Helmholtz, Faraday Lecture, 1881). We will go further than that, and assert
that Electricity is not only Substance but that it is an emanation from an
Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that
rule and guide our world according to the eternal Law of KARMA. (See the
Addendum to this Book.)
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principle, the animal Soul of Nature,
so to say, or -- Electricity. In India, Fohat is connected with Vishnu and
Surya in the early character of the (first) God; for Vishnu is not a high god
in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root vish, "to pervade,"
and Fohat is called the "Pervader" and the Manufacturer, because he
shapes the atoms from crude material.* In the sacred texts of the Rig Veda,
Vishnu, also, is "a manifestation of the Solar Energy," and he is
described as striding through the Seven regions of the Universe in three steps,
the Vedic God having little in common with the Vishnu of later times. Therefore
the two are identical in this particular feature, and one is the copy of the
other.
The "three and seven"
strides refer to the Seven spheres inhabited by man, of the esoteric Doctrine,
as well as to the Seven regions of the Earth. Notwithstanding the frequent
objections made by would-be Orientalists, the Seven Worlds or spheres of our
planetary chain are distinctly referred to in the exoteric Hindu scriptures.
But how strangely all these numbers are connected with like numbers in other
Cosmogonies and with their symbols, can be seen from comparisons and
parallelisms made by students of old religions. The "three strides of
Vishnu" through the "seven regions of the Universe," of the Rig
Veda, have been variously explained by commentators as meaning "fire,
lightning and the Sun" cosmically; and as having been taken in the Earth,
the atmosphere, and the sky; also as the "three steps" of the dwarf
(Vishnu's incarnation), though more philosophically -- and in the astronomical
sense, very correctly -- they are explained by Aurnavabha as being the various
positions of the sun, rising, noon, and setting. Esoteric philosophy alone
explains it clearly, and the Zohar laid it down very philosophically and
comprehensively. It is said and plainly demonstrated therein that in the
beginning the Elohim (Elhim) were called Echod, "one," or the
"Deity is one in many," a very simple idea in a pantheistic
conception (in its philosophical sense, of course). Then came the change, "Jehovah
is Elohim," thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step
towards Monotheism. Now to the query, "How is Jehovah Elohim?" the
answer is, "By three Steps" from below.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is well known that sand, when
placed on a metal plate in vibration assumes a series of regular curved figures
of various descriptions. Can Science give a complete explanation of this fact?
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The meaning is plain.* They are all
symbols, and emblematic, mutually and correlatively, of Spirit, Soul and Body
(MAN); of the circle transformed into Spirit, the Soul of the World, and its
body (or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity, that no man
comprehendeth, Ain-Soph (the Kabalistic synonym for Parabrahm, for the Zeroana
Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other "UNKNOWABLE") becomes
"One" -- the ECHOD, the EKA, the AHU -- then he (or it) is
transformed by evolution into the One in many, the Dhyani-Buddhas or the
Elohim, or again the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into generation of
the flesh, or "Man." And from man, or Jah-Hova, "male female,"
the inner divine entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once more the
Elohim.
The Kabalistic idea is identical with
the Esotericism of the Archaic period. This esotericism is the common property
of all, and belongs neither to the Aryan 5th Race, nor to any of its numerous
Sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so-called, the Egyptians,
Chinese, Chaldeans, nor any of the Seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but
really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we find in
the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Aryans. The Circle was with every nation
the symbol of the Unknown -- "Boundless Space," the abstract garb of
an ever present abstraction -- the Incognisable Deity. It represents limitless
Time in Eternity. The Zeroana Akerne is also the "Boundless Circle of the
Unknown Time," from which Circle issues the radiant light -- the Universal
SUN, or Ormazd** -- and the latter
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The numbers 3, 5, and 7 are
prominent in speculative masonry, as shown in "Isis." 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 7635/2 = 3817.5 and the ratio of 20612/6561 feet for cubit
measure gives the Great Pyramid measures," etc., etc. Three, five and
seven are mystical numbers, and the last and the first are as greatly honoured
by Masons as by the Parsis -- the triangle being a symbol of Deity everywhere.
(See the Masonic Cyclopedia, and "Pythagorean Triangle," Oliver.) As
a matter of course, doctors of divinity (Cassel, for instance) show the Zohar
explaining and supporting the Christian trinity (!). It is the latter, however,
that had its origin from the [[diagram]] of the Heathen, in the Archaic
Occultism and Symbology. The three strides relate metaphysically to the descent
of Spirit into matter, of the Logos falling as a ray into the Spirit, then into
the Soul, and finally into the human physical form of man, in which it becomes
LIFE.
** Ormazd is the Logos, the
"First Born" and the Sun.
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is identical with Kronos, in his
AEolian form, that of a Circle. For the circle is Sar, and Saros, or cycle, and
was the Babylonian god whose circular horizon was the visible symbol of the
invisible, while the sun was the ONE Circle from which proceeded the Cosmic
orbs, and of which he was considered the leader. Zero-ana, is the Chakra or
circle of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, according to the definition
of a mystic, "a curve of such a nature that as to any, the least possible
part thereof, if the curve be protracted either way it will proceed and finally
re-enter upon itself, and form one and the same curve -- or that which we call
the circle." No better definition could thus be given of the natural
symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its circumference
everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also everywhere;
in other words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible Deity is thus
also the Dhyan Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine,
without, and ten, including, their synthetical unit; from which IT steps into
Man. Returning to the Commentary (4) of Stanza IV. the reader will understand
why, while the trans-Himalayan Chackra has inscribed within it [[diagram]] | [[diagram]]
| [[diagram]] (triangle, first line, cube second line, and a pentacle with a
dot in the centre thus: [[diagram]], and some other variations), the Kabalistic
circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of the word [[hebrew]] (Alhim or
Elohim) are numerically read, the famous numerals 13514, or by anagram 31415 --
the astronomical (pi) number, or the hidden meaning of Dhyani-Buddhas, of the
Gebers, the Geborim, the Kabeiri, and the Elohim, all signifying "great
men," "Titans," "Heavenly Men," and, on earth,
"the giants."
The Seven was a Sacred Number with
every nation; but none applied it to more physiologically materialistic uses
than the Hebrews. With these it was pre-eminently the generative number and 9
the male causative one, forming as shown by the Kabalists the [[hebrew with
numbers above]] or otz -- "the Tree of the Garden of Eden,"* the
"double hermaphrodite rod" of the fourth race. Whereas with the
Hindus and Aryans generally, the significance was manifold, and related almost
entirely to purely metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This was the symbol of the
"Holy of Holies," the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation. Nearly every
one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the two letters --
as shown above -- one, the ayin, is a negative female letter, symbolically an
eye; the other a male letter, tza, a fish-hook or a dart.
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and astronomical truths.* Their
Rishis and gods, their Demons and Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings,
and the Aryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological symbols,
as the old Hebrews have done. This is found in the exoteric Hindu Scriptures.
That these accounts are blinds is shown by their contradicting each other, a
different construction being found in almost every Purana and epic poem. Read esoterically
-- they will all yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates Seven
worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen
upper and nether worlds have
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are told by a Kabalist, who in a
work not yet published contrasts the Kabala and Zohar with Aryan Esotericism,
that "The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact modes far and beyond
measure surpass the toddling word-talk of the Hindus -- just as by parallelisms
the Psalmist says, 'My mouth speaks with my tongue, I know not thy numbers'
(lxxi., 15). . . . The Hindu 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 apparently the Hindu
religious systems by their Shastras and Puranas, probably the latter, and in
their modern translation moreover, which is disfigured out of all recognition,
by the Orientalists. It is to their philosophical systems that one has to turn,
to their esoteric teaching, if he would make a point of comparison. No doubt
the symbology of the Pentateuch and even of the New Testament, comes from the
same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are all found
repeated by Professor Piazzi Smythe in Solomon's alleged and mythical temple,
is not of a later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great
identity as claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of the Jews,
not on that of the Egyptians. The Jewish glyphs -- and even their language, the
Hebrew -- are not original. They are borrowed from the Egyptians, from whom
Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable kinsman, if not parent, of
the old Phoenician and from the Hyksos, their (alleged) ancestors, as Josephus
shows in his "Against Apion," I., 25. Aye; but who are the Hyksos
shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, and
speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses of
her historians. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. II., p. 430-438.) "Khamism, or
old Coptic," says Bunsen, "is from Western Asia, and contains some
germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness to the primitive cognate unity of the
Aryan and Semitic races"; and he places the great events in Egypt 9,000
years B.C. The fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Aryan thought we find a
grand philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most
surprising ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual
theogony.
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nothing to do with the classification
of the septenary chain and belong to the purely aethereal, invisible worlds.
These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice for the present to show that they are
purposely referred to as though they belonged to the chain. "Another
enumeration calls the Seven worlds -- earth, sky, heaven, middle region, place
of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the 'Sons of
Brahma' in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana Loka, to be that where
animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born again." (see Hindu
Classical Dictionary.) Some real esoteric teaching is given in the
"Symbolism." He who is prepared for it will understand the hidden
meaning.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND
LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM
(mineral atoms) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS
(gaseous clouds), AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL (a).
(a) "Wheels," as already
explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial Cosmic matter
expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal
and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the
fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or aeons) of
life, MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest "pulsates and thrills
through every slumbering atom"* (Commentary on Dzyan), assumes an
evergrowing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It may be asked, as also the writer
has not failed to ask, "Who is there to ascertain the difference in that
motion, since all nature is reduced to its primal essence, and there can be no
one -- not even one of the Dhyani-Chohans, who are all in Nirvana -- to see
it?" The answer to this is: "Everything in Nature has to be judged by
analogy. Though the highest Deities (Archangels or Dhyani-Buddhas) are unable
to penetrate the mysteries too far beyond our planetary system and the visible
Kosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled
to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems
of worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep."
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tendency, from the first awakening of
Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular movement. The "Deity becomes
a WHIRLWIND." They are also called Rotae -- the moving wheels of the
celestial orbs participating in the world's creation -- when the meaning refers
to the animating principle of the stars and planets; for in the Kabala, they
are represented by the Ophanim, the Angels of the Spheres and stars, of which
they are the informing Souls. (See Kabala Denudata, "De Anima," p.
113.)
This law of vortical movement in
primordial matter, is one of the oldest conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose
first historical Sages were nearly all Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks
had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the
pupils of Brahmins of the esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera
-- the pupil of the Magi -- taught that this gyratory movement of the atoms and
spheres existed from eternity.* Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and
all his pupils, taught the rotation of the earth; and Aryabhata of India,
Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes calculated its revolution as
scientifically as the astronomers do now; while the theory of the Elemental
Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 500 years B.C., or
nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and
finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson. (See his "Vortical
Atoms.") All such knowledge, if justice be only done to it, is an echo of
the archaic doctrine, an attempt to explain which is now being made. How men of
the last few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were
taught as axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta dozens of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The doctrine of the rotation
of the earth about an axis is 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
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 Coelo, 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. . .
." (Comparative Geology, Part IV., "Pre-Kantian Speculation," p.
551, by Alex. Winchell, LL.D.).
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millenniums ago, is a question that
is treated separately. Some were led to it by the natural progress in physical
science and by independent observation; others -- such as Copernicus,
Swedenborg, and a few more -- their great learning notwithstanding, owed their
knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in the usual
way by a course of study.* (See "A Mystery about Buddha.")
By the "Six directions of
Space" is here meant the "Double Triangle," the junction and
blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arupa and the Rupa, of
which the Triangles are a Symbol. This double Triangle is a sign of Vishnu, as
it is Solomon's seal, and the Sri-Antara of the Brahmins.
-------
STANZA V. -- (Continued.)
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE
THE SIX TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN (a); AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT
EACH ANGLE (and) THE LIPIKA -- IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL. THEY (the Lipika) SAY,
"THIS IS GOOD" (b). THE FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST (is
now), THE SECOND (world), THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA" (the formless
Universe
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That Swedenborg, who could not
possibly have known anything of the esoteric ideas of Buddhism, came
independently near the Occult teaching in his general conceptions, is shown by
his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold's translation of it, quoted by
Prof. Winchell, we find the following resume:-- "The first Cause is the
Infinite or Unlimited. This gives existence to the First Finite or
Limited." (The Logos in His manifestation and the Universe.) "That
which produces a limit is analogous to motion. (See first Stanza, 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 connatus to it." (In
our Doctrine it is not a "connatus," 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 connatus of a 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 connatus tends, is
circular, since the circle is the most perfect of all figures . . . The most
perfect figure of a Motion . . . 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." (Quoted from Principia Rerum Naturalia.) This is Occultism pure
and simple.
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of Thought) REFLECTS ITSELF IN
CHHAYALOKA (the shadowy world of primal form, or the intellectual) THE FIRST
GARMENT OF (the) ANUPADAKA (c).
(a) This tracing of "Spiral
lines" refers to the evolution of man's as well as Nature's principles; an
evolution which takes place gradually (as will be seen in Book II., on
"The origin of the Human Races"), as does everything else in nature.
The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere breath, in
our conceptions, is still something material when compared with divine
"Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle. Fohat, in his
capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and sympathy, is
shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable
from the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man
the MONAD, and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the
manifested. "The first is now the second" (world) -- of the Lipikas
-- has reference to the same.
(b) The "Army" at each
angle is the Host of angelic Beings (Dhyan-Chohans) appointed to guide and
watch over each respective region from the beginning to the end of Manvantara.
They are the "Mystic Watchers" of the Christian Kabalists and
Alchemists, and relate, symbolically as well as cosmogonically, to the
numerical system of the Universe. The numbers with which these celestial Beings
are connected are extremely difficult to explain, as each number refers to
several groups of distinct ideas, according to the particular group of
"Angels" which it is intended to represent. Herein lies the nodus in
the study of symbology, with which, unable to untie by disentangling it, so
many scholars have preferred dealing as Alexander dealt with the Gordian knot;
hence erroneous conceptions and teachings, as a direct result.
The "First is the Second,"
because the "First" cannot really be numbered or regarded as the
First, as that is the realm of noumena in its primary manifestation: the
threshold to the World of Truth, or SAT, through which the direct energy that
radiates from the ONE REALITY -- the Nameless Deity -- reaches us. Here again,
the untranslateable term SAT (Be-ness) is likely to lead into an erroneous
conception, since that which is manifested cannot be SAT, but is something
phenomenal, not everlasting, nor, in truth, even sempiternal. It is coeval and
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coexistent with the One Life,
"Secondless," but as a manifestation it is still a Maya -- like the
rest. This "World of Truth" can be described only in the words of the
Commentary as "A bright star dropped from the heart of Eternity; the
beacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being." Truly
so; since those are the Seven Lights whose reflections are the human immortal
Monads -- the Atma, or the irradiating Spirit of every creature of the human
family. First, this septenary Light; then:--
(c) The "Divine World" --
the countless Lights lit at the primeval Light -- the Buddhis, or formless
divine Souls, of the last Arupa (formless) world; the "Sum Total," in
the mysterious language of the old Stanza. In the Catechism, the Master is made
to ask the pupil:--
"Lift thy head, oh Lanoo; dost
thou see one, or countless lights above thee, burning in the dark midnight
sky?"
"I sense one Flame, oh Gurudeva,
I see countless undetached sparks shining in it."
"Thou sayest well. And now look
around and into thyself. That light which burns inside thee, dost thou feel it
different in anywise from the light that shines in thy Brother-men?"
"It is in no way different,
though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and though its outer garments
delude the ignorant into saying, 'Thy Soul and My Soul.' "
The radical unity of the ultimate
essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature -- from Star to mineral
Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in the fullest
acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or
physical worlds -- this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science. "The
Deity is boundless and infinite expansion," says an Occult axiom; and
hence, as remarked, the name of Brahma.* There is a deep philosophy underlying
the earliest worship in the world, that of the Sun and of Fire. Of all the
Elements known to physical science, Fire is the one that has ever eluded
definite analysis. It is confidently asserted that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Rig Veda we find the names
Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati alternating and equivalent to each other. Also see
"Brihad Upanishad"; Brihaspati is a deity called "the Father of
the gods."
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Air is a mixture containing the gases
Oxygen and Nitrogen. We view the Universe and the Earth as matter composed of
definite chemical molecules. We speak of the primitive ten Earths, endowing
each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that water is, chemically, a compound
of Oxygen and Hydrogen. But what is FIRE? It is the effect of combustion, we
are gravely answered. It is heat and light and motion, and a correlation of
physical and chemical forces in general. And this scientific definition is
philosophically supplemented by the theological one in Webster's Dictionary,
which explains fire as "the instrument of punishment, or the punishment of
the impenitent in another state" -- the "state," by the bye,
being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas! the presence of fire would seem to
be a convincing proof of its material nature. Yet, speaking of the illusion of
regarding phenomena as simple, because they are familiar, Professor Bain says
(Logic. Part II.): "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" (p. 125).
What says the esoteric teaching with
regard to fire? "Fire," it says, "is the most perfect and
unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the ONE FLAME. It is Life
and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It is divine
'SUBSTANCE.' " Thus, not only the FIRE-WORSHIPPER, the Parsee, but even
the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim themselves "born of
fire," show more science in their creeds and truth in their superstitions,
than all the speculations of modern physics and learning. The Christian who
says: "God is a living Fire," and speaks of the Pentecostal
"Tongues of Fire" and of the "burning bush" of Moses, is as
much a fire-worshipper as any other "heathen." The Rosicrucians,
among all the mystics and Kabalists, were those who defined Fire in the right
and most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only supplied with oil,
and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles,
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and fires of the whole globe without
diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical One, is eternal and an
infinite substance ("the Lord thy God is a consuming fire") and never
consumed, then it does not seem reasonable that the Occult teaching should be
held as unphilosophical when it says: "Thus were the Arupa and Rupa worlds
formed: from ONE light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times
seven," etc., etc.
-------
STANZA V. -- Continued.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES (having
already taken the first three) (a), AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF
THE SQUARE FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES . . . . . AND THEIR ARMIES (hosts) (b).
(a) The "strides," as
already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.), refer to both the Cosmic and
the Human principles -- the latter of which consist, in the exoteric division,
of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in the esoteric calculation, of seven
principles -- three rays of the Essence and four aspects.* Those who have
studied Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" can easily grasp the
nomenclature. There are two esoteric schools -- or rather one school, divided
into two parts -- one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi-lay
chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a septenary, the other a
six-fold division of human principles.
From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat
taking "five strides" refers here to the five upper planes of
Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) being
the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.
(b) "Four winged wheels at each
corner . . . . . for the four holy ones and their armies (hosts)" . . . .
. These are the "four Maharajahs" or great Kings of the
Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four cardinal
points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical Forces of
North, South,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Kama-rupa which disintegrates
in Kama-loka.
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East and West, Forces having each a
distinct occult property. These BEINGS are also connected with Karma, as the
latter needs physical and material agents to carry out her decrees, such as the
four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by Science to have
their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health of Mankind and
every living thing. There is occult philosophy in that Roman Catholic doctrine
which traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease, and
wars, and so on, to the invisible "Messengers" from North and West. "The
glory of God comes from the way of the East" says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah,
Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers that all the evil under the Sun
comes from the North and the West -- which proposition, when applied to the
Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable prophecy for themselves. And this
accounts also for St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch. iv.) declaring that it is precisely
for that reason that "we curse the North-Wind, and that during the
ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West (Sidereal), to
renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we turn to the East."
Belief in the "Four
Maharajahs" -- the Regents of the Four cardinal points -- was universal
and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St. Augustine,
"Angelic Virtues," and "Spirits" when enumerated by
themselves, and "Devils" when named by Pagans. But where is the
difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this cause? Following
Plato, Aristotle explained that the term [[stoicheia]] was understood only as
meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions
of our Cosmical world to supervise them. Thus, no more than the Christians did,
do they adore and worship the Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but
the "gods" that ruled these respectively. For the Church there are
two kinds of Sidereal beings, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the scholarly Vossius, in his
Theol. Cir. I. VII.: "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 philosophers (pagan) they were gods."
Considering the Ritual established by the Roman Catholic Church for
"Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like
"Gods," and were no more honoured and prayed to by the ancient and
modern pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic
Christians.
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Angels and the Devils. For the
Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and neither of them makes any
difference between "the Rectors of Light" and the Cosmocratores, or
"Rectores tenebrarum harum," whom the Roman Church imagines and
discovers in a "Rector of Light" as soon as he is called by another
name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the "Rector" or
"Maharajah" who punishes or rewards, with or without
"God's" permission or order, but man himself -- his deeds or Karma,
attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations
sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We produce CAUSES, and these
awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal world; which powers are
magnetically and irresistibly attracted to -- and react upon -- those who
produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or
simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is matter,* we are taught by modern
Science; and "every particle of the existing matter must be a register of
all that has happened," as in their "Principles of Science"
Messrs. Jevons and Babbage tell the profane. Modern Science is drawn more every
day into the maelstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very
sensibly. The two main theories of science -- re the relations between Mind and
Matter -- are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of
negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the
pantheistic German schools.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not of course in the sense of the
German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that "Thought is the
movement of matter," a statement of almost unequalled absurdity. Mental
states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not
affect the position that every thought, in addition to its physical
accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective -- though to us
supersensuously objective -- aspect on the astral plane. (See "The Occult
World," pp. 89, 90.)
** The views of our present-day
scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and matter may be reduced
to two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude the possibility
of an independent Soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it
functions. They are:--
(1.) MATERIALISM, the theory which
regards mental phenomena as the product of molecular change in the brain; i.e.,
as the outcome of a transformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder
school once went so far as to identify mind with a "peculiar mode of
motion" (!!), but this view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of
the men of science themselves.
(2.) MONISM, or the Single Substance
Doctrine, is the more subtle form of negative psychology, which one of its
advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms "guarded [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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In the Egyptian temples, according to
Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain separated the tabernacle from the
place for the congregation. The Jews had the same. In both, the curtain was
drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle) symbolising our five senses and five
Root-races esoterically, while the four colours of the curtain represented the
four cardinal points and the four terrestrial elements. The whole was an
allegorical symbol. It is through the four high Rulers over the four points and
Elements that our five senses may become cognisant of the hidden truths of
Nature; and not at all, as Clemens would have it, that it is the elements per
se that furnished the Pagans with divine Knowledge or the knowledge of God.*
While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely
materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind Elements and the imaginary
"Points." For what was the meaning of the square tabernacle raised by
Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical significance?
"Thou shalt make an hanging . . . of blue, purple, and scarlet" and
"five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging . . . four brazen rings in
the four corners thereof . . . boards of fine wood for the four sides, North,
South, West, and East . . . of the Tabernacle . . . with Cherubims of cunning
work." (Exodus, ch. xxvi., xxvii.) The Tabernacle and the square
courtyard, Cherubim and all, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian
temples. The square form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it
still means, to this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans
-- the four cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the
pyramids, obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care
to explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars are the
same
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Materialism." This doctrine, which commands a very wide assent,
counting among its upholders such men as Lewis, Spencer, Ferrier, and others,
while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as radically contrasted
with matter, regards both as equal to the two sides, or aspects, of one and the
same substance in some of its conditions. Thought as thought, they say, is
utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but it must be also regarded as
only "the subjective side of nervous motion" whatever our learned men
may mean by this.
* Thus the sentence, "Natura
Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei," (In Clemens's Stromata, R. IV.,
para. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult the Zends, vol II., p. 228,
and Plutarch De Iside, as compared by Layard, Academie des Inscriptions, 1854,
Vol. XV.
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as those raised at Tyre to the four
Elements, which were placed on pedestals whose four angles faced the four
cardinal points: adding that "the angles of the pedestals had equally the
four figures of the Zodiac" on them, which represented the same
orientation (Antiquities I., VIII., ch. xxii.).
The idea may be traced in the
Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of India, as in all the sacred
square buildings of antiquity that have survived to this day. This is shown
definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal points, and the four
primitive elements, in the religion of every country, under the shape of square
obelisks, the four sides of the pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and
their points the four Maharajahs were the regents and the directors.
If the student would know more of
them, he has but to compare the Vision of Ezekiel (chap. i.) with what is known
of Chinese Buddhism (even in its exoteric teachings); and examine the outward
shape of these "Great Kings." In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph
Edkins, they are "the Devas who preside each over one of the four
continents into which the Hindus divide the world."* Each leads an army of
spiritual beings to protect mankind and Buddhism. With the exception of
favouritism towards Buddhism, the four celestial beings are precisely this.
They are the protectors of mankind and also the Agents of Karma on Earth,
whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the same time
they are the four living creatures "who have the likeness of a man"
of Ezekiel's visions, called by the translators of the Bible,
"Cherubim," "Seraphim," etc.; and by the Occultists,
"the winged Globes," the "Fiery Wheels," and in the Hindu
Pantheon by a number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the "Sweet
Songsters," the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nagas, are the allegorical
descriptions of the "four Maharajahs." The Seraphim are the fiery
Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage describing Mount Meru as:
"the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly
choristers . . . . not to be reached by sinful men . . . . because guarded by
Serpents." They are called the Avengers, and the "Winged
Wheels."
Their mission and character being
explained, let us see what the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Hindus happen to divide the
world into seven continents, exoterically as esoterically; and their four
cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight points of the compass and not
the Continents. (Compare "Chinese Buddhism," p. 216.)
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Christian Bible-interpreters say of
the Cherubim:-- "The word signifies in Hebrew, fullness of knowledge;
these angels are so called from their exquisite Knowledge, and were therefore
used for the punishment of men who affected divine Knowledge."
(Interpreted by Cruden in his Concordance, from Genesis iii., 24.) Very well;
and vague as the information is, it shows that the Cherub placed at the gate of
the garden of Eden after the "Fall," suggested to the venerable
Interpreters the idea of punishment connected with forbidden Science or divine
Knowledge -- one that generally leads to another "Fall," that of the
gods, or "God," in man's estimation. But as the good old Cruden knew
nought of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is suggestive. From Meru,
the abode of gods, to Eden, the distance is very small, and from the Hindu
Serpents to the Ophite Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the
Dragon, the separation is still smaller, for both watched the entrance to the
realm of Secret Knowledge. But Ezekiel plainly describes the four Cosmic
Angels: "I looked, and behold, a whirlwind, a cloud and 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, and the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the
face of an eagle . . . " ("Man" was here substituted for
"Dragon." Compare the "Ophite Spirits."*) . . . "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 support
of the living creature was in the wheel . . . their appearance was like coals
of fire . . ." etc. (Ezekiel, ch. i.)
There are three chief groups of
Builders and as many of the Planetary Spirits and the Lipika, each group being
again divided into Seven sub-groups. It is impossible, even in such a large
work as this, to enter into a minute examination of even the three principal
groups, as it would demand an extra volume. The "Builders" are the
representatives of the first "Mind-Born" Entities, therefore of the
primeval Rishi-Prajapati: also of the Seven great Gods of Egypt, of which
Osiris is the chief: of the Seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Angels recognised 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.
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Ormazd at their head: or the
"Seven Spirits of the Face": the Seven Sephiroth separated from the
first Triad, etc., etc.*
They build or rather rebuild every
"System" after the "Night." The Second group of the
Builders is the Architect of our planetary chain exclusively; and the third,
the progenitor of our Humanity -- the Macrocosmic prototype of the microcosm.
The Planetary Spirits are the
informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of the Planets especially. They
rule the destinies of men who are all born under one or other of their
constellations; the second and third groups pertaining to other systems have
the same functions, and all rule various departments in Nature. In the Hindu
exoteric Pantheon they are the guardian deities who preside over the eight
points of the compass -- the four cardinal and the four intermediate points --
and are called Loka-Palas, "Supporters or guardians of the World" (in
our visible Kosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South), Varuna (West), and
Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and their spouses pertaining of
course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have an occult
significance.
The Lipika (a description of whom is
given in the Commentary on Stanza IV. No. 6) are the Spirits of the Universe,
whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The former belong to
the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether
the Adepts (even the highest) know this angelic order in the completeness of
its triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our
world, is something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would
incline rather to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only
is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma -- being its direct Recorders.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 I. of England's Bible "only three understood Hebrew, and of
these two died before the Psalms were translated" (Royal Masonic
Cyclopaedia), 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.
** The Symbol for Sacred and Secret
Knowledge was universally in antiquity, a Tree, by which a Scripture or a
Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika, the [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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STANZA V. -- Continued.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE
TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE (the vertical line or the figure 1.), THE CUBE, THE
SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG (circle) (a). IT IS THE RING CALLED
"PASS NOT," FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND (as also for those) WHO,
DURING THE KALPA, ARE PROGRESSING TOWARD THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US"
(b). . . . THUS WERE FORMED THE ARUPA AND THE RUPA (the Formless World and the
World of Forms); 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 Angelic Hierarchy. From the group of Four and
Seven emanates the "mind-born" group of Ten, of Twelve, of
Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of septenaries,
novenaries, duodecimals, and so on, until the mind is lost in this endless
enumeration of celestial hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task in the
ruling of the visible Kosmos during its existence.
(a) The esoteric meaning of the first
sentence of the Sloka is, that those who have been called Lipikas, the
Recorders of the Karmic ledger, make an impassible barrier between the personal
EGO and the impersonal SELF, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the former.
Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the
RING "Pass-Not." This world is the symbol (objective) of the ONE
divided into the many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the
"First") or of Eka (the "One"); and this One is the
collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of
this visible universe. In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine,
"One," and Achod, "One" again, but masculine. The
monotheists have taken (and are still taking) advantage of the profound
esotericism of the Kabala 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] "writers" or scribes; the "Dragons," symbols of
wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the "golden" apple Tree of
the Hesperides; the "Luxuriant Trees" and vegetation of Mount Meru
guarded by a Serpent. Juno giving to Jupiter, on her marriage with him, a Tree
with golden fruit is another form of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree
of Knowledge.
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quite arbitrary and against all
reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, identical with the
plural word Chiim, often compounded with the Elohim.* Moreover, in Occult
metaphysics there are, properly speaking, two "ONES" -- the One on
the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity, on which no speculation is
possible, and the Second "One" on the plane of Emanations. The former
can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is eternal, absolute, and immutable.
The Second, being, so to speak, the reflection of the first One (for it is the
Logos, or Eswara, in the Universe of Illusion), can do all this.** It emanates
from itself -- as the upper Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven
Sephiroth -- the seven Rays or Dhyan Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous
becomes the Heterogeneous, the "Protyle" differentiates into the
Elements. But these, unless they return into their primal Element, can never
cross beyond the Laya, or zero-point.
Hence the allegory. The Lipika
separate the world (or plane) of pure spirit from that of Matter. Those who
"descend and ascend" -- the incarnating Monads, and men striving
towards purification and "ascending," but still not having quite
reached the goal -- may cross the "circle of the Pass-Not," only on
the day "Be-With-Us"; that day when man, freeing himself from the
trammels of ignorance, and recog-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The sentence in the Sepher Jezirah
and elsewhere: "Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim" denotes the Elohim as
androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would
read: "ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life." As said above,
Echath (or Achath) is feminine, and Echod (or Achod) masculine, both meaning
ONE.
** This metaphysical tenet can hardly
be better described than Mr. Subba Row's in "Bhagavadgita" lectures:
"Mulaprakriti (the veil of Parabrahmam) acts as the one energy through the
Logos (or 'Eswara'). Now Parabrahmam, 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
Avalokiteshwara 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 Parabrahmam at the time of Pralaya,
and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of Cosmic activity. . .
." For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabraham is not this or
that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or
anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-ego, not even Atma, but
verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.
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nising fully the non-separateness of
the Ego within his personality -- erroneously regarded as his own -- from the
UNIVERSAL EGO (Anima Supra-Mundi), merges thereby into the One Essence to
become not only one "with us" (the manifested universal lives which
are "ONE" LIFE), but that very life itself.
Astronomically, the "Ring
PASS-NOT" that the Lipika trace around the Triangle, the First One, the
Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle to circumscribe these figures, is thus
shown to contain the symbol of 31415 again, or the coefficient constantly used
in mathematical tables (the value of, pi), the geometrical figures standing
here for numerical figures. According to the general philosophical teachings,
this ring is beyond the region of what are called nebulae in astronomy. But
this is as erroneous a conception as that of the topography and the
descriptions, given in Puranic and other exoteric Scriptures, about the 1008
worlds of the Devaloka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in
the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such
incalculable distances that the light of the nearest of them which has just
reached our modern Chaldees, had left its luminary long before the day on which
the words "Let there be Light" were pronounced; but these are no
worlds on the Devaloka plane, but in our Kosmos.
The chemist goes to the laya or zero
point of the plane of matter with which he deals, and then stops short. The
physicist or the astronomer counts by billions of miles beyond the nebulae, and
then they also stop short; the semi-initiated Occultist will represent this
laya-point to himself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is
still conceivable to the human intellect. But the full Initiate knows that the
ring "Pass-Not" is neither a locality nor can it be measured by
distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of infinity. In this
"Infinity" of the full Initiate there is neither height, breadth nor
thickness, but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to
the "para-para-metaphysical." In using the word "down,"
essential depth -- "nowhere and everywhere" -- is meant, not depth of
physical matter.
If one searches carefully through the
exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic allegories of popular religions, even in
these the doctrine embodied in the circle of "Pass-Not" thus guarded
by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus one finds it even in the teachings
of
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the Vedantin sect of the
Visishtadwaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all India. For we read
of the released soul that:--
After reaching Moksha (a state of
bliss meaning "release from Bandha" or bondage), bliss is enjoyed by
it in a place called PARAMAPADHA, which place is not material, but made of
Suddasatwa (the essence, of which the body of Iswara -- "the Lord" --
is formed). There, Muktas or Jivatmas (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are
never again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma. "But if
they choose, for the sake of doing good to the world, they may incarnate on
Earth."* The way to Paramapadha, or the immaterial worlds, from this
world, is called Devayana. When a person has attained Moksha and the body
dies:--
"The Jiva (Soul) goes with
Sukshma Sarira** 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 (Suryamandala) through the solar Rays. Then it goes, through a dark
spot in the Sun, to Paramapadha. The Jiva is directed on its way by the Supreme
Wisdom acquired by Yoga.*** The Jiva thus proceeds to Paramapadha by the aid of
Athivahikas (bearers in transit), known by the names of Archi-Ahas . . .
Aditya, Prajapati, etc. The Archis here mentioned are certain pure Souls, etc.,
etc." (Visishtadwaita Catechism, by Pundit Bhashyacharya, F.T.S.)
No Spirit except the
"Recorders" (Lipika) has ever crossed its forbidden line, nor will
any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary that
separates the finite -- however infinite in man's sight -- from the truly
INFINITE. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as those who "ascend and
descend" are the "Hosts" of what we loosely call "celestial
Beings." But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These voluntary re-incarnations are
referred to in our Doctrine as Nirmanakayas (the surviving spiritual principles
of men).
** Sukshma-sarira,
"dream-like" illusive body, with which are clothed the inferior
Dhyanis of the celestial Hierarchy.
*** Compare this esoteric tenet with
the Gnostic doctrine found in "Pistis-Sophia" (Knowledge = Wisdom),
in which treatise Sophia Achamoth is shown lost in the waters of Chaos
(matter), on her way to Supreme Light, and Christos delivering and helping her
on the right Path. Note well, "Christos" with the Gnostics meant the
impersonal principal, the Atman of the Universe, and the Atma within every
man's soul -- not Jesus; though in the old Coptic MSS. in the British Museum
"Christos" is almost constantly replaced by "Jesus."
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They are Entities of the higher
worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must
appear as Gods, and collectively -- GOD. But so we, mortal men, must appear to
the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may
also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a personal God in the hand of
the urchin who, in one moment, under the impulse of mischief, destroys its
anthill, the labour of many weeks -- long years in the chronology of insects.
The ant, feeling it acutely, and attributing the undeserved calamity to a
combination of Providence and sin, may also, like man, see in it the result of
the sin of its first parent. Who knows and who can affirm or deny? The refusal
to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable and intellectual
beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit of our age.
All that science has a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible
Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny
point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under totally
different conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can
it deny that there may be a certain limited communication* between some of
those worlds and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven
orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies
that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their
progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each
principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings,
who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us. Physical Science
is welcome to speculate upon the physiological mechanism of living beings, and
to continue her fruitless efforts in trying to resolve our feelings, our
sensations, mental and spiritual, into functions of their inorganic vehicles.
Nevertheless, all that will ever be accomplished in this direction has already
been done, and Science will go no farther.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The greatest philosopher of
European birth, Imanuel Kant, assures us that such a communication is in no way
improbable. "I confess I am much disposed to assert the existence of
Immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own soul in the class of these
beings. It will hereafter, I know not where, or when, yet be proved that the
human soul stands even in this life in indissoluble connection with all
immaterial natures in the spirit-world, that it reciprocally acts upon these
and receives impressions from them." (Traume eines Geistersehers, quoted
by C. C. Massey, in his preface to Von Hartmann's "Spiritismus.")
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She is before a dead wall, on the
face of which she traces, as she imagines, great physiological and psychic
discoveries, but every one of which will be shown later on to be no better than
the cobwebs spun by her scientific fancies and illusions. The tissues of our
objective framework alone are subservient to the analysis and researches of
physiological science.* The six higher principles in them will evade for ever
the hand that is guided by an animus that purposely ignores and rejects the
Occult Sciences.
The "Great Day of
BE-WITH-US," then, is an expression the only merit of which lies in its
literal translation. Its significance is not so easily revealed to a public,
unacquainted with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or rather of Esoteric Wisdom
or "Budhism." It is an expression peculiar to the latter, and as hazy
for the profane as that of the Egyptians who called the same the "Day of
COME-TO-US,"** which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* E.g., all that modern physiological
research in connection with psychological problems has, and owing to the nature
of things, could have shown, is, that every thought, sensation, and emotion is
attended with a re-marshalling of the molecules of certain nerves. The
inference drawn by scientists of the type of Buchner, Vogt, and others, that
thought is molecular motion, necessitates a complete abstraction being made of
the fact of our subjective consciousness.
** See "Le Livre des
Morts," by Paul Pierret; "Le Jour de 'Viens a nous' . . . c'est le
jour ou Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois rencontrant le Soleil dans
l'Amenti." (Chap. xvii., p. 61.) The Sun here stands for the Logos (or
Christos, or Horus) as central Essence synthetically, and as a diffused essence
of radiated Entities, different in substance, but not in essence. As expressed
by the Bhagavadgita lecturer, "it must not be supposed that the Logos is
but a single centre of energy manifested from Parabrahmam; there are
innumerable other centres . . . and their number is almost infinite in the
bosom of Parabrahmam." Hence the expressions, "The Day of Come to
us" and "The Day of Be with us," etc. Just as the square is the
Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers -- Tetraktis -- so the Circle shows
the boundary within the Infinity that no man can cross, even in spirit, nor
Deva nor Dhyan Chohan. The Spirits of those who "descend and ascend"
during the course of cyclic evolution shall cross the "iron-bound
world" only on the day of their approach to the threshold of Paranirvana.
If they reach it -- they will rest in the bosom of Parabrahmam, or the
"Unknown Darkness," which shall then become for all of them Light --
during the whole period of Mahapralaya, the "Great NIGHT," namely,
311,040,000,000,000 years of absorption in Brahm. The day of
"Be-With-Us" is this period of rest or Paranirvana. See also for
other data on this peculiar expression, the day of "Come-To-Us," The
Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians, by Viscount de Rouge. It corresponds to the
Day of the Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been sorely materialised
by their religion.
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is identical with the former, though
the verb "be" in this sense, might be still better replaced with
either of the two words "Remain" or "Rest-with-us," as it
refers to that long period of REST which is called Paranirvana. As in the
exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites the soul of every defunct person
-- from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull Apis -- became an Osiris, was
Osirified, though the Secret Doctrine had always taught, that the real
Osirification was the lot of every Monad only after 3,000 cycles of Existences;
so in the present case. The "Monad," born of the nature and the very
Essence of the "Seven" (its highest principle becoming immediately
enshrined in the Seventh Cosmic Element), has to perform its septenary gyration
throughout the Cycle of Being and forms, from the highest to the lowest; and
then again from man to God. At the threshold of Paranirvana it reassumes its
primeval Essence and becomes the Absolute once more.
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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 (chaos) THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF
SIEN-TCHAN (our Universe) AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:--
(a.) The Mother of Mercy and
Knowledge is called "the triple" of Kwan-Shai-Yin because in her
correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the "Mother, the Wife and
the Daughter" of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations
she became "the Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost" -- the Sakti
or Energy -- the Essence of the three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins,
Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos,** is at one and
the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of
Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is -- in the
hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony -- "the MOTHER" or
abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; -- from the
metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos,
Avalokiteshwara; -- and from the purely occult and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This stanza is translated from the
Chinese text, and the names, as the equivalents of the original terms, are
preserved. The real esoteric nomenclature cannot be given, as it would only
confuse the reader. The Brahmanical doctrine has no equivalent to these. Vach
seems, in many an aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan-yin, but there is no
regular worship of Vach under this name in India, as there is of Kwan-Yin in
China. No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus
woman was regarded and treated, from the first dawn of popular religions, as
inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-Yin and Isis were
placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest
Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first
manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually
androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes.
** The "Theosophist" of February,
1887, p. 305, first lecture on the Bhagavadgita.
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Cosmical, Fohat,* the "Son of
the Son," the androgynous energy resulting from this "Light of the
Logos," and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the
hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which is LIFE.
(b) Kwan-Yin-Tien means the "melodious
heaven of Sound," the abode of Kwan-Yin, or the "Divine Voice"
literally. This "Voice" is a synonym of the Verbum or the Word:
"Speech," as the expression of thought. Thus may be traced the
connection with, and even the origin of the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the "daughter
of the Divine Voice," or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the
"Heavenly Man" or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The
latter was surely anticipated by the Hindu Vach, the goddess of Speech, or of
the Word. For Vach -- the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of
Brahma, one "generated by the gods" -- is, in company with Kwan-Yin,
with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses,
the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the active forces in Nature, the
Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan-Yin is the "melodious
Voice," so is Vach; "the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance
and water" (the female principle) -- "who yields us nourishment and
sustenance," as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation
with the Prajapati. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And
she is a form of Aditi -- the principle higher than Ether -- in Akasa, the
synthesis of all the forces in Nature; thus Vach and Kwan-Yin are both the
magic potency of Occult sound in Nature and Ether -- which "Voice"
calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the
Seven Elements.
Thus in Manu Brahma (the Logos also)
is shown dividing his body into two parts, male and female, and creating in the
latter, who is Vach, Viraj, who is himself, or Brahma again -- it is in this
way a learned Vedantin Occultist speaks of that "goddess," explaining
the reason why Eswara (or Brahma) is called Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is
called Sabda Brahmam:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the lecturer on p. 306:
"Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the Logos, not
merely on account of the potentialities locked up in Mulaprakriti. This light
of the Logos is the link . . . between objective matter and the subjective
thought of Eswara (or Logos). It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It
is the one instrument with which the Logos works."
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"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 Vach is of
four kinds (see Rig Veda and the Upanishads). Vaikhari-Vach is what we utter.
Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its Madhyama, further in its Pasyanti,
and ultimately in its Para form.* The reason why this Pranava is called Vach is
this, that the four principles of the great Kosmos correspond to these four
forms of Vach. Now the whole manifested solar System exists in its Sukshma form
in the light or energy of the Logos, because its energy is caught up and
transferred to Cosmic matter. . . . The whole Kosmos in its objective form is
Vaikhari-Vach, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama form, and the Logos
itself the Pasyanti form, and Parabrahm the Para form or aspect of that Vach.
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
Kosmos is the Verbum manifested as Kosmos" (see Lecture on the
Bhagavadgita, referred to above).
-------
STANZA VI. -- (Continued.)
2. THE SWIFT AND THE RADIANT ONE
PRODUCES THE SEVEN Layu** (a) CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE
GREAT DAY "BE WITH US" -- AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL
FOUNDATIONS, SURROUNDING SIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS (b).
(a.) The seven Layu centres are the
seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same sense that Chemists do, to
indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of reckoning of
differentiation begins. From the Centres -- beyond which Esoteric philosophy
allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the "Seven
Sons" of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other
philosophers -- begins
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** From the Sanskrit Laya, the point
of matter where every differentiation has ceased.
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the differentiation of the elements
which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has often been asked
what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, as he
seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular
religions. The answer has just been given in the comment on Stanza V. As well
said in the Bhagavadgita Lectures, "The whole Kosmos must necessarily
exist in the One Source of energy from which this light (Fohat) emanates."
Whether we count the principles in Kosmos and man as seven or only as four, the
forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same
authority that "Pragna, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven
different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter"
(Personal and impersonal God). For, "just as a human being is composed of
seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven
different conditions" (ibid). So does Fohat.* He is One and Seven, and on
the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound,
adhesion, etc., etc., and is the "spirit" of ELECTRICITY, which is
the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an
objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation,
which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as
Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science
speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless
motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that
Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but
the emanation of those other Powers behind him whom the Christians call the
"Messengers" of their God (who is in reality only the Elohim, or
rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the "Messenger of
the primordial Sons of Life and Light."
(b.) The "Elementary Germs"
with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the "Universe") from Tien-Sin (the
"Heaven of Mind," literally, or that which is absolute) are the Atoms
of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Fohat" has several
meanings. (See Stanza V., Commentary et infra). He is called the "Builder
of the Builders," the Force that he personifies having formed our
Septenary chain.
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STANZA VI. -- Continued.
3. OF THE SEVEN (elements) -- FIRST
ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED; TWO MANIFESTED -- FIVE CONCEALED; THREE
MANIFESTED -- FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED -- THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN
(fraction) 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 Mahapralaya (universal destruction), yet this
sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers also by analogy to the
evolution and final formation of the primitive (though compound) Seven Elements
on our Earth. Of these, four elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth
-- Ether -- is only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the
Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in
the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, were of course, as germs,
primarily evolved from the ONE Element in its second stage ("Father-Mother,"
the differentiated World's Soul, not what is termed the "Over-Soul"
by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science, Cosmic dust and Fire
Mist, or with Occultism -- Akasa, Jivatma, divine Astral Light, or the
"Soul of the World." But this first stage of Evolution was in due
course of time followed by the next. No world, as no heavenly body, could be
constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been sufficiently
differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The latter term
is a synonym of Nirvana. It is, in fact, the Nirvanic dissociation of all
substances, merged after a life-cycle into the latency of their primary
conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the matter that was, the
realm of negativeness -- wherein lie latent during their period of rest the
active Forces of the Universe. Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the
standing reproach of the Ancients, that they "supposed their Elements
simple and undecomposable."* Once more this is an unwarrantable state-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The shades of our pre-historical
ancestors might return the compliment to modern physicists, now that new
discoveries in chemistry have led Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., to admit that Science is
yet a thousand leagues from the knowledge of the compound nature of the
simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a thing as a really simple
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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ment; as, at any rate, their
initiated philosophers can hardly come under such an imputation, since it is
they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the beginning. Had
they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they would have had
no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and AEther; their Cosmic gods
and goddesses would never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many
sons and daughters, elements born from and within each respective Element.
Alchemy and occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even in
theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and correlative
functions and attributes of every element that enters into the composition of
Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire -- the latter a terra incognita to this day to
modern Science, which is obliged to call it Motion, evolution of light and heat,
state of ignition, -- defining it by its outward aspects in short, and
remaining ignorant of its nature. But that which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] molecule entirely homogeneous is terra incognita in chemistry.
"Where are we to draw the line?" he asks; "is there no way out
of this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary examinations so stiff
that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, or must we open the examination doors
so wide that the number of admissions is limited only by the number of
applicants?" And then the learned gentleman 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 recognised 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
pre-supposes 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." (Presidential address before the Royal
Society of Chemists, March, 1888.)
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modern Science seems to fail to
perceive is that, differentiated as may have been those simple chemical atoms
-- which archaic philosophy called "the creators of their respective
Parents," fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and those mothers
the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example --
differentiated as these elements were in the beginning, still, they were not
the compound bodies known to science, as they are now. Neither Water, Air,
Earth (synonym for solids generally) existed in their present form,
representing the three states of matter alone recognised by Science; for all
these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres of globes
completely formed -- even to fire -- so that in the first periods of the earth's
formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the conditions and
laws ruling our solar system are fully developed; and that the atmosphere of
our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its
own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place in
space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus changing their
combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and those among the
greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which has been
known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the probable
similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance; it is
unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate towards one
another in the same way and under the same conditions as they are supposed to
do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the
highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be
one and the same in and for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties,
other than those of dissociation and reassociation, differ on every planet; and
thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamt of, and incognizable to,
physical Science. As already expressed in "Five Years of Theosophy,"
the essence of Cometary matter, for instance, "is totally different from
any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest
chemists and physicists of the earth are acquainted" (p. 242). And even
that matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain
change in its nature. Thus not alone the elements of our planets, but even
those of all its sisters in the Solar System, differ as widely from each other
in their combinations, as from the Cosmic elements beyond our
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Solar limits.* Therefore, they cannot
be taken as a standard for comparison with the same in other worlds.**
Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal
Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to
incessant differentiation. "The Mother sleeps, yet is ever
breathing." And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her
Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by
Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once
caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever,
unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to "a current of EFFLUX" (an
occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term
implies); when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had
perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it
will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily
re-absorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-alchemist to write the "Life
and Adventures of an Atom" he would secure thereby the eternal scorn of
the modern chemist, perchance also his subsequent
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is again corroborated by the
same man of science in the same lecture, who quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying
"that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous." He writes:
"It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of intermediate
varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules have gone to, if, as we
have reason to believe, the hydrogen, &c. of the fixed stars is composed of
molecules identical in all respects with our own." And he adds: "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."
** "Each world has its Fohat,
who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action. But there are as many Fohats as
there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of manifestations. The
individual Fohats make one Universal, Collective Fohat -- the aspect-Entity of
the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-Ness, 'SAT.' "Millions
and billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara" -- it is said.
Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we consider as conscious and
intelligent Forces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of scientific minds.
Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it, consider all the
forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of Matter; and as
possible objects of perception to Beings endowed with the requisite senses.
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gratitude.* However it may be,
"The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and radiant and gets hot and
corrupt, to cool once more, and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner
Space," says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on the
mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus -- the higher
atmosphere being the mouth, and the lower one the lungs of every globe -- the
man of our planet breathes only the refuse of "Mother"; therefore,
"he is doomed to die on it."**
(b) The process referred to as
"the small wheels giving birth, one to the other," takes place in the
sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most material world of all in
the manifested Kosmos -- our terrestrial plane. These "Seven Wheels"
are our planetary chain (see Commentary Nos. 5 and 6). By "Wheels"
the various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in this case
they refer to our septenary ring.
-------
STANZA VI. -- Continued.
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF
OLDER WHEELS (worlds), 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, 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.***
(a) The Worlds are built "in the
likeness of older Wheels" -- i.e., those that existed in preceding
Manvantaras and went into Pralaya,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Indeed, if such an imaginary
Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for a moment step out of the
habitual groove of strictly "Exact Science," as the Alchemists of old
did, he might be repaid for his audacity.
** He who would allotropise sluggish
oxygen into Ozone to a measure of alchemical activity, reducing it to its pure
essence (for which there are means), would discover thereby a substitute for an
"Elixir of Life" and prepare it for practical use.
*** A period of 311,040,000,000,000
years, according to Brahminical calculations.
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because the LAW for the birth, growth,
and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun to the glow-worm in the grass,
is ONE. It is an everlasting work of perfection with every new appearance, but
the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the same. But this LAW acts on
every planet through minor and varying laws. The "imperishable Laya
Centres" have a great importance, and their meaning must be fully
understood if we would have a clear conception of the Archaic Cosmogony, whose
theories have now passed into Occultism. At present, one thing may be stated.
The worlds are built neither upon, nor over, nor in the Laya centres, the
zero-point being a condition, not any mathematical point.
(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the
constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have
sprung like Rudra from Brahma "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., polarity, into positive and negative electricity. He has seven
sons who are his brothers; and Fohat is forced to be born time after time
whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too close contact -- whether an
embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and unites those of unlike
nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This, of course, relates,
as any one can see, to electricity generated by friction and to the law
involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those
of like polarity. The Seven "Sons-brothers," however, represent and
personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical Occultism the
"Seven Radicals," whose co-operative and active progeny are, among
other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc.
Occult Science defines all these as Super-sensuous effects in their hidden
behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of senses; the former
requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them -- the latter, our ordinary
physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous
spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious
CAUSES. To attempt a description of such ENTITIES would be worse than useless.
The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this
phenomenal Universe as a great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the UNKNOWN
SUBSTANCE, the more it approaches reality, as being removed the farther
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from this world of Maya. Therefore,
though the molecular constitution of their bodies is not deducible from their
manifestations on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless (from the standpoint
of the adept Occultist) possess a distinctive objective if not material
structure, in the relatively noumenal -- as opposed to the phenomenal --
Universe. Men of science may term them Force or Forces generated by matter, or
"modes of its motion," if they will; Occultism sees in the effects
"Elemental" (forces), and, in the direct causes producing them,
intelligent DIVINE Workmen. The intimate connection of those Elementals (guided
by the unerring hand of the Rulers) -- their correlation we might call it --
with the elements of pure Matter, results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as
light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the
American Substantialists* who call every Force and Energy -- whether Light,
Heat, Electricity or Cohesion -- an "Entity"; for this would be
equivalent to calling the noise produced by the rolling of the wheels of a
vehicle an Entity -- thus confusing and identifying that "noise" with
the driver outside, and the guiding Master Intelligence within the vehicle. But
we certainly give that name to the "drivers" and to these guiding
Intelligences -- the ruling Dhyan Chohans, as shown. The
"Elementals," the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or
rather imperceptible, secondary Causes and in themselves the effects of primary
Causes behind the Veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat,
etc., have been aptly termed the "Ghost or Shadow of Matter in
Motion," i.e., supersensuous states of matter whose effects only we are
able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of
light is like the sound of the rolling wheels -- a purely phenomenal effect,
having no existence outside the observer; the proximate exciting cause of the
sensation is comparable to the driver -- a supersensuous state of matter in
motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind even this, stand -- just as
the owner of the carriage directs the driver from within -- the higher and
noumenal causes, the Intelligences 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "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. (1886, July, August, and September.)
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infinitesimal Infusoria. (See
"Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in Part III.) It is Fohat who guides the
transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to
another -- child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are
transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in
it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new
sidereal body. (Vide infra, "A Few Theosophical Misconceptions,
etc.")
It is most remarkable that, while
honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true Nature of even
terrestrial matter -- primordial substance being regarded more as a dream than
as a sober reality -- the physicists should set themselves up as judges,
nevertheless, of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able
to do, in various combinations. Scientists know it (matter) hardly skin-deep,
and yet they will dogmatise. It is "a mode of motion" and nothing
else. But the force that is inherent in a living person's breath, when blowing
a speck of dust from the table, is also, and undeniably, "a mode of
motion"; and it is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the
particles of that speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity
that breathed, whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously.
Indeed, to endow matter -- something of which nothing is known so far -- with
an inherent quality called Force, of the nature of which still less is known,
is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the
acceptation of the intervention of our "Nature-Spirits" in every
natural phenomenon.
The Occultists, who do not say -- if
they would express themselves correctly -- that matter, but only the substance
or essence of matter, is indestructible and eternal, (i.e., the Root of all,
Mulaprakriti): assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, Electricity,
Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material
particles, are in esse, i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the
differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion which is discussed and
explained in the first pages of this volume (See Proem). When Fohat is said to
produce "Seven Laya Centres," it means that for formative or creative
purposes, the GREAT LAW (Theists may call it God) stops, or rather modifies its
perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the manifested
Universe. "The great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya to
cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara" (Occult Catechism). We
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have said that Laya is what Science
may call the Zero-point or line; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one
real absolute Force, the NOUMENON of the Seventh State of that which we
ignorantly call and recognise as "Force"; or again the Noumenon of
Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable
object to finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity
and subjectivity too; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its
centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we attempt to imagine a
neutral centre -- the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. A
"neutral centre" is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given
set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already
formed; each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of perceptive organs.
We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant
circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the
lower in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they
pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower
plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our
perception into nothing -- or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the
state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly
possess special and not readily discoverable properties. Such "Seven
Neutral Centres,"* then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has
it --
"Fair foundations (are) laid
whereon to build . . ."
quickens matter into activity and
evolution.
The Primordial Atom (anu) cannot be
multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its primogeneity; therefore it is
called "SUM TOTAL," figuratively, of course, as that "SUM
TOTAL" is boundless. (See Addendum to this Book.) That which is the abyss
of nothingness to the physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and
effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist. Among
many other objections to the doctrine of an endless evolution and re-involution
(or re-absorption) of the Kosmos, a process which, according to the Brahminical
and Esoteric Doctrine, is without a beginning or an end, the Occultist is told
that it cannot be, since "by all the admissions of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Such, we believe, is the name
applied by Mr. Keely, of Philadelphia, the inventor of the famous
"Motor" -- destined, as his admirers have hoped, to revolutionise the
motor power of the world -- to what he again calls the "Etheric
Centres."
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modern scientific philosophy it is a
necessity of Nature to run down." If the tendency of Nature "to run
down" is to be considered so forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony,
"How," we may ask, "do your Positivists and Free-thinkers and
Scientists account for the phalanx around us of active stellar systems?"
They had eternity to "run down" in; why, then, is not the Kosmos a
huge inert mass? Even the moon is only hypothetically believed to be a dead
planet, "run down," and astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with
many such dead planets.* The query is unanswerable. But apart from this it must
be noted that the idea of the amount of "transformable energy" in our
little system coming to an end is based purely on the fallacious conception of
a "white-hot, incandescent Sun" perpetually radiating away his heat
without compensation into Space. To this we reply that nature runs down and
disappears from the objective plane, only to re-emerge after a time of rest out
of the subjective and to reascend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will run
down only to reappear on a more perfect plane after every PRALAYA. The matter
of the Eastern philosophers is not the "matter" and Nature of the
Western metaphysicians. For what is Matter? And above all, what is our
scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so politely defined by
Kant as "the Science of the limits to our Knowledge"? Where have the
many attempts made by Science to bind, to connect, and define all the phenomena
of organic life by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it to? To
speculation generally -- mere soap-bubbles, that burst one after the other
before the men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would
have been avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with
gigantic strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting
hypotheses on the mere one-sided Knowledge of their Matter.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** The instance of Uranus and
Neptune, whose satellites, four and one respectively, revolved, it was thought,
in their orbits from East to West, whereas all the other satellites rotate from
West to East, is a very good one, as showing how unreliable are all a priori
speculations even when based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous
hypothesis of the formation of our Solar System out of the nebulous rings, put
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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If no physical intellect is capable
of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of sea-shore; or to fathom
the ultimate nature and essence of those grains, palpable and visible on the
palm of the naturalist, how can any materialist limit the laws changing the
conditions and being of the atoms in primordial chaos, or know anything certain
about the capabilities and potency of their atoms and molecules before and
after their formation into worlds? These changeless and eternal molecules --
far thicker in space than the grains on the ocean shore -- may differ in their
constitution along the line of their planes of existence, as the soul-substance
differs from its vehicle, the body. Each atom has seven planes of being or
existence, we are taught; and each plane is governed by its specific laws of
evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data
from which to start in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin
of the solar system, astronomers, geologists, and physicists are drifting with
each new hypothesis farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the
fathomless depths of speculative ontology.* The Law of Analogy in the plan of
structure between the trans-Solar systems and the intra-Solar planets, does not
necessarily bear upon the finite conditions to which every visible body is
subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science this law is the first
and most important key to Cosmic physics; but it has to be studied in its
minutest details and, "to be
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] forward by Kant and Laplace, was chiefly based on the above fact that
all the planets revolved in the same direction. It is on this fact,
mathematically demonstrated during the time of Laplace, that this great
astronomer, calculating on the theory of probabilities, offered to bet three
milliards to one that the next planet discovered would have in its system the
same peculiarity of motion Eastward. The immutable laws of scientific
mathematics got "worsted by further experiments and observations," it
was said. This idea of Laplace's mistake prevails generally to this day; but
some astronomers have finally succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the mistake
had been in accepting Laplace's assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct
it without attracting general attention to the bevue are now being taken. Many
such unpleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical
character. What further disillusions, then, may there not be in questions of a
transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches that the
so-called "reverse rotation" is a fact.
* The Occultists, having most perfect
faith in their own exact records, astronomical and mathematical, calculate the
age of Humanity, and assert that the latter (as separate sexes) has existed in
this Round just 18,618,727 years, as the Brahmanical teachings and even some
Hindu calendars declare.
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turned seven times," before one
comes to understand it. Occult philosophy is the only science that can teach
it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth of the Occultist's
proposition that "the Kosmos is eternal in its unconditioned collectivity,
and finite but in its conditioned manifestations" on this one-sided
physical enunciation that "it is a necessity of Nature to run down?"
---------------------
With these verses -- the 4th Sloka of
Stanza VI. -- ends that portion of the Stanzas which relates to the Universal
Cosmogony after the last Mahapralaya or Universal destruction, which, when it
comes, sweeps out of Space every differentiated thing, Gods as atoms, like so
many dry leaves. From this verse onwards, the Stanzas are concerned only with
our Solar System in general, with the planetary chains therein, inferentially,
and with the history of our globe (the 4th and its chain) especially. All the
Stanzas and verses which follow in this Book I. refer only to the evolution of,
and on, our Earth. With regard to the latter, a strange tenet -- strange from
the modern scientific stand-point only, of course -- is held, which ought to be
made known.
But before entirely new and rather
startling theories are presented to the reader, they must be prefaced by a few
words of explanation. This is absolutely necessary, as these theories clash not
only with modern science, but contradict, on certain points, earlier statements
made by other Theosophists, who claim to base their explanations and renderings
of these teachings on the same authority as we do.*
This may give rise to the idea that
there is a decided contradiction between the expounders of the same doctrine;
whereas the difference, in reality, arises from the incompleteness of the
information given to earlier writers, who thus drew some erroneous conclusions
and indulged in premature speculations, in their endeavour to present a
complete system to the public. Thus the reader, who is already a student of
Theosophy, must not be surprised to find in these pages the rectification of
certain statements made in various Theosophical works, and also the explanation
of certain points which have remained obscure, because they were necessarily
left incomplete. Many are the questions upon which even the author of
"Esoteric Buddhism" (the best and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Esoteric Buddhism" and
"Man."
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most accurate of all such works) has
not touched. On the other hand, even he has introduced several mistaken notions
which must now be presented in their true mystic light, as far as the present
writer is capable of doing so.
Let us then make a short break
between the Slokas just explained and those which follow, for the Cosmic
periods which separate them are of immense duration. This will afford us ample
time to take a bird's eye view of some points pertaining to the Secret
Doctrine, which have been presented to the public under a more or less
uncertain and sometimes mistaken light.
-------
A FEW EARLY THEOSOPHICAL
MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING PLANETS, ROUNDS, AND MAN.
Among the eleven Stanzas omitted*
there is one which gives a full description of the formation of the planetary
chains one after another, after the first Cosmic and Atomic differentiation had
commenced in the primitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of "laws arising
when Deity prepares to create" for (a) laws or rather LAW is eternal and
uncreated; and (b) that Deity is Law, and vice versa. Moreover, the one eternal
LAW unfolds everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold
principle; among the rest, the countless circular chains of worlds, composed of
seven globes, graduated on the four lower planes of the world of formation (the
three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe). Out of these seven only
one, the lowest and the most material of those globes, is within our plane or
means of perception, the six others lying outside of it and being therefore
invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and
creation of another, lower, and dead chain -- its reincarnation, so to say. To
make it clearer: we are told of the planets -- of which seven only were held as
sacred, as being ruled by the highest regents or gods, and not at all because
the ancients knew nothing of the others** -- that each of these, whether known
or unknown, is a septenary, as is the chain to which the Earth belongs (see
"Esoteric
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See the note which follows the
Commentary on the preceding page, and also the summary of the Stanzas in the
Proem, page 22.
** Many more planets are enumerated
in the Secret Books than in modern astronomical works.
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Buddhism"). For instance, all
such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., etc., or our
Earth, are as visible to us as our globe, probably, is to the inhabitants of
the other planets, if any, because they are all on the same plane; while the
superior fellow-globes of these planets are on other planes quite outside that
of our terrestrial senses. As their relative position is given further on, and
also in the diagram appended to the Comments on Verse 7 of Stanza VI., a few
words of explanation is all that is needed at present. These invisible
companions correspond curiously to that which we call "the principles in
Man." The seven are on three material planes and one spiritual plane,
answering to the three Upadhis (material bases) and one spiritual vehicle
(Vahan) of our seven principles in the human division. If, for the sake of a
clearer mental conception, we imagine the human principles to be arranged as in
the following scheme, we shall obtain the annexed diagram of correspondences:--
HUMAN PRINCIPLES.
(1) Spirit*
(2) Soul
Vehicle of Spirit
(3) Mind
(4) Animal Soul
Upadhi of Mind
(5) Life
(6) Astral Body
Upadhi of Life
(7) Physical Body**
The Upadhi of all the 6 Princ.
PLANETARY DIVISION.
Descending into matter
1
2
3
4 D Our Earth or any (Visible) Planet
Ascending to Spirit
4 D Our Earth or any (Visible) Planet
5
6
7
DIAGRAM I.
[[above is in diagram format in the
original text]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As we are proceeding here from
Universals to Particulars, instead of using the inductive or Aristotelean
method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is enumerated the first instead of
seventh, as is usually done, but, in truth, ought not to be done.
** Or as usually named after the
manner of Esoteric Buddhism and others: 1, Atma; 2, Buddhi (or Spiritual Soul);
3, Manas (Human Soul); 4, Kama Rupa (Vehicle of Desires and Passions); 5, Linga
Sarira; 6, Prana; 7, Sthula Sarira.
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The dark horizontal lines of the
lower planes are the Upadhis in one case, and the planes in the case of the
planetary chain. Of course, as regards the human principles, the diagram does
not place them quite in order, yet it shows the correspondence and analogy to
which attention is now drawn. As the reader will see, it is a case of descent
into matter, the adjustment -- in both the mystic and the physical senses -- of
the two, and their interblending for the great coming "struggle of
life" that awaits both the entities. "Entity" may be thought a
strange term to use in the case of a globe; but the ancient philosophers, who
saw in the earth a huge "animal," were wiser in their generation than
our modern geologists are in theirs; and Pliny, who called the Earth our kind
nurse and mother, the only element which is not inimical to man, spoke more
truly than Watts, who fancied that he saw in her the footstool of God. For
Earth is only the footstool of man in his ascension to higher regions; the
vestibule --
". . . . . . . to glorious
mansions,
Through which a moving crowd for ever
press."
But this only shows how admirably the
occult philosophy fits everything in Nature, and how much more logical are its
tenets than the lifeless hypothetical speculations of physical science.
Having learned thus much, the mystic
will be better prepared to understand the occult teaching, though every formal
student of modern science may, and probably will, regard it as preposterous
nonsense. The student of occultism, however, holds that the theory at present
under discussion is far more philosophical and probable than any other. It is
more logical, at any rate, than the theory recently advanced which made of the
moon the projection of a portion of our Earth extruded when the latter was but
a globe in fusion, a molten plastic mass.*
It is said that the planetary chains
having their "Days" and their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the author of "Modern
Science and Modern Thought," Mr. Samuel Laing: "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" (p. 48). And
if physicists persist, why should the chronology of the Hindus be laughed at as
exaggerated?
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"Nights" -- i.e., periods
of activity or life, and of inertia or death -- and behave in heaven as do men
on Earth: they generate their likes, get old, and become personally extinct,
their spiritual principles only living in their progeny as a survival of
themselves.
Without attempting the very difficult
task of giving out the whole process in all its cosmic details, enough may be
said to give an approximate idea of it. When a planetary chain is in its last
Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy and
"principles" into a neutral centre of latent force, a "laya
centre," and thereby informs a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance
or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it life. Suppose such a
process to have taken place in the lunar "planetary" chain; suppose
again, for argument's sake (though Mr. Darwin's theory quoted below has lately
been upset, even if the fact has not yet been ascertained by mathematical
calculation) that the moon is far older than the Earth. Imagine the six
fellow-globes of the moon -- aeons before the first globe of our seven was
evolved -- just in the same position in relation to each other as the
fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. (See in
"Esoteric Buddhism," "The Constitution of Man," and the
"Planetary Chain.") And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe
A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and -- dying;
Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the new
chain; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the terrene
chain; then the Moon (our Satellite*) pouring forth into
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* She is the satellite, undeniably,
but this does not invalidate the theory that she has given to the Earth all but
her corpse. For Darwin's theory to hold good, besides the hypothesis just upset
(vide last footnote), other still more incongruous speculations had to be
invented. The Moon, it is said, has cooled nearly six times as rapidly as the
Earth (Winchell's "World-Life"): "The Moon, if the earth is
14,000,000 years old since its incrustation, is only eleven and two thirds
millions of years old since that stage . . ." etc. And if our Moon is but
a splash from our Earth, why can no similar inference be established for the
Moons of other planets? The Astronomers "do not know." Why should
Venus and Mercury have no satellites, and by what, when they exist, were they
formed? Because, we say, science has only one key -- the key of matter -- to
open the mysteries of nature withal, while occult philosophy has seven keys and
explains that which science fails to see. Mercury and Venus have no satellites
but they had "parents" just as the earth had. Both are far older than
the Earth and, before the latter reaches her seventh Round, her mother Moon
will have dissolved [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the lowest globe of our planetary
ring -- Globe D, our Earth -- all its life, energy and powers; and, having
transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet, in which
rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe. The Moon is now the
cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into which her
living powers and "principles" are transfused. She now is doomed for
long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her
progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself on it by
soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and poisoned
influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she is a dead,
yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and
destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and
lifeless. Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and
maleficent -- this circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact that
the grass and plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on the graves;
while at the same time it is the graveyard or corpse-emanations, which kill.
And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of the sorcerers and
the foe of the unwary. From the archaic aeons and the later times of the
witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her
nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed
book for physicists.
Such is the moon from the
astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her metaphysical and
psychic nature it must remain an occult secret in this work, as it was in the
volume on "Esoteric Buddhism," notwithstanding the rather sanguine
statement made therein on p. 113 (5th edition) that "there is not much
mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth sphere." These are topics,
indeed, "on which the adepts are very reserved in their communications to
uninitiated pupils," and since they have, moreover, never sanctioned or
permitted any published speculations upon them, the less said the better.
Yet without treading upon the
forbidden ground of the "eighth sphere," it may be useful to state
some additional facts with regard to ex-monads of the lunar chain -- the
"lunar ancestors" -- as they play a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] into thin air, as the "Moons" of the other planets have, or
have not, as the case may be, since there are planets which have several moons
-- a mystery again which no OEdipus of astronomy has solved.
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leading part in the coming
Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the septenary constitution of man;
and as some discussion has arisen of late about the best classification to be
adopted for the division of the microcosmic entity, two systems are now
appended with a view to facilitate comparison. The subjoined short article is
from the pen of Mr. T. Subba Row, a learned Vedantin scholar. He prefers the
Brahmanical division of the Raja Yoga, and from a metaphysical point of view he
is quite right. But, as it is a question of simple choice and expediency, we
hold in this work to the "time-honoured" classification of the
trans-Himalayan "Arhat Esoteric School." The following table and its
explanatory text are reprinted from the "Theosophist" of Madras, and
they are also contained in "Five Years of Theosophy":--
SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT
INDIAN SYSTEMS.
"We give below in a tabular form
the classifications adopted by the Buddhist and Vedantic teachers of the
principles of man:--
CLASSIFICATION IN ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
1. Sthula Sarira.
2. Prana.**
3. The vehicle of Prana.***
4. Kama Rupa.
5. Mind
(a) Volitions and feelings, etc.
(b) Vignanam.
6. Spiritual Soul.*****
7. Atma.
VEDANTIC CLASSIFICATION.
[[1.]] Annamaya kosa.*
[[2., 3.]] Pranamaya kosa.
[[4., 5.(a)]] Manomaya kosa.
[[5.(b)]] Vignanamaya kosa.
[[6.]] Anandamaya kosa.
[[7.]] Atma.
CLASSIFICATION IN TARAKA RAJA YOGA
[[1., 2.]] Sthulopadhi.****
[[5.(a), (b)]] Sukshmopadhi.
[[6.]] Karanopadhi.
[[7.]] Atma.
[[above is in table format in the
original text.]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Kosa (kosha) is "Sheath"
literally, the sheath of every principle.
** "Life."
*** The astral body or Linga Sarira.
**** Sthula-Upadhi, or basis of the
principle.
***** Buddhi.
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From the foregoing table it will be
seen that the third principle in the Buddhist classification is not separately
mentioned in the Vedantic division, as it is merely the vehicle of Prana. It
will also be seen that the Fourth principle is included in the third Kosa
(Sheath), as the same principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but
an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamaya Kosa is
considered to be distinct from the Manomaya Kosa, as a division is made after
death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer
affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth; and its higher part,
which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for the
higher spiritual individuality of man.
We may also here point out to our
readers that the classification mentioned in the last column is, for all
practical purposes, connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though
there are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis
(bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These
three Upadhis can be separated by an Adept without killing himself. He cannot
separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his
constitution."
The student will now be better
prepared to see that between the three Upadhis of the Raja Yoga and its Atma,
and our three Upadhis, Atma, and the additional three divisions, there is in
reality but very little difference. Moreover, as every adept in cis-Himalayan
or trans-Himalayan India, of the Patanjali, the Aryasanga or the Mahayana
schools, has to become a Raja Yogi, he must, therefore, accept the Taraka Raja
classification in principle and theory whatever classification he resorts to
for practical and occult purposes. Thus, it matters very little whether one
speaks of the three Upadhis with their three aspects and Atma, the eternal and
immortal synthesis, or calls them the "seven principles."
For the benefit of those who may not
have read, or, if they have, may not have clearly understood, in Theosophical
writings, the doctrine of the septenary chains of worlds in the Solar Kosmos,
the teaching is briefly thus:--
1. Everything in the metaphysical as
in the physical Universe is septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet,
whether visible
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or invisible, is credited with six
companion globes. (See Diagram No. 3, after verse 6 of this commentary.) The
evolution of life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the 1st to the
7th in Seven ROUNDS or Seven Cycles.
2. These globes are formed by a
process which the Occultists call the "rebirth of planetary chains (or
rings)." When the seventh and last Round of one of such rings has been
entered upon, the highest or first globe "A," followed by all the
others down to the last, instead of entering upon a certain time of rest -- or "obscuration,"
as in their previous Rounds -- begins to die out. The "planetary"
dissolution (pralaya) is at hand, and its hour has struck; each globe has to
transfer its life and energy to another planet. (See diagram No. 2 infra,
"The Moon and the Earth.")
3. Our Earth, as the visible
representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its "lords"
or "principles" (see diagram No. 1), has to live, as have the others,
through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and consolidates; during
the fourth it settles and hardens; during the last three it gradually returns
to its first ethereal form: it is spiritualised, so to say.
4. Its Humanity develops fully only
in the Fourth -- our present Round. Up to this fourth Life-Cycle, it is
referred to as "humanity" only for lack of a more appropriate term.
Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which
becomes man, passes through all the forms and kingdoms during the first Round
and through all the human shapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on
our Earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present series of
life-cycles and races, MAN is the first form that appears thereon, being
preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms -- even the latter having
to develop and continue its further evolution through man. This will be
explained in Book II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe
on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of
a Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then -- GOD, like every
other atom in the Universe.
"Beginning so early as with the
2nd round, Evolution proceeds already on quite a different plan. It is only
during the 1st round that (heavenly) man becomes a human being on globe A
(rebecomes) a mineral, a plant, an animal, on globe B and C, etc. The process
changes
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entirely from the second round -- but
you have learned prudence . . . and I advise you to say nothing before the time
for saying it has come. . ." (Extract from the Teacher's letters on
various topics.)
5. Every life-cycle on Globe D (our
Earth)* is composed of seven root-races. They commence with the Ethereal and
end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and moral evolution --
from the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a
"planetary round" from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh; the other,
the "globe round," or the terrestrial).
This is very well described in
"Esoteric Buddhism" and needs no further elucidation for the time
being.
6. The first root-race, i.e., the
first "men" on earth (irrespective of form) were the progeny of the
"celestial men," called rightly in Indian philosophy the "Lunar
Ancestors" or the Pitris, of which there are seven classes or Hierarchies.
As all this will be sufficiently explained in the following sections and in
Book II., no more need be said of it here.
But the two works already mentioned,
both of which treat of subjects from the occult doctrine, need particular
notice. "Esoteric Buddhism" is too well known in Theosophical
circles, and even to the outside world, for it to be necessary to enter at length
upon its merits here. It is an excellent book, and has done still more
excellent work. But this does not alter the fact that it contains some mistaken
notions, and that it has led many Theosophists and lay-readers to form an
erroneous conception of the Secret Eastern Doctrines. Moreover it seems,
perhaps, a little too materialistic.
"MAN," which came later,
was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine from a more ideal standpoint, to
translate some visions in and from the Astral Light, to render some teachings
partly gathered from a Master's thoughts, but unfortunately misunderstood. This
work also speaks of the evolution of the early Races of men on Earth, and
contains some excellent pages of a philosophical character. But so far it is
only an interesting little mystical romance. It has failed in its mission,
because the conditions required for a correct translation of these visions were
not present. Hence the reader must not wonder if our Volumes contradict these
earlier descriptions in several particulars.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are not concerned with the other
Globes in this work except incidentally.
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Esoteric "Cosmogony" in
general, and the evolution of the human Monad especially, differ so essentially
in these two books and in other Theosophical works written independently by
beginners, that it becomes impossible to proceed with the present work without
special mention of these two earlier volumes, for both have a number of
admirers -- "Esoteric Buddhism" especially. The time has arrived for
the explanation of some matters in this direction. Mistakes have now to be
checked by the original teachings and corrected. If one of the said works has
too pronounced a bias toward materialistic science, the other is decidedly too
idealistic, and is, at times, fantastic.
From the doctrine -- rather
incomprehensible to western minds -- which deals with the periodical
"obscurations" and successive "Rounds" of the Globes along
their circular chains, were born the first perplexities and misconceptions. One
of such has reference to the "Fifth-" and even
"Sixth-Rounders." Those who knew that a Round was preceded and
followed by a long Pralaya, a pause of rest which created an impassable gulf
between two Rounds until the time came for a renewed cycle of life, could not
understand the "fallacy" of talking about "fifth and sixth
Rounders" in our Fourth Round. Gautama Buddha, it was held, was a
Sixth-Rounder, Plato and some other great philosophers and minds,
"Fifth-Rounders." How could it be? One Master taught and affirmed that
there were such "Fifth-Rounders" even now on Earth; and though
understood to say that mankind was yet "in the Fourth Round," in
another place he seemed to say that we were in the Fifth. To this an
"apocalyptic answer" was returned by another Teacher:-- "A few
drops of rain do not make a Monsoon, though they presage it." . . .
"No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but Fifth Round men have been coming
in for the last few thousand years." This was worse than the riddle of the
Sphinx! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest work of
speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie OEdipus and reconcile
the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the stony Sphinx
herself, they were accused of inconsistency, "contradiction," and "discrepancies."
But they were simply allowing the speculations to go on, in order to teach a
lesson which the Western mind sorely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, as
in their habit of materializing every metaphysical conception and term without
allowing any margin for Eastern
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metaphor and allegory, the
Orientalists have made a jumble of the Hindu exoteric philosophy, and the
Theosophists were now doing the same with regard to esoteric teachings. To this
day it is evident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the meaning
of the term "Fifth and Sixth Rounders." But it is simply this: every
"Round" brings about a new development and even an entire change in
the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these
principles evoluting on an ever ascending scale. Thence it follows that those
persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and
spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the
average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find
itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present
humanity. Similarly Gautama Buddha -- Wisdom incarnate -- was still higher and
greater than all the men we have mentioned, who are called Fifth Rounders,
while Buddha and Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders, allegorically. Thence
again the concealed wisdom of the remark, pronounced at the time
"evasive" -- that a few drops of rain do not make the Monsoon, though
they presage it."
And now the truth of the remark made
in "Esoteric Buddhism" by its author will be fully apparent:--
"It is impossible, when the
complicated facts of an entirely unfamiliar science are being presented to
untrained minds for the first time, to put them forward with all their
appropriate qualifications . . . and abnormal developments. . . . We must be
content to take the broad rules first and deal with the exceptions afterwards,
and especially is this the case with study, in connection with which the
traditional methods of teaching, generally followed, aim at impressing every
fresh idea on the memory by provoking the perplexity it at last relieves."
As the author of the remark was
himself, as he says, "an untrained mind" in Occultism, his own
inferences, and his better knowledge of modern astronomical speculations than
of archaic doctrines led him quite naturally, and as unconsciously to himself,
to commit a few mistakes of detail rather than of any "broad rule."
One such will now be noticed. It is a trifling one, still it is calculated to lead
many a beginner into erroneous conceptions. But as the mistaken notions of the
earlier editions were corrected in the annotations of the fifth edition, so the
sixth may be revised and perfected. There were several reasons
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for such mistakes. (1) They were due
to the necessity under which the teachers laboured of giving what were considered
as "evasive answers": the questions being too persistently pressed to
be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand, they could only be partially
answered. (2) This position notwithstanding, the confession that "half a
loaf is better than no bread" was but too often misunderstood and hardly
appreciated as it ought to have been. As a result thereof gratuitous
speculations were sometimes indulged in by the European lay-chelas. Among such
were (a) the "Mystery of the Eighth Sphere" in its relation to the Moon;
and (b) the erroneous statement that two of the superior Globes of the
terrestrial chain were two of our well-known planets: "besides the Earth .
. . there are only two other worlds of our chain which are visible. . . . Mars
and Mercury. . . ." (Esoteric Buddhism; p. 136.)
This was a great mistake. But the
blame for it is to be attached as much to the vagueness and incompleteness of
the Master's answer as to the question of the learner itself, which was equally
vague and indefinite.
It was asked: "What planets, of
those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of
worlds?" Now if by "System of Worlds" our terrestrial chain or
"string" was intended in the mind of the querist, instead of the
"Solar System of Worlds," as it should have been, then of course the
answer was likely to be misunderstood. For the reply was: "Mars, etc., and
four other planets of which astronomy knows nothing. Neither A, B, nor YZ are
known nor can they be seen through physical means however perfected." This
is plain: (a) Astronomy as yet knows nothing in reality of the planets, neither
the ancient ones, nor those discovered in modern times. (b) No companion
planets from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain in the Solar System,
can be seen.* As to Mars, Mercury, and "the four other planets," they
bear
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the exception of course of all
the planets which come fourth in number, as our earth, the moon, etc., etc.
Copies of all the letters ever received or sent, with the exception of a few
private ones -- "in which there was no teaching" the Master says --
are with the writer. As it was her duty, in the beginning, to answer and
explain certain points not touched upon, it is more than likely that
notwithstanding the many annotations on these copies, the writer, in her
ignorance of English and her fear of saying too much, may have bungled the
information given. She takes the whole blame for it upon herself in any and
every case. But it is impossible for her to allow students to remain any longer
under erroneous impressions, or to believe that the fault lies with the
esoteric system.
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a relation to Earth of which no
master or high Occultist will ever speak, much less explain the nature.*
Let it now be distinctly stated,
then, that the theory broached is impossible, with or without the additional
evidence furnished by modern Astronomy. Physical Science can supply
corroborative, though still very uncertain, evidence, but only as regards
heavenly bodies on the same plane of materiality as our objective Universe.
Mars and Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered planet (or
those still to be discovered), are all, per se, the representatives on our
plane of such chains. As distinctly stated in one of the numerous letters of
Mr. Sinnett's "Teacher," "there are other and innumerable
Manvantaric chains of globes which bear intelligent Beings both in and outside
our solar system." But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to our chain. They
are, along with the other planets, septenary Units in the great host of "chains"
of our system, and all are as visible as their upper globes are invisible.
If it is still argued that certain
expressions in the Teacher's letters were liable to mislead, the answer
comes:-- Amen; so it was. The author of "Esoteric Buddhism"
understood it well when he wrote that such are "the traditional modes of
teaching . . . by provoking the perplexity" . . . they do, or do not
relieve -- as the case may be. At all events, if it is urged that this might
have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets given out as
they now are, the answer comes that: "it was not found expedient to do so
at the time, as it would have opened the way to a series of additional
questions which could never be answered on account of their esoteric nature, and
thus would only become embarrassing." It had been declared from the first
and has been repeatedly asserted since that (1st) no Theosophist, not even as
an accepted chela -- let alone lay students -- could expect to have the secret
teachings explained to him thoroughly and completely, before he had
irretrievably pledged himself to the Brotherhood and passed through at least
one initiation, because no figures and numbers could be given to the public,
for figures and numbers are the key to the esoteric system. (2.) That
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In this same letter the
impossibility is distinctly stated:-- . . . "Try to understand that you
are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiation; that I can give
you (only) a general view, but that I dare not nor will I enter upon details .
. ." wrote one of the Teachers to the author of "Esoteric
Buddhism."
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what was revealed was merely the
esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost all the exoteric
Scriptures of the world-religions -- pre-eminently in the Brahmanas, and the
Upanishads of the Vedas and even in the Puranas. It was a small portion of what
is divulged far more fully now in the present volumes; and even this is very
incomplete and fragmentary.
When the present work was commenced,
the writer, feeling sure that the speculation about Mars and Mercury was a
mistake, applied to the Teachers by letter for explanation and an authoritative
version. Both came in due time, and verbatim extracts from these are now given.
". . . . . It is quite correct
that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present, and Mercury just beginning
to get out of it. You might add that Venus is in her last Round. . . . . . . .
. . . If neither Mercury nor Venus have satellites, it is because of the
reasons . . . (vide footnote supra, where those reasons are given), and also
because Mars has two satellites to which he has no right. . . . . Phobos, the
supposed INNER satellite, is no satellite at all. As remarked long ago by
Laplace and now by Faye (see COMPTES RENDUS, Tome XC., p. 569), Phobos keeps a
too short periodic time, and therefore there 'must exist some defect in the
mother idea of the theory' as Faye justly observes. . . . . Again, both (Mars
and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth's sidereal lords
and superiors as you are independent of the 'principles' of Daumling (Tom
Thumb) -- which were perhaps his six brothers, with or without night-caps. . .
. . . . . . . 'Gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge for some
men,' was said by Bacon, who was as right in postulating this truism, as those
who were familiar with it before him were right in hedging off WISDOM from
Knowledge, and tracing limits to that which is to be given out at one time. . .
. Remember:--
'. . . . . . . . . . . knowledge
dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of
other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their
own. . . .'
You can never impress it too
profoundly on the minds of those to whom you impart some of the esoteric
teachings. . ."
Again, 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
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futile, reasonings about the
advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories with the speculations
of Modern Science, and were written by a young Theosophist as a warning against
the "Secret Doctrine" and in reference to the same subject. He had
declared that if there were such companion Earths "they must be only a wee
bit less material than our globe." How then was it that they could not be
seen? The answer was:--
". . . . Were psychic and
spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would become next to impossible
to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less trouble is taken to reconcile
the irreconcileable -- that is to say, the metaphysical and spiritual sciences
with physical or natural philosophy, 'natural' being a synonym to them (men of
science) of that matter which falls under the perception of their corporeal
senses -- no progress can be really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the
first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, where the matter of our
perceptions exhibits itself in its grossest form. . . . . . . Hence it only
stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our Earth must be on
different and superior planes. In short, as Globes, they are in CO-ADUNITION
but not IN CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH and thus pertain to quite another
state of consciousness. Our planet (like all those we see) is adapted to the
peculiar state of its human stock, that state which enables us to see with our
naked eye the sidereal bodies which are co-essential with our terrene plane and
substance, just as their respective inhabitants, the Jovians, Martians and
others can perceive our little world: because our planes of consciousness,
differing as they do in degree but being the same in kind, are on the same
layer of differentiated matter. . . . . What I wrote was 'The minor Pralaya
concerns only our little STRINGS OF GLOBES.' (We called chains 'Strings' in
those days of lip-confusion.) . . . 'To such a string our Earth belongs.' This
ought to have shown plainly that the other planets were also 'strings' or
CHAINS. . . If he (meaning the objector) would perceive even the dim silhouette
of one of such 'planets' on the higher planes, he has to first throw off even
the thin clouds of the astral matter that stands between him and the next
plane. . . . ."
It becomes patent why we could not
perceive, even with the help of the best earthly telescopes, that which is
outside our world of matter. Those alone, whom we call adepts, who know how to
direct their mental vision and to transfer their consciousness -- physical and
psychic both --
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to other planes of being, are able to
speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell us plainly:--
"Lead the life necessary for the
acquisition of such knowledge and powers, and Wisdom will come to you
naturally. Whenever your are able to attune your consciousness to any of the
seven chords of 'Universal Consciousness,' those chords that run along the
sounding-board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another; when you have
studied thoroughly 'the music of the Spheres,' then only will you become quite
free to share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do so.
Meanwhile, be prudent. Do not give out the great Truths that are the
inheritance of the future Races, to our present generation. Do not attempt to
unveil the secret of being and non-being to those unable to see the hidden
meaning of Apollo's HEPTACHORD -- the lyre of the radiant god, in each of the
seven strings of which dwelleth the Spirit, Soul and Astral body of the Kosmos,
whose shell only has now fallen into the hands of Modern Science. . . . . . Be
prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all take care what those who learn
from you believe in; lest by deceiving themselves they deceive others . . . . .
for such is the fate of every truth with which men are, as yet, unfamiliar. . .
. Let rather the planetary chains and other super- and sub-cosmic mysteries
remain a dreamland for those who can neither see, nor yet believe that others
can. . . ."
It is to be regretted that few of us
have followed the wise advice; and that many a priceless pearl, many a jewel of
wisdom, has been cast to an enemy unable to understand its value and who has
turned round and rent us.
" 'Let us imagine,' wrote the
same Master to his two 'lay chelas,' as he called the author of 'Esoteric
Buddhism' and another gentleman, his co-student for some time -- 'let us
imagine THAT OUR EARTH IS ONE OF A GROUP OF SEVEN PLANETS OR MAN-BEARING
WORLDS. . . . . . (The SEVEN planets are the sacred planets of antiquity, and
are all septenary.) Now the life-impulse reaches A, or rather that which is
destined to become A, and which so far is but cosmic dust (a "laya
centre") . . etc.' "
In these early letters, in which the
terms had to be invented and words coined, the "Rings" very often
became "Rounds," and the "Rounds" life-cycles, and vice
versa. To a correspondent who called a "Round" a
"World-Ring," the Teacher wrote: "I believe this will lead to a
further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage
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of a monad from Globe A to Globe G or
Z. . . The 'World-Ring' is correct. . . Advise Mr. . . . strongly, to agree
upon a nomenclature before going any further. . . "
Notwithstanding this agreement, many
mistakes, owing to this confusion, crept into the earliest teachings. The Races
even were occasionally mixed up with the "Rounds" and
"Rings," and led to similar mistakes in "Man." From the
first the Master had written --
"Not being permitted to give you
the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated fractions . . . I am unable
to satisfy you."
This in answer to the questions,
"If we are right, then the total existence prior to the man-period is
637," etc., etc. To all the queries relating to figures, the reply was,
"Try to solve the problem of 777 incarnations. . . . Though I am obliged
to withhold information . . . yet if you should work out the problem by
yourself, it will be my duty to tell you so."
But they never were so worked out,
and the results were -- never-ceasing perplexity and mistakes.
Even the teaching about the Septenary
constitution of the sidereal bodies and of the macrocosm -- from which the
septenary division of the microcosm, or Man -- has until now been among the
most esoteric. In olden times it used to be divulged only at the Initiation and
along with the most sacred figures of the cycles. Now, as stated in one of the
Theosophical journals,* the revelation of the whole system of Cosmogony had not
been contemplated, nor even thought for one moment possible, at a time when a
few bits of information were sparingly given out in answer to letters written by
the author of "Esoteric Buddhism," in which he put forward a
multiplicity of questions. Among these were questions on such problems as no
MASTER, however high and independent he might be, would have the right to
answer, thus divulging to the world the most time-honoured and archaic of the
mysteries of the ancient college-temples. Hence only a few of the doctrines
were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were constantly withheld,
and all the efforts made to elicit more information about them were
systematically eluded from the beginning. This is perfectly natural. Of the
four Vidyas -- out of the seven branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Puranas
-- namely, "Yajna-Vidya" (the performance of religious rites in order
to
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Lucifer," May, 1888.
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produce certain results);
"Maha-Vidya," the great (Magic) knowledge, now degenerated into
Tantrika worship; "Guhya-Vidya," the science of Mantras and their
true rhythm or chanting, of mystical incantations, etc. -- it is only the last
one, "Atma-Vidya," or the true Spiritual and Divine wisdom, which can
throw absolute and final light upon the teachings of the three first named.
Without the help of Atma-Vidya, the other three remain no better than surface
sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness.
They are like the soul, limbs, and mind of a sleeping man: capable of
mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing
visible effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least
of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and
explained from the three first-named sciences. But unless the key to their
teachings is furnished by Atma-Vidya, they will remain for ever like the
fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great truths, dimly
perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those
who would nail every shadow to the wall.
Then, again, another great perplexity
was created in the minds of students by the incomplete exposition of the
doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully realised, both this
process and that of the birth of the Globes must be examined far more from
their metaphysical aspect than from what one might call a statistical
standpoint, involving figures and numbers which are rarely permitted to be
broadly used. Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to handle these
doctrines only metaphysically. Even the best of the Western writers upon our
doctrine declares in his work that "on pure metaphysics of that sort we
are not now engaged," when speaking of the evolution of the Monads
("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 46). And in such case, as the Teacher
remarks in a letter to him, "Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this
uphill work and swimming in adversum flumen? Why should the West . . . learn .
. . from the East . . . that which can never meet the requirements of the
special tastes of the aesthetics?" And he draws his correspondent's attention
"to the formidable difficulties encountered by us (the Adepts) in every
attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to the Western mind."
And well he may; for outside of
metaphysics no occult philosophy, no esotericism is possible. It is like trying
to explain the aspirations and affections, the love and hatred, the most
private and sacred workings in
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the soul and mind of the living man,
by an anatomical description of the chest and brain of his dead body.
Let us now examine two tenets
mentioned above and 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 "Esoteric
Buddhism" must be noticed and the author's opinions quoted. On p. 47
(fifth edition) it is said:--
" . . . 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.
This was a wise course to adopt in
view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to figures and numbers. This
reticence is now partially relinquished; but it would perhaps have been better
had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either
entirely divulged at the time, or as entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood
this difficulty well when saying (p. 140) that: "For reasons which are not
easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors of occult knowledge are
especially reluctant to give out facts relating to Cosmogony, though it is hard
for the uninitiated to understand why they should be withheld."
That there were such reasons is
evident. Nevertheless, it is to this reticence that most of the confused ideas
of some Eastern as well as Western pupils are due. The difficulties in the way
of the acceptance of the two particular tenets under consideration seemed great,
just because of the absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For the
figures belonging to the Occult calculations cannot be given -- as the Masters
have many times declared -- outside the circle of pledged chelas, and not even
these can break the rules.
To make things plainer, without
touching upon the mathematical aspects of the doctrine, the teaching given may
be expanded and some obscure
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points solved. As the evolution of
the Globes and that of the Monads are so closely interblended, we will make of
the two teachings one. In reference to the Monads, the reader is asked to bear
in mind that Eastern philosophy rejects the Western theological dogma of a
newly-created soul for every baby born, as being as unphilosophical as it is
impossible in the economy of Nature. There must be a limited number of Monads evolving
and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive
personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in view of
the doctrines of Rebirth, Karma, and the gradual return of the human Monad to
its source -- absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of more or less
progressed Monads are almost incalculable, they are still finite, as is
everything in this Universe of differentiation and finiteness.
As shown in the double diagram of the
human "principles" and the ascending Globes of the world-chains,
there is an eternal concatenation of causes and effects, and a perfect analogy
which runs through, and links together, all the lines of evolution. One begets
the other -- globes as personalities. But, let us begin at the beginning.
The general outline of the process by
which the successive planetary chains are formed has just been given. To
prevent future misconceptions, some further details may be offered which will
also throw light on the history of humanity on our own chain, the progeny of
that of the Moon.
In the diagrams on p. 172, Fig. 1
represents the "lunar-chain" of seven planets at the outset of its
seventh or last Round; while Fig. 2 represents the "earth-chain"
which will be, but is not yet in existence. The seven Globes of each chain are
distinguished in their cyclic order by the letters A to G, the Globes of the
Earth-chain being further marked by a cross -- + -- the symbol of the Earth.
Now, it must be remembered that the
Monads cycling round any septenary chain are divided into seven classes or
hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness,
and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on planet A, in
the first Round. The time-spaces between the appearances of these hierarchies
on any one Globe are so adjusted that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe
A, Class 1, the first, has just passed on to Globe B, and so on, step by step,
all round the chain.
Again, in the Seventh Round on the
Lunar chain, when Class 7, the
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last, quits Globe A, that Globe,
instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous Rounds, begins to die (to
go into its planetary pralaya);* and in dying it transfers successively, as
just said, its "principles," or life-elements and energy, etc., one
after the other to a new "laya-centre," which commences the formation
of Globe A of the Earth Chain. A similar process takes place for each of the
Globes of the "lunar chain" one after the other, each forming a fresh
Globe of the "earth-chain." Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the
series, and was
EARTH CHAIN.
FIG. 2.
A+ G+
B+ F+
C+ E+
D+ (Our Earth)
LUNAR CHAIN.
FIG. 1.
A G
B F
C E
D (Our Moon)
DIAGRAM II.
[[above is in diagram format in the
original text]]
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 Nirvana
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Maha --
or Brahma -- Pralaya at the close of the "Age of Brahma." These are
the three chief pralayas or "destruction periods." There are many
other minor ones, but with these we are not concerned at present.
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which awaits them between the two
chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to
the corresponding globe of the "earth-chain."
Further, when Globe A of the new
chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar chain
incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. The result of
this is, that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human
state of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each
planet, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of
Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up
to the middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point -- and on this Fourth
Round in which the human stage will be fully developed -- the "Door"
into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of "human"
Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the
Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the
evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will
reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round. They
will, therefore, not be men on this chain, but will form the humanity of a
future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming "Men" on a higher chain
altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this there is but one
solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther on.
But this accounts for the difference in the races.
It thus becomes apparent how perfect
is the analogy between the processes of Nature in the Kosmos and in the
individual man. The latter lives through his life-cycle, and dies. His
"higher principles," corresponding in the development of a planetary
chain to the cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to the
"Nirvana" and states of rest intervening between two chains. The
Man's lower "principles" are disintegrated in time and are used by
Nature again for the formation of new human principles, and the same process
takes 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 Yamaboosis, the mystics of the
Lao-Tze sect and the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo -- the "seven
jewels." Only the Japanese and the Chinese
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Buddhist ascetics and Initiates are,
if possible, even more reticent in giving out their "Knowledge" than
are the Hindus.
But the reader must not be allowed to
lose sight of the Monads, and must be enlightened as to their nature, as far as
permitted, without trespassing upon the highest mysteries, of which the writer
does not in any way pretend to know the last or final word.
The Monadic Host may be roughly
divided into three great classes:--
1. The most developed Monads (the
Lunar Gods or "Spirits," called, in India, the Pitris), whose
function it is to pass in the first Round through the whole triple cycle of the
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms in their most ethereal, filmy, and
rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature
of the newly formed chain. They are those who first reach the human form (if
there can be any form in the realm of the almost subjective) on Globe A in the
first Round. It is they, therefore, who lead and represent the human element during
the second and third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning
of the Fourth Round for the second class, or those who come behind them.
2. Those Monads that are the first to
reach the human stage during the three and a half Rounds, and to become men.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are forced to use here the
misleading word "Men," and this is a clear proof of how little any
European language is adapted to express these subtle distinctions.
It stands to reason that these
"Men" did not resemble the men of to-day, either in form or nature.
Why then, it may be asked, call them "Men" at all? Because there is
no other term in any Western language which approximately conveys the idea
intended. The word "Men" at least indicates that these beings were
"MANUS," thinking entities, however they differed in form and
intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in respect of
spirituality and intellection, rather "gods" than "Men."
The same difficulty of language is
met with in describing the "stages" through which the Monad passes.
Metaphysically speaking, it is of course an absurdity to talk of the
"development" of a Monad, or to say that it becomes "Man."
But any attempt to preserve metaphysical accuracy of language in the use of
such a tongue as the English would necessitate at least three extra volumes of
this work, and would entail an amount of verbal repetition which would be
wearisome in the extreme. It stands to reason that a MONAD cannot either
progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes of states it passes
through. It is not of this world or plane, and may be compared only to an
indestructible star of divine light and fire, thrown down on to our [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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3. The laggards; the Monads which are
retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of Karmic impediments, the human
stage at all during this cycle or Round, save one exception which will be
spoken of elsewhere as already promised.
Now the evolution of the external
form or body round the astral is produced by the terrestrial forces, just as in
the case of the lower kingdoms; but the evolution of the internal or real MAN
is purely spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad
through many and various forms of matter -- endowed at best with instinct and
consciousness on quite a different plane -- as in the case of external
evolution, but a journey of the "pilgrim-soul" through various states
of not only matter but Self-consciousness and self-perception, or of perception
from apperception. (See "Gods, Monads and Atoms.")
The MONAD emerges from its state of
spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and, skipping the first two planes
-- too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any correlation with anything on a lower
plane -- it gets direct into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in
the whole universe with a wider margin, or a wider field of action in its
almost endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this
plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every
"form," from the "mineral" monad up to the time when that
monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But all the time it is
still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout
its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or the
partial or total obscuration of matter -- two polar antitheses -- as it ascends
into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of
materiality.
To return to "Esoteric
Buddhism." It is there stated with regard to the enormous period
intervening between the mineral epoch on Globe A, and the man-epoch,* that:
"The full development of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Earth as a plank of salvation for the personalities in which it
indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it; and thus partaking of its divine
nature, obtain immortality. Left to itself the Monad will cling to no one; but,
like the "plank," be drifted away to another incarnation by the
unresting current of evolution.
* The term "Man epoch" is
here used because of the necessity of giving a name to that fourth kingdom
which follows the animal. But in truth the "Man" on Globe A during
the First Round is no Man, but only his prototype or dimensionless image from
the astral regions.
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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." (Page 49.)
And so it goes on for three Rounds,
when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of our Globe, at the
Fourth Round; because the human period (of the true physical men to be), the
seventh, is now reached. This is evident, for as said, " . . . there are
processes of evolution which precede the mineral kingdom, and thus a wave of
evolution, indeed several waves of evolution, precede the mineral wave in its
progress round the spheres" (ibid).
And now we have to quote from another
article, "The Mineral Monad" in "Five Years of Theosophy,"
p. 273 et seq.
"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) Mulaprakriti (or rather
Pradhana, 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 evoluting energy. Three stages (sub-physical) on the elemental side; the
mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective physical* side -- these are the
(first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary chain."
"Preliminary" because they
are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, they yet would be
more correctly described as sub-natural evolution. This process makes a halt in
its stages at the Third, at the threshold of the Fourth stage, when it becomes,
on the plane of the natural evolution, the first really manward stage, thus
forming with the three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It
is at this point that begins:--
"A descent of spirit into matter
equivalent to an ascent in physical
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "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.
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evolution; a re-ascent from the
deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a
corresponding dissipation of concrete organism -- up to Nirvana, the vanishing
point of differentiated matter." ("Five Years of Theosophy," p.
276.)
Therefore it becomes evident why that
which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism "Wave of Evolution,"
and mineral-, vegetable-, animal- and man-"impulse," stops at the
door of our Globe, at its Fourth cycle or Round. It is at this point that the
Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to and become the vehicle of the Atmic
Ray, i.e., it (Buddhi) will awaken to an apperception of it (Atman); and thus
enter on the first step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead
it eventually to the tenth (counting from the lowest upwards) of the Sephirothal
tree, the Crown.
Everything in the Universe follows
analogy. "As above, so below"; Man is the microcosm of the Universe.
That which takes place on the spiritual plane repeats itself on the Cosmic
plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding to the
highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding
to the Sephirothal Crown (or upper triad) there are the three elemental
Kingdoms, which precede the Mineral (see diagram on p. 277 in Five Years of
Theosophy), and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the
Cosmic differentiation to the worlds of Form and Matter from the
Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal.
Now what is a "Monad?" And
what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following reply is based upon the
explanations given in answer to these questions in the above-cited article:
"The Mineral Monad," written by the author.
"None whatever," is
answered to the second question, "to the atom or molecule as existing in
the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the
microscopic organism, once classed among polygastric infusoria, and now
regarded as vegetable, and classed among Algae; nor is it quite the Monas of
the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of
course, from the human monad, which is neither physical nor can its
constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements." In short, as
the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays,
nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the "Individual
Monads" of men,
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so the Mineral Monad -- being at the
opposite point of the circle -- is also One -- and from it proceed the
countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as
individualized.
Otherwise how could one account for
and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the Four
Kingdoms? The "Monad" is the combination of the last two
"principles" in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the
term "human monad" applies only to the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not
to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle, Atma, alone. But since the
Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Atma) 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 horneblende. 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 aeons to blossom
as 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, (etc.), Monad" are
examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is
passing through that arc of its circuit. The "Monadic
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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.
Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as
elementary and indestructible units endowed with the power of giving and
receiving with respect to other units, and thus of determining all spiritual
and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which
together with nerve- (not perception, but rather) -- sensation, expresses the
state of the Monadic consciousness through all the Kingdoms up to Man.
Thus it may be wrong on strictly
metaphysical lines to call Atma-Buddhi a MONAD, since in the materialistic view
it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versa; and
since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from
each other; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the
former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Atma, as Adam-Kadmon, the
Kabalistic Logos, does to En-Soph, or Mulaprakriti to Parabrahm.
A few words more of the Moon.
What, it may be asked, are the
"Lunar Monads," just spoken of? The description of the seven classes
of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. It
must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their
life-cycle on the lunar chain, which is inferior to the terrestrial chain, have
incarnated on this one. But there are some further details which may be added,
though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The
last word of the mystery is divulged only to the adepts, but it may be stated
that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing
then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone being
visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a
reflection, just as man's body is. "The real Sun and the real Moon are as
invisible as the real man," says an occult maxim.
And it may be remarked en passant
that those ancients were not so foolish after all who first started the idea of
"the seven moons." For though
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this conception is now taken solely
as an astronomical measure of time, in a very materialised form, yet underlying
the husk there can still be recognised the traces of a profoundly philosophical
idea.
In reality the Moon is only the
satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically the Moon revolves
round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth which is the
satellite of the Moon, and not vice versa. Startling as the statement may seem
it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the
tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the
lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in
the phenomena of human gestation and conception. The importance of the Moon and
its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably
the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical
phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth's action on the Moon is
confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit.
And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that
the Moon is truly the Earth's satellite on other planes of action, one may
reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child's cradle
keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent
upon it; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older
and more fully developed than the child she watches.
It is, then, the Moon that plays the
largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself,
as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The "Lunar Monads" or
Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the
"Monads" who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who,
passing round the chain of planets, evolve the human form as has just been
shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe,
they "ooze out" their astral doubles from the "ape-like"
forms which they had evolved in Round III. And it is this subtle, finer form,
which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These
"Monads" or "divine sparks" are thus the "Lunar"
ancestors, the Pitris themselves. For these "Lunar Spirits" have to
become "Men" in order that their "Monads" may reach a
higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the
Manasa-Putras, those who
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endow the "senseless"
shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with "mind" in the latter
part of the Third Root-Race.
In the same way the
"Monads" or Egos of the men of the seventh Round of our Earth, after
our own Globes A, B, C, D, et seq., parting with their life-energy, will have
informed and thereby called to life other laya-centres destined to live and act
on a still higher plane of being -- in the same way will the Terrene
"Ancestors" create those who will become their superiors.
It now becomes plain that there
exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the formation of the three
periodical Upadhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our
system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are
the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions.
These three are the finite aspects or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion
of ATMA, the seventh, the ONE REALITY.
1. The Monadic is, as the name
implies, concerned with the growth and development into still higher phases of
activity of the Monad in conjunction with:--
2. The Intellectual, represented by
the Manasa-Dhyanis (the Solar Devas, or the Agnishwatta Pitris) the
"givers of intelligence and consciousness"* to man and:--
3. The Physical, represented by the
Chhayas of the lunar Pitris, round which Nature has concreted the present
physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the "growth" (to
use a misleading word) and the transformations through Manas and -- owing to
the accumulation of experiences -- of the finite into the INFINITE, of the
transient into the Eternal and Absolute.
Each of these three systems has its
own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis or
"Logoi." Each is represented in the constitution of man, the
Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these three streams in
him which makes him the complex being he now is.
"Nature," the physical
evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided -- she can only
create "senseless forms," as will be seen in our
"ANTHROPOGENESIS." The "Lunar Monads" cannot progress, for
they have not yet had sufficient touch with the forms
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide CONCLUSION in Part II. of this
Book.
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created by "Nature" to
allow of their accumulating experiences through its means. It is the
Manasa-Dhyanis who fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power
of Intelligence and Mind, the link between "Spirit" and
"Matter" -- in this Round.
Also it must be borne in mind that
the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first
Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes
somewhat complicated. . . . Let us recapitulate.
The most developed Monads (the lunar)
reach the human germ-stage in the first Round; become terrestrial, though very
ethereal human beings towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on it (the
globe) through the "obscuration" period as the seed for future
mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the
beginning of this, the Fourth Round. Others reach the Human stage only during
later Rounds, i.e., in the second, third, or first half of the Fourth Round.
And finally the most retarded of all, i.e., those still occupying animal forms
after the middle turning-point of the Fourth Round -- will not become men at
all during this Manwantara. They will reach to the verge of humanity only at
the close of the seventh Round to be, in their turn, ushered into a new chain
after pralaya -- by older pioneers, the progenitors of humanity, or the
Seed-Humanity (Sishta), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end
of these Rounds.
The student hardly needs any further
explanation on the part played by the fourth Globe and the fourth Round in the
scheme of evolution.
From the preceding diagrams, which
are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen
that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the
others, the Fourth has no "sister" Globe on the same plane as itself,
and it thus forms the fulcrum of the "balance" represented by the
whole chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary adjustments, the world of
Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance is struck which
determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of its
incarnations in the cycle. And therefore it is, that, after this central
turning-point has been passed in the Great Cycle, -- i.e., after the middle
point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe -- no more Monads can
enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle and the balance
struck. For were it otherwise -- had there been a new soul
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created for each of the countless
milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no
reincarnation -- it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the
disembodied "Spirits;" nor could the origin and cause of suffering
ever be accounted for. It is the ignorance of the occult tenets and the
enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education, which
have created materialism and atheism as a protest against the asserted divine
order of things.
The only exceptions to the rule just
stated are the "dumb races," whose Monads are already within the
human stage, in virtue of the fact that these "animals" are later
than, and even half descended from man, their last descendants being the
anthropoid and other apes. These "human presentments" are in truth
only the distorted copies of the early humanity. But this will receive full
attention in the next Book.
As the Commentary, broadly rendered,
says:--
1. "Every form on earth, and
every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to
follow the model placed for it in the ' HEAVENLY MAN.' . . . Its (the atom's)
involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development,
have all one and the same object -- man; man, as the highest physical and
ultimate form on this earth; the MONAD, in its absolute totality and awakened
condition -- as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth."
2. "The Dhyanis (Pitris) are
those who have evolved their BHUTA (doubles) from themselves, which RUPA (form)
has become the vehicle of monads (seventh and sixth principles) that had
completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas (Rounds).
Then, they (the astral doubles) became the men of the first Human Race of the
Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless."
This will be explained in the Books
that follow. Meanwhile man -- or rather his Monad -- has existed on the earth
from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own Fifth Race, the
external shapes which covered those divine astral doubles changed and
consolidated with every sub-race; the form and physical structure of the fauna
changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the ever-changing
conditions of life on this globe during the geological periods of its formative
cycle. And thus shall they go on changing with every
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Root Race and every chief sub-race
down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.
3. "The inner, now concealed,
man, was then (in the beginnings) the external man. The progeny of the Dhyanis
(Pitris), he was 'the son like unto his father.' Like the lotus, whose external
shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of
man in the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man
began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom,
it became the reverse. The human foetus follows now in its transformations all
the forms that the physical frame of man had assumed throughout the three
Kalpas (Rounds) during the tentative efforts at Plastic formation around the
monad by senseless, because imperfect, matter, in her blind wanderings. In the
present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it
finally becomes man, evolving within himself his own ethereal counterpart, in
his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart (astral man) which, being
senseless, got entangled in the meshes of matter."
But this "man" belongs to
the fourth Round. As shown, the MONAD had passed through, journeyed and been
imprisoned in, every transitional form throughout every kingdom of nature
during the three preceding Rounds. But the monad which becomes human is not the
Man. In this Round -- with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the
anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their monads will be
liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of
the Sixth* and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth
Round -- no units of either of the kingdoms are animated any longer by monads
destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower Elementals
of their respective realms.**
The last human Monad incarnated
before the beginning of the 5th
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nature never repeats herself,
therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at any time since the
middle of the Miocene period; when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a
tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their
first parent, the black and yellow gigantic Lemuro-Atlantean. To search for the
"Missing Link" is useless. To the scientists of the closing sixth
Root-race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather
their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes -- an extinct
species of the genus homo.
** These "Elementals" will
become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary
Manvantara.
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Root-Race.* The cycle of
metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round
and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind -- at any rate
one who has made himself acquainted with "Esoteric Buddhism" -- that
the Stanzas which follow in this Book and Book II speak of the evolution in our
Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which,
matter,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Such anthropoids form an exception
because they were not intended by Nature, but are the direct product and
creation of "senseless" man. The Hindus give a divine origin to the
apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane
who had become "senseless" mortals. This subject had already been
touched upon in "Isis Unveiled" twelve years ago as plainly as was
then possible. On pp. 278-279, the reader is referred "to the Brahmins, if
he would know the reason of the regard they have for the monkeys. For then he
(the reader) would perhaps learn -- were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an
explanation -- that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should:
the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human
family, a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final
perfection of the latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the
educated 'heathen' the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial
physical casket another. That physical nature, the great combination of
physical correlations of forces, ever creeping onward 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."
Moreover, a German scientific work is
mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says that a Hanoverian scientist
had recently published a Book entitled "Ueber die Auflosung der Arten
durch Naturliche 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 conception. This is a purely Brahmanic,
Buddhistic and Kabalistic philosophy. The 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 the
ethnological transformation 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 body should end as
Simia rather than as Seraphs. But though the apes descend from man, it is
certainly not the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached the level
of humanity, ever incarnates again in the form of an animal.
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having reached its lowest depths,
begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with every new Race and with
every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to see
contradiction where there is none, as in "Esoteric Buddhism" Rounds
are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is
meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of reformation and
evolutionary perfection.
Finally, to close this chapter anent
various, but unavoidable misconceptions, we must refer to a statement in
"Esoteric Buddhism" which has produced a very fatal impression upon
the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence from the work just
referred to is constantly brought forward to prove the materialism of the
doctrine. On p. 48, 5th Edition, the Author, referring to the progress of
organisms on the Globes, says that "the mineral kingdom will no more
develop the vegetable . . . than the Earth was able to develop man from the
ape, till it received an impulse."
Whether this sentence renders
literally the thought of the author, or is simply (as we believe it is) a
lapsus calami, may remain an open question.
It is really with surprise that we
have ascertained the fact that "Esoteric Buddhism" was so little
understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it
thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the
descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: "I suppose
you realise that three-fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that,
as far as the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one
another." Nothing of the kind was ever realised, nor is there any great
warrant for it, so far as we know, in "Esoteric Buddhism." It has
been repeatedly stated that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the
groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy has
ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists -- least of all the
descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn
to p. 47 of "Esoteric Buddhism," 5th edition, to find there the
statement that "Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of
the animals." With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it
is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled unless he
is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction.
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Every Round repeats on a higher scale
the evolutionary work of the preceding Round. With the exception of some higher
anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at
an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated, that the
full-blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of
candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next cycle. Thus there
is a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth
earlier than any animal creation, as will be described.
But it is still urged that the author
of "Esoteric Buddhism" has "preached Darwinism" all along.
Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference.
Besides which the Occultists themselves are ready to concede partial
correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in later details, bye-laws of
Evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race. Of that which has
taken place, physical science can really know nothing, for such matters lie
entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the Occultists have
never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an ape in this or in
any other Round; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been
"ape-like." This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the
author of "Esoteric Buddhism" got his information.
Thus to those who confront the
Occultists with these lines from the above-named volume: "It is enough to
show that we may as reasonably -- and that we must, if we would talk about
these matters at all -- conceive a life-impulse giving birth to mineral form,
as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into a race of
rudimentary men." To those who bring this passage forward as showing
"decided Darwinism," the Occultists answer by pointing to the
explanation of the Master (Mr. Sinnett's "teacher") which would
contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed to them. A
copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two years ago
(1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the "Secret
Doctrine." It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the
Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the
evolution of man from the animal, i.e., from the mineral, vegetable and animal
kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and
correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas,
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and even Gods, having to pass through
states which it was agreed to refer to as "Inmetallization, Inherbation,
Inzoonization and finally Incarnation," and explains this by hinting at
the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans.
Concerning this it says:
"Still, as these 'failures' are
too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan
Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower
kingdoms. . . . ." After which only a hint is given about the mystery
contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and
explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human
evolution, "they will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup
of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the
Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop
little by little the full type of humanity."
These Dhyan Chohans, as we see, do
not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris; nor do they
incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:
"Man in the First Round and
First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyani, as
man), non-intelligent but superspiritual; and correspondingly, on the law of
analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races
and sub-races . . . he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being,
but still preponderatingly ethereal. . . . He is sexless, and, like the animal
and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser
surroundings.
"II. Round. He (Man) is still
gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more condensed in body, a more
physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for mind is a
slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame . . .
"III. Round. He has now a
perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now
more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc,
he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and
overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round his
gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a
more rational being, though still more an ape than a
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Deva. . . . (All this is almost
exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.)
"IV. Round. Intellect has an
enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto) dumb races acquire our
(present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language
is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth Round
(as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes the axial point of
the minor Manvantara cycle . . . . the world teeming with the results of
intellectual activity and spiritual decrease . . . ."
This is from the authentic letter;
what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the
same hand in the form of footnotes.
(1.) " . . . The original letter
contained general teaching -- a 'bird's eye view' -- and particularized
nothing. . . . To speak of 'physical man' while limiting the statement to the
early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous 'coats
of skin.' . . . The first 'Nature,' the first 'body,' the first 'mind' on the
first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was
meant. For Karma and evolution have --
' . . . centred in our make such
strange extremes!
From different Natures* marvellously
mixed . . .'
(2.) "Restore: he has now
reached the point (by analogy, and as the Third Root Race in the Fourth Round)
where his ("the angel"-man's) primordial spirituality is eclipsed and
overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your
thumb-nail. . . ."
These are the words of the Teacher --
text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to
reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as
"objectivity" and "subjectivity," "materiality"
and "spirituality," when the same terms are applied to different
planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense.
And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own
speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in
these abstruse teachings, has fallen
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Natures of the seven
hierarchies or classes of Pitris and Dhyan Chohans which compose our nature and
Bodies are here meant.
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into an error. Neither was the
difference between the "Rounds" and the "Races"
sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there anything of the
kind required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the
difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master's
(188-), "the teachings were imparted under protest. . . . They were, so to
say, smuggled goods . . . and when I remained face to face with only one
correspondent, the other, Mr. . . . ., had so far tossed all the cards into
confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law."
Theosophists, "whom it may concern," will understand what is meant.
The outcome of all this is that
nothing had ever been said in the "letters" to warrant the assurance
that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, the
preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with
the ape -- an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless metaphorically. To
this day the world is more full of "ape-like men" than the woods are
of "men-like apes." The ape is sacred in India because its origin is
well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory.
Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, "the god of the wind") by Anjana,
a monster called Kesari, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this
in mind will find in Book II. passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious
allegory. The "Men" of the Third Race (who separated) were
"Gods" by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet
destitute of mind, as men.
These "Men" of the Third
Race -- the ancestors of the Atlanteans -- were just such ape-like,
intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third
Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race
"men" who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower
than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the
tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as we find it now in
the pithecoid family.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And if this is found clashing with
that other statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is
asked to bear in mind that the placental mammal only is meant. In those days
there were animals of which zoology does not even dream in our own; and the modes
of reproduction were not identical with the notions which modern physiology has
upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions
in public, but there is no contradiction or impossibility in this whatever.
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Thus the earlier teachings, however
unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of
"man" from the "ape." Nor does the author of "Esoteric
Buddhism" assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to
his inclination towards modern science, he uses language which might perhaps
justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race,
however much he may have looked physically like a "gigantic ape" --
"the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man" -- was still
a thinking and already a speaking man. The "Lemuro-Atlantean" was a
highly civilized race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history
than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher
than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at
any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so.
And now we may return to the Stanzas.
-------
STANZA VI. -- Continued.
5. AT THE FOURTH (Round, or
revolution of life and being around "the seven smaller wheels") (a),
THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES. TWO (thirds) OBEY.
The full meaning of this sloka can be
fully comprehended only after reading the detailed additional explanations in
the "Anthropogenesis" and its commentaries, in Book II. Between this
Sloka and the last, Sloka 4 in this same Stanza, extend long ages; and there
now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another aeon. The drama enacted on our
planet is at the beginning of its fourth act, but for a clearer comprehension
of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed
onward. For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic
volumes, whereas Book II. will give a detailed account of the
"Creation" or rather the formation, of the first human beings,
followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called,
"the first, second, and the third Root-Races." As the solid Earth
began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic
phantom, so did man.
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(a) That which is meant by the
qualification the "Fourth" is explained as the "fourth
Round" only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean
fourth "Eternity" as "Fourth Round," or even the fourth
(our) Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is the fourth Sphere on the
fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in the
Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between
Spirit and Matter had to take place.* Says the Commentary explaining the
verse:--
"The holy youths (the gods)
refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, after their kind.
They are not fit forms (rupas) for us. They have to grow. They refuse to enter
the chhayas (shadows or images) of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling
prevailed from the beginning, even among the gods, and they fell under the eye
of the Karmic Lipikas."
They had to suffer for it in later
births. How the punishment reached the gods will be seen in the second volume.
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STANZA VI. -- Continued.
6. THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (a): THEY
WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH (Race), SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING (b). THIS IS THE
FIRST WAR (c).
(a) It is a universal tradition that,
before the physiological "Fall," propagation of one's kind, whether
human or animal, took place through the WILL of the Creators, or of their
progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal man.
It has already been stated that, to become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter
must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on
earth in Man.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It was, as we shall see, at this
period -- during the highest point of civilization and knowledge, as also of
human intellectuality, of the fourth, Atlantean Race -- that, owing to the
final crisis of physiologico-spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity
branched off into its two diametrically opposite paths: the RIGHT- and the
LEFT-hand paths of knowledge or of Vidya. "Thus were the germs of the
White and the Black Magic sown in those days. The seeds lay latent for some time,
to sprout only during the early period of the Fifth (our Race)."
(Commentary.)
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Spirit per se is an unconscious
negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit; hence, as
already shown, to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is necessary for each Ego
to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which
is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists arguing that no Spirit could
belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) was united to Nephesh
(living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching. "A Dhyani has to
be an Atma-Buddhi; once the Buddhi-Manas breaks loose from its immortal Atma of
which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Atman passes into NON-BEING, which is
absolute Being." This means that the purely Nirvanic state is a passage of
Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness which has no relation to the
plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle.
(b) "The curse is
pronounced" does not mean, in this instance, that any personal Being, god,
or superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause which could but
create bad results had been generated, and that the effects of a Karmic cause
could lead the "Beings" that counteracted the laws of Nature, and
thus impeded her legitimate progress, only to bad incarnations, hence to
suffering.
(c) "There were many wars"
refers to several struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical, and
astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man as he is now.
Powers -- pure Essences -- "that were told to create" is a sentence
that relates to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only
one of the most hidden secrets of Nature -- that of generation, over whose
solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together -- but likewise
a divine function that involves that other religious, or rather dogmatic,
mystery, the "Fall" of the Angels, as it is called. Satan and his
rebellious host would thus prove, when the meaning of the allegory is
explained, to have refused to create physical man, only to become the direct
Saviours and the Creators of "divine Man." The symbolical teaching is
more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen
later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind, functioning medium, impelled
and guided by fathomless LAW, the "rebellious" Angel claimed and
enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his
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right of free-agency and
responsibility, since man and angel are alike under Karmic Law.*
"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 Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."
The Kabalistic version of the same
story is given in the Codex Nazareus, the scripture of the Nazarenes, the real
mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of Christos.
Bahak-Zivo, the "Father of the Genii," is ordered to construct
creatures (to create). But, as he is "ignorant of Orcus," he fails to
do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still
worse. This is a repetition of the failure of the "Fathers," the
lords of light who fail one after the other. (Book II, Sloka 17.)
We will now quote from our earlier
Volumes:--
"Then steps on the stage of
creation the spirit** (of the Earth so-called, or the Soul, Psyche, which St.
James calls 'devilish') the lower portion the Anima Mundi or Astral Light. (See
the close of this Sloka). With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this Spirit was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Explaining Kabalistic views, the
author of the "New Aspects of Life" says of the Fallen Angels that,
"According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from being simply a
functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and developing
action; and, substituting its own will for the Divine desire in its regard, so
fell. Hence the Kingdom and reign of Spirits and spiritual action, which flow
from and are the product of Spirit-volition, are outside, and contrasted with,
and in contradiction to the Kingdom of Souls and Divine action." 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 hard to feel quite sure of the Author's meaning (see p. 235). A FALL,
however, "from the natural into the supernatural and the animal" --
supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in this case -- means what we
suggest.
** On the authority of Irenaeus, of
Justin Martyr and the "Codex" itself, Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes
regarded "Spirit" as a female and Evil Power in its connection with
our Earth. (Dunlap: "Sod," the Son of the Man, p. 52).
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feminine. Thus the spirit of the
Earth perceiving that for Fetahil,* the newest man (the latest), the splendour
was 'changed,' and that for splendour existed 'decrease and damage,' she awakes
Karabtanos,** '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.**** Then Mano***** (the greatest), who dwells with the greatest
FERHO, call Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar Iufin
Ifafin), Helm and Vine of the food of life,****** 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******* (AEons), see what the Genii,
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Fetahil is identical with the host
of the Pitris who "created Man" as only a "shell." 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.
** The spirit of Matter and
Concupiscence; "Kamarupa" minus "Manas," Mind.
*** See Franck's "Codex
Nazaraeus," and Dunlap's "Sod, the Son of the Man."
**** Codex Nazaraeus, ii., 233.
***** This Mano of the Nazarenes
strangely resembles the Hindu Manu, the Heavenly Man of the "Rig
Vedas."
****** "I am the true Vine, and
my father is the husbandman." (John xv., 1.)
******* With the Gnostics, Christ, as
well as Michael who is identical with him in some respects, was the "Chief
of the AEons."
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rebellious angels do, and about what
they are consulting.* They say, 'Let us call for the world, and let us call the
'powers' into existence." The Genii are the 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, CABAR-ZIO, the mighty Lord of Splendor, produces seven other lives
(the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light "from on
high"*** and thus re-establish the balance between good and evil, light
and darkness.
Here one finds a repetition of the
early allegorical, dual systems, as the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the
dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ which has grown into
such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline
of the two "Supremes" -- God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such
idea exists.
Most of the Western Christian
Kabalists -- pre-eminently Eliphas Levi -- in their desire to reconcile the
Occult Sciences with Church dogmas, did their best to make of the "Astral
Light" only and preeminently the Pleroma of early Church Fathers, the
abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the "Archons" and
"Powers." But the Astral Light, while only the lower aspect of the
Absolute, is yet dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be viewed
otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which exists between
its "light" and its "Living Fire" ought to be ever present
in the mind of the Seer and the "Psychic." The higher aspect, without
which only creatures of matter from that Astral Light can be produced, is this
Living Fire, and it is the Seventh Principle. It is said in "Isis
Unveiled," in a complete description of it:--
"The Astral Light or Anima Mundi
is dual and bisexual. The (ideal) male part of it is purely divine and
spiritual, it is the 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Codex Nazaraeus, i, 135.
** Ibid.
*** See the Cosmogony of Pherecydes.
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only after a series of countless
evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution 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.'" (Vol. I., p. 301, note.)
The seven principles of the Eastern
Initiates had not been explained when "Isis" was written, but only
the three Kabalistic Faces of the semi-exoteric Kabala.* But these contain the
description of the mystic natures of the first group of Dhyan Chohans in the
regimen ignis, the region and "rule (or government) of fire," which
group is divided into three classes, synthesized by the first, which makes four
or the "Tetraktis." (See Comments on Stanza VII. Book I.) If one
studies the Comments attentively he will find the same progression in the
angelic natures, viz., from the passive down to the active, the last of these
Beings being as near to the Ahamkara element (the region or plane wherein
Egoship or the feeling of I-am-ness is beginning to be defined) as the first
ones are near to the undifferentiated essence. The former are Arupa,
incorporeal; the latter, Rupa, corporeal.
In Volume II. of Isis (p. 183 et
seq.) the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the primitive Jewish
Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully considered. They show
the views held in those days -- outside the circle of Mosaic Jews -- about
Jehovah. He was identified by all the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with
the good principle. For them, he was Ilda-Baoth, "the son of
Darkness," whose mother, Sophia Achamoth, was the daughter of Sophia, the
Divine Wisdom (the female Holy Ghost of the early Christians) -- Akasa;** while
Sophia Achamoth personified the lower Astral Light or Ether. Ilda-Baoth,*** or
Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the seven
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* They are found, however, in the
Chaldean Book of Numbers.
** The astral light stands in the
same relation to Akasa and Anima Mundi, as Satan stands to the Deity. They are
one and the same thing seen from two aspects: the spiritual and the psychic --
the super-ethereal or connecting link between matter and pure spirit, and the
physical. See for the difference between nous, the higher divine wisdom, and
psyche, the lower and terrestrial (St. James iii. v. 15-17). Vide "Demon
est Deus inversus," Part II. of this volume.
*** Ilda-Baoth is a compound name
made up of Ilda, [[hebrew]], "a child," and Baoth; both from
[[hebrew]] the egg, and [[hebrew]] Baoth, "chaos," emptiness, void,
or desolation; or the child born in the egg of Chaos, like Brahma.
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creative Spirits, and one of the
lower Sephiroth. He produces from himself seven other Gods, "Stellar
Spirits" (or the lunar ancestors*), for they are all the same.** They are
all in his own image (the "Spirits of the Face"), and the reflections
one of the other, and have become darker and more material as they successively
receded from their originator. They also inhabit seven regions disposed like a
ladder, as its rungs slope up and down the scale of spirit and matter.*** With
Pagans and Christians, with Hindus and Chaldeans, with the Greek as with the
Roman Catholics -- with a slight variation of the texts in their
interpretations -- they all were the Genii of the seven planets, as of the
seven planetary spheres of our septenary chain, of which Earth is the lowest.
(See Isis, Vol. II. p. 186.) This connects the "Stellar" and
"Lunar" Spirits with the higher planetary Angels and the Saptarishis
(the seven Rishis of the Stars) of the Hindus -- as subordinate Angels
(Messengers) to these "Rishis," the emanations, on the descending
scale, of the former. Such, in the opinion of the philosophical Gnostics, were
the God and the Archangels now worshipped by the Christians! The "Fallen
Angels" and the legend of the "War in Heaven" is thus purely
pagan in its origin and comes from India via Persia and Chaldea. The only
reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as quoted
a few pages back.
Thus "SATAN," once he
ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic, unphilosophical spirit of
the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of one who made of terrestrial a
divine MAN; who gave him, throughout the long cycle of Maha-kalpa the law of
the Spirit of Life, and made him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of
death. (See the Section On Satan in Part II. Vol. II.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jehovah's connection with the moon
in the Kabala is well known to students.
** About the Nazarenes see Isis, Vol.
II. p. 131 and 132; the true followers of the true Christos were all Nazarenes
and Christians, and were the opponents of the later Christians.
*** Vide supra, the diagram of the
lunar ring of seven worlds, where, as in our or any other chain, the upper
worlds are spiritual, while the lowest, whether Moon, Earth, or any planet, is
dark with matter.
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STANZA VI. -- Continued.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARD
AND UPWARD (a). . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE (Kosmos).* THERE WERE
BATTLES FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR
SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND REAPPEARING CONTINUOUSLY (b).**
(a) Here, having finished for the
time being with our side-issues -- which, however they may break the flow of
the narrative, are necessary for the elucidation of the whole scheme -- the
reader must return once more to Cosmogony. The phrase "Older wheels"
refers to the worlds or Globes of our chain as they were during the
"previous Rounds." The present Stanza, when explained esoterically,
is found embodied entirely in the Kabalistic works. Therein will be found the
very history of the evolution of those countless Globes which evolve after a
periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into new forms. The previous
Globes disintegrate and reappear transformed and perfected for a new phase of
life. In the Kabala, worlds are compared to sparks which fly from under the
hammer of the great Architect -- LAW, the law which rules all the smaller
Creators.
The following comparative diagram
shows the identity between the two systems, the Kabalistic and the Eastern. The
three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, revealed and
explained in both schools only to the Initiates, the lower ones represent the four
lower planes -- the lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe.
These seven planes correspond to the
seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with him to attune the three
higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he
can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three "seats" to life and
activity. And how many are capable of bringing themselves to even a superficial
comprehension of Atma-Vidya (Spirit-Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis,
Rohanee! In Section the VIIth of this Book, in Sub-section 3,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reader is reminded that Kosmos
often means in our Stanzas only our own Solar System, not the Infinite
Universe.
** This is purely astronomical.
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the reader will find a still clearer
explanation of the above in the Commentary upon Saptaparna -- the man-plant.
See also the Section of that name in Part II.
1st Plane
2nd P.
The Three higher Planes of the
Septenary Kosmos
The Divine & Formless World of
Spirit*
3rd Plane
Eastern Gupta Vidya [[--]] Chaldean
Kabala
1st P The Archetypal World**
Globe A [[/]] G [[--]] Geburah A
[[/]] Chesed G or Z
[[--]] Tephireth F
2nd Plane The Intellectual World
B [[/]] F [[--]] Hod B [[/]] Netzah E
3rd Plane The Substantial or
Formative World
C [[/]] E [[--]] Yesod C
4th Plane The Material*** World
The Earth Globe D [[--]] The Earth
Malkuth D
[[above is in diagram format in the
original text]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Arupa or "formless,"
there where form ceases to exist, on the objective plane.
** The word "Archetypal"
must not be taken here in the sense that the Platonists gave to it, i.e., the
world as it existed in the Mind of the Deity; but in that of a world made as a
first model, to be followed and improved upon by the worlds which succeed it
physically -- though deteriorating in purity.
*** These are the four lower planes
of Cosmic Consciousness, the three higher planes being inaccessible to human
intellect as developed at present. The seven states of human consciousness
pertain to quite another question.
[[-------]]
(b) "The Seed appears and
disappears continuously." Here "Seed" stands for "the
World-germ," viewed by Science as material particles in a highly
attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as "Spiritual particles,"
i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval
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differentiation.* In theogony, every
Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a celestial being, a
God.
In the "beginning," that
which is called in mystic phraseology "Cosmic Desire" evolves into
absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be absolute light -- in
other words, absolute darkness -- as physical science seeks to prove. That
shadow appears under the form of primordial matter, allegorized -- if one likes
-- in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical
form and allegory, science chooses to see in this the primordial Fire-Mist, it
is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous
FORCE of Science, nameless, and as difficult of definition as our Fohat
himself, that Something "caused the Universe to move with circular
motion," as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it:
"The Central Sun causes Fohat to
collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel them to move in
converging lines and finally to approach each other and aggregate." (Book
of Dzyan) . . . . . "Being scattered in Space, without order or system,
the world-germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation,
after which they become wanderers (Comets). Then the battles and struggles
begin. The older (bodies) attract the younger, while others repel them. Many
perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that escape become
worlds."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To see and appreciate the
difference -- the immense gulf that separates terrestrial matter from the finer
grades of supersensuous matter -- every astronomer, every chemist and physicist
ought to be a psychometer, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for
himself that difference in which he now refuses to believe. Mrs. Elizabeth
Denton, one of the most learned, and also one of the most materialistic and
sceptical women of her age -- the wife of Professor Denton, the well-known
American geologist and the author of "The Soul of Things" -- was,
nevertheless, one of the most wonderful psychometers some years ago. This is
what she described in one of her experiments; with a particle of a meteorite
placed on her forehead, in an envelope, the lady, not being aware of what it
contained, said:
"What a difference between that
which we recognise 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 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." (Vol.
III. p. 345-6.)
** When carefully analysed and
reflected upon, this will be found as scientific as Science could make it, even
at our late period.
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We have been assured that there exist
several modern works of speculative fancy upon such struggles for life in
sidereal heaven, especially in the German language. We rejoice to hear it, for
ours is an Occult teaching lost in the darkness of archaic ages. We have
treated of it fully in "Isis Unveiled," and the idea of
Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle for life and supremacy, and of the
"survival of the fittest" among the Hosts above as the Hosts below,
runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work, written in 1876 (See
Index in "Isis Unveiled" at the words "Evolution" --
"Darwin" -- "Kapila" -- "Battle of Life," etc.
etc.) But the idea was not ours, it is that of antiquity. Even the Puranic
writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory with Cosmic facts and human
events. Any symbologist may discern the astro-cosmical allusion even though he
be unable to grasp the whole meaning. The great "Wars in Heaven," in
the Puranas; the wars of the Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers; the
"struggles," also in the Egyptian legend between Osiris and Typhon,
and even those in the Scandinavian legends, all refer to the same subject.
Northern Mythology refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel
who fought on the field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and
have a double and often even a triple meaning, and esoteric application to
things above as to things below. They relate severally to astronomical,
theogonical and human struggles; to the adjustment of orbs, and the supremacy
among nations and tribes. The "Struggle for Existence" and the
"Survival of the Fittest" reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos
manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ancient
Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the god of the Firmament, with the
Asuras -- degraded from high gods into Cosmic demons; and with Vritri or Ah-hi;
the battles fought between stars and constellations, between Moon and planets
-- later on incarnated as kings and mortals. Hence also the War in Heaven of
Michael and his Host against the Dragon (Jupiter and Lucifer-Venus), when a
third of the stars of the rebellious host was hurled down into Space, and
"its place was found no more in Heaven." As said long ago --
"This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It shows
that the Brahmins and Tanaim . . . speculated on the creation and development
of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in
the natural selection of species, the survival of the fittest,
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and transformation. . . . There were
old worlds that perished conquered by the new," etc., etc. ("Isis
Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 260.) The assertion that all the worlds (Stars,
planets, etc.) -- as soon as a nucleus of primordial substance in the laya
(undifferentiated) state is informed by the freed principles, of a just
deceased sidereal body -- become first comets, and then Suns to cool down to
inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis.
Thus the Secret Books distinctly teach,
as we see, an astronomy that would not be rejected even by modern speculation
could the latter thoroughly understand its teachings.
For, archaic astronomy, and the
ancient, physical and mathematical sciences, expressed views identical with
those of modern science, and many of far more momentous import. A
"struggle for life" as a "survival of the fittest" in the
worlds above, as on our planet here below, are distinctly taught. This
teaching, however, although it would not be "entirely rejected" by
Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers that there
are only seven Self-born primordial "gods" emanated from the
trinitarian ONE. In other words, it means that all the worlds or sidereal
bodies (always on strict analogy) are formed one from the other, after the
primordial manifestation at the beginning of the "Great Age" is
accomplished. The birth of the celestial bodies in Space is compared to a crowd
or multitude of "pilgrims" at the festival of the "Fires."
Seven ascetics appear on the threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks
of incense. At the light of these the first row of pilgrims light their incense
sticks. After which every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in
space, and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A
laya-centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another
"pilgrim," after which the new "centre" rushes into space
and becomes a comet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery
tail, that the "Fiery Dragon" settles down into quiet and steady life
as a regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is
said:--
Born in the unfathomable depths of
Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the World-Soul, every nucleus of
Cosmic matter, suddenly launched into being, begins life under the most hostile
circumstances. Through a series of countless ages, it has to conquer
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for itself a place in the
infinitudes. It circles round and round between denser and already fixed
bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre that
attracts it, trying to avoid, like a ship drawn into a channel dotted with
reefs and sunken rocks, other bodies that draw and repel it in turn; many
perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger masses, and, when born
within a system, chiefly within the insatiable stomachs of various Suns. (See
Comm. to Stanza IV). Those which move slower and are propelled into an elliptic
course are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others moving in parabolic
curves generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity.
Some very critical readers will
perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to the cometary stage passed through by
all heavenly bodies, is in contradiction with the statements just made as to
the moon being the mother of the earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition
is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition is in truth required. What
does Science know of Comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour?
Nothing -- absolutely nothing! And what is there so impossible that a laya
centre -- a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent, when suddenly
animated or fired up -- should rush from its bed in Space and whirl throughout
the abysmal depths in order to strengthen its homogeneous organism by an
accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And why should not such a
comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe!
"The abodes of Fohat are
many," it is said. "He places his four fiery (electro-positive) Sons
in the "Four circles"; these Circles are the Equator, the Ecliptic,
and the two parallels of declination, or the tropics -- to preside over the
climates of which are placed the Four mystical Entities. Then again:
"Other seven (sons) are commissioned to preside over the seven hot, and
seven cold lokas (the hells of the orthodox Brahmins) at the two ends of the
Egg of Matter (our Earth and its poles). The seven lokas are also called the
"Rings," elsewhere, and the "Circles." The ancients made
the polar circles seven instead of two, as Europeans do; for Mount Meru, which
is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps leading to
it.
The strange statement made in one of
the Stanzas: "The Songs of Fohat and his Sons were radiant as the
noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined;" and that the four Sons on the middle
four-fold
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Circle "saw their father's songs
and heard his Solar-selenic radiance;" is explained in the Commentary in
these words: "The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends
(North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance
at night, have in them several of the properties of Akasa (Ether) colour and
sound as well." . . . . . . "Sound is the characteristic of Akasa
(Ether): it generates air, the property of which is Touch; which (by friction)
becomes productive of Colour and Light." . . . . . . (Vishnu Purana.)
Perhaps the above will be regarded as
archaic nonsense, but it will be better comprehended, if the reader remembers
the Aurora Borealis and Australis, both of which take place at the very centres
of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two poles are said to be the
store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of Cosmic and
terrestrial Vitality (Electricity); from the surplus of which the Earth, had it
not been for these two natural "safety-valves," would have been rent
to pieces long ago. At the same time it is now a theory that has lately become
an axiom, that the phenomenon of polar lights is accompanied by, and productive
of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing, and cracking. (But see Professor Trumholdt's
works on the Aurora Borealis, and his correspondence regarding this moot
question.)
-------
STANZA VI. -- Continued.
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, O LANOO, IF
THOU WOULDST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL (chain). ITS FOURTH SPOKE
IS OUR MOTHER (Earth) (a). REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH
PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR THOU
SHALT SEE (b).
(a) The "small wheel" is
our chain of spheres, and the fourth spoke is our Earth, the fourth in the chain.
It is one of those on which the "hot (positive) breath of the Sun"
has a direct effect.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The seven fundamental
transformations of the globes or heavenly spheres, or rather of their constituent
particles of matter, is described as follows: (1) The homogeneous; (2) the
aeriform and radiant (gaseous); (3) Curd-like (nebulous); (4) Atomic, Ethereal
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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To calculate its age, however, as the
pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, is rather difficult, since we are not given
the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish those of our
small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of these. "The older
wheels rotated for one Eternity and one half of an Eternity," it says. We
know that by "Eternity" the seventh part of 311,040,000,000,000
years, or an age of Brahma is meant. But what of that? We also know that, to
begin with, if we take for our basis the above figures, we have first of all to
eliminate from the 100 years of Brahma (or 311,040,000,000,000 years) two years
taken up by the Sandhyas (twilights), which leaves 98, as we have to bring it
to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But we have no knowledge at what time
precisely the evolution and formation of our little earth began. Therefore it
is impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its birth is given --
which the TEACHERS refuse to do, so far. At the close of this Book and in Book
II., however, some chronological hints will be given. We must remember,
moreover, that the law of Analogy holds good for the worlds, as it does for
man; and that as "The ONE (Deity) becomes Two (Deva or Angel) and Two
becomes Three (or man)," etc., etc., so we are taught that the Curds
(world-stuff) become wanderers, (Comets), these become stars, and the stars
(the centres of vortices) our sun and planets -- to put it briefly.*
(b) There are four grades of
initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known respectively in
Sanskrit as "Srotapanna," "Sagardagan,"
"Anagamin," and "Arhan" -- the four paths to Nirvana, in
this, our fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can
see the Past, the Present, and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate; for
the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes chela (pupil) to a higher
Initiate. Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who
would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have
reached it even in this fifth race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the
attainment of these higher
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] (beginning of motion, hence of differentiation); (5) Germinal, fiery,
(differentiated, but composed of the germs only of the Elements, in their
earliest states, they having seven states, when completely developed on our
earth); (6) Four-fold, vapoury (the future Earth); (7) Cold and depending (on
the Sun for life and light).
* This cannot be so very
unscientific, since Descartes thought also that "the planets rotate on
their axes because they were once lucid stars, the centres of Vortices."
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grades will be fully developed in the
average ascetic only at the end of this Root-Race, and in the Sixth and
Seventh. Thus there will always be Initiates and the Profane till the end of
this minor Manvantara, the present life-cycle. The Arhats of the "fire-mist"
of the 7th rung are but one remove from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy -- the
highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial chain. This "Root-Base" has a
name which can only be translated by several compound words into English"
-- "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 the sexes of the Third Race.
This Third Race is sometimes called
collectively "the Sons of Passive Yoga," i.e., it was produced
unconsciously by the second Race, which, as it was intellectually inactive, is
supposed to have been constantly plunged in a kind of blank or abstract
contemplation, as required by the conditions of the Yoga state. In the first or
earlier portion of the existence of this third race, while it was yet in its
state of purity, the "Sons of Wisdom," who, as will be seen,
incarnated in this Third Race, produced by Kriyasakti a progeny called the
"Sons of Ad" or "of the Fire-Mist," the "Sons of Will
and Yoga," etc. They were a conscious production, as a portion of the race
was already animated with the divine spark of spiritual, superior intelligence.
It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous Being, called the
"Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human
beings. "Set apart" in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are
those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, "Munis and
Rishis from previous Manvantaras" -- to form the nursery for future human
adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle. These "Sons of Will
and Yoga" born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is
explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.
The "BEING" just referred
to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages,
all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi
Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective
man, he is the mysterious (to the profane -- the ever invisible) yet ever
present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the
Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form,
yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the
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initiated Adepts throughout the whole
world. He is, as said, the "Nameless One" who has so many names, and
yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the
"Initiator," called the "GREAT SACRIFICE." For, sitting at
the threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness,
which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this
life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why
does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer,
as he has naught to learn which he does not know -- aye, neither on this Earth,
nor in its heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back
to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this
limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would
fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a
voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating
himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has
sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit
by the GREAT SACRIFICE.
It is under the direct, silent
guidance of this MAHA -- (great) -- GURU that all the other less divine
Teachers and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening of human
consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through these "Sons of
God" that infant humanity got its first notions of all the arts and
sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge; and it is they who have laid the
first foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations that puzzle so sorely our
modern generation of students and scholars.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Let those who doubt this statement
explain the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge possessed by the ancients --
alleged to have developed from lower and animal-like savages, the cave-men of
the Palaeolithic age -- on any other equally reasonable grounds. Let them turn
to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age, on
architecture, for instance, in which all the rules of proportion are those
taught anciently at initiations, if he would acquaint himself with the truly
divine art, and understand the deep esoteric significance hidden in every rule
and law of proportion. No man descended from a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could
ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and
intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas
of the third Root Race, who handed their knowledge from one generation to another,
to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion; as it is the
Disciples of the Initiates of the 4th, the Atlanteans, who handed it over to
their Cyclopes, the "Sons of Cycles" or of the "Infinite,"
from whom the name passed to the still later generations of Gnostic priests.
"It is owing to the divine perfection [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Although these matters were barely
hinted at in "Isis Unveiled," it will be well to remind the reader of
what was said in Vol. I., pp. 587 to 593, concerning a certain Sacred Island in
Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to the chapter in Book II.
on "The Sons of God and the Sacred Island." A few more explanations,
however, though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to
obtain a glimpse into the present mystery.
To state at least one detail
concerning these mysterious "Sons of God" in plain words. It is from
them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dwijas, the initiated Brahmins of old
justly claimed descent, while the modern Brahmin would have the lowest castes
believe literally that they issued direct from the mouth of Brahma. This is the
esoteric teaching, which adds moreover that, although these descendants
(spiritually of course) from the "sons of Will and Yoga," became in
time divided into opposite sexes, as their "Kriyasakti" progenitors
did themselves, later on; yet even their degenerate descendants have down to
the present day retained a veneration and respect for the creative
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of those architectural proportions that the Ancients could build those
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.'" (See "Book
of God," Kenealy.) Modern architects may not altogether have neglected
those rules, but they have superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy
those just proportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of
construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten
books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an
initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmen,
the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe
which were found "Cyclopean in origin" by the French Institute, are
all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily
taught by the "Sons of God," justly called "The Builders."
This is what appreciative posterity says of those descendants. "They used
neither mortar nor cement, nor steel nor iron to cut the stones with; and yet
they were so artfully wrought that in many places the joints are not seen,
though many of the stones, as in Peru, are 18 ft. thick, and in the walls of
the fortress of Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size." (Acosta,
vi., 14.) "Again, the walls of Syene, built 5,400 years ago, when that
spot was exactly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, were so
constructed that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar solstice, the
entire disc of the Sun was seen reflected on their surface -- a work which the
united skill of all the astronomers of Europe would not now be able to
effect." -- (Kenealy, "Book of God.")
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function, and still regard it in the
light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations consider it
as a mere animal function. Compare the western views and practice in these
matters with the Institutions of Manu in regard to the laws of Grihasta and
married life. The true Brahmin is thus indeed "he whose seven forefathers
have drunk the juice of the moon-plant (Soma)," and who is a
"Trisuparna," for he has understood the secret of the Vedas.
And, to this day, such Brahmins know
that, during its early beginnings, psychic and physical intellect being dormant
and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual conceptions of that race
were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings. That divine man dwelt in
his animal -- though externally human -- form; and, if there was instinct in
him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent fifth
principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused
into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and
activity was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators. As
the child's first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations
of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he
felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and independent of him. DEVOTION
arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his
nature; for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate
in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal. This
feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is
beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle. "The
great antique heart," he exclaims, "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* . . . . 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That which was natural in the sight
of primitive man has become only now miracle to us; and that which was to him a
miracle could never be expressed in our language.
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only of it is dead; the essence of it
lives through all times and all eternity!"
It lives undeniably, and has settled
in all its ineradicable strength and power in the Asiatic Aryan heart from the
Third Race direct through its first "mind-born" sons, -- the fruits
of Kriyasakti. As time rolled on the holy caste of Initiates produced but
rarely, and from age to age, such perfect creatures: beings apart, inwardly,
though the same as those who produced them, outwardly.
While in the infancy of the third
primitive race:--
"A creature of a more exalted
kind
Was wanting yet, and therefore was
designed;
Conscious of thought, of more
capacious breast
For empire formed and fit to rule the
rest. . . . ."
It was called into being, a ready and
perfect vehicle for the incarnating denizens of higher spheres, who took
forthwith their abodes in these forms born of Spiritual WILL and the natural
divine power in man. It was a child of pure Spirit, mentally unalloyed with any
tincture of earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life,
as it drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the living tree of divine
wisdom; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse Legend,
which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life shall be fought,
while its roots are gnawed all the time by the dragon Nidhogg; for even so, the
first and holy Son of Kriyasakti had his body gnawed by the tooth of time, but
the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying and strong, because
they grew and expanded in heaven not on earth. He was the first of the FIRST,
and he was the seed of all the others. There were other "Sons of
Kriyasakti" produced by a second Spiritual effort, but the first one has
remained to this day the Seed of divine Knowledge, the One and the Supreme
among the terrestrial "Sons of Wisdom." Of this subject we can say no
more, except to add that in every age -- aye, even in our own -- there have
been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly.
How comes our physical body to the
state of perfection it is found in now? Through millions of years of evolution,
of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by materialism. For,
as Carlyle says:-- ". . . The essence of our being, the mystery in us that
calls itself 'I,' -- what words have we for such things? -- it is a breath of
Heaven,
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the highest Being reveals himself in
man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture
for the UNNAMED?"
The breath of heaven, or rather the
breath of life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every
animate speck as in every mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the
consciousness of the nature of that highest Being,* as none has that divine
harmony in its form which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one
since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle:--
"There is but one temple in the
universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form .
. . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!" "This
sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric," adds Carlyle, "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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Hindu people. See what Max Muller says of this
idiosyncracy and national feature in his works. This is direct inheritance from
the primitive conscious men of the Third Race.
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STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT
FORMLESS LIFE (a).
FIRST, THE DIVINE (vehicle) (b), THE
ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT (Atman); THEN THE SPIRITUAL -- (Atma-Buddhi,
Spirit-soul)* (c); (again) 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 (Avalokiteswara) THE SHINING SEVEN (the "Builders").**
IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, O LANOO; THEY WHO WATCH OVER THEE AND THY
MOTHER, BHUMI (the Earth).
(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers
is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric, within the twelve great Orders,
recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the seven of the manifesting scale
being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into
numberless groups of divine Spiritual, semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings.
The Chief Hierarchies among these are
hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the "four bodies and the three
faculties" of Brahma exoterically, and the Panchasyam, the five Brahmas,
or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist system.
The highest group is composed of the
divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the "Fiery Lions" and the
"Lions of Life," whose esotericism is securely hidden in the Zodiacal
sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior divine World (see Commentary in
first pages of Addendum). They are the formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one
aspect with the upper Sephirothal TRIAD, which is placed by the Kabalists in
the "Archetypal World."
The same hierarchy, with the same
numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the "Beginnings" as
taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system,
Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the Divine merges into the human, and
creates --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This relates to the Cosmic
principles.
** The seven creative Rishis now
connected with the constellation of the Great Bear
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midway in its descent into matter --
the visible Universe. The legendary personages -- remarks reverentially Omoie
-- "having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment of the higher
(secret) doctrine, and its sublime truths." To state it at full length,
however, would occupy too much of our space, but a few words on this old system
cannot be out of place. The following is a short synopsis of this
Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and it shows how closely the most separated notions echoed
one and the same Archaic teaching.
When all was as yet Chaos (Kon-ton)
three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani
naka nushi no Kami, "Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven"; (2) Taka
mi onosubi no Kami, "Exalted, imperial Divine offspring of Heaven and the
Earth"; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, "Offspring of the Gods,"
simply.
These were without form or substance
(our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had
yet differentiated, "nor had the essence of things been formed."
In the Zohar -- which, as now
arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean
Christian Gnostics in the XIIth century, and corrected and revised still later
by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself
-- this divine "Vehicle" no longer appears as it does in the
"Chaldean Book of Numbers." True enough, Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE
ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the ONE, the manifested "Heavenly
man" (the FIRST CAUSE) as its chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vahan, in
Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal
world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use
anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is
devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause
(Plato's Logos) the original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam
Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the "Book of Numbers" it is
explained that EN (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-existent, whereas its
"Depth" (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only
periodical. The latter is Brahm as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It
is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos
or the abstract Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the
manifested Logos (the objective Universe) "male and female" -- as a
chariot through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following
incongruity: "Senior
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occultatus est et absconditus;
Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus." (Rosenroth; Liber
Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or the microcosm, can
only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the
Maha-Pralayas. Rosenroth's Kabala is no guide, but very often a puzzle.
(b) As in the Japanese system, in the
Egyptian, and every old cosmogony -- at this divine FLAME, The "One,"
are lit the three descending groups. Having their potential being in the higher
group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called the
"Virgins of Life," the "Great Illusion," etc., etc., and
collectively the "Six-pointed Star." The latter is the symbol, in
almost every religion, of the Logos as the first emanation. It is that of Vishnu
in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, the
"He of the four letters" or -- metaphorically -- "the limbs of
Microprosopos" in the Kabala, which are ten and six respectively. The
later Kabalists however, especially the Christian mystics, have played sad
havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the "ten limbs" of the
Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the
unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus
-- the lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial
plane.** Of this, however, later on. The six-pointed Star refers to the six
Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, etc., etc., all
synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the Star. All these, the
upper and lower hierarchies included, emanate from the "Heavenly or
Celestial Virgin,"*** the great mother in all religions, the Androgyne,
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Indeed, the Microprosopus -- who
is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the unmanifested eternal
Logos "one with the Father," -- has been finally brought, by
centuries of incessant efforts, of sophistry and paradoxes, to be considered as
one with Jehovah, or the ONE living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than
Binah, a female Sephiroth. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon
the reader.
** The Microprosopus is, as just
said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are many.
*** Sephira is the Crown, KETHER, in
the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x (the unknown quantity). On the
plane of differentiated nature she is the female counterpart of Adam Kadmon --
the first Androgyne. The Kabala teaches that the word "Fiat Lux"
(Genesis ch. i.) referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and
not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says: "Oh com-
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Sephira-Adam-Kadmon. In its Unity,
primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daivi-prakriti, the
light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation it becomes Fohat,
or the "Seven Sons." The former is symbolised by the Central point in
the double-Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or the "six
limbs" of the Microprosopus the Seventh being Malkuth, the "Bride"
of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the expressions:
"The first after the 'One' is
divine Fire; the second, Fire and AEther; the third is composed of Fire, AEther
and Water; the fourth of Fire, AEther, Water, and Air."* The One is not
concerned with Man-bearing globes, but with the inner invisible Spheres.
"The 'First-Born' are the LIFE, the heart and pulse of the Universe; the
Second are its MIND or Consciousness,"**
as said in the Commentary.
(c) The second Order of Celestial
Beings, those of Fire and AEther (corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or the
Atma-Buddhi) whose names are legion, are still formless, but more definitely
"substantial." They are the first differentiation in the Secondary
Evolution or "Creation" -- a misleading word. As the name shows, they
are the prototypes of the incarnating Jivas or Monads, and are composed of the
Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a pure solar beam,
the ray which is furnished by them with its future vehicle, the Divine Soul,
Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the higher world of our
system. From these twofold Units emanate the threefold.
In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out
of the chaotic mass, an egglike nucleus appears, having within itself the germ
and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the
"three-fold" just named, which differentiates. "The male
aethereal" (Yo) principle
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] panions, 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 it
was Light.' And this is the two-fold man." (Auszuge aus dem Zohar, pp.
13-15.)
* See next footnote. These elements
of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements.
** This "Consciousness" has
no relation to our consciousness. The consciousness of the "One
manifested," if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat (the Universal
Mind) is the first production of the Brahma-Creator, but also of the Pradhana
(undifferentiated matter).
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ascends and the female grosser or
more material principle (In) is precipitated into the Universe of substance,
when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. From this
the female, the mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is
ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from this and the mother that the
Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven creations, just
as in the Codex Nazaraeus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven
evilly disposed (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here
the Japanese names, but once translated they stand in this order:--
(1.) The "Invisible
Celibate," which is the creative logos of the noncreating
"father," or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest.
(2.) "The Spirit (or the God) of
the rayless depths" (of Chaos); which becomes differentiated matter, or
the world-stuff; also the mineral realm.
(3.) "The Spirit of the
Vegetable Kingdom," of the "Abundant Vegetation."
(4.) This one is of dual nature,
being at the same time "The Spirit of the Earth" and "the Spirit
of the Sands," the former containing the potentiality of the male element,
the latter that of the female element, the two forming a combined nature.
These two were ONE; yet unconscious
of being two.
In this duality were contained (a)
the male, dark and muscular Being, Isu no gai no Kami; and (b) Eku gai no Kami,
the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then, the:--
(5th and 6th.) Spirits who were
androgynous or dual-sexed, and, finally:--
(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last
emanated from the "mother," appears as the first divine human form
distinctly male and female. It was the seventh creation, as in the Puranas,
wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahma.
These, Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended
into the Universe by the celestial Bridge (the milky way), and "Tsanagi,
perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled
spear into the depths, and dry land appeared." Then the two separated to
explore Onokoro, the newly-created island-world; etc., etc. (Omoie).
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Such are the Japanese exoteric
fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one truth of the Secret
Doctrine. Turning back to the esoteric explanations in every cosmogony:--
(d) The Third order corresponds to the
Atma-Buddhi-Manas: Spirit, Soul and Intellect, and is called the
"Triads."
(e) The Fourth are substantial
Entities. This is the highest group among the Rupas (Atomic Forms*). It is the
nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the
"Imperishable Jivas," and constitute, through the order below their
own, the first group of the first septenary** host -- the great mystery of
human conscious and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is worthy of notice that, while
rejecting as a superstition of Occultism, and religion too, the theory of
substantial and invisible Beings called Angels, Elementals, etc. -- without, of
course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities,
or thought over them -- modern chemistry, owing to observation and discovery,
should have unconsciously been forced to adopt and recognize the same ratio of
progression and order in the evolution of chemical atoms as Occultism does,
both for its Dhyanis and Atoms -- analogy being its first law. As seen above,
the very first group of the Rupa Angels is quaternary, an element being added
to each in descending order. So are the atoms, adopting the phraseology of
chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, and tetratomic, progressing downwards. Let it
be remembered that Fire, Water, and Air, or the "Elements of primary
Creation" so-called, are not the compound Elements they are on Earth, but
noumenal homogeneous Elements -- the Spirits thereof. Then follow the septenary
groups or hosts. Placed on parallel lines in a diagram with Atoms, the Natures
of those Beings would be seen to correspond in their downward scale of
progression to composite elements in a mathematically identical manner, as to
analogy. This refers, of course, only to diagrams made by the Occultists; for
were the scale of Angelic Beings to be placed on a parallel line with the scale
of the chemical atoms of Science -- from the hypothetical Helium down to
Uranium -- they would of course be found to differ. For these have, as
correspondents on the Astral plane, only the four lowest orders -- the higher
three principles in the atom, or rather molecule or chemical element, being
perceptible only to the initiated Dangma's eye. But then, if Chemistry desired
to find itself on the right path, it would have to correct its tabular
arrangement by that of the Occultists -- which it may refuse to do. In Esoteric
Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends on its higher
noumenon -- the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as below, the
Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the Spiritual --
tainted from its lower plane by the astral -- the whole animate and (seemingly)
inanimate Nature evolving on parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from
above as well as from below.
** The number seven does not imply
only seven Entities, but seven groups or Hosts, as explained before. The
highest group, the Asuras born in Brahma's first body -- [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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intellectual Being. For the latter
are the field wherein lies concealed in its privation the germ that will fall
into generation. That germ will become the spiritual potency in the physical
cell that guides the development of the embryo, and which is the cause of the
hereditary transmission of faculties and all the inherent qualities in man. The
Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties, is
neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in it, proceeds on quite
other lines; the physical, according to esoteric teaching, evolving gradually
from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner soul of the physical cell
-- this "spiritual plasm" that dominates the germinal plasm -- is the
key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist,
now called the dark mystery of Embryology. (See text and note infra.)
(f) The Fifth group is a very
mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic Pentagon, the
five-pointed star representing man. In India and Egypt these Dhyanis were
connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. These are
convertible terms in Indian astrology, as this (tenth) sign of the Zodiac is
called Makara, loosely translated "crocodile." The word itself is
occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt the
defunct man -- whose symbol is the pentagram or the five-pointed star, the
points of which represent the limbs of a man -- was shown emblematically
transformed into a crocodile: Sebakh or Sevekh "or seventh," as Mr.
Gerald Massey says, showing it as having been the type of intelligence, is a
dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the "Dragon of Wisdom" or
Manas, the "Human Soul," Mind, the Intelligent principle, called in
our esoteric philosophy the "Fifth" principle.
Says the defunct
"Osirified" in ch. lxxxviii., "Book of the Dead," or the
Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform god with a crocodile's head:--
(1) "I am the god (crocodile)
presiding at the fear . . . 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] which turned into "Night" -- are septenary, i.e., divided like
the Pitris into seven classes, three of which are arupa (bodiless) and four
with bodies. (See Vishnu Purana, Book I.) They are in fact more truly our
Pitris (ancestors) than the Pitris who projected the first physical men. (See
Book II.)
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when man acquires the knowledge of
good and evil; also to the "fallen" gods, or angels of every
theogony).
(2) "I am the fish of the great
Horus (as Mankara is the "crocodile," the vehicle of Varuna). I am
merged in Sekten."
This last sentence gives the
corroboration of, and repeats the doctrine of, esoteric Buddhism, for it
alludes directly to the fifth principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part of
its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with
Atma-Buddhi after the death of man. For Se-khen is the residence or loka of the
god Khem (Horus-Osiris, or Father and Son), hence the "Devachan" of
Atma-Buddhi. In the Ritual of the Dead the defunct is shown entering into
Sekhem with Horus-Thot and "emerging from it as pure spirit" (lxiv.,
29). Thus the defunct says (v. 130): "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." . . .
And in verse 35, addressing in magic
formula that which is called, in Egyptian esotericism, the "ancestral
heart," or the re-incarnating principle, the permanent EGO, the defunct
says:--
"Oh 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). . . . . . ."
It is in Sekhem that lies concealed
"the Mysterious Face," or the real man concealed under the false
personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity or
human Triad, Atma, Buddhi and Manas.* In all the ancient papyri the crocodile is
called Sebek (Seventh), while the water is the fifth principle esoterically;
and, as already stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was
"the Seventh Soul, the supreme one of seven -- the Seer unseen." Even
exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the god Khem, and Khem is Horus
avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the Sins of man when
he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* One of the explanations of the real
though hidden meaning of this Egyptian religious glyph is easy. The crocodile
is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of the morning sun, and very
soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the
arrival on earth and among men "of the divine soul which informs the
Gods." Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a
crocodile to show that it was a soul arriving from the earth.
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"Osirified" became the god
Khem, who "gleans the field of Aanroo," i.e., he gleans either his
reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where
the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The fifth group of the
celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of both
the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so to say,
of Mahat the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man, the spiritual
and the physical. Hence its number Five, multiplied and made into ten,
connecting it with Makara, the 10th sign of Zodiac.
(g) The sixth and seventh groups
partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious, ethereal
Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs of a tree
from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn
numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or
Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and
unsubstantial -- the ideal THOUGHTS of their creators -- down to the Atomic,
though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as
the "Spirits of Atoms" for they are the first remove (backwards) from
the physical Atom -- sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all
subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the
doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether
in our or in other systems, in the outer or the inner worlds,* as the angels of
the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he
cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full-blown angel. The
Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred in
the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room for a
new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless
cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles
finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit
in being gods. Such a class of beings, perfect only by virtue of the special
immaculate nature inherent in them, in the face of suffering and struggling
humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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symbol of an eternal injustice quite
Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an
impossibility in Nature. Therefore the "Four" and the
"Three" have to incarnate as all other beings have. This sixth group,
moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his
highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body, the five middle human
principles being the very essence of those Dhyanis.* Alone, the Divine Ray (the
Atman) proceeds directly from the One. When asked how that can be? How is it
possible to conceive that those "gods," or angels, can be at the same
time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense in
the material world, where the son is (in one way) his father, being his blood,
the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the teachers answer
"Verily it is so." But one has to go deep into the mystery of BEING
before one can fully comprehend this truth.
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STANZA VII. -- Continued.
2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER
RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM (of Form,
Sthula-sarira, external body). THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE-RAY, THE
ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS (pearls) (a).
(a) This sloka expresses the
conception -- a purely Vedantic one, as already explained elsewhere -- of a
life-thread, Sutratma, running through successive generations. How, then, can
this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though
necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting
to it, however, I would ask whether it seems unnatural, least of all
"supernatural," to any one of us, when we consider that process known
as the growth and development of a foetus into a healthy baby weighing several
pounds evolves from what? From the segmentation of an infinitesimally small
ovum and a spermatozoon; and afterwards we see that baby develop into a
six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Paracelsus calls them the Flagae;
the Christians, the "Guardian Angels;" the Occultist, the
"Ancestors, the Pitris;" they are the sixfold Dhyan Chohans, having
the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies -- in fact, men,
minus the physical body.
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expansion from the microscopically
small into something very large, from the -- to the naked eye -- unseen, into
the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say,
her theories, embryological, biological, and physiological, are correct enough
so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief
difficulties of the science of embryology -- namely, what are the forces at
work in the formation of the foetus, and the cause of "hereditary transmission"
of likeness, physical, moral or mental -- have never been properly answered;
nor will they ever be solved till the day when scientists condescend to accept
the Occult theories.* But if this physical pheno-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The materialists and the
evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill-advised to accept the newly
worked-out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of Beitrage zur
Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as
above specified, which he seems to have solved -- as he thinks. For, when it is
solved, Science will have stepped over into the domain of the truly occult, and
stepped for ever out of the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The
two are irreconcileable, from the standpoint of materialism. Regarded from that
of the Occultists, it solves all these mysteries. Those who are not acquainted
with the new discovery of Professor Weissman -- at one time a fervent Darwinist
-- ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German
Embryologist-philosopher shows -- thus stepping over the heads of the Greek
Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Aryans --
one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of
an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation
and multiplication, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its
physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. It is that cell which impresses
on the face and form of the new individual the features of the parents or of
some distant ancestor; it is that cell again which transmits to him the
intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is
the immortal portion of our bodies -- simply through the process of successive
assimilations. Darwin's theory, viewing the embryological cell as an essence or
the extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting
for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery
of heredity; either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the
faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the
construction of a separate organism and then to the reproduction of identical
germinal cells; or, those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in
the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal
cell passed from father to son through long generations. It is the latter
hypothesis that Weissmann accepted and has worked upon; and it is to this cell
that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when this
almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first
appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man "grew" like the
"immortal Topsy," and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds,
how was that embryological cell born in him?
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menon astonishes no one, except in so
far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner
growth, the evolution of the human-spiritual to the Divine-Spiritual, be
regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other? Now to the simile.
Complete the physical plasm,
mentioned in the last foot-note, the "Germinal Cell" of man with all
its material potentialities, with the "spiritual plasm," so to say,
or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the six-principled
Dhyan -- and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it.
"When the seed of the animal man
is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it
has been fructified by the five virtues (the fluid of, or the emanation from
the principles) of the six-fold Heavenly man. Wherefore the Microcosm is
represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the "Macrocosm."
("[[Anthropos]],") a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.). Then:
"The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five-fold character. In the
mineral atom it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the
Earth (the six-fold Dhyanis); in the vegetable particle, with their second --
the Prana (life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth;
in man, the germ must receive the fruition of all the five. Otherwise he will
be born no higher than an animal"; namely, a congenital idiot. Thus in man
alone the Jiva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the
Beams of the Universal Sun. Each rational creature receives only the temporary
loan of that which has to return to its source; while his physical body 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." (Kabala, Chaldean Book of Numbers).
It comes to this: Mankind in its
first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life (or
Pitris); in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the
"Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its
moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings,
the name and characteristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively,
men are the handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the
tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some
of them. In our present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the
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Fourth is still strong in us; but we
are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing
decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive
third Root-Race in Spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was composed wholly
of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the
monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race built by (as they
are now also) and composed of countless myriads of lives.* This sentence will
be explained later on in the present Commentary. The "tabernacles"
have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the
globe that bore them; but the physical improvement took place at the expense of
the spiritual inner man and nature. The three middle principles in earth and
man became with every race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room
for the physical intellect; the essence of elements becoming the material and
composite elements now known.
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the
complete product of the "Lord God"; but he is the child of the
Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender. The first
Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their image, could only
throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter
to work upon. (See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of
the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be
said that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,"
unless that God is identified with the "ONE LIFE," Omnipresent though
invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to "God" on
behalf of every living Soul -- or Nephesch, which is the vital Soul, not the
divine Spirit or Ruach, which ensures to man alone a divine degree of
immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of
incarnation. It is the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our
Western metaphysicians, who, not knowing of, and being unable to understand,
hence to accept, more than a triune man -- Spirit, Soul,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Science, dimly perceiving the
truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in
them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed.
Occultism -- which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a
mineral or human body, in air, fire or water -- affirms that our whole body is
built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them
in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.
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Body -- thus confuse the "breath
of life" with immortal Spirit.* This applies also directly to the
Protestant theologians, who, in translating verse 8 of Ch. III. in the Fourth
Gospel, have entirely perverted the meaning. Indeed the verse is made to say
"The wind bloweth where it listeth," instead of "the Spirit
goeth where it willeth," as in the original and also in the translation of
the Greek Eastern Church.
Thus the philosophy of psychic,
spiritual, and mental relations with man's physical functions is in almost
inextricable confusion. Neither the old Aryan, nor the Egyptian psychology are
now properly understood. Nor can they be assimilated without accepting the
esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedantic quinquepartite division of
the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to
understand the metaphysical and purely psychic and even physiological relations
between the Dhyan-Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and humanity on the
other. No Eastern (Aryan) esoteric works are so far published, but we possess
the Egyptian papyri which speak clearly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The learned and very philosophical
author of "New Aspects of Life" would impress upon his reader that
the Nephesh chaiah (living soul), according to the Hebrews, "proceeded
from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the
quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that spirit
in the thus constituted self, so that the spirit passed into, was lost sight
of, and disappeared in the living Soul." The human body, he thinks, ought
to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which, the Soul (which he seems to
place higher than the spirit) is developed -- considered functionally and from
the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably higher in this finite
and conditioned world of Maya -- the Soul, he says, "is ultimately
produced from the animated body of man." Thus the author identifies
"Spirit" (Atma) simply with "the breath of life." The
Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is based on the
erroneous conception that Prana and Atma or Jivatma are one and the same thing.
The author supports the argument by showing that with the ancient Hebrews,
Greeks and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus -- with the Jews undeniably,
and with the Greeks and Romans very probably -- meant Wind; the Greek word Anemos
(wind) and the Latin Anima "Soul" having a suspicious relation.
This is very far fetched. A
legitimate battle-field for deciding this question is hardly to be found, since
Mr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter-of-fact metaphysician, a kind of Kabalist-Positivist,
and the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedantins, are all Idealists.
The Occultists are also of the extreme esoteric Vedantin school, and they call
the One Life (Parabrahm), the Great Breath and the Whirlwind; but they
disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter or any relation to, or
connection with it.
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of the seven principles or the
"Seven Souls of Man."* The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of
the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes, while divesting
himself, one by one, of all those principles -- materialised for the sake of
clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who
try to prove that the ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and did not teach
Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the Ego or Self) of the defunct is
said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, "co-eval with, and
disappearing with the Solar boat," i.e., for the cycle of necessity. This
"Soul" emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life) and
joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This
expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. (Book of the Dead, cvxliii.)
The shadow, the astral form, is
annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus" (cxlix., 51), the Manes will be
annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will be scattered; but
the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow -- and the Uraeus of Flame" (Manas
and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother's
husbands.**
Like alone produces like. The Earth
gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner principles, the psychic
Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating principle. SPIRIT (Atman)
is one -- and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.
For what is the Tiaou? The frequent
allusion to it in the "Book of the Dead" contains a mystery. Tiaou is
the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of
the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the moon. The human
being, in their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide in Part II., Book II.,
"The Seven Souls of Man," the divisions made respectively by Messrs.
Gerald Massey and Franz Lambert.
** Another suggestive analogy between
the Aryan or Brahmanical and the Egyptian esotericism. The former call the
Pitris "the lunar ancestors" of men; and the Egyptians made of the
Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor. This "moon-god"
"expressed the Seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were
summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the
eighth one (hence the eighth sphere). The seven rays of the Chaldean Heptakis
or Iao, on the Gnostic stones indicate the same septenary of souls." . . .
"The first form of the mystical SEVEN was seen to be figured in heaven, by
the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the
Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven elemental powers." (See
The Seven Souls, etc.) As well known to every Hindu, this same constellation
represents in India the Seven Rishis, and as such is called Riksha, and
Chitra-Sikhandinas.
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esotericism, came out from the moon
(a triple mystery -- astronomical, physiological, and psychical at once); he
crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned to his birth-place
before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown arriving in the West,
receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the god Horus, and
circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to
Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot (the celestial abyss), returning once
more to Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and
reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows
the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of Osiris into
the moon." In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and the renovation
of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the moon was the
symbol of life-renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying,
and reappearance every month. In the Dankmoe, (iv. 5) it is said:-- "Oh,
Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy renewal." And Safekh says to Seti I.
(Mariette's Abydos, plate 51), "Thou renewest thyself as the god Lunus
when a babe." It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus (P.
Pierret, "Etudes Egyptologiques"): "Couplings and conceptions
abound when he (Osiris-Lunus) is seen in heaven on that day." Says Osiris:
"Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I issue from the circulating
multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue
by day to do what I have to do amongst the living" ("Book of the
Dead," ch. ii.), -- i.e., to produce conceptions.
Osiris was "God manifest in
generation," because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the
real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception.*
Later on, when the moon became connected with female goddesses** -- with Diana,
Isis, Artemis,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the oldest systems we find the
Moon always male. Thus Soma is, with the Hindus, a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a
"King," and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Buddha -- Wisdom,
which relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough
acquaintance with lunar mysteries including those of sexual generation. (See "Holy
of Holies.")
** If instead of being taught in
Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of the ragged and the
poor were taught Astrology -- so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of
the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned, then there
would be little need to fear increase of the population nor to resort to the
questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon
and her [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Juno, etc., that connection was due
to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as
psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, so to say,
tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological deities -- the Father and
the Son, while Space and air in general, or that expanse of Heaven called Noot
by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. These
"Father and Son" were interchangeable in their functions and worked
harmoniously together in their effects upon terrestrial nature and humanity;
hence they were regarded as ONE, though TWO in personified Entities. They were
both males, and both had their distinct and also collaborative work in the
causative generation of Humanity. So much from the astronomical and cosmic
standpoints viewed and expressed in symbolical language -- which became in our last
races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of Cosmic and Astrological
symbols, there were the Occult mysteries of Anthropography and the primeval
genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols -- or even the key to the
post-diluvian symbolical language of the Jews -- will, or can help, save only
with reference to that which was laid down in national scriptures for exoteric
uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was only the smallest portion
of the real primitive history of each people, often relating, moreover, -- as
in the Hebrew Scriptures -- merely to the terrestrial human, not divine life of
that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to MYSTERY and
INITIATION. There were things never recorded in scrolls, but, as in Central
Asia, on rocks and in subterranean crypts.
Nevertheless, there was a time when
the whole world was "of one lip and of one knowledge," and Man knew
more of his origin than he does now, and thus knew that the Sun and Moon,
however large a part they do play in the constitution, growth and development
of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on
Earth;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every astrologer in India
knows it. During the previous and the present races, at least at the beginning
of this one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar
phases that made those relations sterile were regarded as sorcerers and
sinners. But even now those sins of old, based on the Occult knowledge and the
abuse of it, would appear preferable to the crimes of to-day, which are
perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of, and disbelief in all such
occult influences.
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these agents being, in truth, the
living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyan Chohans.
As to this, a very learned admirer of
the Jewish Esotericism tells us that "the Kabala says expressly that
Elohim is a 'general abstraction'; what we call in mathematics 'a constant
co-efficient' or a 'general function' entering into all construction, not
particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, (the astro-Dhyanic and)
Elohistic figures." To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so, it is
an abstraction to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however,
and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim or Dhyanis are no more an
abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject
the other -- since that which is the surviving Entity in us is partly the
direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities themselves. One
thing is sure; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and various
maleficent forces; but, with the exception of some of their great prophets and
seers like Daniel and Ezekiel (Enoch belonging to a far distant race and not to
any nation but to all, as a generic character), they knew little of, nor would
they deal with, the real divine Occultism, their national character being
averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal,
and individual benefits -- witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered
by them against the "stiff-necked race." But even the Kabala plainly
shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men.
Therefore, when it is proved to us
that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephiroth,
has still another, a sub-occult meaning in it, then and then only the Occultist
will be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is
asserted that, as Jehovah is in the abstract sense of a "one living
God," a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put
in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephiroth -- we have a right to
maintain that the Zohar (as witnessed by the BOOK OF NUMBERS, at any rate),
gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and
still gives out the same doctrine that we do; i.e., it makes Man emanate, not
from one Celestial MAN, but from a Septenary group of Celestial men or Angels,
just as in "Pymander, the Thought Divine."
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STANZA VII. -- Continued.
(3) WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO -- THE
"THREE-FOLD" APPEARS (a). THE THREE ARE (linked into) ONE; AND IT IS
OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT, CALLED SAPTAPARNA (b).
(a) "When the ONE becomes two,
the three-fold appears": to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection
into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, "the Ray,"
differentiates the "Water of Space"; or, in the words of the
"Book of the Dead"; "Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the
Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by the help of the great
magic power of the WORD of the (Central) Sun." Chaos becomes male-female,
and Water, incubated through Light, and the "three-fold being issues as
its First-born." "Osiris-Ptah (or RA) creates his own limbs (like
Brahma) by creating the gods destined to personify his phases" during the
Cycle (xvii., 4). The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the DEEP, is the Divine
Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Narayana, the Purusha,
"concealed in Akasa and present in Ether."
This is the metaphysical explanation,
and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we should rather say, of
Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza when explained from another standpoint in
its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to
comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One
becoming two, and then being transformed into the "three-fold," the
student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call
"Rounds." If he refers to "Esoteric Buddhism" -- the first
attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic Cosmogony -- he will
find that by a "Round" is meant the serial evolution of nascent
material nature, of the seven globes of our chain* with their mineral,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Several inimical critics are
anxious to prove that no seven principles of man nor septenary constitution of
our chain were taught in our earlier volume, "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 chain is
openly mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim in Vol. II., page 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 is, of course, upon the diagram representing the
"chain," the seventh and the lowest; though, [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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vegetable, and animal kingdoms (man
being there included in the latter and standing at the head of it) during the
whole period of a life-cycle. The latter would be called by the Brahmins
"a Day of Brahma." It is, in short, one revolution of the
"Wheel" (our planetary chain), which is composed of seven globes (or
seven separate "Wheels," in another sense this time). When evolution
has run downward into matter, from planet A to planet G, or Z, as the Western
students call it, it is one Round. In the middle of the Fourth revolution,
which is our present "Round": "Evolution has reached its acme of
physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from
this point, begins its work spirit-ward." All this needs little
repetition, as it is well explained in "Esoteric Buddhism." That
which was hardly touched upon, and of which the little that was said has misled
many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may
now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the
process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Book II.
Now every "Round" (on the
descending scale) is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the Round which
preceded it, as every globe -- down to our fourth sphere (the actual earth) --
is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy sphere which precedes
it in their successive order, on the three higher planes. (See diagram in
Stanza VI. Comm. 6). On its way upwards on the ascending arc, Evolution
spiritualises and etherealises, so to speak, the general nature of all,
bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin globe on the
opposite side is placed; the result being, that when the seventh globe is
reached (in whatever Round) the nature of everything that is evolving returns
to the condition it was in at its starting point -- plus, every time, a new and
superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the "origin
of man," so-called, on this our present
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] as the evolution on these globes is cyclic, it is the fourth in
descending the arc of matter. And again, on page 367, Vol. II., it is written:
"In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded on
philosophy, man was not merely . . . an union of soul and body; he was a
trinity when spirit was added to it; and besides that doctrine made him consist
of body, astral form, or shadow, the 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, one finds on page 683:-- "Six principles of man" -- the
seventh being the synthesis of the six, and not a principle but a ray of the
Absolute ALL -- in strict truth.
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Round, or life-cycle on this planet,
must occupy the same place in the same order -- save details based on local
conditions and time -- as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be explained
and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a
different group of so-called "Creators" or "Architects," so
is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of
special "Builders" and "Watchers" -- the various
Dhyan-Chohans.
The group of the hierarchy which is
commissioned to "create"* men is a special group, then; yet it
evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more spiritual
group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth -- on the downward
scale of Spirituality -- the last and seventh being the terrestrial Spirits
(elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense his physical body --
this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man's shadowy form, a filmy,
hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the fifth
Hierarchy -- the mysterious beings that preside over the constellation
Capricornus, Makara, or "Crocodile" in India as in Egypt -- to inform
the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is one
of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It
is a MYSTERY, truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of
intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full
Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a "function of the
Brain." Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated
bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that,
still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. .
. .
To put it more clearly: the invisible
Entity may be bodily present on earth without abandoning, however, its status
and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can
do no better than remind the reader of like cases in Spiritualism, though such
cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity
incarnating,**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Creation is an incorrect word to
use, as no religion, not even the sect of the Visishta Adwaitees in India --
one which anthropomorphises even Parabrahmam -- believes in creation out of
nihil as Christians and Jews do, but in evolution out of preexisting materials.
** The so-called "Spirits"
that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of mediums are not the
Monads or Higher Principles of disembodied personalities. Such a
"Spirit" can only be either an Elementary, or -- a Nirmanakaya.
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or taking temporary possession of a
medium. Just as certain persons -- men and women, reverting to parallel cases
among living persons -- whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or
through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their
"double" in one place, while the body is many miles away; so the same
thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man, philosophically considered, is,
in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his
pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a living body, not a living
being, since the realisation of existence, the "Ego-Sum,"
necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only have direct
consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the Ancients that
the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, independent of each other.*
The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial envelope, could
die and man be still living on earth -- i.e., the soul could free itself from
and quit the tabernacle for various reasons -- such as insanity, spiritual and
physical depravity, etc.** Therefore, that which living men (Initiates)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On p. 340-351 (Genesis of the Soul)
in the "New Aspects of Life," the Author states the Kabalistic
teaching: "They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter of
corresponding opacity and density tended to coalesce; and that the resultant
created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which
the differing opacities and transparencies of Elemental or uncreated Spirit
were reproduced. And that these Spirits in the disembodied state attracted,
appropriated, digested and assimilated Elemental Spirit and Elemental Matter
whose condition was conformed to their own." "They therefore taught
that there was a wide difference in the condition 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 rarified finding their home in its satellite."
This relates exclusively to our
Elementary Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal,
Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces or "Angels" as they are
termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical
Occultists who dealt with ceremonial magic, busied themselves solely with the
spirits of the Planets and the "Elementals" so-called. Therefore this
covers only a portion of the Esoteric Teaching.
** The possibility of the
"Soul" (i.e., the eternal Spiritual Ego) dwelling in the unseen
worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a pre-eminently occult
doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. See "Isis
Unveiled," vol. i., [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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can do, the Dhyanis, who have no
physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the
Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society, in
Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of
their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities
(Ferouers), applying this duality -- in esoteric philosophy, at any rate -- to
all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space
which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean
oracles, we have a triple evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he
says: "In these oracles the seven Cosmocratores of the world, ('The
World-Pillars,') mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double -- one set being
commissioned to rule the superior worlds the spiritual and the sidereal, and
the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter." Such is also the
opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the archangels
and the "Archontes." (See "De Mysteriis," sec. ii., ch. 3.)
The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the
degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman
Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the
archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their doubles are denounced by
her as devils.* But the word "ferouer" is not to be understood in
this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some
attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the "Demon is the
lining of God" (evil, the reverse of the medal), he does not mean two
separate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] p. 602, for an illustration. Many are the Soulless men among us, for the
occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons
"who advance in holiness and never turn back." (See ibid and also
"Isis," vol. ii., p. 369.)
* This identity between the Spirit
and its material "double" (in man it is the reverse) explains still
better the confusion, alluded to already in this work, made in the names and
individualities, as well as the numbers, of the Rishis and the Prajapatis;
especially between those of the Satyayuga and the Mahabharatan period. It also
throws additional light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the
Root and the Seed Manus (see Book ii. "On the primitive Manus of
humanity"). Not only those progenitors of our mankind, but every human
being, we are taught, has its prototype in the Spiritual Spheres; which
prototype is the highest essence of his seventh principle. Thus the seven Manus
become 14, the Root Manu being the Prime Cause, and the "Seed-Manu"
its effect; and when the latter reach from Satyayuga (the first stage) to the
heroic period, these Manus or Rishis become 21 in number.
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actualities, but the two aspects or
facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living would appear, side by side
with an Archangel -- as described in Theology -- a fiend. Hence a certain
reason to depreciate a lower "double," immersed far deeper in matter
than its original. But there is still as little cause to regard them as devils,
and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and
logic.
(b) The concluding sentence of this
sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven-fold
in his constitution. The thread of being which animates man and passes through
all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the
thread on which moreover all his "Spirits" are strung -- is spun from
the essence of the "threefold," the "fourfold" and the
"fivefold"; which contain all the preceding. Panchasikha, agreeably
to Bhagavata Purana (V. XX. 25-28), is one of the seven Kumaras who go to
Sveta-Dvipa to worship Vishnu. We shall see further on, what connection there
is between the "celibate" and chaste sons of Brahma, who refuse
"to multiply," and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is evident that
"the Man-Plant," Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and
man is compared to the seven-leaved plant of this name* so sacred among
Buddhists.
For further details as to Saptaparna
and the importance of the number seven in occultism, as well as in symbology,
the reader is referred to Part II., Book II., on Symbolism: Sections on
"Saptaparna," "The Septenary in the Vedas," etc. etc.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Egyptian allegory in the
"Book of the Dead" already mentioned, the hymn that relates to the
reward "of the Soul," is as suggestive of our Septenary Doctrine as
it is poetical. The deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of
Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the
harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven cubits high,
which grows in a territory divided into 14 and 7 portions. This corn is the
food on which they live and prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the
realm of which the Aanroo field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn, (see
chap. xxxii. 9) the deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure
spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the "Seven times seventy-seven
lives" passed or to be passed on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the
"fruit of our actions" is very graphic.
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STANZA VII. -- Continued.
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 (their upper triad) 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 ("Bhumi," or
"Prithivi")** (b).
(a) The "Three-tongued
flame" that never dies is the immortal spiritual triad -- the Atma-Buddhi
and Manas -- the fruition of the latter assimilated by the first two after
every terrestrial life. The "four wicks" that go out and are
extinguished, are the four lower principles, including the body.
"I am the three-wicked Flame and
my wicks are immortal," says the defunct. "I enter into the domain of
Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied
soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their
adversaries," i.e., got rid of the sin-creating "four wicks."
(See chap. i., vii., "Book of the Dead," and the "Mysteries of
Ro-stan.")
(b) Just as milliards of bright
sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same moon is
shining, so our evanescent personalities -- the illusive envelopes of the
immortal MONAD-EGO -- twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and
appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as
the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the
period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams -- symbols of our
eternal Spiritual Egos -- alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were
before, one with the Mother-Source.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The three-tongued flame of the four
wicks corresponds to the four unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal
tree (see Commentary on Stanza VI.).
** Useless to repeat again that the
terms given here are Sanskrit translations; for the original terms, unknown and
unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader more, and serve no useful
purpose.
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STANZA VII. -- Continued.
(5) THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY
THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA (a).
IT STOPS IN THE FIRST (Kingdom), AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE
SECOND (Kingdom), AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS
AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL; (the first shadow of the physical man) (b).
FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF
THESE, MANU (man), THE THINKER, IS FORMED.
WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES; AND
THE ONE LIFE (c). WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVEFOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE
LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA (the moon) (d).
(a) The phrase "through the
seven Worlds of Maya" refers here to the seven globes of the planetary
chain and the seven rounds, or the 49 stations of active existence that are
before the "Spark" or Monad, at the beginning of every "Great
Life-Cycle" or Manvantara. The "thread of Fohat" is the thread
of life before referred to.
This relates to the greatest problem
of philosophy -- the physical and substantial nature of life, the independent
nature of which is denied by modern science because that science is unable to
comprehend it. The reincarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly
perceive that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its
manifestations: whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because if --
"Life, like a dome of
many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of
Eternity" --
yet it is itself part and parcel of
that Eternity; for life alone can understand life.
What is that "Spark" which
"hangs from the flame?" It is JIVA, the MONAD in conjunction with
MANAS, or rather its aroma -- that which remains from each personality, when
worthy, and hangs from Atma-Buddhi, the Flame, by the thread of life. In
whatever way interpreted, and into whatever number of principles the human
being is divided, it may easily be shown that this doctrine is supported by all
the ancient
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religions, from the Vedic to the
Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of the
last-mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this statement.
The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine septenary
hanging from the Triad (thus forming the Decade) and its permutations 7, 5, 4,
and 3, which, finally, all merge into the ONE itself: an endless and boundless
Circle.
"The Deity (the ever Invisible
Presence)," says the Zohar, "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 Decade contains four Unities and three
Binaries." The ten Sephiroth correspond to the limbs of MAN. "When I
framed Adam Kadmon," the Elohim are made to say, "the Spirit of the
Eternal shot out of his Body like a sheet of lightning that radiated at once on
the billows of the Seven millions of skies, and my ten splendours were his
limbs." But neither the Head nor the shoulders of Adam-Kadmon can be seen;
therefore we read in the Sephra Dzenioutha (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 (see Mantuan Codex) on its plane, and the lowest on all the other
planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed
explanation of all this. "The first triad of the body of Adam Kadmon (the
three upper planes of the seven*) cannot be seen before the soul stands in the
presence of the Ancient of Days." The Sephiroth of this upper triad are:--
"1, Kether (the Crown) represented by the brow of Macroprosopos; 2,
Chochmah (Wisdom, a male Principle) by his right shoulder; and 3, Binah
(Intelligence, a female Principle) by the left shoulder." Then come the
seven limbs (or Sephiroth) on the planes of manifestation, the totality of
these four planes being represented by Microprosopus (the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
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lesser Face) or Tetragrammaton, the
"four-lettered" Mystery. "The seven manifested and the three
concealed limbs are the Body of the Deity."
Thus our Earth, Malkuth, is both the
Seventh and the Fourth world, the former when counting from the first globe
above, the latter if reckoned by the planes. It is generated by the sixth globe
or Sephiroth called Yezod, "foundation," or as said in the Book of
Numbers "by Yezod, He (Adam Kadmon) fecundates the primitive Heva"
(Eve or our Earth). Rendered in mystic language this is the explanation why
Malkuth, called "the inferior Mother," Matrona, Queen, and the
Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the Bride of Tetragrammaton or
Microprosopus (the 2nd Logos) the Heavenly Man. When free from all impurity she
will become united with the Spiritual Logos, i.e., in the 7th Race of the 7th
Round -- after the regeneration, on the day of "SABBATH." For the "seventh
day" has again an occult significance undreamt 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," says verse 746, in chapter xxii. of
"Ha Idra Zuta Kadisha." "Becomes one body" means that all
is reabsorbed once more into the one element, the spirits of men becoming
Nirvanees and the elements of everything else becoming again what they were
before -- protyle or undifferentiated substance. "Sabbath" means rest
or Nirvana. It is not the seventh day after six days but a period the duration
of which equals that of the seven "days" or any period made up of
seven parts. Thus a pralaya is equal in duration to the manwantara, or a night
of Brahma is equal to this "day." If the Christians will follow
Jewish customs they ought to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof:
i.e., to work one week of seven days and rest seven days. That the word
"Sabbath" had a mystic significance is shown in the contempt shown by
Jesus for the Sabbath day, and by what is said in Luke xviii. 12. Sabbath is
there taken for the whole week. (See Greek text where the week is called
Sabbath. "I fast twice in the Sabbath.") Paul, an Initiate, knew it
well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in heaven, as Sabbath;
"and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be (one) with the
Lord and will enjoy an eternal Sabbath." (Hebrew iv. 2.)
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The difference between the two
systems, taking the Kabala as contained in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, not as
misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the Kabala of the Christian mystics
--the Kabala and the archaic esoteric Vidya, is very small indeed, being
confined to unimportant divergences of form and expression. Thus Eastern
occultism refers to our earth as the fourth world, the lowest of the chain,
above which run upward on both its sides the six globes, three on each side.
The Zohar, on the other hand, calls the earth the lower, or the Seventh, adding
that upon the six depend all things which are in it, "Microprosopus."
The "smaller face," smaller because manifested and finite, "is
formed of six Sephiroth," says the same work. "Seven kings come and
die in the thrice-destroyed world" -- (Malkuth our earth, destroyed after
each of the three rounds which it has gone through). "And their reign (of
the seven kings) will be broken up." (Book of Numbers, 1. viii., 3.) This
relates to the Seven Races, five of which have already appeared, and two more
have still to appear in this Round.
The Shinto allegorical accounts of
Cosmogony and the origin of man in Japan hint at the same belief.
Captain C. Pfoundes studied for
nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan the religion underlying the
various sects of the land. . . . . . "The Shinto idea of creation,"
he says, "is as follows: Out of chaos (Konton) the earth (in) was the
sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (yo) the ethereal essences which
ascended: Maa (jin) appeared between the two. The first man was called Kuni-to
ko tatchi-no-mikoto, and five other names were given to him, and then the human
race appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko doijin, the
first of the five gods of the Earth." These "gods" are simply
our five races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of the
"ancestors," the two preceding races which give birth to animal and
to rational man.
It will be shown (Vol. II. Pt. II.)
that the number seven, as well as the doctrine of the septenary constitution of
man, was pre-eminent in all the secret systems. It plays as important a part in
Western Kabala as in Eastern Occultism. Eliphas Levi calls the number seven
"the key to the Mosaic creation and the symbols of every religion."
He shows the Kabala following faithfully even the septenary division of man, as
the diagram he gives in his "Clef des Grands Mysteres" is septenary.
This
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may be seen at a glance on page 389,
"Une prophetic et diverses pensees de Paracelse," however cleverly
the correct thought is veiled. One needs also only to look at the diagram
(Plate VII. in Mr. Mathers' Kabala) "the formation of the Soul"* from
the same "Key of the Great Mysteries" by Levi to find the same,
though with a different interpretation.
Thus it stands with both the
Kabalistic and the Occult names attached:--
7 Neschanah [[--]] Pure Spirit [[--]]
Atma
6 Ruach [[--]] Spiritual Soul [[--]]
Buddhi
5 Nephesch [[--]] Plastic Mediator
[[--]] Manas
N. B. -- Please remark that this
triad is disconnected with the lower Quaternary, as it disconnects itself
always after death.
THE UPPER TRIAD [[--]] The Immortal.
E. Levi calls Nephesch what we name Manas, and vice versa.*
4 Samael [[--]] Seat of Passion &
Animal Desires [[--]] Kama
3 Mikael [[--]] the Sun Principle
[[--]] whence Life Prana
2 Image of man [[--]] Astral Body
[[--]] or Linga Sarira
1 Image of the Creators [[--]]
Physical Body [[--]] Sthula Sarira [[--]] Rupa
The lower Quarternary: the Transitory
and the mortal.
Nephesch. -- The Breath of animal
life in man -- the breath of life instinctual in the animal: and Manas is the
3rd Soul -- the human in its light side, -- animal, in its connection with
Samaelor Kama.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Nephesch is the "breath of
(animal) life" breathed into Adam, the man of dust; it is consequently the
Vital Spark, the informing element. Without Manas, or what is miscalled in
Levi's diagram Nephesch instead of Manas, "the reasoning Soul," or
mind, Atma-Buddhi are irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi
which is the plastic mediator, not Manas, "the intelligent medium between
the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary." But there are many such strange
and curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works -- a convincing
proof that its literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the
classification except in this one particular, in order to show the points of
agreement.
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We will now give in tabular form what
the very cautious Eliphas Levi says in explanation of his diagram, and what the
Esoteric Doctrine teaches -- and compare the two. Levi, too, makes a
distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics. (See "Histoire de la
Magic," pp. 388, 389.)
[[first column]]
Says Eliphas Levi, the Kabalist:--
KABALISTIC PNEUMATICS.
1. The Soul (or EGO) is a clothed
light; and this light is triple.
2. Neschamah -- "pure
Spirit."
3. Ruach -- the Soul or Spirit.
4. Nephesch -- plastic mediator.**
5. The garment of the Soul is the
rind (body) of the image (astral Soul).
6. The image is double, because it
reflects the good as the bad.
7. Imago, body.
-------
OCCULT PNEUMATICS.
As given by Eliphas Levi.
1. Nephesh is immortal because it
renews its life by the destruction of forms.
[But Nephesh, the "breath of
[[first column continued on next
page]]
[[second column]]
Say the Theosophists:--
ESOTERIC PNEUMATICS.
1. Ditto, for it is
Atma-Buddhi-Manas.
2. Ditto.*
3. Spiritual Soul.
4. Mediator between Spirit and its
Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man.
5. Correct.
6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. Why not
say that the astral reflects the good as well as the bad man; man, who is ever
tending to the upper triangle, or else disappears with the Quaternary.
7. Ditto, the earthly image.
-------
OCCULT PNEUMATICS.
As given by the Occultists.
1. Manas is immortal, because after
every new incarnation it adds to Atma-Buddhi something of itself, and
[[second column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eliphas Levi has, whether purposely
or otherwise, confused the numbers: with us his No. 2 is No. 1. (Spirit); and
by making of Nephesch both the plastic mediator and Life, he thus makes in
reality only six principles, because he repeats the first two.
** Esotericism teaches the same. But
Manas is not Nephesch; nor is the latter the astral, but the 4th principle, if
also the 2nd prana, for Nephesch is the "breath of life" in man, as
in beast or insect, of physical, material life, which has no spirituality in
it.
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[[first column continued from
previous page]]
life," is a misnomer and a
useless puzzle to the student.]
2. Ruach progresses by the evolution
of ideas (! ?).
3. Neschamah is progressive without
oblivion and destruction.
4. The soul has three dwellings.
5. These dwellings are: the plane of
the mortals: the Superior Eden; and the Inferior Eden.
6. The image (man) is a sphinx that
offers the riddle of birth.
7. The fatal image (the astral)
endows Nephesch with its aptitudes; but Ruach is able to substitute for this
(vitiated) Nephesch the image
[[first column continued on next
page]]
[[second column continued from
previous page]]
thus, assimilating itself to the
Monad, shares its immortality.
2. Buddhi becomes conscious by the
accretions it gets from Manas after every new incarnation and the death of man.
3. Atma neither progresses, forgets,
nor remembers. It does 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 (collectively, as the
upper Triad) lives on three planes, besides its fourth, the terrestrial sphere;
and it exists eternally on the highest of the three.
5. These dwellings are: Earth for the
physical man, or the animal Soul; Kama-loka (Hades, the Limbo) for the
disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the higher Triad.
6. Correct.
7. The astral through Kama (desire)
is ever drawing Manas down into the sphere of material passions and desires.
But if the better man
[[second column continued on next
page]]
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[[first column continued from
previous page]]
conquered in accordance with the
inspirations of Neschamah.
-------
[[second column continued from
previous page]]
or Manas tries to escape the fatal
attraction and turns its aspirations to Atma -- Spirit -- 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 know sufficiently the real tenet, or distorted it to
suit himself and his object. Thus he says again, treating upon the same
subject, and we, Occultists, answer the late Kabalist and his admirers:--
[[first column]]
1. The body is the mould of Nephesch;
Nephesch the mould of Ruach; Ruach the mould of the garments of Neschamah.
2. Light (the Soul) personifies in
clothing itself (with a body); and personality endures only when the garment is
perfect.
3. The angels aspire to become men; a
perfect man, a man-god is above all the angels.
4. Every 14,000 years the soul
rejuvenates and rests in the jubilean sleep of oblivion.
[[second column]]
1. The body follows the whims, good
or bad, of Manas; Manas tries to follow the light of Buddhi, but often fails.
Buddhi is the mould of the "garments" of Atma, because Atma is no
body, or shape, or anything, and because Buddhi is its vehicle only
figuratively.
2. The Monad becomes a personal ego
when it incarnates; and something remains of that personality through Manas,
when the latter is perfect enough to assimilate Buddhi. 3. Correct.
4. Within a period, "a great
age" or a day of Brahrna, 14 Manus reign; after which comes Pralaya when
all the Souls rest in Nirvana. (Souls = Egos).
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Such are the distorted copies of the
esoteric doctrine in the Kabala. But see also "The Primeval Manus of
Humanity" in Book II.
To return to Stanza VII.
(b) The well-known Kabalistic
aphorism runs:-- "A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; the beast, a
man; a man a spirit; and the spirit a god." The "spark" animates
all the kingdoms in turn before it enters into and informs divine man, between
whom and his predecessor, animal man, there is all the difference in the world.
Genesis begins its anthropology at the wrong end (evidently for a blind) and
lands nowhere.* Had it 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 whom after their pralayic sleep -- a sleep that gathers
the cyphers scattered on the Mayavic plane into One, as the separate globules
of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass -- the Logoi appear in their
totality as the first "male and female" or Adam Kadmon, the
"Fiat Lux" of the Bible, as we have already seen. But this transformation
did not take place on our Earth, nor on any material plane, but in the Spacial
Depths of the first differentiation of the eternal Root-matter. On our nascent
globe things proceed differently. The Monad or Jiva, as said in "Isis
Unveiled," vol. i., p. 302, is, first of all, shot down by the law of
Evolution into the lowest form of matter -- the mineral. After a sevenfold
gyration encased in the stone (or that which will become mineral and stone in
the Fourth Round), it creeps out of it, say, as a lichen. Passing thence,
through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed animal matter,
it has now reached the point in which it has become the germ, so to speak, of
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The introductory chapters of
Genesis were never meant to represent even a remote allegory of the creation of
our Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of some indefinite period in
the eternity, when successive attempts were being made by the law of evolution
at the formation of universes. The idea is plainly stated in the Zohar:
"There were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came into
existence, were formless, and were called Sparks. Thus, the smith, when
hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The sparks are the
primordial worlds, which could not continue because the Sacred Aged (Sephira)
had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne, or opposite sexes) of King and
Queen (Sephira and Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at his work." See
Zohar, "Idra Suta," Book iii., p. 292, b. The Supreme consulting with
the Architect of the world -- his Logos -- about creation. ("Isis
Unveiled," vol. ii., p. 421.)
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animal, that will become the physical
man. All this, up to the Third Round, is formless, as matter, and senseless, as
consciousness. For the Monad or Jiva per se cannot be even called spirit: it is
a ray, a breath of the ABSOLUTE, or the Absoluteness rather, and the Absolute
Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative finiteness,
is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material which will be
needed for its future human form, the monad requires (a) a spiritual model, or
prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and (b) an intelligent
consciousness to guide its evolution and progress, neither of which is
possessed by the homogeneous monad, or by senseless though living matter. The
Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the two middle
principles, which are the sentient life of the irrational animal and the Human
Soul, for the former is irrational without the latter. It is only when, from a
potential androgyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he
will be endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul, (Manas)
"the principle, or the intelligence, of the Elohim," to receive
which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil.
How is he to obtain all this? The Occult doctrine teaches that while the monad
is cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim -- or Pitris, the lower
Dhyan-Chohans -- are evolving pari passu with it on a higher and more spiritual
plane, descending also relatively into matter on their own plane of
consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the
incarnating senseless monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two
potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of
the "Heavenly Man" in space -- PERFECT MAN. In the Sankhya
philosophy, Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something impotent unless he
mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left alone, is --
senseless. But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though
one and the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are
on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress
in contrary directions -- Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter
ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance. Both
are inseparable, yet ever separated. In polarity, on the physical plane, two
like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive
are mutually attracted, so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other -- the two
poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe.
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Therefore, when the hour strikes for
Purusha to mount on Prakriti's shoulders for the formation of the Perfect Man
-- rudimentary man of the first 2 1/2 Races being only the first, gradually
evolving into the most perfect of mammals -- the Celestial
"Ancestors" (Entities from preceding worlds, called in India the
Sishta) step in on this our plane, as the Pitris had stepped in before them for
the formation of the physical or animal-man, and incarnate in the latter. Thus
the two processes -- for the two creations: the animal and the divine man --
differ greatly. The Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies, still more
ethereal and shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call
"doubles," or "astral forms," in their own likeness.* This
furnishes the Monad with its first dwelling, and blind matter with a model
around and upon which to build henceforth. But Man is still incomplete. From
Swayambhuva Manu (in Manu, Book I.), from whom descended the seven primitive
Manus or Prajapati, each of whom gave birth to a primitive race of men, down to
the Codex Nazareus, in which Karabtanos or Fetahil (blind concupiscent matter)
begets on his Mother, "Spiritus," seven figures, each of which stands
as the progenitor of one of the primaeval seven races -- this doctrine has left
its impress on every Archaic Scripture.
"Who forms Manu (the Man) and
who forms his body? The LIFE and the LIVES. Sin** and the MOON." Here Manu
stands for the spiritual, heavenly man, the real and non-dying EGO in us, which
is the direct emanation of the "One Life" or the Absolute Deity. As
to our outward physical bodies, the house of the tabernacle of the Soul, the
Doctrine teaches a strange lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained
and as rightly comprehended, it is only the exact Science of the future that is
destined to vindicate the theory fully.
It has been stated before now that
Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression
employed by Science, "inorganic substance," means simply that the
latent life slumbering in the molecules of so-called "inert matter"
is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom of even mineral dust is a LIFE,
though beyond our comprehension and perception, because it is outside the range
of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Read in Isis, vol. ii., pp.
297-303, the doctrine of the Codex Nazaraeus -- every tenet of our teaching is
found there under a different form and allegory.
** The word "Sin" is
curious, but has a particular Occult relation to the Moon, besides being its
Chaldean equivalent.
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laws known to those who reject
Occultism. "The very Atoms," says Tyndall, "seem instinct with a
desire for life." Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency "to
run into organic form"? Is it in any way explicable except according to
the teachings of Occult Science?
"The worlds, to the
profane," says a Commentary, "are built up of the known Elements. To
the conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves collectively a divine
Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and
countless crores of lives.* Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Is Pasteur unconsciously taking the
first step toward Occult Science in declaring that, if he dared express his
full idea upon this subject, he would say that the Organic cells are endowed
with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a
current of Oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off its
relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence of that gas?
"I would add," goes on Pasteur, "that the evolution of the germ
is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we must class
processes of fermentation"; and life, according to Claude Bernard and
Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there exist in
Nature Beings or Lives that can live and thrive without air, even on our globe,
was demonstrated by the same men of science. Pasteur found that many of the
lower lives, such as Vibriones, and some microbes and bacteria, could exist
without air, which, on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen
necessary for their multiplication from the various substances that surround
them. He calls them AErobes, living on the tissues of our matter when the
latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living whole (then called
very unscientifically by science "dead matter"), and Anaerobes. The
one kind binds oxygen, and contributes vastly to the destruction of animal life
and vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter later
on into the constitution of other organisms; the other destroys, or rather
annihilates finally, the so-called organic substance; ultimate decay being
impossible without their participation. Certain germ-cells, such as those of
yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will adapt
themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen from
substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The
cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate
fermentation. "Therefore the vegetable cell manifests in this case its
life as an anaerobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell form in this case
an exception"? asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows that in the
substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding sufficient oxygen
for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit-cell, and
Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur's idea of the formation of ferments found
its application and corroboration in the fact that Urea increases in the blood
during strangulation: LIFE therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and,
Occultism teaches us, it is also in the atom. Also see infra, at the close of
this Section.
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Reality: on that of manifested, hence
illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live and have their being
at the expense of every other life that they consume. Therefore they are named
the "DEVOURERS." . . . "Every visible thing in this Universe was
built by such LIVES, front conscious and divine primordial man down to the
unconscious agents that construct matter." . . . "From the ONE LIFE
formless and Uncreate, proceeds the Universe of lives. First was manifested
from the Deep (Chaos) cold luminous fire (gaseous light?) which formed the
curds in Space." (Irresolvable nebulae, perhaps?). . . . . . ." . . .
These fought, and a great heat was developed by the encountering and collision,
which produced rotation. Then came the first manifested MATERIAL, Fire, the hot
flames, the wanderers in heaven (comets); heat generates moist vapour; that
forms solid water (?); then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out
the luminous brightness of the pilgrims (comets?) and forms solid watery wheels
(MATTER globes). Bhumi (the Earth) appears with six sisters.* These produce by
their continuous motion the inferior fire, heat, and an aqueous mist, which
yields the third World-Element -- WATER; and from the breath of all
(atmospheric) AIR is born. These four are the four lives of the first four
periods (Rounds) of Manvantara. The three last will follow."
This means that every new Round
develops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science, -- which
rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into
constituents. If Nature is the "Ever-becoming" on the manifested
plane, then those Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to
evolve, progress, and increase to the Manvantaric end. Thus the First Round, we
are taught, developed but one Element, and a nature and humanity in what may be
called one aspect of Nature -- called by some, very unscientifically, though it
may be so de facto, "One-dimensional Space."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is a Vedic teaching that
"there are three Earths corresponding to three Heavens, and our Earth (the
fourth) is called Bhumi." This is the explanation given by our exoteric
Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning and allusion to it in the Vedas
is that it refers to our planetary chain, three "Earths" on the
descending arc, and three "heavens" which are the three Earths or
globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or spiritual arc: by the
first three we descend into matter, by the other three we ascend into Spirit;
the lower one, Bhumi, our Earth, forming the turning point, so to say, and
containing potentially as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. We shall treat
of this hereafter.
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The Second Round brought forth and
developed two Elements -- Fire and Earth -- and its humanity, adapted to this
condition of Nature, if we can give the name Humanity to beings living under
conditions unknown to men, was -- to use again a familiar phrase in a strictly
figurative sense (the only way in which it can be used correctly) -- "a
two-dimensional species." The processes of natural development which we
are now considering will at once elucidate and discredit the fashion of
speculating on the attributes of the two, three, and four or more
"dimensional Space;" but in passing, it is worth while to point out
the real significance of the sound but incomplete intuition that has prompted
-- among Spiritualists and Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for
the matter of that* -- the use of the modern expression, "the fourth
dimension of Space." To begin with, of course, the superficial absurdity
of assuming that Space itself is measurable in any direction is of little
consequence. The familiar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form
-- the "Fourth dimension of MATTER in Space."** But it is an unhappy
phrase even thus expanded, because while it is perfectly true that the progress
of evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of matter,
those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous than the
three dimensions. The faculties, or what is perhaps the best available term,
the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct relation always to
the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion (molecular motion),
taste, and smell, corresponding to the existing senses of man, and by the time
that it fully develops the next characteristic -- let us call it for the moment
PERMEABILITY -- this will correspond to the next sense of man -- let us call it
"NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE;" thus, when some bold thinkers have been
thirsting for a fourth dimension to explain the passage of matter through
matter, and the production of knots upon an endless cord, what they were really
in want of, was a sixth characteristic of matter. The three dimensions belong
really but to one attribute or characteristic of matter -- extension; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor Zollner's theory has been
more than welcomed by several Scientists --who are Spiritualists -- Professors
Butlerof and Wagner, of St. Petersburg, for instance.
** "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.)
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popular common sense justly rebels
against the idea that under any condition of things there can be more than
three of such dimensions as length, breadth, and thickness. These terms, and
the term "dimension" itself, all belong to one plane of thought, to
one stage of evolution, to one characteristic of matter. So long as there are
foot-rules within the resources of Kosmos, to apply to matter, so long will
they be able to measure it three ways and no more; and from the time the idea
of measurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it has been
possible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But these
considerations do not militate in any way against the certainty that in the
progress of time -- as the faculties of humanity are multiplied -- so will the
characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the expression is far
more incorrect than even the familiar one of the "Sun rising or setting."
We now return to the consideration of
material evolution through the Rounds. Matter in the second Round, it has been
stated, may be figuratively referred to as two-dimensional. But here another
caveat must be entered. That loose and figurative expression may be regarded --
in one plane of thought, as we have just seen -- as equivalent to the second
characteristic of matter corresponding to the second perceptive faculty or
sense of man. But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned with the processes
going on within the limits of a single Round. The succession of primary aspects
of Nature with which the succession of Rounds is concerned, has to do, as
already indicated, with the development of the "Elements" (in the
Occult sense) -- Fire, Air, Water,* Earth. We are only in the fourth Round, and
our catalogue so far stops short. The centres of consciousness (destined to
develop into humanity as we know it) of the third Round arrived at a perception
of the third Element Water.** Those of the fourth Round have added
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The order in which these Elements
are placed above is the correct one for esoteric purposes and in the Secret
Teachings. Milton was right when he spoke of the "Powers of Fire, Air,
Water, Earth"; the Earth, such as we know it now, had no existence before
the 4th Round, hundreds of million years ago, the commencement of our
geological Earth. The globe was "fiery, cool and radiant as its ethereal
men and animals during the first Round," says the Commentary, uttering a
contradiction or paradox in the opinion of our present Science; "luminous
and more dense and heavy during the second Round; watery during the
Third!" Thus are the elements reversed.
** If we had to frame our conclusions
according to the data furnished to us by the [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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earth as a state of matter to their
stock as well as the three other elements in their present transformation. In
short, none of the so-called elements were, in the three preceding Rounds, as
they are now. For all we know, FIRE may have been pure AKASA, the first Matter
of the Magnum Opus of the Creators and "Builders," that Astral Light
which the paradoxical Eliphas Levi calls in one breath "the body of the
Holy Ghost," and in the next "Baphomet," the "Androgyne
Goat of Mendes"*; AIR, simply
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] geologists, then we would say that there was no real water -- even
during the Carboniferous period. We are told that gigantic masses of carbon,
which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere as Carbonic Acid, were absorbed
by plants, while a large proportion of that gas was mixed in the water. Now, if
this be so, and we have to believe that all the Carbonic Acid which went to
compose those plants that formed bituminous coal, lignite, etc., and went
towards the formation of limestone, and so on, that all this was at that period
in the atmosphere in gaseous form, then, there must have been seas and oceans
of liquid carbonic acid? But how then could the carboniferous period be
preceded by the Devonian and Silurian ages -- those of Fishes and Molluscs --
on that assumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have exceeded several
hundred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How could organisms, even
so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand that? There is a
curious work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he shows some strange
contradictions and confusions in the theories of his colleagues, and which we
recommend to the reader's attention.
* Eliphas Levi shows it very truly
"a force in Nature," by means of which "a single man who can
master it . . . might throw the world into confusion and transform its
face"; for it is the "great Arcanum of transcendent Magic." Quoting
the words of the great Western Kabalist in their translated form (see The
Mysteries of Magic, by A. E. Waite), we may explain them perhaps the better by
the occasional addition of a word or two to show the difference between Western
and Eastern explanations of the same subject. The Author says of the great
Magic Agent -- "This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached
from the (Central or 'Spiritual') Sun's splendour . . . fixed by the weight of
the atmosphere (?!) and the power of central attraction . . . the Astral Light,
this electromagnetic 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 Kronos --
"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 Levi 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 archaeus is now discovered by, and
only for one man -- Mr. J. W. Keeley, of [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Nitrogen, "the breath of the
Supporters of the Heavenly Dome," as the Mohammedan mystics call it;
WATER, that primordial fluid which was required, according to Moses, to make a
living soul with. And this may account for the flagrant discrepancies and
unscientific statements found in Genesis. Separate the first from the second
chapter; read the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the latter as that
of the far younger Jehovists; still one finds, if one reads between the lines,
the same order in which things created appear -- namely, Fire (light), Air,
Water, and MAN (or the Earth). For the sentence: "In the beginning God
created Heaven and Earth" is a mistranslation; it is not "Heaven and
Earth," but the duplex or dual Heaven, the upper and the lower Heavens, or
the separation of primordial substance that was light in its upper and dark in its
lower portions -- or the manifested Universe -- in its duality of the invisible
(to the senses) and the visible to our perceptions. God divided the light from
the Darkness (v. 4); and then made the firmament, air (5), "a firmament in
the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,"
(6), i.e., "the waters which were under the firmament (our manifested
visible Universe) from the waters above the firmament," or the (to us)
invisible planes of being. In the second chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs
are created before water, just as in the first, light is produced before the
Sun. "God made the Earth and the Heavens and every plant of the field
before it was in the Earth and every herb of the field before it grew; for the
Elohim ('gods') had not caused it to rain upon the earth, etc." (v. 5) --
an absurdity unless the esoteric explanation is accepted. The plants were
created before they were in the earth -- for there was no earth then such as it
is now; and the herb of the field was in existence before it grew as it does
now in the fourth Round.
Discussing and explaining the nature
of the invisible Elements and the "primordial fire" mentioned above,
Eliphas Levi calls it invariably the "Astral Light." It is the
"grand Agent Magique" with him; undeniably it is so, but -- only so
far as Black Magic is concerned, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Philadelphia. For others, however, it is discovered, yet must remain
almost useless. "So far shalt thou go. . . ."
All the above is as practical as it
is correct, save one error, which we will explain in the text further on.
Eliphas Levi commits a great blunder in always identifying the Astral Light
with what we call Akasa. What it really is will be given in Part II. of Vol.
II.
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on the lowest planes of what we call
Ether, the noumenon of which is Akasa; and even this would be held incorrect by
orthodox Occultists. The "Astral Light" is simply the older
"sidereal Light" of Paracelsus; and to say that "everything which
exists has been evolved from it, and it preserves and reproduces all
forms," as he writes, is to enunciate truth only in the second
proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was evolved through
(or via) it, it is not the astral light. The latter is not the container of all
things but only the reflector, at best, of this all. Eliphas Levi 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; while even the Puranic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion.
No Hindu has ever mistaken Prakriti -- the Astral Light being only above the
lowest plane of Prakriti, the material Kosmos -- for the "immortal
Spirit." Prakriti is ever called Maya, illusion, and is doomed to
disappear with the rest, the gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya; for it
is shown that Akasa is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can
it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the
Puranas, have occasionally confused Akasa with Prakriti, with Ether, and even
with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated
the term Akasa by "Ether" (Wilson, for instance), finding it called
"the material cause of sound" possessing, moreover, this one single
property (Vishnu Purana), have ignorantly imagined it to be
"material," in the physical sense. True, again, that if the
characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing material or physical,
and therefore conditioned and temporary can be immortal -- according to
metaphysics and philosophy -- it would follow that Akasa is neither infinite
nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhana
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(primeval matter) and sound, as a
property, have been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhana) being certainly synonymous
with Mulaprakriti and Akasa, and the latter (sound) with the Verbum, the Word
or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the following
sentences in Vishnu Purana: "In the beginning there was neither day nor
night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light. . . . . Save only ONE,
unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahma and Pums (Spirit) and
Pradhana (primordial matter)." . . . . (Book I., ch. ii.).
Now, what is Pradhana, if it is not
Mulaprakriti, the root of all, in another aspect? For Pradhana, though said
further on to merge into the Deity as everything else does, in order to leave
the ONE absolute during the Pralaya, yet is held as infinite and immortal. The Commentator
describes the Deity as: "One Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT, was,"
and interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a derivative word
used attributively, i.e., like something conjoined with Pradhana.* Hence
Pradhana even in the Puranas is an aspect of Parabrahmam, not an evolution, and
must be the same as the Vedantic Mulaprakriti. "Prakriti in its primary
state is Akasa," says a Vedantin scholar (see "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 169). It is almost abstract Nature.
Akasa, then, is Pradhana in another
form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible agent, courted even by
physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as said, the noumenon of the
seven-fold differentiated Prakriti** -- the ever immaculate "Mother"
of the fatherless Son, who becomes "Father" on the lower manifested
plane. For MAHAT is the first product of Pradhana, or Akasa, and Mahat --
Universal intelligence "whose characteristic property is Buddhi" --
is no other than the Logos, for he is called "Eswara" Brahma, Bhava,
etc. (See Linga Purana, sec. lxx. 12 et seq.; and Vayu Purana, but especially
the former Purana -- prior, section viii., 67-74). He is, in short, the
"Creator" or the divine mind in creative operation, "the cause
of all things." He is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The student has to note, moreover,
that the Purana is a dualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this
respect, far more will be found, from an esoteric standpoint, in Sankhya, and
even in the Manava-dharma-Sastra, however much the latter differs from the
former.
** In the Sankhya philosophy, the
seven Prakritis or "productive productions" are Mahat, Ahamkara, and
the five tanmatras. See "Sankhya-karika," III., and the Commentary
thereon.
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the "first-born" of whom
the Puranas tell us that "Mahat and matter are the inner and outer
boundaries of the Universe," or, in our language, the negative and the
positive poles of dual nature (abstract and concrete), for the Purana adds:
"In this manner -- as were the seven forms (principles) of Prakriti
reckoned from Mahat to Earth -- so at the time of pralaya (pratyahara) these
seven successively re-enter into each other. The egg of Brahma (Sarva-mandala)
is dissolved with its seven zones (dwipa), seven oceans, seven regions,
etc." (Vishnu Purana, Book vi., ch. iv.)*
These are the reasons why the
Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to Akasa, or to call it
Ether. "In my Father's house are many mansions," may be contrasted
with the occult saying, "In our Mother's house there are seven
mansions," or planes, the lowest of which is above and around us -- the
Astral Light.
The elements, whether simple or
compound, could not have remained the same since the commencement of the
evolution of our chain. Everything in the Universe progresses steadily in the
Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller cycles. Nature
is never stationary during manvantara, as it is ever becoming,** not simply
being; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their
organisms to the then reigning Elements, and therefore those Elements were then
fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will only
be in the next, or fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether -- the gross body
of Akasa, if it can be called even that --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* No use to say so to the Hindus, who
know their Puranas 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 Purana he is guilty of the most ludicrous
contradictions and errors. So on this identical subject of the seven Prakritis
or the seven zones of Brahma's egg, the two accounts differ totally. In Vol. 1,
page 40, the egg is said to be externally invested by seven envelopes -- Wilson
comments: "by Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and Ahamkara" (which last word
does not exist in the Sanskrit texts); and in vol. v., p. 198, of the same
Vishnu Purana it is written, "in this manner were the seven forms of
nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat to Earth" (?). Between Mahat or
Maha-Buddhi and "Water, etc.," the difference is very considerable.
** 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) objectivises himself as Nature, and again rises out of
it."
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will, by becoming a familiar fact of
Nature to all men, as air is familiar to us now, cease to be as at present
hypothetical, and also an "agent" for so many things. And only during
that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Akasa
subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, a
partial familiarity with the characteristic of matter -- permeability -- which
should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to
develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next element added to
our resources in the next Round, permeability will become so manifest a
characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this will seem to man's
perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more.
Let us return to the life-cycle now.
Without entering at length upon the description given of the higher LIVES, we
must direct our attention at present simply to the earthly beings and the earth
itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the first Round by the
"Devourers" which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other
lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present
stage of the world, the aerobes do, when, undermining and loosening the
chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter and generate
substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the
so-called Azoic age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when
the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a
particle or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in
it, however latent and unconscious. "Whatsoever quits the Laya State,
becomes active life; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical
solvent of Life); Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE, which is
neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book of
Dzyan, Comm. III., par. 18). . . . "Spirit is the first differentiation of
(and in) SPACE; and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is
neither Spirit nor matter -- that is IT -- the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and
Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the ONE LIFE or the
Intra-Cosmic Breath."
Once more we will say -- like must
produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic atom whether single or
complex, and there is life
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even in laya just as a man in a
profound cataleptic state -- to all appearance a corpse -- is still a living
being.
When the "Devourers" (in
whom the men of science are invited to see, with some show of reason, atoms of
the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to this);
when the "Devourers," we say, have differentiated "the
fire-atoms" by a peculiar process of segmentation, the latter become
life-germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion and affinity.
Then the life-germs produce lives of another kind, which work on the structure
of our globes. * * * *
Thus, in the first Round, the globe,
having been built by the primitive fire-lives, i.e., formed into a sphere --
had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold brightness, nor form nor
colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one
Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became now in
our Round the fire we know throughout the system. The Earth was in her first
rupa, the essence of which is the Akasic principle named *** "that which
is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Eliphas Levi
calls "the imagination of Nature,"** probably to avoid giving it its
correct name, as others do.
"It is through and from the
radiations of the seven bodies of the seven orders of Dhyanis, that the seven
discrete quantities (Elements), whose motion and harmonious Union produce the
manifested Universe of Matter, are born." (Commentary.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Speaking of it in his Preface to
the "History of Magic" Eliphas Levi says: "It is through this
Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from
it -- that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it -- that we have our dreams;
and that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place. .
. . . Astral Light, acting under the impulsion of powerful wills, destroys,
coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things. . . . God created it on
that day when he said: Fiat Lux, and it is directed by the Egregores, i.e., the
chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and action." Eliphas
Levi ought to have added that the astral light, or primordial substance, if
matter at all, is that which, called Light, LUX, esoterically explained, is the
body of those Spirits themselves, and their very essence. Our physical light is
the manifestation on our plane and the reflected radiance of the Divine Light
emanating from the collective body of those who are called the "LIGHTS"
and the "FLAMES." But no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of
heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox chase another
in the same sentence and in such flowing language, as Eliphas Levi. He leads
his reader through the most lovely, gorgeously blooming valleys, to strand him
after all on a desert and barren rocky island.
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The Second Round brings into
manifestation the second element AIR, that element, the purity of which would
ensure continuous life to him who would use it. There have been two occultists
only in Europe who have discovered and even partially applied it in practice,
though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern
Initiates. The ozone of the modern chemists is poison compared with the real
universal solvent which could never be thought of unless it existed in nature.
"From the second Round, Earth -- hitherto a foetus in the matrix of Space
-- began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient life, its
second principle. The second corresponds to the sixth (principle); the second
is life continuous, the other, temporary."
The Third Round developed the third
Principle -- WATER; while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic
form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living
on. "Bhumi" has reached her fourth principle. To this it may be
objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all.
Earth will reach her true ultimate form -- (inversely in this to man) -- her
body shell -- only toward the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round.
Eugenius Philalethes was right when he assured his readers on his word of
honour that no one had yet seen the Earth (i.e., MATTER in its essential form).
Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic state -- the astral body of desires of
Ahamkara, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane. . . .
It is not molecularly constituted
matter -- least of all the human body (sthulasarira) -- that is the grossest of
all our "principles," but verily the middle principle, the real
animal centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and
medium through which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual
theosophist will understand my real meaning. Thus the idea that the human
tabernacle is built by countless lives, just in the same way as the rocky crust
of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic. Nor can
Science oppose the occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will
ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the
doctrine.
(c) Science teaches us that the
living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal are swarming with
bacteria of a hundred various
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kinds; that from without we are
threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from
within by leucomaines, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But Science never yet
went so far as to assert with the occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as
those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of
such beings; which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far, as
regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to
discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and
physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined to open
the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths. With every day, the identity
between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even
between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man -- is more and more clearly
shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be
identical, chemical science may well say that there is no difference between
the matter which composes the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult
doctrine is far more explicit. It says:--- Not only the chemical compounds are
the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the
bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and
of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle -- whether you call
it organic or inorganic -- is a life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe
is both life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by
aggregation universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the
transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms and expels
those souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is
self-generating and self-destroying; it brings into being, and annihilates,
that mystery of mysteries -- the living body of man, animal, or plant, every
second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and
ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent
and maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious LIFE, represented collectively
by countless myriads of lives, that follows in its own sporadic way, the
hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances as
well as those it finds impressed in the aura of the generators of every future
human being, a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere.
For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern science
begins to find out that ptomaine (the alkaloid poison generated by decaying
matter and corpses -- a life also) extracted
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with the help of volatile ether,
yields a smell as strong and equal to that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but
that free from oxygen, these alkaloids yield either a most sickening,
disgusting smell, or the most agreeable aroma which recalls that of the most
delicately scented flowers. And it is suspected that such blossoms owe their
agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine; the venomous essence of certain
mushrooms (fungi) being nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India,
the most deadly of serpents.* Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has
to find their PRIMARY CAUSES; and this it can never do without the help of the
old sciences, of alchemy, occult botany and physics. We are taught that every
physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena; diseases -- nay,
life itself -- or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain
conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to
act in that body; that all this is due to those unseen CREATORS and DESTROYERS
that are called in such a loose and general way, microbes.** Such
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The French savants Arnaud, Gautier,
and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid
as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus of
Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called
ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals, and
plants. The same savant, Gautier, discovered an alkaloid in the fresh meat of
an ox and in its brains, and a venom which he calls Xanthocreatinine similar to
the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva of reptiles. It is the
muscular tissues, as being the most active organ in the animal economy, that
are suspected of being the generators or factors of venoms, having the same
importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, which venoms are
the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it is not yet fully
determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal system of living
beings without the participation and interference of microbes, it is
ascertained that the animal does produce venomous substances in its
physiological or living state.
** It might be supposed that these
"fiery lives" and the microbes of science are identical. This is not
true. The "fiery lives" are the seventh and highest subdivision of
the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the
Universe, though only on that plane. The microbes of science are the first and
lowest sub-division on the second plane -- that of material prana (or life).
The physical body of man undergoes a complete change of structure every seven
years, and its destruction and preservation are due to the alternate function
of the fiery lives as "destroyers" and "builders." They are
"builders" by sacrificing themselves in the form of vitality to
restrain the destructive influence of the microbes, and, by supplying the
microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under that restraint to build
up the material body and its cells. They are "destroyers" also when
that restraint is [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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experimenters as Pasteur are the best
friends and helpers of the Destroyers and the worst enemies of the Creators --
if the latter were not at the same time destroyers too. However it may be, one
thing is sure in this: The knowledge of these primary causes and of the
ultimate essence of every element, of its lives, their functions, properties,
and conditions of change -- constitutes the basis of MAGIC. Paracelsus was,
perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the last centuries since the
Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not a criminal hand put an
end to his life, years before the time allotted him by Nature, physiological
Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than it now has.
(d) But what has the Moon to do in
all this? we may be asked. What have "Fish, Sin and Moon" in the
apocalyptic saying of the Stanza to do in company with the
"Life-microbes"? With the latter nothing, except availing themselves
of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with divine perfect man everything,
since "Fish, Sin and Moon" make conjointly the three symbols of the
immortal Being.
This is all that can be given. Nor
does the writer pretend to know more of this strange symbol than may be
inferred about it from exoteric religions; from the mystery perhaps, which
underlies the Matsya (fish)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] removed and the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are
left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man's
life (the first five periods of seven years each) the "fiery lives"
are indirectly engaged in the process of building up man's material body; life
is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and increase.
After this period is passed the age of retrogression commences, and, the work
of the "fiery lives" exhausting their strength, the work of destruction
and decrease also commences.
An analogy between cosmic events in
the descent of spirit into matter for the first half of a manvantara (planetary
as human) and its ascent at the expense of matter in the second half, may here
be traced. These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, but
the restraining influence of the "fiery lives" on the lowest
sub-division of the second plane -- the microbes -- is confirmed by the fact
mentioned in the foot-note on Pasteur (vide supra) that the cells of the organs,
when they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to
that condition and form ferments, which, by absorbing oxygen from substances
coming in contact with them, ruin the latter. Thus the process is commenced by
one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its vitality when the supply is
insufficient; and the ruin so commenced steadily progresses.
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Avatar of Vishnu, the Chaldean Oannes
-- the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and
running throughout the two Testaments in the personages of Joshua "Son of
the Fish (Nun)" and Jesus; the allegorical "Sin" or Fall of
Spirit into matter, and the Moon -- in so far as it relates to the
"Lunar" ancestors, the Pitris.
For the present it may be as well to
remind the reader that while the Moon-goddesses were connected in every
mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of the lunar
influence on women and conception, the occult and actual connection of our
satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to physiology, which regards
every popular practice in this reference as gross superstition. As it is
useless to discuss them in detail, we may only stop at present to discuss the
lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the
most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism -- the basis of Christianity. With
the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the
esotericism of the Bible, interpreted Kabalistically, shows undeniably the Holy
of Holies in the temple to be only the symbol of the womb. This is now proven
beyond doubt and cavil, by the numerical reading of the Bible in general, and
of Genesis especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews
from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies was, and with the latter
is to this day, symbolised by the King's chamber in the Great Pyramid (see
"Source of Measures") and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hinduism. To
make the whole clearer and to show at the same time the enormous difference in
the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols
between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists we refer the
reader to Book II., "The Holy of Holies."*
-------
STANZA VII. -- Continued.
6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN (primitive, or
the first man) THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES
MORE
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Phallic worship has developed only
with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the symbols. It was the last
and most fatal turning point from the highway of truth and divine knowledge
into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification
and hierarchic ambition.
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STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE
(re-incarnation) (a). THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY . .
. .
(a) This sentence: "The thread
between the silent watcher and his shadow (man) becomes stronger" -- with
every re-incarnation -- is another psychological mystery, that will find its
explanation in Book II. For the present it will suffice to say that the
"Watcher" and his "Shadows" -- the latter numbering as many
as there are re-incarnations for the monad -- are one. The Watcher, or the
divine prototype, is at the upper rung of the ladder of being; the shadow, at
the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral turpitude
breaks the connection and runs loose and "astray into the lunar path"
-- to use the Occult expression -- is an individual Dhyan Chohan, distinct from
others, a kind of spiritual individuality of its own, during one special
Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Atman) is one, of course, with Paramatma
(the one Universal Spirit), but the vehicle (Vahan) it is enshrined in, the
Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyan-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; in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the
esoteric tenet.
-------
STANZA VII. -- Continued.
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 VAHAN (vehicle) TO THE DAY, "BE WITH
US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND ME (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 (man will merge into his Dhyan Chohan) myself and others,
thyself and me," as the Stanza has it -- means this: In Paranirvana --
when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even
the spiritual Ego(s) to their original principle -- the Past, Present, and even
Future
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Humanities, like all things, will be
one and the same. Everything will have re-entered the Great Breath. In other
words, everything will be "merged in Brahma" or the divine unity.
Is this annihilation, as some think?
Or Atheism, as other critics -- the worshippers of a personal deity and
believers in an unphilosophical paradise -- are inclined to suppose? Neither.
It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism in that
which is spirituality of a most refined character. To see in Nirvana
annihilation amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless sleep --
one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the
sleeper's Higher Self is in its original state of absolute consciousness during
those hours -- that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers only to
one side of the question -- the most material; since re-absorption is by no
means such a "dreamless sleep," but, on the contrary, absolute
existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language
is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a
comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions
of the soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine monad. Nor is the
individuality -- nor even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind
-- lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless -- from a human standpoint
-- the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the
same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher
plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind cannot in
its present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach this plane of
thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and
Eternity.
(b) The "Watchers" reign
over man during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent
yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the
Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes (see Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the
priests to Solon), the incarnated Dhyanis of a lower order, up to King Menes
and the human kings of other nations; all were recorded carefully. In the views
of symbologists this Mythopoeic Age is of course only regarded as a fairy tale.
But since traditions and even Chronicles of such dynasties of divine Kings --
of gods reigning over men followed by dynasties of Heroes or Giants -- exist in
the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples
under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast
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oceans and belong to different
hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the
Chaldeans, could have worked out the same "fairy tales" in the same
order of events.* However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history -- which, for
being esoteric and traditional, is none the less more reliable than profane
history -- we are as entitled to our beliefs as anyone else, whether
religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyani-Buddhas of the
two higher groups, namely, the "Watchers" or the
"Architects," furnished the many and various races with divine kings
and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and
the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their
vehicles of the lower Kingdoms -- and who had, therefore, lost every
recollection of their divine origin -- the great spiritual truths of the
transcendental worlds. (See Book II., "Divine Dynasties.")
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the
Watchers descended on Earth and reigned over men -- "who are
themselves." The reigning kings had finished their cycle on Earth and
other worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future manvantaras they will have
risen to higher systems than our planetary world; and it is the Elect of our
Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will
take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness
the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a mankind
whose Monads may now yet be imprisoned -- semi-conscious -- in the most
intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be
animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world.
Thus proceed the cycles of the
septenary evolution, in Septennial nature; the Spiritual or divine; the psychic
or semi-divine; the intellectual, the passional, the instinctual, or
cognitional; the semi-corporeal and the purely material or physical natures.
All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a
double, centrifugal and centripetal way, one in their ultimate essence, seven
in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is the one depending upon and
subservient to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the "Sacred Mysteries
among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago," by Auguste 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 Maya
and the Egyptians are almost identical.
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our five physical senses.* Thus far,
for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm
of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests
periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless lives,
the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that through the Ever-Becoming,
every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the
intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter
in full generation, and then back again, reascending at each new period higher
and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach through individual
merits and efforts that plane where it re-becomes the one unconditioned ALL.
But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary "Road" hedged
in by thorns, that "goes down first, then --
Winds up hill all the way
Yes, to the very end . . . . ."
Starting upon the long journey
immaculate; descending more and more into sinful matter, and having connected
himself with every atom in manifested Space -- the Pilgrim, having struggled
through and suffered in every form of life and being, is only at the bottom of
the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified
himself with collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own image. In order
to progress upwards and homewards, the "God" has now to ascend the
weary uphill path of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of
self-conscious existence. Like Visvakarman he has to sacrifice himself to
himself in order to redeem all creatures, to resurect from the many into the
One Life. Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the
incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana he reigns
unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again a the next
"coming," which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter
sense as the second advent, and the other as the last "Kalki Avatar."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Which are in truth seven as shown
later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads.
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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, Theosophist, 1881.)
THE first of these Seven chapters has
been attempted and is now finished. However incomplete and feeble as an
exposition, it is, at any rate, an approximation -- using the word in a
mathematical sense -- to that which is the oldest basis for all the subsequent
Cosmogonies. The attempt to render in a European tongue the grand panorama of
the ever periodically recurring Law -- impressed upon the plastic minds of the
first races endowed with Consciousness by those who reflected the same from the
Universal Mind -- is daring, for no human language, save the Sanskrit -- which
is that of the Gods -- can do so with any degree of adequacy. But the failures
in this work must be forgiven for the sake of the motive.
As a whole, neither the foregoing nor
what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is not taught in any of the six
Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their synthesis -- the
seventh, which is the Occult doctrine. It is not traced on any crumbling
papyrus of Egypt, nor is it any longer graven on Assyrian tile or granite wall.
The Books of the Vedanta (the last word of human knowledge) give out but the
metaphysical aspect of this world-Cosmogony; and their priceless thesaurus, the
Upanishads -- Upa-ni-shad being a compound word meaning "the conquest of
ignorance by the revelation of secret, spiritual knowledge" -- require now
the additional possession of a Master-key to enable the student to get at their
full meaning. The reason for this I venture to state here as I learned it from
a Master.
The name, "Upanishads," is
usually translated "esoteric doctrine." These treatises form part of
the Sruti or "revealed knowledge," Revelation, in short, and are
generally attached to the Brahmana
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portion of the Vedas,* as their third
division. There are over 150 Upanishads enumerated by, and known to,
Orientalists, who credit the oldest with being written probably about 600 years
B.C.; but of genuine texts there does not exist a fifth of the number. The
Upanishads are to the Vedas what the Kabala is to the Jewish Bible. They treat
of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts. They speak of
the origin of the Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as
also of the metaphysical connection of mind and matter. In a few words: They
CONTAIN the beginning and the end of all human knowledge, but they have now
ceased to REVEAL it, since the day of Buddha. If it were otherwise, the
Upanishads could not be called esoteric, since they are now openly attached to
the Sacred Brahmanical books, which have, in our present age, become accessible
even to the Mlechchhas (out-castes) and the European Orientalists. One thing in
them -- and this in all the Upanishads -- invariably and constantly points to
their ancient origin, and proves (a) that they were written, in some of their
portions, before the caste system became the tyrannical institution which it
still is; and (b) that half of their contents have been eliminated, while some
of them were rewritten and abridged. "The great Teachers of the higher
Knowledge and the Brahmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya
(military caste) kings to become their pupils." As Cowell pertinently
remarks, the Upanishads "breathe an entirely different spirit" (from
other Brahmanical writings), "a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier
work except in the Rig Veda hymns themselves." The second fact is
explained by a tradition recorded in one of the MSS. on Buddha's life. It says
that the Upanishads were originally attached to their Brahmanas after the
beginning of a reform, which led to the exclusiveness of the present caste
system among the Brahmins, 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 chelas who were preparing for their initiation.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* . . . "The Vedas have a
distinct dual meaning -- one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the
other indicated by the metre and the swara -- intonation -- which are as the
life of the Vedas. . . . Learned pundits and philologists of course deny that
swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the
mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its most profound
secrets." (T. Subba Row, Five Years of Theosophy, p. 154.)
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This lasted so long as the Vedas and
the Brahmanas remained in the sole and exclusive keeping of the temple-Brahmins
-- while no one else had the right to study or even read them outside of the
sacred caste. Then came Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu. After learning the
whole of the Brahmanical wisdom in the Rahasya or the Upanishads, and finding
that the teachings differed little, if at all, from those of the "Teachers
of Life" inhabiting the snowy ranges of the Himalaya,* the Disciple of the
Brahmins, feeling indignant because the sacred wisdom was thus withheld from
all but the Brahmins, determined to save the whole world by popularizing it.
Then it was that the Brahmins, seeing that their sacred knowledge and Occult
wisdom was falling into the hands of the "Mlechchhas," abridged the
texts of the Upanishads, originally containing thrice the matter of the Vedas
and the Brahmanas together, without altering, however, one word of the texts.
They simply detached from the MSS. the most important portions containing the
last word of the Mystery of Being. The key to the Brahmanical secret code
remained henceforth with the initiates alone, and the Brahmins were thus in a
position to publicly deny the correctness of Buddha's teaching by appealing to
their Upanishads, silenced for ever on the chief questions. Such is the
esoteric tradition beyond the Himalayas.
Sri Sankaracharya, the greatest
Initiate living in the historical ages, wrote many a Bhashya on the Upanishads.
But his original treatises, as there are reasons to suppose, have not yet
fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for they are too jealously preserved
in his maths (monasteries, mathams). And there are still weightier reasons to
believe that the priceless Bhashyas (Commentaries) on the esoteric doctrine of
the Brahmins, by their greatest expounder, will remain for ages yet a dead
letter to most of the Hindus, except the Smartava Brahmins. This sect, founded
by Sankaracharya, (which is still very powerful in Southern India) is now
almost the only one to produce students who have preserved sufficient knowledge
to comprehend the
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]]
* 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 years 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.
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dead letter of the Bhashyas. The
reason of this is that they alone, I am informed, have occasionally real
Initiates at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the
"Sringa-giri," in the Western Ghats of Mysore. On the other hand,
there is no sect in that desperately exclusive caste of the Brahmins, more
exclusive than is the Smartava; and the reticence of its followers to say what
they may know of the Occult sciences and the esoteric doctrine, is only
equalled by their pride and learning.
Therefore the writer of the present
statement must be prepared beforehand to meet with great opposition and even
the denial of such statements as are brought forward in this work. Not that any
claim to infallibility, or to perfect correctness in every detail of all that
which is herein said, was ever put forward. Facts are there, and they can
hardly be denied. But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects
treated, and the almost insurmountable limitations of the English tongue (as of
all other European languages) to express certain ideas, it is more than
probable that the writer has failed to present the explanations in the best and
in the clearest form; yet all that could be done was done under every adverse
circumstance, and this is the utmost that can be expected of any writer.
Let us recapitulate and show, by the
vastness of the subjects expounded, how difficult, if not impossible, it is to
do them full justice.
(1.) The Secret Doctrine is the
accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous
and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is
the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually
occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to
set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are
all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze
of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the
soul of things there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have
perceived but the external work of form. But modern science believes not in the
"soul of things," and hence will reject the whole system of ancient
cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one
or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering
thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to
test and to verify the
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traditions passed orally by one early
race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched
over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the "Wise Men" of
the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and
shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How
did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every
department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great
adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental,
psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree. No vision
of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions --
so obtained as to stand as independent evidence -- of other adepts, and by
centuries of experiences.
(2.) The fundamental Law in that
system, the central point from which all emerged, around and toward which all
gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One
homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.
. . . "Some few, whose lamps
shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause to nature's
secret head,
And found that one first Principle
must be. . . ."
It is called
"Substance-Principle," for it becomes "substance" on the
plane of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a
"principle" in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and
invisible SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains
all and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of the
System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.
(See in chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial Substance, and Divine Thought.")
(3.) The Universe is the periodical
manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. To call it "essence,"
however, is to sin against the very spirit of the philosophy. For though the
noun may be derived in this case from the verb esse, "to be," yet IT
cannot be identified with a being of any kind, that can be conceived by human
intellect. IT is best described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both.
"Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti" are One, in reality, yet two in the
Universal conception of the manifested, even in the conception of the One
Logos, its first manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in the
"Notes on the Bhagavadgita" shows, IT appears from the objective
standpoint of
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the One Logos as Mulaprakriti and not
as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not the one REALITY hidden behind, which is
unconditioned and absolute.
(4.) The Universe is called, with
everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral
life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of
the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its
evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a
philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real
enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.
(5.) Everything in the Universe,
throughout all its kingdoms, is CONSCIOUS: i.e., endowed with a consciousness
of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that
because we do not perceive any signs -- which we can recognise -- of
consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness
exists there. There is no such thing as either "dead" or
"blind" matter, as there is no "Blind" or
"Unconscious" Law. These find no place among the conceptions of Occult
philosophy. The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for it the
noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts; it
resembles therein the mediaeval Nominalists, for whom it was the Universals
that were the realities and the particulars which existed only in name and
human fancy.
(6.) The Universe is worked and
guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth;
and man -- the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm -- is the living
witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that every
external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or
mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or
volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in
man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given
through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested
Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost
endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to
perform, and who -- whether we give to them one name or another, and call them
Dhyan-Chohans or Angels -- are "messengers" in the sense only that
they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their
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respective degrees of consciousness
and intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits without any of the earthly
alloy "which time is wont to prey upon" is only to indulge in
poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a
man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They
are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ morally from the terrestrial
human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only in that they are
devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human emotional nature -- two
purely earthly characteristics. The former, or the "perfected," have
become free from those feelings, because (a) they have no longer fleshly bodies
-- an ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and (b) the pure spiritual element being
left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by maya than man can
ever be, unless he is an adept who keeps his two personalities -- the spiritual
and the physical -- entirely separated. The incipient monads, having never had
terrestrial bodies yet, can have no sense of personality or EGO-ism. That which
is meant by "personality," being a limitation and a relation, or, as
defined by Coleridge, "individuality existing in itself but with a nature
as a ground," the term cannot of course be applied to non-human entities;
but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings,
high or low, have either individuality or personality as separate Entities,
i.e., they have no individuality in the sense in which a man says, "I am
myself and no one else;" in other words, they are conscious of no such
distinct separateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the
characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not of their units; and these
characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which those
hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine,
the purer and the less accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. They
are finite, in all respects, with the exception of their higher principles --
the immortal sparks reflecting the universal divine flame -- individualized and
separated only on the spheres of Illusion by a differentiation as illusive as
the rest. They are "Living Ones," because they are the streams
projected on the Kosmic screen of illusion from the ABSOLUTE LIFE; beings in
whom life cannot become extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in
those who sense these "Lives." Having sprung into being under the
quickening influence of the uncreated beam, the reflection of the great Central
Sun that
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radiates on the shores of the river
of Life, it is the inner principle in them which belongs to the waters of
immortality, while its differentiated clothing is as perishable as man's body.
Therefore Young was right in saying that
"Angels are men of a superior
kind"
and no more. They are neither
"ministering" nor "protecting" angels; nor are they
"Harbingers of the Most High" still less the "Messengers of
wrath" of any God such as man's fancy has created. To appeal to their
protection is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may be secured by
any kind of propitiation; for they are, as much as man himself is, the slaves
and creatures of immutable Karmic and Kosmic law. The reason for it is evident.
Having no elements of personality in their essence they can have no personal
qualities, such as attributed by men, in their exoteric religions, to their
anthropomorphic God -- a jealous and exclusive God who rejoices and feels
wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more despotic in his vanity than
any finite foolish man. Man, as shown in Book II., being a compound of the
essences of all those celestial Hierarchies may succeed in making himself, as
such, superior, in one sense, to any hierarchy or class, or even combination of
them. "Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas," it is said.
But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the full
knowledge of the non-separateness of his higher SELF from the One absolute
SELF, man can, even during his terrestrial life, become as "One of
Us." Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge which dispels
ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim or the Dhyanis; and once on
their plane the Spirit of Solidarity and perfect Harmony, which reigns in every
Hierarchy, must extend over him and protect him in every particular.
The chief difficulty which prevents
men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their
materialism. The main impediment before the Spiritualist which hinders him from
believing in the same, while preserving a blind belief in the
"Spirits" of the Departed, is the general ignorance of all, except
some Occultists and Kabalists, about the true essence and nature of matter. It
is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature,
in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the
existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead.
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It is on the right comprehension of
the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter and its real essence that the student
has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony,
and for the only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies.
In sober truth, as just shown, every
"Spirit" so-called is either a disembodied or a future man. As from
the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last conscious
"Builder" (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all such are
men, having lived aeons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so
the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals -- are all future
men. That fact alone -- that a Spirit is endowed with intelligence -- is a
proof to the Occultist that that Being must have been a man, and acquired his
knowledge and intelligence throughout the human cycle. There is but one
indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the Universe, and this
thrills throughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the whole finite
Kosmos which hath no bounds, and which people call SPACE, considered
independently of anything contained in it. But the first differentiation of its
reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings
generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to
the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or Intelligence
before they have acquired such, personally and individually. This may be a
mystery, yet it is a fact, in Esoteric philosophy, and a very apparent one too.
The whole order of nature evinces a
progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the
seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with its endless
adaptations is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and
feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure the
"survival of the fittest," though so cruel in their immediate action
-- all are working toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations do
occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that
what is called "unconscious Nature"* is in reality an aggregate of
forces mani-
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Nature taken in its abstract sense,
cannot be "unconscious," as it is the emanation from, and thus an
aspect (on the manifested plane) of the ABSOLUTE consciousness. Where is that
daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a
consciousness of their own. All he can say is, that this consciousness is
beyond his comprehension.
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pulated by semi-intelligent beings
(Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits, (Dhyan Chohans), whose
collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the unmanifested LOGOS, and
constitutes at one and the same time the MIND of the Universe and its immutable
LAW.
Three distinct representations of the
Universe in its three distinct aspects are impressed upon our thought by the
esoteric philosophy: the PRE-EXISTING (evolved from) the EVER-EXISTING; and the
PHENOMENAL -- the world of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof. During
the great mystery and drama of life known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is
like the object placed behind the white screen upon which are thrown the
Chinese shadows, called forth by the magic lantern. The actual figures and
things remain invisible, while the wires of evolution are pulled by the unseen
hands; and men and things are thus but the reflections, on the white field, of
the realities behind the snares of Mahamaya, or the great Illusion. This was
taught in every philosophy, in every religion, ante as well as post diluvian,
in India and Chaldea, by the Chinese as by the Grecian Sages. In the former
countries these three Universes were allegorized, in exoteric teachings, by the
three trinities emanating from the Central eternal germ and forming with it a
Supreme Unity: the initial, the manifested, and the Creative Triad, or the
three in One. The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of the
first ideal two. Hence Esoteric philosophy passes over the necessarianism of
this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first one, only, the Ever
Existing. This is the view of every one of the six great schools of Indian
philosophy -- the six principles of that unit body of WISDOM of which the
"gnosis," the hidden knowledge, is the seventh.
The writer hopes that, superficially
handled as may be the comments on the Seven Stanzas, enough has been given in
this cosmogonic portion of the work to show Archaic teachings to be more
scientific (in the modern sense of the word) on their very face, than any other
ancient Scriptures left to be regarded and judged on their exoteric aspect.
Since, however, as confessed before, this work withholds far more than it gives
out, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. Our chief care is to
elucidate that which has already been given out, and, to our regret, very
incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge hinted at -- whenever and
wherever possible -- by addi-
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tional matter; and to bulwark our
doctrines against the too strong attacks of modern Sectarianism, and more especially
against those of our latter-day Materialism, very often miscalled Science,
whereas, in reality, the words "Scientists" and "Sciolists"
ought alone to bear the responsibility for the many illogical theories offered
to the world. In its great ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting
everything that emanates from "authorities," and feeling it to be its
duty to regard every dictum coming from a man of Science as a proven fact --
the public, we say, is taught to scoff at anything brought forward from
"heathen" sources. Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be
fought solely with their own weapons -- those of controversy and argument -- an
Addendum is added to every Book contrasting our respective views and showing
how even great authorities may often err. We believe that this can be done
effectually by showing the weak points of our opponents, and by proving their
too frequent sophisms -- made to pass for scientific dicta -- to be incorrect.
We hold to Hermes and his "Wisdom" -- in its universal character;
they -- to Aristotle as against intuition and the experience of the ages,
fancying that Truth is the exclusive property of the Western world. Hence the
disagreement. As Hermes says, "Knowledge differs much from sense; for
sense is of things that surmount it, but Knowledge (gyi) is the end of
sense" -- i.e., of the illusion of our physical brain and its intellect;
thus emphasizing the contrast between the laboriously acquired knowledge of the
senses and mind (manas), and the intuitive omniscience of the Spiritual divine
Soul -- Buddhi.
Whatever may be the destiny of these
actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following
facts:
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no
Atheism, except in the Hindu sense of the word nastika, or the rejection of
idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a
Nastika.
(2) It admits a Logos or a collective
"Creator" of the Universe; a Demi-urgos -- in the sense implied when
one speaks of an "Architect" as the "Creator" of an
edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while
furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the
plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour
was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demiurgos is
no
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personal deity, -- i.e., an imperfect
extra-cosmic god, -- but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans and the other
forces.
As to the latter --
(3) They are dual in their character;
being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b)
the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that
energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the
Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations
and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, the whole being
subservient to Karma. As that process is not always perfect; and since, however
many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still
shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in evident failures --
therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working
powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are
entitled to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be
ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of
his ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and
incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its
shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart --
invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through "the still small
voice" of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought
to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls*; making
their spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their
good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only visible and
objective sacrificial victims to the Presence. (See Part II., "On the Hidden
Deity.")
(4) Matter is Eternal. It is the
Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal Mind to build
thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no
inorganic or dead matter in nature, the distinction between the two made by
Science being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* "When thou prayest, thou shalt
not be as the hypocrites are . . . but enter into thine inner chamber and having
shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret." Matt. vi.). Our
Father is within us "in Secret," our 7th principle, in the
"inner chamber" of our Soul perception. "The Kingdom of
Heaven" and of God "is within us" says Jesus, not outside. Why
are Christians so absolutely blind to the self-evident meaning of the words of
wisdom they delight in mechanically repeating?
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Whatever Science may think, however
-- and exact Science is a fickle dame, as we all know by experience --
Occultism knows and teaches differently, from time immemorial -- from Manu and
Hermes down to Paracelsus and his successors.
Thus Hermes, the thrice great
Trismegistus, 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 deity. Having been endowed with the germs of becoming, matter
(objective) 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." (The Definitions of Asclepios, p. 134, "Virgin
of the World.")
"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." (Paracelsus, "Philosophia ad Athenienes," F.
Hartmann's translations, p. 44.)
(5.) The Universe was evolved out of
its ideal plan, upheld through Eternity in the unconsciousness of that which
the Vedantins call Parabrahm. This is practically identical with the
conclusions of the highest Western Philosophy -- "the innate, eternal, and
self-existing Ideas" of Plato, now reflected by Von Hartmann. The
"unknowable" of Herbert Spencer bears only a faint resemblance to
that transcendental Reality believed in by Occultists, often appearing merely a
personification of a "force behind phenomena" -- an infinite and
eternal Energy
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* To this the late Mrs. (Dr.)
Kingsford, the able translator and compiler of the Hermetic Fragments (see
"The Virgin of the World") remarks in a foot-note; "Dr. Menard
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 Vedantic 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 Vedantin) 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 (Dasein) 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 'becoming'" (p. 134).
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from which all things proceed, while
the author of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious" has come (in this
respect only) as near to a solution of the great Mystery as mortal man can. Few
were those, whether in ancient or mediaeval philosophy, who have dared to
approach the subject or even hint at it. Paracelsus mentions it inferentially.
His ideas are admirably synthesized by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his
"Life of Paracelsus."
All the Christian Kabalists
understood well the Eastern root idea: The active Power, the "Perpetual
motion of the great Breath" only awakens Kosmos at the dawn of every new
Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces,* and thus
causing it to become objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that
dual motion transfers Kosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of
finite manifestation, or from the Noumenal to the Phenomenal plane. Everything
that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are
finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form. They
existed as Ideas, in the Eternity,** and, when they pass away, will exist as
reflections. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone
has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced
"becoming," i.e., objectivising into its present materiality, or
expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous
essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in
the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the
Spiritual Beings (or Gods) whose duty it was to bring them into objective being
and terrestrial Life, evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from
their own essence. After which, when this human Upadhi, or basic mould was
ready, the natural terrestrial Forces began to work on those supersensuous
moulds which contained, besides their own, the elements of all the past
vegetable and future animal forms of this globe in them. Therefore, man's
outward shell passed through every vegetable and animal body before it assumed
the human shape. As this will be fully
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The centripetal and the centrifugal
forces, which are male and female, positive and negative, physical and
spiritual, the two being the one Primordial Force.
** Occultism teaches that no form can
be given to anything, either by nature or by man, whose ideal type does not
already exist on the subjective plane. More than this; that no such form or
shape can possibly enter man's consciousness, or evolve in his imagination,
which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation.
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described in Book II., with the
Commentaries thereupon, 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 in chemistry -- or primordial Protomateria
that evolved out of itself the Kosmos.
"When Evolution took place the
Yliaster divided itself. . . . melted and dissolved, developing from within
itself the Ideos or Chaos, called respectively 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 Ideos of
primordial matter, or the proto-ilos -- which is the matrix of all created
things -- is contained the substance from which everything is formed. It is the
Chaos . . . out of which the Macrocosm, and, later on, by evolution and
division in Mysteria Specialia,* each separate being, came into existence.
"All things and all elementary substances were contained in it in potentia
but not in actu" -- which makes the translator, Dr. F. Hartmann, justly
observe that "it seems that Paracelsus anticipated the modern discovery of
the 'potency of matter' three hundred years ago" (P. 42).
This Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster
of Paracelsus, is simply our old friend "Father-Mother," within,
before it appeared in Space, of the second and other Stanzas. It is the
universal matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macro- and
Microcosm (or the Universe and our Globe)** by Aditi-Prakriti, the Spiritual
and the physical nature. For we find it explained in Paracelsus that "the
Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of which all creatures have grown, in the same
sense as a tree grows out of a small seed; with the difference, however, that
the great Limbus takes its origin from the Word, while the Limbus minor (the
terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the earth.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* 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."
** It is only the mediaeval 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.
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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
latter possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in the same sense as
a son has an organization similar to that of his father." (See Comment.
Book II. para. iii.) . . . "As Yliaster dissolved, Ares, the dividing,
differentiating, and individualising 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 by spiritual and dynamical, not even 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 fount. But as from the seed grow the roots with their fibres, and
after that 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." ("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 was still more elaborated by Kapila in the Sankhya
philosophy") . . . . The elements as the mothers of all creatures are of
an invisible, spiritual nature, and have souls.* They all spring from the
"Mysterium Magnum." (Philosophia ad Athenienses.)
Compare this with Vishnu Purana.
"From Pradhana (primordial
substance) presided over by Kshetrajna (embodied Spirit?) proceeds the
evolution of those qualities. . . . From the great Principle Mahat (Universal
Intellect, or mind) . . . proceeds
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The Eastern Occultist says --
"are guided and informed by the Spiritual Beings" the Workmen in the
invisible worlds and behind the veil of Occult nature, or nature in Abscondito.
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the origin of the subtle elements and
from these the organs of sense (Book I., ii.).
Thus it may be shown that all the
fundamental truths of nature were universal in antiquity, and that the basic
ideas upon spirit, matter, and the universe, or upon God, Substance, and man,
were identical. Taking the two most ancient religious philosophies on the
globe, Hinduism and Hermetism, from the scriptures of India and Egypt, the
identity of the two is easily recognisable.
This becomes apparent to one who
reads the latest translation and rendering of the "Hermetic
Fragments" just mentioned, by our late lamented friend, Dr. Anna
Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in their passage through
Sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator has most ably and
intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy them by means of
explanations and foot-notes. And she says:.......... The creation of the
visible world by the 'working gods' or Titans, as agents of the Supreme God,*
is a thoroughly Hermetic idea, recognisable in all religious systems, and in
accordance with modern scientific research (?), which shows us everywhere the
Divine power operating through natural Forces."
"That Universal Being, that
contains all, and which is all, put into motion the Soul and the World, all that
nature comprises, says Hermes. 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." (Asclepios, Part I.)
"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." (Divine Pymander, Book IX., v.
64.)
The above shows plainly that
"Divine Pyrnander," however much distorted in some passages by
Christian "smoothing," was nevertheless written by a philosopher,
while most of the so-called "hermetic Fragments" are the production
of sectarian pagans with a tendency towards an anthropomorphic Supreme Being. Yet
both are the echo of the Esoteric philosophy and the Hindu Puranas.
Compare two invocations, one to the
Hermetic "Supreme All," the
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* A frequent expression in the said
Fragments, to which we take exception. The Universal Mind is not a Being or
"God."
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other to the "Supreme All"
of the later Aryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by Suidas (see Mrs.
Kingsford's "The Virgin of the World"): -
"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."
This just 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 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), etc."
(Fragments of the writings of Hermes to Ammon.)
This is contradicted by the very same
Trismegistos, who is made to say: "To speak of God is impossible. For
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." (Physical Eclogues, Florilegium of Stobaeus.)
The contradiction between the two
passages is evident; and this shows (a) that Hermes was a generic nom-de-plume
used by a series of generations of mystics of every shade, and (b) that a great
discernment has to be used before accepting a Fragment as esoteric teaching
only because it is undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like
invocation in the Hindu Scriptures -- undoubtedly as old, if not far older.
Here it is Parasara, the Aryan "Hermes" who 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 Sankara (Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), the
creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the world; to Vasudeva, the
liberator (of his worshippers); to him whose essence is both single and
manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscreet and discreet; to Vishnu
the cause of final emancipation, the cause of the creation, existence, the
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end of the world; who is the root of
the world, and who consists of the world." (Vish. Purana, Book L.)
This is a grand invocation, full of
philosophical meaning underlying it; but, for the profane masses, as suggestive
as is the first of an anthropomorphic Being. We must respect the feeling that
dictated both; but we cannot help finding it in full disharmony with its inner
meaning, even with that which is found in the same Hermetic treatise where it
is said:
"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?
Trismegistos: 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?
Trismeg.: That which is one and
alone, 0 Tatios; That which is not made of matter, nor in any body. Which has
neither colour nor form, which changes not nor is transmitted but which always
is."
This is quite consistent with the
Vedantic teaching. The leading thought is Occult; and many are the passages in
the Hermetic Fragments that belong bodily to the Secret Doctrine.
The latter teaches that the whole
universe is ruled by intelligent and semi-intelligent Forces and Powers, as
stated from the very beginning. Christian Theology admits and even enforces
belief in such, but makes an arbitrary division and refers to them as
"Angels" and "Devils." Science denies the existence of
such, and ridicules the very idea. Spiritualists believe in the Spirits of the
Dead, and, outside these, deny entirely any other kind or class of invisible
beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are thus the only rational expounders of
the ancient traditions, which have now culminated in dogmatic faith on the one
hand, and dogmatic denials on the other. For, both belief and unbelief embrace
but one small corner each of the infinite horizons of spiritual and physical
manifestations; and thus both are right from
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their respective standpoints, and
both are wrong in believing that they can circumscribe the whole within their
own special and narrow barriers; for -- they can never do so. In this respect
Science, Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more wisdom than the
ostrich does, when it hides its head in the sand at its feet, feeling sure that
there can be thus nothing beyond its own point of observation and the limited
area occupied by its foolish head.
As the only works now extant upon the
subject under consideration within reach of the profane of the Western
"civilized" races are the above-mentioned Hermetic Books, or rather
Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast them in the present case with the teachings
of Esoteric philosophy. To quote for this purpose from any other would be
useless, since the public knows nothing of the Chaldean works which are
translated into Arabic and preserved by some Sufi initiates. Therefore the
"Definitions of Asclepios," as lately compiled and glossed by Mrs. A.
Kingsford, F.T.S., some of which sayings are in remarkable agreement with the
Esoteric Eastern doctrine, have to be resorted to for comparison. Though not a
few passages show a strong impression of some later Christian hand, yet on the
whole the characteristics of the genii* and gods are those of eastern
teachings, while concerning other things there are passages which differ widely
in our doctrines. The following are a few:--
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The Hermetic philosophers called
Theoi, gods, Genii and Daimones (in the original texts), those Entities whom we
call Devas (gods), Dhyan Chohans, Chitkala (Kwan-yin, the Buddhists call them),
and by other names. The Daimones are -- in the Socratic sense, and even in the
Oriental and Latin theological sense -- the guardian spirits of the human race;
"those who dwell in the neighbourhood of the immortals, and thence watch
over human affairs," as Hermes has it. In Esoteric parlance, they are
called Chitkala, some of which are those who have furnished man with his fourth
and fifth Principles from their own essence; and others the Pitris so-called.
This will be explained when we come to the production of the complete man. The
root of the name is Chiti, "that by which the effects and consequences of
actions and kinds of knowledge are selected for the use of the soul," or
conscience the inner Voice in man. With the Yogis, the Chiti is a synonym of
Mahat, the first and divine intellect; but in Esoteric philosophy Mahat is the
root of Chiti, its germ; and Chiti is a quality of Manas in conjunction with
Buddhi, a quality that attracts to itself by spiritual affinity a Chitkala when
it develops sufficiently in man. This is why it is said that Chiti is a voice
acquiring mystic life and becoming Kwan-Yin.
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EXTRACTS FROM A PRIVATE COMMENTARY,*
hitherto secret:--
(xvii.) "The Initial Existence
in the first twilight of the Maha-Manwantara (after the MAHA-PRALAYA that
follows every age of Brahma) is a CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL QUALITY. In the
manifested WORLDS (solar systems) it is, in its OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVITY, like
the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze of the entranced seer. It spreads as
it issues from LAYA** throughout infinity as a colourless spiritual fluid. It
is on the SEVENTH PLANE, and in its SEVENTH STATE in our planetary world.***
(xviii.) "It is Substance to OUR
spiritual sight. It cannot be called so by men in their WAKING STATE; therefore
they have named it in their ignorance 'God-Spirit.'
(xix.) "It exists everywhere and
forms the first UPADHI (foundation) on which our World (solar system) is built.
Outside the latter it is to be found in its pristine purity only between (the
solar systems or) the Stars of the Universe, the worlds already formed or
forming; those in LAYA resting meanwhile in its bosom. As its substance is of a
different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing
THROUGH IT, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space.
There is not one finger's breath (ANGULA) of void Space in the whole Boundless
(Universe).........
(xx.) "Matter or Substance is
septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it. Moreover, each of its states
or principles is graduated into seven degrees of density. SURYA (the Sun), in
its visible reflection, exhibits the first, or lowest state of the seventh, the
highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure of the pure, the first
manifested Breath of the ever Unmanifested SAT (Be-ness). All the Central
physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first
Principle of the BREATH. Nor are any of these any more than the REFLECTIONS of
their PRIMARIES which are concealed from the gaze of all but the Dhyan Chohans,
whose Corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of the seventh
Principle of the Mother substance, and is,
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* This (teaching) does not refer to
Prakriti-Purusha beyond the boundaries of our small universe.
** The ultimate quiescent state: the
Nirvana condition of the seventh Principle.
*** The teaching is all given from
our plane of consciousness.
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therefore, four degrees higher than
the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhatu (principal substances
in the human body) so there are seven Forces in Man and in all Nature.
(xxi.) "The real substance of
the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance.* It is the heart and the
matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe. It is the
Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers
that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within
which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year. He who
tells thee he has seen the sun, laugh at him** as if he had said that the sun
moves really onward on his diurnal path . . . .
(xxiii). "It is on account of
his septenary nature that the Sun is spoken of by the ancients as one who is
driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas; or, again, that,
though he is identified with the SEVEN "Gaina" (classes of being) in
his orb, he is distinct from them,*** as he is, indeed; as also that he has
SEVEN RAYS, as indeed he has . . . .
(xxv.) "The Seven Beings in the
Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent power in the matrix of
Mother substance. It is they who send the Seven Principal Forces, called rays,
which at the beginning of Pralaya will centre into seven new Suns for the next
Manvantara. The energy from which they spring into conscious existence in every
Sun, is what some people call Vishnu (see foot-note below), which is the Breath
of the ABSOLUTENESS.
We call it the One manifested life --
itself a reflection of the Absolute.........
(xxvi.) "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 onward unto IT
spiritually, as the whole physical universe gravitates towards ITS manifested
centre -- cosmically.
(xxvii.) "The former -- the
Initial existence -- which may be called while in
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Or the "dream of
Science," the primeval really homogeneous matter, which no mortal can make
objective in this Race or Round either.
** "Vishnu in the form of the
Solar active energy, neither ever rises nor sets, and is at once, the sevenfold
Sun and distinct from it," says Vishnu Purana (Book II., Chap. 11).
*** "In the same manner as a man
approaches 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" ("Vishnu Purana").
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this state of being the ONE LIFE, is,
as explained, a FILM for creative or formative Purposes. It manifests in seven
states, which, with their septenary sub-divisions, are the FORTY-NINE Fires*
mentioned in sacred books . . . . . .
(xxix.) "The first is the . . .
. 'Mother' (prima MATERIA). Separating itself into its primary seven states, it
proceeds down cyclically; when** having consolidated itself in its LAST
principle as GROSS MATTER, it revolves around itself and informs, with the
seventh emanation of the last, the first and the lowest element (the Serpent
biting its own tail). In a hierarchy, or order of being, the seventh emanation
of her last principle is:--
(a) In the mineral, the spark that
lies latent in it, and is called to its evanescent being by the POSITIVE
awakening the NEGATIVE (and so forth) . . . .
(b) In the plant it is that vital and
intelligent Force which informs the seed and develops it into the blade of
grass, or the root and sapling. It is the germ which becomes the UPADHI of the
seven principles of the thing it resides in, shooting them out as the latter
grows and develops.
(c) In every animal it does the same.
It is its life principle and vital power; its instinct and qualities; its
characteristics and special idiosyncrasies . . . .
(d) To man, it gives all that it
bestows on all the rest of the manifested units in nature; but develops,
furthermore, the reflection of all its FORTY-NINE FIRES in him. Each of his
seven principles is an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the seven principles
of the "great Mother." The breath of her first principle is his
spirit (Atma). Her second principle is BUDDHI (soul). We call it, erroneously,
the seventh. The third furnishes him with (a) the brain stuff on the physical
plane, and (b) with the MIND that moves it [which is the human soul. -- H. P.
B.] -- according to his organic capacities.
(e) It is the guiding Force in the
Cosmic and terrestrial elements. It resides in the Fire provoked out of its
latent into active being; for the whole of the seven subdivisions of the * * *
principle reside in the terrestrial Fire. It whirls in the breeze, blows with
the hurricane, and sets the air in motion, which element participates in one of
its principles also. Proceeding cyclically, it regulates the motion
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* In "Vishnu" and other
Puranas.
** See the Hermetic
"Nature," "Going down cyclically into matter when she meets
'heavenly man.' "
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of the water, attracts and repels the
waves* according to fixed laws of which its seventh principle is the informing
soul.
(f) Its four higher principles
contain the germ that develops into the Cosmic Gods; its three lower ones breed
the lives of the Elements (Elementals).
(g) In our Solar world, the One
Existence is Heaven and the Earth, the Root and the flower, the Action and the
Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as present in the glow-worm. Not an atom can
escape it. Therefore, the ancient Sages have wisely called it the manifested
God in Nature. . . ."
It may be interesting, in this
connection, to remind the reader of what Mr. Subba Row said of the Forces --
mystically defined. See "Five Years of Theosophy" and "The
Twelve Signs of the Zodiac." Thus he says:
"Kanya (the sixth sign of the
Zodiac, or Virgo) means a Virgin, and represents Sakti or Mahamaya. The sign .
. . is the 6th Rasi or division, and indicates that there are six primary
forces in Nature (synthesized by the Seventh)" . . . These Sakti stand as
follows: -
(1.) PARASAKTI. Literally the great
or Supreme Force or power. It means and includes the powers of light and heat.
(2.) JNANASAKTI. . . . The power of
intellect, of real Wisdom or Knowledge. It has two aspects:
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; some of its manifestations when liberated from the bonds
of matter are -- (a) Clairvoyance, (b) Psychometry.
(3.) ITCHASAKTI -- the power of the
Will. Its most ordinary manifesta-
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* 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.
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tion is the generation of certain
nerve currents which set in motion such muscles as are required for the
accomplishment of the desired object.
(4.) KRIYASAKTI. 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 Itchasakti and Kriyasakti.
(5.) KUNDALINI SAKTI. The power or
Force which moves in a curved path. It is the Universal life-Principle
manifesting everywhere 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, punar janman (re-birth) in the doctrines of the ancient Hindu
philosophers. A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power before he can attain
Moksham. . . .
(6.) MANTRIKA-SAKTI. The force or
power of letters, speech or music. The Mantra Shastra has for its
subject-matter this force in all its manifestations......... The influence of
melody is one of its ordinary manifestations. The power of the ineffable name
is the crown of this Sakti.
Modern Science has but partly
investigated the first, second and fifth of the forces above named, but is
altogether in the dark as regards the remaining powers. The six forces are in
their unity represented by the "Daiviprakriti" (the Seventh, the
light of the LOGOS).
The above is quoted to show the real
Hindu ideas on the same. It is all esoteric, though not covering the tenth part
of what might be said. For one, the six names of the Six Forces mentioned are
those of the six Hierarchies of Dhyan Chohans synthesized by their Primary, the
seventh, who personify the Fifth Principle of Cosmic Nature, or of the
"Mother" in its Mystical Sense. The enumeration alone of the yogi
Powers would require ten volumes. Each of these Forces has a living Conscious
Entity at its head, of which entity it is an emanation.
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But let us compare with the
commentary just cited the words of Hermes, the "thrice great":--
"The creation of Life by the Sun
is as continuous as his light; nothing arrests or limits it. Around him, like
an army of Satellites, are innumerable choirs of genii. These dwell in the
neighbourhood of the Immortals, and thence watch over human things. They fulfil
the will of the gods (Karma) by means of storms, tempests, transitions of fire
and earthquakes; likewise by famines and wars, for the punishment of impiety.*
. . . 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 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,** 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,*** and
who are classed beneath the astral powers (Superhuman astral Spirits.) They
change perpetually, not always identically, but revolving in circles.**** 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
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* See Stanzas III. and IV. and the
Commentaries thereupon, especially the Comments on Stanza IV. "the Lipika
and the four Maharajas," the agents of Karma.
** And "Gods" or Dhyanis,
too, not only the genii or "guided Forces."
*** The meaning of this is that as
man is composed of all the Great Elements: Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Ether --
the ELEMENTALS which belong respectively to these Elements feel attracted to
man by reason of their co-essence. 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
Sapientiae). Paracelsus was cautious, and wanted the Bible to agree with what
he said, and therefore did not say all.
**** Cyclic progress in development.
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for the reception of (the) God,* 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.** 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...........
The above, save a few sectarian
points, represents that which was a universal belief common to all nations till
about a century or so back. It is still as orthodox in its broad outlines and
features among pagans and Christians alike, if one excepts a handful of
materialists and men of Science.
For whether one calls the genii of
Hermes and his "Gods," "Powers of Darkness" and
"Angels," as in the Greek and Latin Churches; or "Spirits of the
Dead," as in Spiritualism or, again, Bhoots and Devas, Shaitan or Djin, as
they are still called in India and Mussulman countries -- they are all one and
the same thing -- ILLUSION. Let not this, however, be misunderstood in the
sense into which the great philosophical doctrine of the Vedantists has been
lately perverted by Western schools.
All that which is, emanates from the
ABSOLUTE, which, from this qualification alone, stands as the one and only
reality -- hence, everything extraneous to this Absolute, the generative and
causative Element, must be an illusion, most undeniably. But this is only so
from the purely metaphysical view. A man who regards himself as mentally sane,
and is so regarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an insane brother --
whose hallucinations make the victim either happy or supremely wretched, as the
case may be -- illusions and fancies likewise. But, where is that madman for
whom the hideous shadows in his deranged mind, his illusions, are not, for the
time being, as actual and as real as the things which his physician or keeper
may see? Everything is relative in this Universe, everything is an illusion.
But
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The God in man and often the
incarnation of a God, a highly Spiritual Dhyan Chohan in him, besides the
presence of his own seventh Principle.
** 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 those men "few in number." And it is precisely those
men who believe in "gods" and know no "God," but one
Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity.
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the experience of any plane is an
actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness is on that plane;
though the said experience, regarded from the purely metaphysical standpoint,
may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it is not against
metaphysicians, but against physicists and materialists that Esoteric teachings
have to fight, and for these Vital Force, Light, Sound, Electricity, even to
the objectively pulling force of magnetism, have no objective being, and are
said to exist merely as "modes of motion," "sensations and affections
of matter."
Neither the Occultists generally, nor
the Theosophists, reject, as erroneously believed by some, the views and
theories of the modern scientists, only because these views are opposed to
Theosophy. The first rule of our Society is to render unto Caesar what is
Caesar's. The Theosophists, therefore, are the first to recognize the intrinsic
value of science. But when its high priests resolve consciousness into a
secretion from the grey matter of the brain, and everything else in nature into
a mode of motion, we protest against the doctrine as being unphilosophical,
self-contradictory, and simply absurd, from a scientific point of view, as much
and even more than from the occult aspect of the esoteric knowledge.
For truly the astral light of the
derided Kabalists has strange and weird secrets for him who can see in it; and
the mysteries concealed within its incessantly disturbed waves are there, the
whole body of Materialists and scoffers notwithstanding.* These secrets, along
with
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The astral light of the Kabalists
is very incorrectly translated by some "AEther;" the latter is
confused with the hypothetical Ether of Science, and both are referred to by
some theosophists as synonymous with Akasa. This is a great mistake.
"A characteristic of Akasa will
serve to show how inadequately it is represented by Ether," writes the
author of Rational Refutations, thus unconsciously helping Occultism. "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, Isvara, ("The Lord," but rather creative potency and
soul -- anima mundi). 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" (p. 120.)
It is vacuity, no doubt, especially
for Rationalists. At any rate Akasa is sure to produce vacuity in the brain of
a materialist. Nevertheless, though Akasa is not that Ether of Science, not
even the Ether of the Occultist, who defines the latter as one of the
principles of Akasa only, it is as certainly, together with its primary, the
cause of sound, only a physical and spiritual, not a material cause by any
means. The relations [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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many other mysteries, will remain
non-existent to the materialists of our age, in the same way as America was a
non-existent myth for Europeans during the early part of the mediaeval ages,
whereas Scandinavians and Norwegians had actually reached and settled in that
very old "New World" several centuries before. But, as a Columbus was
born to re-discover, and to force the Old World to believe in Antipodal
countries, so will there be born scientists who will discover the marvels now claimed
by Occultists to exist in the regions of Ether, with their varied and multiform
denizens and conscious Entities. Then, nolens volens, Science will have to
accept the old "Superstition," as it has several others. And having
been once forced to accept it -- judging from past experience -- its learned
professors will, in all probability, as in the case of MESMERISM and Magnetism,
now re-baptised Hypnotism, father the thing and reject its name. The choice of
the new appellation will depend, in its turn, on the "modes of
motion," the new name for the older "automatic physical processes
among the nerve fibrils of the (Scientific) brain" of Moleschott; as also,
very likely, upon the last meal of the namer; since, according to the Founder
of the new Hylo-Idealistic Scheme, "Cerebration is generically the same as
chylification."* Thus, were one to believe this preposterous proposition,
the new name of the archaic thing would have to take its chance, on the
inspiration of the namer's liver, and then only would these truths have a
chance of becoming scientific!
But TRUTH, however distasteful to the
generally blind majorities, has always had her champions, ready to die for her,
and it is not the Occultists who will protest against its adoption by Science
under whatever new name. But, until absolutely forced on the notice and
acceptance of Scientists, many an Occult truth will be tabooed, as the
phenomena of the Spiritualists and other psychic manifestations were, to be finally
appropriated by its ex-traducers without the least acknowledgment or thanks.
Nitrogen has added considerably to chemical knowledge, but its discoverer,
Paracelsus, is to this day called a "quack."
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of Ether to Akasa may be defined by applying to both Akasa and Ether the
words said of the god in the Vedas, "So himself was indeed (his own)
son," one being the progeny of the other and yet itself. This may be a
difficult riddle to the profane, but very easy to understand for any Hindu --
though not even a mystic.
* National Reformer, January 9th,
1887. Article "Phreno-Kosmo-Biology," by Dr. Lewins.
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How profoundly true are the words of
H. T. Buckle, in his admirable "History of Civilization" (Vol. I., p.
256), when he says:--
"Owing to circumstances still
unknown (Karmic provision, H.P.B.) 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* 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."
It is barely possible that the minds
of the present generations are not quite ripe for the reception of Occult
truths. Such will be the retrospect furnished to the advanced thinkers of the
Sixth Root Race of the history of the acceptance of Esoteric Philosophy --
fully and unconditionally. Meanwhile the generations of our Fifth Race will
continue to be led away by prejudice and preconceptions. Occult Sciences will
have the finger of scorn pointed at them from every street corner, and everyone
will seek to ridicule and crush them in the name, and for the greater glory, of
Materialism and its so-called Science. The Addendum which completes the present
Book shows, however, in an anticipatory answer to several of the forthcoming
Scientific objections, the true and mutual positions of the defendant and
plaintiff. The Theosophists and Occultists stand arraigned by public opinion,
which still holds high the banner of the inductive Sciences. The latter have,
then, to be examined; and it must be shown how far their achievements and
discoveries in the realm of natural laws are opposed, not so much to our
claims, as to the facts in nature. The hour has now struck to ascertain whether
the
[[Footnote(s)]]-------------------------------------------------
* This is Cyclic law, but this law
itself is often defied by human stubbornness.
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walls of the modern Jericho are so
impregnable that no blast of the Occult trumpet is ever likely to make them
crumble.
The so-called Forces, with Light and
Electricity heading them, and the constitution of the Solar orb must be
carefully examined; as also Gravitation and the Nebular theories. The Natures
of Ether and of other Elements must be discussed: thus contrasting scientific
with other Occult teachings, while revealing some of the hitherto secret tenets
of the latter. (Vide Addendum.)
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." (Sepher Jezireh, Book of Creation.) And again:-- "This is
a secret which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst reveal it to the
vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape from it and fall
outside." (Rules of Initiation.)
A few years later, a corner of the
Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now another and a larger rent is made. . . .
But old and time-honoured errors --
such as become with every day more glaring and self-evident -- stand arrayed in
battle-order now, as they did then. Marshalled by blind conservatism, conceit
and prejudice, they are constantly on the watch, ready to strangle every truth,
which, awakening from its age-long sleep, happens to knock for admission. Such
has been the case ever since man became an animal. That this proves in every
case moral death to the revealers, who bring to light any of these old, old
truths, is as certain as that it gives LIFE and REGENERATION to those who are
fit to profit even by the little that is now revealed to them.
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BOOK I., PART II.
THE
EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM
IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER.
---------------------
EXPLANATORY SECTIONS.
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CONTENTS.
-------
§§. PAGE.
I. -- SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ...
303
II. -- MYSTERY LANGUAGE ... 310
III. -- PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND
DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
IV. -- CHAOS, THEOS, KOSMOS ... 342
V. -- THE HIDDEN DEITY AND ITS GLYPHS
... 349
VI. -- THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
VII. -- THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA
... 368
VIII. -- THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL
SYMBOL ... 379
IX. -- DEUS LUNUS ... 386
X. -- TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE
WORSHIP ... 403
XI. -- DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ...
411
XII. -- THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS
... 424
XIII. -- THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
XIV. -- THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF THE
ANCIENTS ... 460
XV. -- ON KWAN-SHI YIN AND KWAN-YIN
... 470
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BOOK I. -- PART II.
(SECRET DOCTRINE.)
§ I.
SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS.
"A symbol is ever, to him who has
eyes for it,
some dimmer or clearer revelation of
the God-like.
Through all there glimmers something
of a divine
idea; nay, the highest ensign that
men ever met and
embraced under the cross itself, had
no meaning, save
an accidental extrinsic one."
CARLYLE.
THE study of the hidden meaning in
every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small --
pre-eminently the traditions of the East -- has occupied the greater portion of
the present writer's life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no
mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever
been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an
actual, historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those
symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth nothing
save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind of the ancients, and
believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar myths. Such
superficial thinkers were admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet
and Egyptologist, in a lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern."
His pointed criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part of this work, as
it echoes so well our own feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when
"Isis Unveiled" was written.
"For thirty years past Professor
Max Muller has been teaching in his books and lectures, in the Times 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 aberration.
"'We know,' says Renouf, echoing
Max Muller, 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 think-
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ing done by proxy. Professor Max
Muller, Cox, Gubernatis, and other propounders of the Solar Mythos, have portrayed
the primitive myth-maker for us as a sort of Germanised-Hindu 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 experience into him, like the
grinding 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' 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.* 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** When the "false
theologies" disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found,
contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans -- ancient Hindoos, and
even the pre-Homeric Hellenes.
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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 Mullerite 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 image in its mirror. In the form of the goddess Pasht, the
cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of
the serpent of darkness, called his eternal enemy. . . ."
This is a very correct exposition of
the lunar-mythos from its astronomical aspect. Selenography, however, is the
least esoteric of the divisions of lunar Symbology. To master thoroughly -- if
one is permitted to coin a new word -- Selenognosis, one must become proficient
in more than its astronomical meaning. The moon (vide § VII. Deus Lunus) is
intimately related to the Earth, as shown in Stanza VI. of Book I., and is more
directly concerned with all the mysteries of our globe than is even
Venus-Lucifer, the occult sister and alter-ego of the Earth.
The untiring researches of Western,
and especially German, symbologists, during the last and the present centuries,
have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced persons to see that without
the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know
nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. Symbology must
be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar
methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no
Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally.
This every scholar now knows. The
able lectures of Mr. G. Massey alone are sufficient in themselves to convince
any fair-minded Christian that to accept the dead-letter of the Bible is
equivalent to falling into a grosser error and superstition than any hitherto
evolved by the brain of the savage South Sea Islander. But the point to which
even the most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalists -- whether Aryanists
or Egyptologists -- seem to remain blind, is the fact that every symbol in
papyrus or olla is a many-faced diamond, each of whose facets not merely bears
several interpretations, but relates likewise to several sciences. This is
instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the moon symbolized by the cat
-- an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon bearing many other
meanings besides this with other nations.
As a learned Mason and Theosophist,
the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia,
there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The former
"comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said
rather to illustrate some single special idea." Hence, the symbols (say
lunar, or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special idea,
or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is "a
concrete visible
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picture or sign representing
principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who have received
certain instructions" (initiates). To put it still plainer, an emblem is usually
a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding
an idea in panoramic views, one after the other. Thus the Puranas are written
emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all
other exoteric Scriptures. As the same authority shows:--
"All esoteric Societies have
made use of emblems and symbols, such as the Pythagorean Society, the
Eleusinian, 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 sigillae, being founded on certain principles of
numbers, 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 recognise them."
The above enumerated societies are
all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier than the middle ages. How
much more proper, then, that the students of the oldest Archaic School should
be careful not to divulge secrets of far more importance to humanity (in the
sense of being dangerous in the hands of the latter) than any of the so-called
"Masonic Secrets," which have now become, as the French say, those of
"Polichinelle!" But this restriction can apply only to the
psychological or rather psycho-physiological and Cosmical significance of
symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. An adept must refuse to
impart the conditions and means that lead to a correlation of elements, whether
psychic or physical, that may produce a hurtful result as well as a beneficent
one. But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret of the
ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed under mythological
symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land-marks towards a retrospective
view of the past, as containing useful information with regard to the origin of
man, the evolution of the races and geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint of
to-day, not only among theosophists, but also among the few profane interested
in the subject. "Why do not the adepts reveal that which they know?"
To this, one might answer, "Why should they, since one knows beforehand that
no man of science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let alone as a theory or
axiom, the facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed in the A B
C of the Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist, "Esoteric
Buddhism," and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which
was given, been ridiculed and derided, and made to face the "animal"
and "ape theory" of Huxley -- Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of
Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding such an unenviable prospect, a
mass of facts is given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the
evolution of the globe and
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the races, human and animal, are as
fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them.
The proofs brought forward in
corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely throughout the old
scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and the old
classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of
collecting and collating together those facts. The reason for this is, that all
such events were recorded symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most
acute minds, among our Aryanists and Egyptologists, have been too often
darkened by one or another preconception; still oftener, by one-sided views of
the secret meaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a
fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life-realities,
events, and facts. And, as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, that moral
being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an historical, real event was
deduced -- by those versed in the hieratic sciences -- from certain emblems and
symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples. The religious and
esoteric history of every nation was embedded in symbols; it was never
expressed in so many words. All the thoughts and emotions, all the learning and
knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early races, found their pictorial
expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because the spoken word has a potency
unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by the modern "sages."
Because sound and rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the
Ancients; and because such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken
corresponding powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as the
case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite historical, religious, or
any real events in so many unmistakable words, lest the powers connected with
the event should be once more attracted. Such events were narrated only during
the Initiation, and every student had to record them in corresponding symbols, drawn
out of his own mind and examined later by his master, before they were finally
accepted. Thus was created in time the Chinese Alphabet, as, before that, the
hieratic symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the
alphabet of which may be read in any language,* and which is only a little less
ancient than the Egyptian alphabet of Thoth, every word has its corresponding
symbol conveying the word needed in a pictorial form. The language possesses
many thousands of such symbol letters, or logograms, each meaning a whole word;
for letters proper, or an alphabet, do not exist in the Chinese language any
more than they did in the Egyptian till a far later period.
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Thus, a Japanese who does not
understand one word of Chinese, meeting with a Chinaman who has never heard the
language of the former, will communicate in writing with him, and they will
understand each other perfectly -- because the writing is symbolical.
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The explanation of the chief symbols
and emblems is now attempted, as Book II., which treats of Anthropogenesis,
would be most difficult to understand without a preparatory acquaintance with
the metaphysical symbols at least.
Nor would it be just to enter upon an
esoteric reading of symbolism without giving due honour to one who has rendered
it the greatest service in this century, by discovering the chief key to
ancient Hebrew symbology, interwoven strongly with metrology, one of the keys
to the once universal mystery language. Mr. Ralston Skinner, of Cincinnati, the
author of "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures"
has our thanks. A mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has laboured for many
years in this direction, and his efforts were certainly crowned with great
success. In his own words:--
"The writer is quite certain that
there was an ancient language which modernly and up to this time appears to
have been lost, the vestiges of which, however, abundantly exist. . . . The
author discovered that this (integral ratio in numbers of diameter to
circumference of a circle) geometrical ratio 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 were 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 meaning 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
construction."
"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 will 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 separate 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 co-ordina-
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tive subject-matter, 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. . . . 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?"
"Divine origin" does not
mean here a revelation from an anthropomorphic god on a mount amidst thunder
and lightning; but, as we understand it, a language and a system of science
imparted to the early mankind by a more advanced mankind, so much higher as to
be divine in the sight of that infant humanity. By a "mankind," in
short, from other spheres; an idea which contains nothing supernatural in it,
but the acceptance or rejection of which depends upon the degree of conceit and
arrogance in the mind of him to whom it is stated. For, if the professors of
modern knowledge would only confess that, though they know nothing of the
future of the disembodied man -- or rather will accept nothing -- yet this
future may be pregnant with surprises and unexpected revelations to them, once
their Egos are rid of their gross bodies -- then materialistic unbelief would
have fewer chances than it has. Who of them knows, or can tell, what may happen
when once the life cycle of this globe is run down and our mother earth herself
falls into her last sleep? Who is bold enough to say that the divine Egos of
our mankind -- at least the elect out of the multitudes passing on to other
spheres -- will not become in their turn the "divine" instructors of
a new mankind generated by them on a new globe, called to life and activity by
the disembodied "principles" of our Earth? (See Stanza VI., Book I.,
Part 1.) All this may have been the experience of the PAST, and these strange
records lie embedded in the "Mystery language" of the prehistoric
ages, the language now called SYMBOLISM.
--------------
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§ II.
THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS.
RECENT discoveries made by great
mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that every
theology, from the earliest and oldest down to the latest, has sprung not only
from a common source of abstract beliefs, but from one universal esoteric, or
"Mystery" language. These scholars hold the key to the universal
language of old, and have turned it successfully, though only once, in the
hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of Mysteries. The great archaic
system known from prehistoric ages as the sacred Wisdom Science, one that is
contained and can be traced in every old as well as in every new religion, had,
and still has, its universal language -- suspected by the Mason Ragon -- the
language of the Hierophants, which has seven "dialects," so to speak,
each referring, and being specially appropriated, to one of the seven mysteries
of Nature. Each had its own symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its
fulness, or viewed from one of its special aspects.
The proof of this lies, to this day,
in the extreme difficulty which the Orientalists in general, the Indianists and
Egyptologists especially, experience in interpreting the allegorical writings
of the Aryans and the hieratic records of old Egypt. This is because they will
never remember that all the ancient records were written in a language which
was universal and known to all nations alike in days of old, but which is now
intelligible only to the few. Like the Arabic figures which are plain to a man
of whatever nation, or like the English word and, which becomes et for the
Frenchman, und for the German, and so on, yet which may be expressed for all
civilized nations in the simple sign & -- so all the words of that mystery
language signified the same thing to each man of whatever nationality. There
have been several men of note who have tried to re-establish such a universal
and philosophical tongue: Delgarme, Wilkins, Leibnitz; but Demaimieux, in his
Pasigraphie, is the only one who has proven its possibility. The scheme of
Valentinius, called the "Greek Kabala," based on the combination of
Greek letters, might serve as a model.
The many-sided facets of the mystery
language have led to the adoption of widely varied dogmas and rites in the
exotericism of the Church rituals. It is they, again, which are at the origin
of most of the dogmas of the Christian Church, e.g., the seven Sacraments, the
Trinity, the Resurrection; the seven capital Sins and the seven Virtues. The
seven keys to the mystery tongue, however, having always been in
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the keeping of the highest among the
initiated Hierophants of antiquity, it is only the partial use of a few out of
the seven which passed, through the treason of some early Church Fathers --
ex-initiates of the Temples -- into the hands of the new sect of the Nazarenes.
Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but the last fragments of their
knowledge have now fallen into the power of the Jesuits, who have turned them
into a system of sorcery.
It is maintained that INDIA (not in
its present limits, but including its ancient boundaries) is the only country
in the world which still has among her sons adepts, who have the knowledge of
all the seven sub-systems and the key to the entire system. Since the fall of
Memphis, Egypt began to lose those keys one by one, and Chaldea had preserved
only three in the days of Berosus. As for the Hebrews, in all their writings
they show no more than a thorough knowledge of the astronomical, geometrical
and numerical systems of symbolizing all the human, and especially the
physiological functions. They never had the higher keys.
"Every time I hear people
talking of the religion of Egypt," writes M. Gaston Maspero, the great
French Egyptologist and the successor of Mariette Bey, "I am tempted to
ask which of the Egyptian religions they are talking about? Is it of the
Egyptian religion of the 4th Dynasty, or of the Egyptian religion of the
Ptolemaic period? Is it of the religion of the rabble, or of that of the
learned men? Of that which was taught in the schools of Heliopolis, or of that
other which was in the minds and conceptions of the Theban sacerdotal class?
For, between the first tomb of Memphis, which bears the cartouche of a king of
the third dynasty, and the last stones at Esneh under Caesar-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 has 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
only by a few copies of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Each of the verses
composing it was already at the time interpreted in three or four different
ways; so different, indeed, that according to this or another school, the
Demiurge became the solar fire -- Ra-shoo, or the primordial water. Fifteen
centuries later, the number of readings had increased considerably. Time had,
in its course, modified the ideas about the universe and the forces that ruled
it. During the hardly 18 centuries that Christianity exists, it has worked,
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developed and transformed most of its
dogmas; how many times, then, might not the Egyptian clergy have altered its
dogmas during those fifty centuries that separate Theodosius from the King
Builders of the Pyramids?"
Here we believe the eminent
Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric dogmas may often have been altered,
the esoteric never. He does not take into account the sacred immutability of
the primitive truths, revealed only during the mysteries of initiation. The
Egyptian priests have forgotten much, they altered nothing. The loss of a good deal
of the primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of the great
Hierophants, who passed away before they had time to reveal all to their
successors; mostly, to the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet they
have preserved in their rituals and dogmas the principal teachings of the
secret doctrine. Thus, in the seventeenth chapter mentioned by Maspero, one
finds (1) Osiris saying he is Toum (the creative force in nature, giving form
to all Beings, spirits and men), self-generated and self-existent, issued from
Noun, the celestial river, called Father-mother of the gods, the primordial
deity, which is chaos or the Deep, impregnated by the unseen spirit. (2) He has
found Shoo (solar force) on the staircase in the City of the Eight (the two
cubes of good and Evil), and he has annihilated the evil principles in Noun
(chaos) the children of Rebellion. (3) He is the Fire and Water, i.e., Noun the
primordial parent, and he created the gods out of his limbs -- 14 gods (twice
seven) seven dark and seven light gods (the seven Spirits of the Presence of
the Christians and the Seven dark Evil Spirits). (4) He is the Law of existence
and Being (v. 10), the Bennoo (or phoenix, the bird of resurrection in
Eternity), in whom night follows the day, and day the night -- an allusion to
the periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human re-incarnation; for what
can this mean? "The wayfarer who crosses millions of years, in the name of
One, and the great green (primordial water or Chaos) the name of the other"
(v. 17), one begetting millions of years in succession, the other engulfing
them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks of the Seven Luminous ones who follow
their Lord, who confers justice (Osiris in Amenti).
All this is now shown to have been
the source and origin of Christian dogmas. That which the Jews had from Egypt,
through Moses and other initiates, was confused and distorted enough in later
days; and that which the Church got from both, is still more misinterpreted.
Yet their system is now proven identical
in this special department of symbology -- the key, namely, to the mysteries of
astronomy as connected with those of generation and conception -- with those
ideas of ancient religions, the theology of which has developed the phallic
element. The Jewish system of sacred measures applied to religious symbols is
the same,
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so far as geometrical and numerical
combinations go, as those of Chaldea, Greece, and Egypt, having been adopted by
the Jews during the centuries of their slavery and captivity with those
nations.* What was that system? It is the intimate conviction of the author of
"The Source of Measures" that "the Mosaic Books were intended,
by a mode of art speech, to set forth a geometrical and numerical system of
exact science, which should serve as an origin of measures." Piazzi Smyth
believes likewise. This system and these measures are found by some scholars to
be identical with those used in the construction of the great pyramid -- but
this is only partially so. "The foundation of these measures was the
Parker ratio," says Mr. R. Skinner, in "The Source of Measures."
The author of this very extraordinary
work has found it out, he says, in the use of the integral ratio in numbers of
diameter to circumference of a circle, discovered by John Parker, of New York.
This ratio is 6,561 for diameter, and 20,612 for circumference. Furthermore,
that this geometrical ratio was the very ancient (and probably) the divine
origin of what have now become through exoteric handling and practical
application the British linear measures, "the underlying unit of which,
viz., the inch, was likewise the base of one of the royal Egyptian cubits and
of the Roman foot. He also found out that there was a modified form of the
ratio, viz., 113-355 (explained in his work); and that while this last ratio
pointed through its origin to the exact integral pi, or to 6,561 to 20,612, 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 found 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 (see
first pages of Book I.) 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 revela-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* As we said in Isis (Vol. II. p.
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 be as well the exiled Tchandalas of old India, the
'bricklayers' mentioned by Vina-Svata, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as the Phoenicians
of Herodotus, or the Hyk-Sos of Josephus, or 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 Moses, as the Bible shows them freely
intermarrying not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or
race they came in contact with."
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tion. . . ." But let us see what
is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi Smyth's measurements of the Pyramid.
Mr. Petrie seems to deny them, and to
have made short work altogether of Piazzi Smyth's calculations in their
Biblical connection. So does Mr. Proctor, the champion
"Coincidentalist" for many years past in every question of ancient
arts and sciences. Speaking of "the multitude of relations independent of
the Pyramid, which have turned up while the Pyramidalists have been
endeavouring to connect the pyramid with the solar system . . . . these
coincidences," he says, "are altogether more curious than any
coincidence between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as
close and remarkable as they are real" (i.e., those "coincidences"
that would remain if even the pyramid had no existence); "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" (Petrie's letter to the Academy, Dec. 17, 1881.) To this
Mr. Staniland Wake justly observes in his work on "The Origin and
Significance of the Great Pyramid" (London, 1882): "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."
They had it; and it is on this
"knowledge" that the programme of the MYSTERIES and of the series of
Initiations was based: thence, the construction of the Pyramids, the
everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of these Mysteries and
Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the stars are in Heaven. The cycle of
Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of Cosmic
changes to which astronomers have given the name of tropical or sidereal year.
Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year [25,868 years], the
heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at its
outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man has regained
the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his
cycle of terrestrial incarnation.
Moses, an Initiate into the Egyptian
Mystagogy, based the religious mysteries of the new nation which he created,
upon the same abstract formula derived from this sidereal cycle, which he
symbolised under the form and measurements of the tabernacle, that he is
supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these data, the later Jewish
High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon's Temple -- a building which
never had a real existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is
simply, and as much a solar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif, of the
Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this
allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of
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Initiation, coincide with those of
the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former were derived from the
latter through the Tabernacle of Moses.
That our author has undeniably
discovered one and even two of the keys is fully demonstrated in the work just
quoted. One has but to read it to feel a growing conviction that the hidden
meaning of the allegories and parables of both Testaments is now unveiled. But
that he owes this discovery far more to his own genius than to Parker and
Piazzi Smyth, is as certain, if not more so. For, as just shown, whether the
measures of the great Pyramid taken and adopted as the correct ones by the
Biblical "Pyramidalists" are beyond suspicion, is not so sure. A
proof of this is the work called "The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh,"
by Mr. F. Petrie, besides other works written quite recently to oppose the said
calculations, which were called biassed. We gather that nearly every one of
Piazzi Smyth's measurements differs from the later and more carefully made
measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction to his work with
this sentence:
"As to the results of the whole
investigation, perhaps many theories 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 tone -- '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. Parker's
calculation in general, and his third proposition especially, we have consulted
some eminent mathematicians, and this is the substance of what they say:
Parker's reasoning rests on
sentimental, rather than mathematical, considerations, and is logically
inconclusive.
Proposition III., namely, that --
"The circle is the natural basis
or beginning of all area, and the square being made so in mathematical science,
is artificial and arbitrary --"
-- is an illustration of an arbitrary
proposition, and cannot safely be relied upon in mathematical reasoning. The
same observation applies, even more strongly, to Proposition VII., which states
that:
"Because the circle is the
primary shape in nature, and hence the basis of area; and because the circle is
measured by, and is equal to the square only in ratio of half its circumference
by the radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and not the square of diameter,
are the only natural and legitimate elements of area, by which all regular
shapes are made equal to the square, and equal to the circle."
Proposition IX. is a remarkable
example of faulty reasoning, and it is the one on which Mr. Parker's Quadrature
mainly rests. Here it is:--
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"The circle and the equilateral
triangle are opposite to one another in all the elements of their construction,
and hence the fractional diameter of one circle, which is equal to the diameter
of one square, is in the opposite duplicate ratio to the diameter of an
equilateral triangle whose area is one," etc., etc.
Granting, for the sake of argument,
that a triangle can be said to have a radius in the sense in which we speak of
the radius of a circle, -- for what Parker calls the radius of the triangle is
the radius of a circle inscribed in the triangle and therefore not the radius
of the triangle at all, -- and granting for the moment the other fanciful and
mathematical propositions united in his premises, why must we conclude that if
the triangle and circle are opposite in all the elements of their construction,
the diameter of any defined circle is in the opposite duplicate ratio of the
diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What necessary connection is there
between the premises and the conclusion? The reasoning is of a kind not known
in geometry, and would not be accepted by strict mathematicians.
Whether the Archaic esoteric system
originated the British inch or not, is of little consequence, however, to the
strict and true metaphysician. Nor does Mr. Ralston Skinner's esoteric reading
of the Bible become incorrect, merely because the measurements of the Pyramid
will not be found to agree with those of Solomon's temple, the ark of Noah,
etc.; or because Mr. Parker's Quadrature of the Circle is rejected by
mathematicians. For Mr. Skinner's reading depends first of all on the
Kabalistic methods and the Rabbinical value of the Hebrew letters. But it is
extremely important to ascertain whether the measures used in the evolution and
building of the Aryan symbolic religion, in the construction of their temples,
the figures given in the Puranas, and especially in their chronology, their
astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles, and other computations, were,
or were not, the same as those used in the Biblical measurements and glyphs.
For this will prove that the Jews, unless they took their sacred cubit and
measurements from the Egyptians (Moses being an initiate of the Priests) must
have got those notions from India. At any rate they passed them to the early
Christians. Hence, it is the Occultists and Kabalists who are the
"true" heirs to the KNOWLEDGE, or the secret wisdom which is still
found in the Bible; for they alone now understand its real meaning, whereas
profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead letter thereof. That it
is the system of measures which led to the invention of the God-names Elohim
and Jehovah, and their adaptation to phallicism, and that Jehovah is a not very
flattered copy of Osiris, is now demonstrated by the author of the "Source
of Measures." But the latter and Mr. Piazzi Smyth both seem to labour
under the impression that (a) the priority of the system belongs to the
Israelites,
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the Hebrew language being the divine
language, and that (b) this universal language belongs to direct revelation!
The latter hypothesis is correct only
in the sense shown in the last paragraph of the preceding §; but we have yet to
agree as to the nature and character of the divine "Revealer." With
regard to priority, this, to the profane, will of course depend on (a) the
internal and external evidence of the revelation, and (b) on each scholar's individual
preconception. This, however, cannot prevent either the theistic Kabalist, or
the Pantheistic Occultist, from believing each in his way; neither of the two
convincing the other. The data furnished by history are too meagre and
unsatisfactory for either of them to prove to the sceptic which of them is
right.
On the other hand, the proofs
afforded by tradition are too constantly rejected for us to hope to settle the
question in our present age. Meanwhile, materialistic science will be laughing
impartially at both Kabalists and Occultists. But the said vexed question of
priority once laid aside, Science, in its departments of philology and
comparative religion, will find itself finally taken to task, and be compelled
to admit the common claim.* Its greatest scholars, instead of pooh-poohing that
supposed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* One by one the claims become
admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to recognize the facts
given out from the Secret Doctrine -- though he rarely, if ever, recognizes
that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the palmy days of Mr.
Piazzi Smyth's authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was, that the
porphyry sarcophagus of the King's Chamber "is the unit of measure for the
two most enlightened nations of the earth, England and America," and was
no better than a "corn bin." This was vehemently denied by us in Isis
Unveiled just published at that time. Then the New York press arose in arms
(the "Sun" and the "World" chiefly) against our presuming
to correct or find fault with such a star of learning. On p. 519, vol. I., we
had said, that Herodotus when treating of that Pyramid "might have added
that, externally it symbolized the creative principle of Nature, and illustrated
also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy.
Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the
mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members
of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth,
Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font,
upon emerging from which the neophyte was "born again" and became an
adept."
Our statement was laughed at in those
days. We were accused of having got our ideas from the "craze" of
Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the Sarcophagus had been used
for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris; (we had never heard of that writer!).
And now, six or seven years later, this is what Mr. Staniland Wake writes on p.
93 of his paper, on "The Origin and Significance of the Great
Pyramid."
"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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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"farrago of absurd fiction and
superstitions," as the Brahminical literature is generally termed, will
endeavour to learn the symbolical universal language with its numerical and
geometrical keys. But here again they will hardly be successful if they share
the belief that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains the key to the whole
mystery: for, it does not. Nor does any other Scripture at present possess it
in its entirety, for even the Vedas are not complete. Every old religion is but
a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval mysteries -- Eastern
Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession of the full
secret, with its seven keys. Comparisons will be instituted, and as much as
possible will be explained in this work -- the rest is left to the student's
personal intuition. For in saying that Eastern Occultism has the secret, it is
not as if a "complete" or even an approximate knowledge was claimed
by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, I give out; that which I
cannot explain, the student must find out for himself.
But while supposing that the whole
cycle of the universal mystery language will not be mastered for whole
centuries to come, even that which has been hitherto discovered in the Bible by
some scholars is quite sufficient to demonstrate the claim -- mathematically.
Judaism having availed itself of two keys out of the seven, and these two keys
having been now rediscovered, it becomes no longer a matter of individual speculation
and hypothesis, least of all of "coincidence," but one of a correct
reading of the Bible texts, as anyone acquainted with arithmetic reads and
verifies an addition or total.* A few years longer and this system will kill
the dead letter of the Bible, as it will that of all the other exoteric faiths,
by showing the dogmas in their real, naked meaning.
And then this undeniable meaning,
however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of Being, besides changing entirely
the modern scientific systems of Anthropology, Ethnology and especially that of
Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found in every God-name and narrative in
the Old (and to some degree in the New) Testament, may also in time
considerably change modern materialistic views in Biology and Physiology.
Divested of their modern repulsive
crudeness, such views of nature and man, on the authority of the celestial
bodies and their mysteries,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] final stage of the SACRED MYSTERIES." Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a
Theosophist, he might have added that the narrow upward passage leading to the
King's chamber had a "narrow gate" indeed; the same "strait
gate" which "leadeth unto life," or the new spiritual re-birth
alluded to by Jesus in Matthew vii. 13 et seq; and that it is this gate in the
Initiation temple, that the writer who recorded the words alleged to have been
spoken by an Initiate, was thinking of.
* All we have said in Isis is now
found corroborated in the "Egyptian Mystery; or The Source of
Measures," by those readings of the Bible with the numerical and
geometrical keys thereto.
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will unveil the evolutions of the
human mind and show how natural was such a course of thought. The so-called
phallic symbols have become offensive only because of the element of materiality
and animality in them. As they originated with the archaic races, which,
issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry, were the first
phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the separation of sexes and the
ensuing mystery of creating in their turn -- such symbols were but natural. If
later races have degraded them, especially the "chosen people," this
does not affect the origin of those symbols. The little Semitic tribe -- one of
the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the 4th and 5th sub-races (the
Mongolo-Turanian and the Indo-European, so-called, after the sinking of the
great Continent) -- could only accept its symbology in the spirit which was
given to it by the nations from which it was derived. Perchance, in the Mosaic
beginnings, that symbology was not as crude as it became later under the
handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole Pentateuch. For the glyph of
Pharaoh's daughter (the woman), the Nile (the Great Deep and Water), and the
baby-boy found floating therein in the ark of rushes, has not been primarily
composed for, or by, Moses. It has been found anticipated in the Babylonian
fragments on the tiles, in the story of King Sargon,* who lived far earlier
than Moses. Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly that which gives
us the right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been learned by
him while at Babylon,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On page 224 of Assyrian Antiquities
Mr. George Smith says: "In the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik I found
another fragment of the curious history of Sargon. . . . published in my
translation in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vol. I.
part I. p. 46." The capital of Sargon, the Babylonian Moses, "was the
great city of Agadi, called by the Semitics Akkad -- mentioned in Genesis as
the capital of Nimrod." (Gen. x. 10) . . . "Akkad lay near the City
of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of Babylon." (See Isis, vol. II. p.
442-3,) Another strange coincidence is found in the fact that the name of the
neighbouring above-mentioned City of Sippara is the same as the name of the
wife of Moses -- Zipporah (Exodus ii.). Of course the story is a clever
addition by Ezra, who could not be ignorant of it. This curious story is found
on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:--
1. Sargona, 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 Azupiran, which is
by the side of the River Euphrates.
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, etc., etc.
And now Exodus (ii): "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."
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and that he applied the allegory told
of Sargon to the Jewish lawgiver. In short, that Exodus was never written by
Moses, but re-fabricated from old materials by Ezra.
And if so, then why should not other
symbols and glyphs far more crude in their phallic element have been added by
this adept in the later Chaldean and Sabaean phallic worship? We are taught
that the primeval faith of the Israelites was quite different from that which
was developed centuries later by the Talmudists, and before them by David and
Hezekiah.
All this, notwithstanding the
exoteric element, as now found in the two Testaments, is quite sufficient to
class the Bible among esoteric works, and to connect its secret system with
Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of biblical glyphs
and numbers as suggested by astronomical observations -- astronomy and theology
being closely connected -- is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric,
systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the planets,
their aspects and nodes -- the last term having now passed even into our modern
botany to distinguish male and female plants (the unisexual, polygamous,
monoecious, dioecious, etc., etc.) -- are known in astronomy as sextiles,
quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and aeons by the archaic
nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. The
earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the
observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence the most archaic
symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a plane, a
cube, a pentacle, and a hexagon, and plane figures with various sides and
angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical symbology to be as old
as the world.
Starting from this, it becomes easy
to understand how nature herself could have taught primeval mankind, even
without the help of its divine instructors, the first principles of a numerical
and geometrical symbol language.* Hence one finds numbers and figures used as
an
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] "The story," says Mr. G. Smith, "is supposed to have happened
about 1600 B.C. rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses. As we know that
the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account had a
connection with the event related in Exodus ii., for every action, when once
performed, has a tendency to be repeated." But now, when Professor Sayce
has had the courage to push back the dates of the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings
by two thousand years more, Sargon must have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at
the least. (See Professor Sayce's Lectures on the subject.) The confession is
suggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or two.
* As a reminder how the Esoteric
religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the worship of Jehovah, as
re-established by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for one, read pp.
436-42, vol. II., in Isis Unveiled. Surely there must have been some very
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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expression and a record of thought in
every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever the same, with only certain
variations growing out of the first figures. Thus the evolution and correlation
of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and development -- spiritual and
physical, abstract and concrete -- were first recorded in geometrical changes
of shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle, a point, a triangle, and a cube,
up to number 9, when it was synthesized by the first line and a circle -- the
Pythagorean mystic Decade, the sum of all, involving and expressing the
mysteries of the entire Kosmos; recorded a hundred times more fully in the
Hindu system, for him who can understand its mystic language. The numbers 3 and
4, in their blending of 7, as those of 5, 6, 9, and 10, are the very
corner-stone of Occult Cosmogonies. This decade and its thousand combinations
are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes them in the caves and
rock-cut temples of Hindostan and Central Asia, as in the pyramids and lithoi
of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas, in the mounds of the
Caucasian snowcapped fastnesses, in the ruins of Palenque, in Easter Island,
everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ever journeyed. The 3 and the 4,
the triangle and the cube, or the male and female universal glyph, showing the
first aspect of the evolving deity, is stamped for ever in the Southern Cross
in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux-Ansata. As well expressed, "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.*
This kind of measure was made to co-ordinate with the idea of the origin of
human life, and hence the phallic form.**"
The Stanzas show the cross and these
numbers playing a prominent part in archaic cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit
by the evidence collected by the same author to show the identity of symbols
and their esoteric meaning all over the globe, which he calls rightly the
"primordial vestiges of these symbols."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the high
Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged "Books
of Moses," the Pentateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud.
* Once more, remember the Hindu
Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the "sacred sign,"
the Swastica; Plato's Decussated man in Space, etc., etc.
** "Source of Measures."
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"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 back
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, 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,* 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; thus exhibiting a symbolic display of the
interdependency of the forms set forth.
"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. . . . Attwater, 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 are decorated with
hieroglyphical sculptures and small niches arranged with great symmetry. The
number of these niches seems to allude to the 318 simple and compound signs of
the days of their civil calendar."
"318 is the Gnostic value of
Christ," remarks the author, "and the famous number of the trained or
circumcised servants of Abraham. When it is consi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See farther on the description
given of the early Aryan initiation: of Visvakarma crucifying the Sun,
"Vikkartana," shorn of his beams -- on a cruciform lath.
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dered 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 the civil calendar becomes manifest."
Identical glyphs, numbers and
esoteric symbols are found in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Easter Island, India,
Chaldea, and Central Asia. Crucified men, and symbols of the evolution of races
from gods; and yet behold Science repudiating the idea of a human race other
than one made in our image; theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation;
anthropology teaching our descent from the ape; and the Clergy tracing it from
Adam 4,004 years B.C.!!
Shall one, for fear of incurring the
penalty of being called a superstitious fool, and even a liar, abstain from
furnishing proofs -- as good as any -- only because that day, when all the
SEVEN KEYS shall be delivered unto Science, or rather the men of learning and
research in the symbological department, has not yet dawned? In the face of the
crushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to the antiquity
of man, shall we -- in order to avoid the usual penalty that awaits every one
who strays outside the beaten paths of either Theology or Materialism -- hold
to the 6,000 years and "special creation," or accept in submissive
admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so, as long as it is
known that the secret records hold the said SEVEN keys to the mystery of the
genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as the scientific theories
may be, they are a thousand times nearer the truth than the vagaries of
theology. The latter are in their death agony for every one but the most
uncompromising bigot and fanatic.* Hence we have no choice but either to
blindly accept the deductions of Science, or to cut adrift from it, and
withstand it fearlessly to its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches
us, being fully prepared to bear the consequences.
But let us see whether Science in its
materialistic speculations, and even theology in its death-rattle and supreme
struggle to reconcile the 6,000 years since Adam with Sir Charles Lyell's
"Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man," do not themselves
give us unconsciously a helping hand. Ethnology, on the confession of some of
its very learned votaries, finds it already impossible to account for the
varieties in the human race, unless the hypothesis of the creation of several
Adams be accepted. They speak of "a white Adam and a black Adam, a red
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Some of its defenders must have
lost their reason, one would rather say. For what can one think when, in the
face of the dead-letter absurdities of the Bible, these are still supported,
publicly and as fiercely as ever, and one finds its theologians maintaining
that though "the Scriptures carefully refrain (?) from making any direct
contribution to scientific knowledge, they have never stumbled upon any
statement which will not abide the light of ADVANCING SCIENCE"!!! --
("Primeval Man," p. 14).
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Adam and a yellow Adam."* Were
they Hindus enumerating the rebirths of Vamadeva from the Linga Purana, they
could say little more. For, enumerating the repeated births of Siva, the latter
show him in one Kalpa of a white complexion, in another of a black colour, in
still another of a red colour, after which the Kumara becomes "four youths
of a yellow colour." This strange coincidence, as Mr. Proctor would say,
speak only in favour of scientific intuition, as Siva-Kumara represents only
allegorically the human races during the genesis of man. But it led to another
intuitional phenomenon -- in the theological ranks this time. The unknown
author of "Primeval Man" in a desperate effort to screen the divine
Revelation from the merciless and eloquent discoveries of geology and anthropology,
remarking that "it would be unfortunate if the defenders of the Bible
should be driven into the position of either surrendering the inspiration of
Scripture, or denying the conclusions of geologists" -- finds a
compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick volume to proving this fact: "Adam was
not the first man** created upon this earth." . . . The exhumed relics of
pre-Adamic man, "instead of shaking our confidence in Scripture, supply
additional proof of its veracity" (p. 194). How so? In the simplest way
imaginable; for the author argues that, henceforth "we" (the clergy)
"are enabled to leave scientific men to pursue their studies without
attempting to coerce them by the fear of heresy" . . . (this must be a
relief indeed to Messrs. Huxley, Tyndall, and Sir C. 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" (p. 55). . . . Who, then,
or what were those races, since the author still maintains that Adam is the
first man of our race? It was THE SATANIC RACE AND RACES! "Satan (was)
never in heaven, Angels and men (being) one species." It was the
pre-Adamic race of "Angels that sinned." Satan was "the first
Prince of this world," we read. Having died in consequence of his
rebellion, he remained on earth as a disembodied Spirit, and tempted Adam and
Eve. "The earlier ages of the Satanic race, and more especially during the
life-time of Satan (!!!) may have been a period
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Primeval Man Unveiled, or the
Anthropology of the Bible"; author (unknown) of the "Stars and the
Angels" 1870, p. 195.
** Especially in the face of the
evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. of Genesis, v. 16
and 17, which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and there marrying a wife.
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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. . . . (when) 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"! . . . . (pp. 206-207).
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 nowadays before her gay modern
lovers -- might even derive a moral lesson from this daughter of Satan, in the
exuberant fancy of her first human biographer. These pictures -- and to
appreciate them at their true value they must be examined in the volume that
describes them -- are all suggested with a view to reconcile the infallibility
of revealed Scripture with Sir C. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man" and
other damaging scientific works. But this does not prevent truth and fact
appearing at the foundation of these vagaries, which the author has never dared
to sign with his own, or even a borrowed name. For, his pre-Adamic races -- not
Satanic but simply Atlantic, and the Hermaphrodites before the latter -- are
mentioned in the Bible when read esoterically, as they are in the Secret
Doctrine. The SEVEN KEYS open the mysteries, past and future, of the seven
great Root Races, as of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and even
the esoteric geology, will surely be rejected by Science just as much as the
Satanic and pre-Adamic races, yet if having no other way out of their
difficulties the Scientists have to choose between the two, we feel certain
that, Scripture notwithstanding, once the mystery language is approximately
mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will be accepted.
-------
§ 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
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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, LL.D.,
Part II., p. 133)
Ether, this hypothetical Proteus, one
of the "representative Fictions" of modern Science -- which,
nevertheless, was so long accepted -- is one of the lower
"principles" of what we call PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE (Akasa, in
Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, and which has now become again the dream
of modern science. It is the greatest, just as it is the boldest, of the
surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, however,
both ETHER and the Primordial Substance are a reality. To put it plainly, ETHER
is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is AKASA, the Upadhi of
DIVINE THOUGHT.
In modern language, the latter would
be better named COSMIC IDEATION -- Spirit; the former, COSMIC SUBSTANCE,
Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are but the two facets of the
one Absolute Existence. The latter was never addressed, or even mentioned, by
any name in antiquity, except allegorically. In the oldest Aryan race, the
Hindu, the worship of the intellectual classes never consisted (as with the
Greeks) in a fervent adoration of marvellous form and art, which led later on
to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek philosopher adored form, and the Hindu
sage alone "perceived the true relation of earthly beauty and eternal
truth" -- the uneducated of every nation understood neither, at any time.
They do not understand it even now.
The evolution of the GOD-IDEA proceeds apace with man's own intellectual
evolution. So true it is that the noblest ideal to which the religious Spirit
of one age can soar, will appear but a gross caricature to the philosophic mind
in a succeeding epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be initiated into
perceptive mysteries, before they could grasp the correct idea of the ancients
in relation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise -- outside such
initiation -- for every thinker there will be a "Thus far shalt thou go and
no farther," mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as
unmistakeably as there is for the progress of any nation or race in its cycle
by the law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary
religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain unable to
soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and even
free-thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product of their respective
environments and periods. The ideals of both are only
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the necessary results of their
temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual progress to which a
nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the
highest flights of modern (Western) metaphysics have fallen far short of the
truth. Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the "First
Cause" is little better than veiled materialism -- the terminology alone
being different. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the
"Unknowable" occasionally in terms that demonstrate the lethal influence
of materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, has withered and
blighted all current ontological speculation.*
From the early ages of the Fourth
Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped and the mystery was made manifest, down
to the last palmy days of Grecian art at the dawn of Christianity -- the
Hellenes alone had dared to raise publicly an altar to the UNKNOWN GOD.
Whatever St. Paul may have had in his profound mind when declaring to the
Athenians that this "unknown," ignorantly worshipped by them, was the
true God announced by himself -- that Deity was not "Jehovah" (see
"The Holy of Holies"), nor was he "The Maker of the world and
all things." For it is not the "God of Israel" but the
"Unknown" of the ancient and modern Pantheist that "dwelleth not
in temples made with hands" (Acts xviii., 23-4).
Divine thought cannot be defined, or
its meaning explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic
Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by those who can do so. To
say this, after having defined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, impersonal,
sexless, which must be placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its subsequent
evolution, is equivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a
transcendental equation of conditions for the true values of a set, having in
hand for deducing them only a number of unknown quantities. Its place is found
in the old primitive Symbolic charts, in which, as shown in the text, it is
represented by a boundless darkness, on the ground of which appears the first
central point in white -- thus symbolising coeval and co-eternal SPIRIT-MATTER
making its appearance in the phenomenal world, before its first
differentiation. When "the one becomes two," it may then be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For instance, when he terms the
"First Cause" -- the UNKNOWABLE -- a "power manifesting through
phenomena," and "an infinite eternal Energy" (?) it is clear
that he has grasped solely the physical aspect of the mystery of Being -- the
Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The co-eternal aspect of the ONE REALITY --
Cosmic Ideation -- (as to its noumenon, it seems non-existent in the mind of
the great thinker) is absolutely omitted from consideration. Without doubt,
this one-sided mode of dealing with the problem is due largely to the
pernicious Western practice of subordinating consciousness, or regarding it as
a "by-product" of molecular motion.
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referred to as Spirit and matter. To
"Spirit" is referable every manifestation of consciousness,
reflective or direct, and of unconscious purposiveness (to adopt a modern
expression used in Western philosophy, so-called) as evidenced in the Vital
Principle, and Nature's submission to the majestic sequence of immutable law.
"Matter" must be regarded as objectivity in its purest abstraction --
the self-existing basis whose septenary manvantaric differentiations constitute
the objective reality underlying the phenomena of each phase of conscious
existence. During the period of Universal Pralaya, Cosmic Ideation is
nonexistent; and the variously differentiated states of Cosmic Substance are
resolved back again into the primary state of abstract potential objectivity.
Manvantaric impulse commences with
the re-awakening of Cosmic Ideation (the "Universal Mind")
concurrently with, and parallel to the primary emergence of Cosmic Substance --
the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former -- from its
undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its
Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible
by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy (Fohat). Thrilling through the
bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary
differentiations on all the Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are
thus Seven Protyles (as they are now called), while Aryan antiquity called them
the Seven Prakriti, or Natures, serving, severally, as the relatively
homogeneous basis, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity (in the
evolution of the Universe) differentiate into the marvellous complexity
presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term
"relatively" is used designedly, because the very existence of such a
process, resulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic
Substance into its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the
protyle* of each plane as only a mediate phase assumed by Substance in its
passage from abstract, into full objectivity.
Cosmic Ideation is said to be
non-existent during Pralayic periods, for the simple reason that there is no
one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no manifestation of
Consciousness, semi-consciousness, or even "unconscious
purposiveness," except through the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The term Protyle is due to Mr.
Crookes, the eminent chemist, who has given that name to pre-Matter, if one may
so call primordial and purely homogeneous substances, suspected, if not
actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the atom. But the
incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and molecules takes its
rise subsequent to the evolution of the Seven Protyles. It is the last of these
-- having recently detected the possibility of its existence on our plane --
that Mr. Crookes is in search of.
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vehicle of matter; that is to say, on
this our plane, wherein human consciousness in its normal state cannot soar
beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it is only through some
molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual
or sub-conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is
a mere abstraction, both of these aspects of the ABSOLUTE -- Cosmic Substance
and Cosmic Ideation -- are mutually inter-dependent. In strict accuracy -- to
avoid confusion and misconception -- the term "Matter" ought to be
applied to the aggregate of objects of possible perception, and
"Substance" to noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of our plane
are the creation of the perceiving Ego -- the modifications of its own
subjectivity -- all the "states of matter representing the aggregate of
perceived objects" can have but a relative and purely phenomenal existence
for the children of our plane. As the modern Idealists would say, the
co-operation of Subject and Object results in the Sense-object or phenomenon.
But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the same on all
other planes; that the co-operation of the two on the planes of their septenary
differentiation results in a septenary aggregate of phenomena which are
likewise non-existent per se, though concrete realities for the Entities of
whose experience they form a part, in the same manner as the rocks and rivers
around us are real from the stand-point of a physicist, though unreal illusions
of sense from that of the metaphysician. It would be an error to say, or even
conceive such a thing. From the stand-point of the highest metaphysics, the
whole Universe, gods included, is an illusion; but the illusion of him who is
in himself an illusion differs on every plane of consciousness; and we have no
more right to dogmatise about the possible nature of the perceptive faculties
of an Ego on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to identify our perceptions
with, or make them a standard for, those of an ant, in its mode of
consciousness. The pure object apart from consciousness* is unknown to us,
while living on the plane of our three-dimensional World; as we know only the
mental states it excites in the perceiving Ego. And, so long as the contrast of
Subject and Object endures -- to wit, as long as we enjoy our five senses and
no more, and do not know how to divorce our all-perceiving Ego (the Higher
Self) from the thraldom of these senses -- so long will it be impossible for
the personal Ego to break through the barrier which separates it from a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Cosmic Ideation focussed in a
principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness of the individual Ego.
Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi, e.g., through that known as
Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated
fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi resting on the experience of Manas
as its basis -- as a stream of spiritual INTUITION.
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knowledge of things in themselves (or
Substance). That Ego, progressing in an arc of ascending subjectivity, must
exhaust the experience of every plane. But not till the Unit is merged in the
ALL, whether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike vanish in
the absolute negation of the Nirvanic State (negation, again, only from our
plane), is scaled that peak of Omniscience -- the Knowledge of
things-in-themselves; and the solution of the yet more awful riddle approached,
before which even the highest Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance --
the unspeakable mystery of that which is called by the Vedantins, the
PARABRAHMAM.
Therefore, such being the case, all
those who sought to give a name to the incognizable Principle have simply
degraded it. Even to speak of Cosmic Ideation -- save in its phenomenal aspect
-- is like trying to bottle up primordial Chaos, or to put a printed label on
ETERNITY.
What, then, is the "primordial
Substance," that mysterious object of which Alchemy was ever talking, and
which became the subject of philosophical speculation in every age? What can it
be finally, even in its phenomenal pre-differentiation? Even that is ALL in
manifested Nature and -- nothing to our senses. It is mentioned under various
names in every Cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to
this day, the ever grasp-eluding PROTEUS in Nature. We touch and do not feel
it; we look at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we
hear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it is in
every molecule of that which in our illusion and ignorance we regard as Matter
in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a thought, an emotion. . . . In
short, it is the "upadhi," or vehicle, of every possible phenomenon,
whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening sentences of Genesis, as
in the Chaldean Cosmogony; in the Puranas of India, and in the Book of the Dead
of Egypt, it opens everywhere the cycle of manifestation. It is termed
"Chaos," and the face of the waters, incubated by the Spirit
proceeding from the Unknown, under whatever name. (See "Chaos, Theos,
Kosmos.")
The authors of the sacred Scriptures
in India go deeper into the origin of things evolved than Thales or Job, for
they say:--
"From INTELLIGENCE (called MAHAT
in the Puranas) associated with IGNORANCE (Iswar, 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.
(Taittiriya Upanishad II. 1).
It becomes thus evident that it is
not this Ether -- sprung at the fourth
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remove from an Emanation of
Intelligence "associated with Ignorance" -- which is the high
principle, the deific Entity worshipped by the Greeks and Latins under the name
of "Pater omnipotens AEther," and "Magnus AEther" in its
collective aggregates. The septenary gradation, and the innumerable
subdivisions and differences, made by the ancients between the powers of Ether
collectively, from its outward fringe of effects, with which our Science is so
familiar, up to the "Imponderable Substance," once admitted as the
"Ether of Space," now about to be rejected, has been ever a vexing
riddle for every branch of knowledge. The mythologists and symbologists of our
day, confused by this incomprehensible glorification, on the one hand, and
degradation on the other, of the same deified entity and in the same religious
systems, are often driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a
rock in each and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether
the abode of her Satanic legions.* The whole hierarchy of the
"Fallen" angels is there; the Cosmocratores -- or the "world
bearers," (according to Bossuet); Mundi Tenentes -- the "world
holders," as Tertullian calls them; and Mundi Domini "world
dominations," or rather dominators, the Curbati, or "Curved,"
etc., who thus make of the stars and celestial orbs in their course -- Devils!
The difference made between the seven
states of Ether (itself one of the Seven Cosmic principles), while the AEther
of the Ancients is universal Fire, may be seen in the injunctions by Zoroaster
and Psellus, respectively. The former said: "Consult it only when it is
without form or figure," absque forma et figura, which means without
flames or burning coals. "When it has a form -- heed it not," teaches
Psellus; "but when it is formless, obey it, for it is then sacred fire,
and all it will reveal thee, shall be true."** This proves that Ether,
itself an aspect of Akasa, has in its turn several aspects or "principles."
All the ancient nations deified
AEther in its imponderable aspect and potency. Virgil calls Jupiter, Pater
omnipotens AEther, "the great AEther."*** The Hindus have also placed
it among their deities; under the name of Akasa (the synthesis of AEther). And
the author of the Homoiomerian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For it is thus that the Church has
interpreted verse 12 in the VI. Chapter to the Ephesians. "For we wrestle
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world." Further on St. Paul
mentions the spiritual malices ("wickedness" in English texts) SPREAD
IN THE AIR -- "Spiritualia nequitiae coelestibus," the Latin texts
giving various names to these "malices," the innocent
"Elementals." But the Church is right this time, though wrong in
calling them all devils. The ASTRAL LIGHT or lower Ether is full of conscious
and semi-conscious and unconscious entities; only the church has less power
over them than over invisible microbes or mosquitoes.
** Effatum XVI. "Oracles of
Zoroaster."
*** Georgica. Book II.
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System of philosophy, Anaxagoras of
Clazomenae, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all things, as
well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless Ether where they were
generated, whence they evolved, and whither they returned -- an Occult
teaching.
It thus becomes clear that it is from
Ether in its highest synthetic aspect, once anthropomorphised, that sprung the
first idea of a personal creative deity. With the philosophical Hindus the
elements are Tamas, i.e., "unenlightened by intellect, which they
obscure."
We have now to exhaust the question
of the mystical meaning of "Primordial Chaos" and of the
Root-Principle, and show how they were connected in the ancient philosophies
with Akasa, wrongly translated AEther, and also with Maya (illusion) -- of
which Ishwara is the male aspect. We shall speak further on of the intelligent
"principle," or rather of the invisible immaterial properties, in the
visible and material elements, that "sprung from the primordial Chaos."
For, "What is the primordial
Chaos but AEther?" it is asked in "ISIS UNVEILED." Not the
modern Ether; not such as is recognised now, but such as was known to the
ancient philosophers long before the time of Moses; but AEther, with all its
mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs of universal
creation. Upper AEther or Akasa, is the celestial virgin and mother of every
existing form and being, from whose bosom, as soon as "incubated" by
the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter and Life, Force and Action.
AEther is the Aditi of the Hindus, and it is Akasa. Electricity, magnetism,
heat, light, and chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh
facts are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends
the power of this protean giant -- AEther; or whence its mysterious origin?
Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it
all visible forms?
It will be an easy task to show that
the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on a knowledge by the
ancients of those sciences, which have allied themselves in our days in support
of the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that
those ancients were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself,
embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. "With
the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing
the whole, and an established principle; while 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, far later, account clashes with
the definite exegesis of 'Exact Science'" ("Isis Unveiled").
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If one turns to the "Laws (or
Ordinances) of Manu," one finds the prototype of all these ideas. Mostly
lost (to the Western world) in their original form, disfigured by later
interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless, preserved quite enough
of their ancient Spirit to show its character. "Removing the darkness, the
Self-existent Lord" (Vishnu, Narayana, etc.) becoming manifest, and
"wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created, in the beginning,
water alone. In that he cast seed. . . . . That became a golden Egg." (V.
6, 7, 8, 9.) Whence this Self-existent Lord? It is called THIS, and is spoken
of as "Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable
as if wholly in sleep." (V. 5.) Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole
divine year, he "who is called in the world Brahma," splits that Egg
in two, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the
earth, and from the middle the sky and "the perpetual place of
waters." (12, 13.)
But there is, directly following
these verses, something more important for us, as it corroborates entirely our
esoteric teachings. From verse 14 to 36, evolution is given in the order
described in the Esoteric philosophy. This cannot be easily gainsaid. Even
Medhatithi, the son of Viraswamin, and the author of the Commentary, "the
Manubhasya," whose date, according to the western Orientalists, is 1,000
A.D., helps us with his remarks to the elucidation of the truth. He showed
himself either unwilling to give out more, because he knew that truth which has
to be kept from the profane, or else he was really puzzled. Still, what he does
give out makes the septenary principle in men and nature plain enough.
Let us begin with Chapter 1. of the
"Ordinances" or "Laws" after the Self-existent Lord, the
unmanifesting Logos of the Unknown "Darkness," becomes manifested in
the golden Egg. It is from this "Egg," from ----
(11.) That which is the undiscrete
(undifferentiated) cause, eternal, which Is and Is not, from It issued that
male who is called in the world Brahma. . . . .
Here we find, as in all genuine
philosophical systems, even the "Egg" or the Circle (or Zero),
boundless Infinity, referred to as IT,* and Brahma, the first unit only,
referred to as the male god, i.e., the fructifying Principle. It is [[diagram]]
or 10 (ten) the Decade. On the plane of the Septenary or our World only, it is
called Brahma. On that of the Unified Decade in the realm of Reality, this male
Brahma is an illusion.
(14.) "From Self (atmanah) he
created mind, (1) which is and is not;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The ideal apex of the Pythagorean
triangle: vide Sections in Vol. II., "Cross and Circle," and the
"Earliest Symbolics of the Cross."
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(2) and from mind, Ego-ism
(Self-Consciousness) the ruler; (3) the Lord."
(1.) The mind is Manas. Medhatithi,
the commentator, justly observes here that it is the reverse of this and shows
already interpolation and rearranging; for it is Manas that springs from
Ahamkara or (Universal) Self-Consciousness, as Manas in the microcosm springs
from Mahat, or Maha-Buddhi (Buddhi, in man). For Manas is dual, and as shown
and translated by Colebrooke, "is serving both for sense and action, is an
organ by affinity, being cognate with the rest." "The rest"
means, here, that Manas, our fifth principle (the fifth, because the body was
named the first, which is the reverse of the true philosophical order)* is in
affinity both with Atma-Buddhi and with the lower four principles. Hence, our
teaching: namely, that Manas follows Atma-Buddhi to Devachan, and that the
lower (dregs, the residue of) Manas remains with Kama rupa, in Limbus, or
Kama-loka, the abode of the "Shells."
(2.) Such is the meaning of Manas,
which "is, and is not."
(3.) Medhatithi translates it as
"the one conscious of the I," or Ego, not "ruler," as the
Orientalists do. Thus they translate verse 16: "He also, having made the
subtile parts of those six (the Great Self and the five organs of sense) of
unmeasured brightness, to enter into the elements of Self (Atmamatrasu) created
all beings."
When, according to Medhatithi, it
ought to read matra-Chit instead of "Atmamatrasu," and thus be made
to say:--
"He having pervaded the subtile
parts of those six, of unmeasured brightness, by elements of self, created all
beings."
This latter reading must be the
correct one, since he, the Self, is what we call Atma, and thus constitutes the
seventh principle, the synthesis of the "six." Such is also the
opinion of the editor of Manava-dharma Shastra, who seems to have intuitionally
entered far deeper into the spirit of the philosophy than has the translator of
the "Ordinances of Manu," the late Dr. Burnell. For he hesitates
little between the text of Kulluka and the Commentaries of Medhatithi.
Rejecting the tanmatra, or subtile elements, and the atmamatrasu of Kulluka, he
says, applying the principles to the Cosmic Self: "The six appear rather
to be the manas plus the five principles of Ether, air, fire, water,
earth"; "having united five portions of these six with the spiritual
element (the seventh) he (thus) created all existing things;" atmamatra is
therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the elementary, not reflective
"elements of himself." Thus he corrects the translation of verse --
"17. As the subtile elements of bodily forms of This One depend on these
six, so
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide A. Coke Burnell's translation,
edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph.D.
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the wise call his form carira"
(sharira) -- and he says that "Elements" mean here portions or parts
(or principles), which reading is borne out by verse 19, which says:--
"19. This non-eternal (Universe)
arises then from the Eternal, by means of the subtile elements of forms of
those seven very glorious principles" (purusha).
Commenting upon which, according to
Medhatithi, the Editor remarks that "the five elements plus mind (Manas)
and Self-Consciousness (Ahamkara)* are meant;" "subtile
elements," as before (meaning) "five portions of form" (or
principles). For verse 20 shows it, when saying of these (five elements, or
"five portions of form" (rupa, plus Manas and Self-Consciousness)
that they constitute the "seven purusha," or principles, called in
the Puranas the "Seven Prakritis."
Moreover, these "five
elements" or "five portions" are spoken of in verse 27 as
"those which are called the atomic destructible portions" --
therefore "distinct from the atoms of the nyaya."
This creative Brahma, issuing from
the mundane or golden egg, unites in himself both the male and the female
principles. He is, in short, the same as all the creative Protologoi. Of
Brahma, however, it could not be said, as of Dionysos: "[[protogonon
diphue trigonon Baccheion Hanakta Hagrion arreton kruphion dikerota
dimorphon]]" -- a lunar Jehovah -- Bacchus truly, with David dancing nude
before his symbol in the ark -- because no licentious Dionysia were ever
established in his name and honour. All such public worship was exoteric, and
the great universal symbols were distorted universally, as those of Krishna are
now by the Vallabacharyas of Bombay, the followers of the infant god. But are
these popular gods the true Deity? Are they the Apex and synthesis of the
sevenfold creation, man included? Never! Each and all are one of the rungs of
that septenary ladder of Divine Consciousness, pagan as Christian. For Ain-Soph
also is said to manifest through the Seven Letters of Jehovah's name who,
having usurped the place of the Unknown Limitless, was given by his devotees
his Seven Angels of the Presence -- his Seven Principles. Yet they are
mentioned in almost every school. In the pure Sankhya philosophy mahat,
ahamkara and the five tanmatras are called the seven Prakritis (or Natures),
and they are counted from Maha-Buddhi or Mahat down to Earth. (See Sankhya
Karika III. and Commentaries.)
Nevertheless, however disfigured for
Rabbinical purposes is the original Elohistic version by Ezra, however
repulsive at times even the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ahamkara, as universal
Self-Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as also Manas. For this conception of
"I," or one's Ego, is either sattwa, "pure quietude," or
appears as rajas, "active," or remains tamas, "stagnant,"
in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and assumes the properties of
either.
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esoteric meaning in the Hebrew
scrolls, which is far more so than its outward veil or cloaking may be* -- once
the Jehovistic portions are eliminated, the Mosaic books are found full of
purely occult and priceless knowledge, especially in the first six chapters.
Read by the aid of the Kabala one
finds a matchless temple of occult truths, a well of deeply concealed beauty
hidden under a structure, the visible architecture of which, its apparent
symmetry notwithstanding, is unable to stand the criticism of cold reason, or
to reveal its age, for it belongs to all the ages. There is more wisdom
concealed under the exoteric fables of Puranas and Bible than in all the
exoteric facts and science in the literature of the world, and more OCCULT true
Science, than there is of exact knowledge in all the academies. Or, in plainer
and stronger language, there is as much esoteric wisdom in some portions of the
exoteric Puranas and Pentateuch, as there is of nonsense and of designed
childish fancy in it, when read only in the dead-letter murderous
interpretations of great dogmatic religions, and especially of sects.
Let anyone read the first verses of
chapter i. of Genesis and reflect upon them. There "God" commands to
another "god," who does his bidding -- even in the cautious English
Protestant translation of James the First's authorised edition.
In the "beginning," the
Hebrew language having no word to express the idea of Eternity,**
"God" fashions the heaven and the Earth; and the latter is
"without form and void," while the former is no Heaven in fact, but
the "Deep," Chaos, with darkness upon its face.***
"And the Spirit of GOD moved
upon the face of the Waters" (v. 2), or the great Deep of the Infinite
Space. And this Spirit is Nara-yana, or Vishnu.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "The Holy of Holies."
** The word "eternity," by
which Christian theologians interpret the term "for ever and ever,"
does not exist in the Hebrew tongue -- either as a word or meaning. Oulam, says
Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is not known. It does not
mean "infinite duration," and the word for ever in the Old Testament,
only signifies a "long time." Nor is the term "eternity"
used in the Christian sense in the Puranas. For in Vishnu Purana, it is clearly
stated that by Eternity and Immortality only "existence to the end of the
Kalpa" is meant (Book II. chap. viii.).
*** 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 Aryan
Hindu spirit breaks forth everywhere in both Hesiod's and the Orphic theogony.
(See the remarkable work of James Darmesteter, Cosmogonies Aryennes, 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 at the same time as a
visible presence. SPACE filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in its
precosmic state. For in its etymological sense, Chaos is Space, according to
Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity in our philosophy.
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"And God said, Let there be a
firmament. . ." (v. 6), and "God," the second, obeyed and
"made the firmament" (v. 7). "And God said let there be
light," and "there was light." Now the latter does not mean
light at all, but in the Kabala, the androgyne "Adam Kadmon," or
Sephira (Spiritual light), for they are one; or, according to the Chaldean
"Book of Numbers," the secondary angels, the first being the Elohim
who are the aggregate of that "fashioning" god. For to whom are those
words of command addressed? And who is it who commands? That which commands is
the eternal Law, and he who obeys, the Elohim, the known quantity acting in and
with x, or the coefficient of the unknown quantity, the Forces of the ONE
Force. All this is Occultism, and is found in the archaic STANZAS. It is
perfectly immaterial whether we call these "Forces" the Dhyan
Chohans, or the Ophanim, as St. John does.
"The one Universal Light, which
to Man is Darkness, is ever existent," says the Chaldean "Book of
Numbers." From it proceeds periodically the ENERGY, which is reflected in
the "Deep" or Chaos, the store-house of future worlds, and, once
awakened, stirs up and fructifies the latent Forces, which are the ever present
eternal potentialities in it. Then awake anew the Brahmas and Buddhas -- the
co-eternal Forces -- and a new Universe springs into being. . . . .
In the Sepher Jezireh, the Kabalistic
Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it,
the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity,
boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit.*
"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;"** and this is
the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphised by the
Christian Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole Kosmos. First from
ONE emanated number TWO, or Air (the Father), the creative element; and then
number THREE, Water (the Mother), proceeded from the air; Ether or Fire
completes the mystic four, the Arba-il.*** "When the Concealed of the
Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point (primordial point, or
the first Sephiroth, air, or Holy Ghost), shaped into a sacred form (the ten
Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a rich and splendid
garment, that is the world."****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The manifested Spirit; Absolute,
Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance: Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti
are one in essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic Substance in their
primal character are one also.
** "Sepher Jezireh," chap.
1, Mishna ix.
*** Ibid. It is from Arba that Abram
is made to come.
**** "Zohar," I., 2a.
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"He maketh the wind His
messengers, flaming Fire His servants," says the Jezireh, showing the
cosmical character of the later euhemerised Elements,* and that the Spirit
permeates every atom in Kosmos.
This "primordial Substance"
is called by some Chaos: Plato and the Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the
World after it had been impregnated by the Spirit of that which broods over the
Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It is by being reflected in it, say the Kabalists,
that the brooding Principle created the phantasmagoria of a visible, manifested
Universe. Chaos, before -- Ether, after, the "reflection;" it is
still the deity that pervades all Space and things. It is the invisible,
imponderable Spirit of things and the invisible, but too tangible fluid that
radiates from the fingers of the healthy magnetizer, for it is Vital
Electricity -- LIFE itself. Called in derision by the Marquis de Mirville
"the nebulous Almighty," it is termed by the Theurgists and
Occultists to this day "the living Fire"; and there is not a Hindu
who practises at dawn a certain kind of meditation but knows its effects.** It
is the "Spirit of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sepher Jezireh," Mishna
ix., 10. Everywhere throughout the Acts, Paul calls the invisible Kosmic Beings
the "Elements." (See Greek Texts.) But now the Elements are degraded
into and limited to atoms of which nothing is known, so far, and which are only
"children of necessity" as Ether is too -- as we said in
"ISIS." "The poor primordial elements have long been exiled, and
our ambitious physicists run races to determine who shall add one more to the
fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary substances." Meanwhile
there rages a war in modern chemistry about terms. We are denied the right to call
these substances "chemical elements," for they are not
"primordial principles of self-existing essences out of which the universe
was fashioned," according to Plato. Such ideas associated with the word
element were good enough for the "old Greek philosophy," but modern
science rejects them; for, as Professor Crookes says, "they are
unfortunate terms," and experimental science will have "nothing to do
with any kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It
leaves others to the metaphysicians. . . ." We must feel grateful even for
so much.
** Writing upon this subject in Isis
Unveiled we said of it that it was: "The Chaos of the ancients, the
Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Atash-Behram of the Parsees; 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 hats of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon head, the helm
of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the Egyptian Phtha-Ra; the Grecian Zeus
Cataibates (the descending) of Pausanias; the pentacostal fire-tongues; the
burning bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the 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 AKASA of
the Hindu adepts; the Astral Light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and the
fluid of the magnetists; the od of the 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 Archeus." We now add -- it is
all this and much more.
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Light" and Magnes. As truly
expressed by an opponent, Magus and magnes are two branches growing from the
same trunk and shooting forth the same resultants. And in this appellation of
"living fire" we may also discover the meaning of the puzzling
sentence in the Zend-Avesta saying that there is "a fire that gives
knowledge of the future. Science and amiable speech," i.e., develops an
extraordinary eloquence in the sybil, the sensitive, and even some orators.
This "fire" is spoken of in
all the Hindu Books, as also in the Kabalistic works. The Zohar explains it as
the "white hidden fire, in the Resha trivrah" (the White Head), whose
Will causes the fiery fluid to flow in 370 currents in every direction of the
universe. It is identical with the "Serpent that runs with 370 leaps"
of the Siphrah Dzenioota, which, when the "Perfect Man," the
Metatron, is raised, i.e., when the divine man indwells in the animal man, it,
the Serpent, becomes three spirits, that is to say, is Atma-Buddhi-Manas, in
our theosophical phraseology. (Vide Part II. in Vol. II., §§ 3, "The Many
Meanings of the War in Heaven.")
Spirit, then, or Cosmic Ideation, and
Cosmic Substance -- one of whose principles is Ether -- are one, and include
the ELEMENTS, in the sense St. Paul attaches to them. These Elements are the
veiled Synthesis standing for Dhyan Chohans, Devas, Sephiroth, Amshaspends,
Archangels, etc., etc. The Ether of science -- the Ilus of Berosus, or the Protyle
of Chemistry -- constitutes, so to speak, the rude material (relatively) out of
which the above-named "Builders," following the plan traced out for
them eternally in the DIVINE THOUGHT, fashion the systems in the Cosmos. They
are "myths," we are told. "No more so than Ether and the
Atoms," we answer. The two latter are absolute necessities of physical
science; the "Builders" are as absolute a necessity of metaphysics.
We are twitted with: "You never saw them." We ask the materialists:
"Have you ever seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your FORCE?"
Moreover, one of the greatest Western Evolutionists of our modern day, the
coadjutor of Darwin, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of
Natural Selection alone to account for the physical form of Man, admits the
guiding action of "higher intelligences" as a "necessary part of
the great laws which govern the material Universe" ("Contributions to
Theory of Natural Selection").
These "higher
intelligences" are the Dhyan Chohans of the Occultists.
Indeed, there are few Myths in any
religious system worthy of the name, but have an historical as well as a
scientific foundation. "Myths," justly observes Pococke, "are
now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths,
in proportion as they were once understood."
The one prevailing, most distinct
idea -- found in all ancient teaching,
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with reference to Cosmic Evolution
and the first "creation" of our Globe with all its products, organic
and inorganic (strange word for an Occultist to use) -- is that the whole
Kosmos has sprung from the DIVINE THOUGHT. This thought impregnates matter,
which is co-eternal with the ONE REALITY; and all that lives and breathes
evolves from the emanations of the ONE Immutable -- Parabrahm = Mulaprakriti,
the eternal one-root. The former of these is, so to say, the aspect of the
central point turned inward into regions quite inaccessible to human intellect,
and is absolute abstraction; whereas, in its aspect as Mulaprakriti -- the
eternal root of all, -- it gives one some hazy comprehension at least 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,* the first-begotten 'was pleased to employ twelve thousand years
in its creation.' The latter number is expressed in the Tyrrhenian cosmogony,**
which shows man created in the sixth millennium. This agrees with the Egyptian
theory of 6,000 'years'*** and with the Hebrew computation. But it is the
exoteric form of it. The secret computation explains that the 'twelve thousand
and the 6,000 years' are YEARS OF BRAHMA -- one day of Brahma being equal to
4,320,000,000 years. Sanchoniathon**** in his Cosmogony, declares that when the
wind (spirit) became enamoured of its own principles (the chaos), an intimate
union took place, which connection was called pothos, 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 Mot, or the ilus (mud).***** From
this proceeded the spores of creation and the generation of the universe.
"Zeus-Zen (aether), and Chthonia
(the chaotic earth) and Metis (the water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona --
the former god also representing ether -- 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 (female, or
passive, elements of Cosmical generation)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Timaeus."
** "Suidas" v.
Tyrrhenia."
*** The reader will understand that
by "years" is meant "ages," not mere periods of thirteen
lunar months each.
**** See the Greek translation by
Philo Byblus.
***** Cory: "Ancient
Fragment."
****** Mithras was regarded among the
Persians as the Theos ekpetros -- god of the rock.
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Mithras is the son of Bordj, the
Persian mundane mountain,* from which he flashed out as a radiant ray of light.
Brahma, the fire-god, and his prolific consort; and the Hindu Agni, the
refulgent deity from whose body issue a thousand streams of glory and seven
tongues of flame, and in whose honour certain Brahmans preserve to this day a
perpetual fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the Hindus, the
Meru: these terrific fire-gods, who are 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 these dual myths mean but the psychochemical principle of primordial
creation? The first Evolution in its triple manifestation of spirit, force and
matter; the divine correllation at its starting point, allegorized as the
marriage of Fire and water, products of electrifying spirit, 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 AEther,
and whose shadow is the ASTRAL LIGHT!" (ISIS UNVEILED).
The fragments of the systems that
have now reached us are rejected as absurd fables. Nevertheless, occult Science
-- having survived even the great Flood that submersed the antediluvian giants
and with them their very memory, save in the Secret Doctrine, the Bible and
other Scriptures -- still holds the Key to all the world problems.
Let us apply that Key to the rare
fragments of long-forgotten cosmogonies and try by their scattered parts to
re-establish the once Universal Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine. The Key fits
them all. No one can study ancient philosophies seriously without perceiving
that the striking similitude of conception between all -- in their exoteric
form very often, in their hidden spirit invariably -- is the result of no mere
coincidence, but of a concurrent design: and that there was, during the youth
of mankind, one languages, one knowledge, one universal religion, when there
were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto
himself. And, if it is shown that already in those ages which are shut out from
our sight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious thought
developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it becomes
evident that, born under whatever latitude, in the cold North or the burning
South, in the East or West, that thought was inspired by the same revelations,
and man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of the same TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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§ IV.
CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS.
THESE three are the containment of
Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has defined it, "Space, the all
containing uncontained, is the primary embodiment of simply Unity. . . .
boundless extension."* But, he asks again, "boundless extension of
what?" -- and makes the correct reply -- "The unknown container of
all, the Unknown FIRST CAUSE." This is a most correct definition and
answer, most esoteric and true, from every aspect of occult teaching.
SPACE, which, in their ignorance and
iconoclastic tendency to destroy every philosophic idea of old, the modern
wiseacres have proclaimed "an abstract idea" and a void, is, in
reality, the container and the body of the Universe with its seven principles.
It is a body of limitless extent, whose PRINCIPLES, in Occult phraseology --
each being in its turn a septenary -- manifest in our phenomenal world only the
grossest fabric of their sub-divisions. "No one has ever seen the Elements
in their fulness," the Doctrine teaches. We have to search for our Wisdom
in the original expressions of the primeval people and in their synonyms. Even
the latest of them -- the Jews -- show in their Kabalistic teachings this idea,
e.g., the seven-headed Serpent of Space, called "the great Sea."
"In the beginning, the Alhim created the heavens and the earth; the 6
(Sephiroth). . . . They created six, and on these all things are based. And
those (six) depend upon the seven forms of the cranium up to Dignity of all
Dignities (Siphrah Dzenioota, i, § 16), see part ii., vol. ii. "Ancient
Divisions and the Mystic Numbers."
Now Wind, Air and Spirit have ever
been synonymous with every nation. Pneuma (Spirit) and Anemos (the wind) with
the Greeks, Spiritus and Ventus with the Latins, were convertible terms even if
dissociated from the original idea of the breath of life. In the
"Forces" of Science we see but the material effect of the spiritual
affect of one or the other of the four primordial Elements, transmitted to us
by the 4th Race, as we shall transmit Ether (or rather the gross subdivision of
it) in its fulness to the Sixth Root Race. This is explained in the text of
this and the following Book.
"Chaos" is called senseless
by the ancients, because it represented and contained in itself (Chaos and
Space being synonymous) all the Elements in their rudimentary, undifferentiated
State. They made of Ether, the fifth element, the synthesis of the other four;
for the AEther of the Greek philosophers is not its dregs -- of which indeed
they knew more
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "New Aspects of Life," by
Henry Pratt, M.D.
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than science does now -- which are
rightly enough supposed to act as an agent for many forces that manifest on
Earth. Their AEther was the Akasa of the Hindus; the Ether accepted in physics
is but one of its subdivisions, on our plane, -- the Astral Light of the
Kabalists with all its evil as well as good effects.
On account of the Essence of AEther,
or the Unseen Space, being held divine as the supposed veil of Deity, it was
regarded as the medium between this life and the next one. The ancients
considered that when the directing active "Intelligences" (the gods)
retired from any portion of Ether in our Space -- the four realms which they
superintend -- then that particular place was left in the possession of evil,
so called by reason of the absence of the Good from it.
"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 but matter -- the blind cosmic forces of nature;
while Spirit represents the intelligence which directs them. The Aryan,
Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of
Sanchoniathon and Berosus, are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz.,
that the aether 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; the
chaos, a shapeless liquid principle, without 'form or sense,' from the union of
which two sprung into existence the universe, or rather the universal world,
the first androgynous deity -- the chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether
its soul. According to the phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias, 'chaos, from
this union with spirit, obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was
produced the Protogonos (the first-born) light.'* 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." (Isis Unveiled.)
"Nature abhors Vacuum" said
the Peripatetics, who comprehended perhaps, though materialists in their way,
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 Deity or force; which, before its first manifestation when
it became WILL -- communicating the first impulse to these atoms -- was the
great Nothingness, Ain-Soph, or NO-THING; was, therefore, to every sense, a
Void -- or CHAOS.
That Chaos, however, became the
"Soul of the World," according to Plato and the Pythagoreans.
According to Hindu teaching, Deity in the shape of AEther (Akasa) pervades all
things; and it was called there-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Damascius, in the
"Theogony," calls it Dis, "the disposer of all things."
Cory, "Ancient Fragments," p. 314.
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fore by the theurgists "the
living fire," the "Spirit of Light," and sometimes Magnes. It
was the highest Deity itself which, according to Plato, built the Universe in
the geometrical form of the Dodecahedron; and its "first begotten"
was born of Chaos and Primordial Light (the Central Sun). This
"First-Born," however, was only the aggregate of the Host of the
"Builders," the first constructive Forces, who are called in ancient
Cosmogonies the Ancients (born of the Deep, or Chaos) and the "First
Point." He is the Tetragrammaton, so-called, at the head of the Seven
lower Sephiroth. This was the belief of the Chaldees. "These
Chaldeans," writes Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the first
instructors of his ancestors, "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." (See his
"Migration of Abraham," 32.)
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos are but the three
aspects of their synthesis -- SPACE. One can never hope to solve the mystery of
this Tetraktis by holding to the dead-letter even of the old philosophies, as
now extant. But, even in these CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS = SPACE, are identified in
all Eternity, as the One Unknown Space, the last word about which will,
perhaps, never be known before our seventh Round. Nevertheless, the allegories
and metaphysical symbols about the primeval and perfect CUBE, are remarkable
even in the exoteric Puranas.
There, also, Brahma is the Theos,
evolving out of Chaos, or the great "Deep," the waters, over which
Spirit = SPACE, personified by ayana -- the Spirit moving over the face of the
future boundless Kosmos -- is silently hovering, in the first hour of
re-awakening. It is also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta-Sesha, the great Serpent of
Eternity, of which Western theology, ignorant of the Kabala, the only key that
opens the secrets of the Bible, has made -- the Devil. It is the first triangle
or the Pythagorean triad, the "God of the three Aspects," before it
is transformed through its perfect quadrature of the infinite Circle into the
"four-faced Brahma."
"Of him who is and yet is not,
from the not-being, Eternal Cause, is born the Being-Purusha," says Manu,
the legislator.
In Isis Unveiled, it is said that:--
"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 Agathodaemon, the
good spirit: in its opposite aspect, it is the Kakodaemon -- the bad one. In
the Scandinavian Eddas, the honey dew, the fruit of the gods and of the
creative busy Yggdrasill (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
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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 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. Brahma creates the great Muni (or first man)
seated on his lotus, only after having called into being spirits 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
has not only all the elements of his physical being, but even the "breath
of life" itself 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.* . . . Job says, in chap. xxvi. 5, that
"dead things are formed from under the waters, and inhabitants
thereof." 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."
"In the primordial state of the
creation," says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the rudimental
universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of Vishnu. Sprung from this
chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf,
floated (moved) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water and
darkness." Perceiving such a dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquises
in consternation: "Who am I? Whence came I?" Then he hears a voice:**
"Direct your thoughts to Bhagavat." Brahma, rising from his natatory
position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude of contemplation, and
reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with this evidence of piety, disperses
the primeval darkness and opens his understanding. "After this Brahma
issues from the universal egg (infinite chaos) as light, for his understanding
is now opened, and he sets himself to work: he moves on the eternal waters,
with the spirit of God within himself; and in his capacity of mover of the
waters he is Vishnu, or Narayana." This is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 they had anticipated in
this connection the theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle
(Metaph. I., 3, 5).
** The "Spirit," or hidden
voice of the Mantras, the active manifestation of the latent Force, or occult
potency.
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exoteric, of course, yet in its main
idea as identical as possible with the Egyptian cosmogony, which shows in its
opening sentences Athtor,* or Mother Night (which represents illimitable
darkness), as the primeval element which covered the infinite abyss, animated
by water and the universal spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos. Similarly
in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with the spirit of
God and his creative emanation -- another Deity.**
The Zohar teaches that it is the
primordial elements -- the trinity of Fire, Air and Water -- the four cardinal
points, and all the Forces of Nature, which form collectively the VOICE of the
WILL Memrab, or the "Word," the Logos of the Absolute Silent ALL.
"The indivisible point, limitless and unknowable" spreads itself over
the endless space, and thus forms a veil (the Mulaprakriti of Parabraham) which
conceals this Absolute point. (Vide infra).
In the cosmogonies of all the nations
it is the "Architects" synthesized by Demiurgos (in the Bible the
"Elohim"), who fashion Kosmos out of Chaos, and who are the
collective Theos, "male-female," Spirit and matter. "By a series
(yom) of foundations (hasoth) the Alhim caused earth and heaven to be"
(Gen. ii., 4). In the Bible it is first Alhim, then Jahva-Alhim, and finally
Jehovah --after the separation of the sexes in chapter iv. of Genesis. It is
noticeable that nowhere, except in the later, the last Cosmogonies of our Fifth
race, is the ineffable and unutterable NAME*** -- the symbol of the Unknown
Deity, which was used only in the MYSTERIES -- used in connection with the "Creation"
of the Universe. It is the "Movers," the "Runners," the
theoi (from [[theein]], "to run"), who do the work of formation, the
"Messengers" of the manvantaric law, who have now become in
Christianity the "messengers" (malachim); and it seems the same in
Hinduism or early Brahmanism. For it is not Brahma who creates in the Rig Veda,
but the Prajapati, the "Lords of Being," who are the Rishis; the word
Rishi (according to Professor Mahadeo Kunte) being connected with the word to
move, to lead on, applied to them in their terrestrial character, when, as
Patriarchs, they lead their hosts on the Seven Rivers.
Moreover, the very word
"God" in the singular, embracing all the gods -- or theos from theoi
-- came to the "superior" civilized nations from a strange source,
one entirely and as pre-eminently phallic as the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Orthography of the "Archaic
Dictionary."
** We do not mean the current or
accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one, now explained kabalistically.
*** It is "unutterable" for
the simple reason that it is non-existent. It never was a name, nor any word at
all, but an Idea that could not be expressed. A substitute was created for it
in the century preceding our era.
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sincere, open-spoken lingham of
India. The attempt to derive God from the Anglo-Saxon synonym "good"
is an abandoned idea, for in no other language, in all of which the term varies
more or less, from the Persian Khoda down to the Latin Deus, has an instance
been found of a name of God being derived from the attribute of Goodness. To
the Latin races it comes from the Aryan Dyaus (the Day); to the Slavonian, from
the Greek Bacchus (Bagh-bog); and to the Saxon races directly from the Hebrew
Yodh or Jod. The latter is [[diagram]], the number-letter 10, male and female,
and Jod the phallic hook:-- hence the Saxon Godh, the Germanic Gott, and the
English God. This symbolic term may be said to represent the Creator of
physical "Humanity," on the terrestrial plane; but surely it had
nothing to do with the formation or "Creation" of Spirit, gods, or
Kosmos!
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos, the triple deity,
is all in all. Therefore, it is said to be male and female, good and evil,
positive and negative: the whole series of contrasted qualities. When latent
(in pralaya) it is incognizable and becomes the unknowable Deity. It can be
known only in its active functions; hence as matter-Force and living Spirit,
the correlations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane, of the
ultimate and ever-to-be unknown UNITY.
In its turn this triple unit is the
producer of the four primary "Elements,"* which are known in our
visible terrestrial nature as the seven (so far the five) Elements, each
divisible into forty-nine (or seven times seven) sub-elements, with about
seventy of which Chemistry is acquainted. Every Cosmical Element such as Fire,
Air, Water, Earth, partaking of the qualities and defects of their Primaries,
are in their nature Good and Evil, Force (or Spirit) and Matter, etc., etc.;
and each, therefore, is at one and the same time Life and Death, Health and Disease,
Action and Reaction. (See Section XIV., "The Four Elements.") They
are ever and constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the
ONE Element (the incognizable), represented in the world of phenomena by
'AEther, or "the immortal gods who give birth and life to all."
In "the Philosophical writings
of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol" (translated in Mr. Isaac Myer's
Kabbalah, just published) it is said on the structure of the Universe, "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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. 1, viii ch.,
xxii.) It is the idea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and in Tyre, where the
pyramids became pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their abodes in the four
respective points (See § xiv.; "The Four Elements.")
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created 7 heavens above, 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 the seventh of all," etc. (p. 415).
This, besides showing a strange
identity with the cosmogony of the Puranas (e.g., Vishnu Purana 1st Book),
corroborates with regard to number seven, all our teachings as briefly given in
"Esoteric Buddhism."
The Hindus have an endless series of
allegories to express this idea. In the primordial Chaos, before it became
developed into the Seven Oceans (Sapta Samudra) -- emblematical of the seven
gunas (conditioned qualities) composed of trigunas (Satwa, Rajas and Tamas, see
Puranas) -- lie latent both Amrita (immortality) and Visha (poison, death,
evil). This allegory is found in the "Churning of the Ocean" by the
gods. Amrita is beyond any guna, for it is UNCONDITIONED per se; yet when
fallen into the phenomenal creation it got mixed up with EVIL, Chaos, with
latent theos in it, and before Kosmos was evolved. Hence, one finds Vishnu --
standing here for eternal Law -- periodically calling forth Kosmos into
activity -- "churning out of the primitive Ocean (boundless Chaos) the
Amrita of Eternity, reserved only for the gods and devas; and he has to employ
in the task Nagas and Asuras -- demons in exoteric Hinduism. The whole allegory
is highly philosophical, and we find it repeated in every philosophical System.
Plato, having fully embraced the ideas of Pythagoras -- who had brought them
from India -- compiled and published them in a form more intelligible than the
mysterious numerals of the Greek Sage. Thus the Kosmos is "the Son"
with Plato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and Matter.*
"The Egyptians," says
Dunlap,** "distinguish between an older and younger Horus; the former the
brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris and Isis." The first is
the Idea of the world remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, "born in darkness
before the creation of the world." The second Horus is this
"Idea" going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter, and
assuming an actual existence.***
"The Mundane God, eternal,
boundless, young and old, of winding form,"**** say the Chaldean oracles.
This "winding form" is a
figure to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the
ancient priests were perfectly well acquainted, though its name was invented by
the Martinists.
Now Cosmolatry has the finger of
scorn pointed at its superstitions by modern Science, which ought, however, as
advised by a French
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch, "Isis and
Osiris," I., vi.
** "Spirit History of Man,"
p. 88.
*** Mover's "Phoinizer,"
268.
**** Cory, "Fragments,"
240.
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savant, before laughing at it
"to remodel entirely its own system of cosmo-pneumatological
education." Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parvum. Cosmolatry like
Pantheism may be made to yield in its ultimate expression the words applied to
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." (Original Sanskrit
Texts, Part iv., pp. 32, 33.)
--------------
§ V.
ON THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND
GLYPHS.
THE Logos or Creative deity, the
"Word made Flesh," of every religion, has to be traced to its
ultimate source and Essence. In India, it is a Proteus of 1,008 divine names
and aspects in each of its personal transformations, from Brahma-Purusha down
through the Seven divine Rishis and ten semi-divine Prajapati (also Rishis) to
the divine-human Avatars. The same puzzling problem of the "One in
many" and the multitude in One, is found in other Pantheons, in the
Egyptian, the Greek and the Chaldeo-Judaic, the latter having made confusion
still more confused by presenting its Gods as euhemerizations, in the shapes of
Patriarchs. The latter 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, En-Soph is also the
ONE, and the infinite Unity. This was known to the very few learned Fathers of
the Church, who were aware that Jehovah was but a third rate potency and no
"highest" God. But while complaining bitterly of the Gnostics and
saying . . . "our Heretics hold . . . that PROPATOR is known but to the
Only begotten Son* (who is Brahma among the rest) that is to the mind"
(nous), Irenaeus never mentioned that the Jews did the same in their real
secret books. Valentinus, "the profoundest doctor of the Gnosis,"
held that "there was a perfect AION who existed before Bythos, or Buthon
(the first father of unfathomable nature, which is the second Logos) called
Propator." It is thus AION, who springs as a Ray from Ain-Soph (who does
not create), and AION, who creates, or through whom, rather, everything is
created, or evolves.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As Mulaprakriti is known only to
Iswar, the LOGOS, as he is called now by Mr. T. Subba Row, of Madras. (See his
Bhagavadgita Lectures.)
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For, as the Basilidians taught,
"there was a supreme god, Abraxas, 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., etc." By these (Angels) the 365
AEons were created. "Amongst the lowest, indeed, and those who made this
world, he (Basilides) sets last of all the God of the Jews, whom he denies to
be God (and very rightly), affirming he is one of the angels" (Ibid.).
Here, then, we find the same system as in the Puranas, wherein the
Incomprehensible drops a seed, which becomes the golden egg, from which Brahma
is produced. Brahma produces Mahat, etc., etc. True Esoteric philosophy,
however, speaks neither of "creation" nor of "evolution" in
the sense the exoteric religions do. All these personified Powers are not
evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole manifestation
of the ABSOLUTE all. The same system as the gnostic prevails in the Sephirothal
aspects of Ain-Soph, yet, as these aspects are in Space and Time, a certain
order is maintained in their successive appearances. Therefore, it becomes
impossible not to take notice of the great changes that the Zohar has undergone
under the handling of generations of Christian Mystics. For, even in the
metaphysics of the Talmud, the "lower Face" (or "Lesser
Countenance"), the microprosopus, in fact, could never be placed on the
plane of the same abstract ideal as the Higher, or "Greater
Countenance," macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean Kabala, a pure
abstraction; the Word or LOGOS, or DABAR (in Hebrew), which Word, though it
becomes in fact a plural number, or "Words" -- D(a)B(a)RIM, when it
reflects itself, or falls into the aspect of a Host (of angels, or Sephiroth,
"numbers") is still collectively ONE, and on the ideal plane a nought
-- 0, a "No-thing." IT is without form or being, "with no
likeness with anything else." (Franck, "Die Kabbala," p. 126.)
And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, "the
SECOND GOD," and "the second God who is his (Highest God's)
WISDOM" (Philo. Quaest. et Solut). Deity is not God. It is NOTHING, and
DARKNESS. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph -- "the word Ayin
meaning nothing." See Franck "Die Kabbala," p. 153. See also
Section XII., "Theogony of the Creative Gods." The "Highest
God" (the unmanifested LOGOS) is its Son.
Nor are most of the gnostic systems,
which come down to us mutilated by the Church Fathers, anything better than the
distorted shells of the original speculations. Nor were they open to the public
or reader, at any time; i.e., had their hidden meaning or esotericism been
revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric teaching, and this could never
be. Alone Marcus (the chief of the Marcosians, 2nd century), who taught
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that deity had to be viewed under the
symbol of four syllables, gave out more of the esoteric truths than any other
Gnostic. But even he was never well understood. For it is only on the surface
or dead letter of his Revelation that it appears that God is a quaternary, to
wit: "the Ineffable, the Silence, the Father, and Truth," -- in
reality it is quite erroneous, and divulges only one more esoteric riddle. This
teaching of Marcus was that of the early Kabalists and ours. For he makes of
Deity, the number 30 in 4 syllables, which, translated esoterically, means a
Triad or Triangle, and a Quaternary or a square, in all seven, which, on the
lower plane made the seven divine or secret letters of which the God-name is composed.
This requires demonstration. In his "Revelation," speaking of divine
mysteries expressed by means of letters and numbers, Marcus narrates how the
"Supreme Tetrad came down unto me (him) from the region which cannot be
seen nor named, in a female form, because the world would have been unable to
bear her appearing under a male figure," and revealed to him "the
generation of the universe, untold before to either gods or men."
This first sentence already contains
a double meaning. Why should a female figure be more easily borne or listened
to by the world than a male figure? On the very face of it this appears
nonsensical. Withal it is quite simple and clear to one who is acquainted with
the mystery-language. Esoteric Philosophy, or the Secret Wisdom, was symbolized
by a female form, while a male figure stood for the Unveiled mystery. Hence,
the world not being ready to receive, could not bear it, and the Revelation of
Marcus had to be given allegorically. Then he writes:
"When first the Inconceivable,
the Beingless and Sexless (the Kabalistic Ain-Soph) began to be in labour
(i.e., when the hour of manifesting Itself had struck) and desired that Its
Ineffable should be born (the first LOGOS, or AEon, or Aion), and its invisible
should be clothed with form, its mouth opened and uttered the word like unto
itself. This word (logos) manifested itself in the form of the Invisible One.
The uttering of the (ineffable) name (through the word) came to pass in this
manner. He (the Supreme Logos) uttered the first word of his name, which is a
syllable of four letters. Then the second syllable was added, also of four
letters. Then the third, composed of ten letters; and after this the fourth,
which contains twelve letters. The whole name consists thus of thirty letters
and of four syllables. Each letter has its own accent and way of writing, but
neither understands nor ever beholds that form of the whole Name, -- no; not
even the power of the letter that stands next to Itself (to the Beingless and
the Inconceivable.)* All these sounds when united are the collective Beingless,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Iswara, or the Logos, cannot see
Parabrahmam, but only Mulaprakriti, says the lecturer, in the Four Lectures on
Bhagavatgita. (See Theosophist, Feb., 1887.)
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unbegotten AEon, and these are the
Angels that are ever beholding the face of the Father* (the Logos, the
"second God," who stands next God, "the Inconceivable,"
according to Philo).
This is as plain as ancient esoteric
secrecy would make it. It is as Kabalistic, but less veiled than the Zohar in
which the mystic names or attributes are also four syllabled, twelve,
forty-two, and even seventy-two syllabled words! The Tetrad shows to Marcus the
TRUTH in the shape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that figure,
calling her head [[omega]], her neck [[psi]], shoulders and hands [[gamma]],
and [[chi]], etc., etc. In this Sephira is easily recognised, the Crown
(Kether) or head being numbered one; the brain or Chochmah, 2; the heart, or
Intelligence (Binah), 3; and the other seven Sephiroth representing the limbs
of the body. The Sephirothal Tree is the Universe, and Adam Kadmon represents
it in the West as Brahma represents it in India.
Throughout, the 10 Sephiroth are
represented as divided into the three higher, or the spiritual Triad, and the
lower Septenary. The true Esoteric meaning of the sacred number seven is
cleverly veiled in the Zohar; yet was betrayed by the double way of writing
"in the beginning" or Be-resheeth, and Be-raishath, the latter the "Higher,
or Upper Wisdom." As shown by Mr. Macgregor Mathers in his Kabbalah (p.
47), and in the Qabbalah of Mr. T. Myer (p. 233), both of these Kabalists being
supported by the best ancient authorities, these words have a dual and secret
meaning. Braisheeth bara Elohim means that the six, over which stands the
seventh Sephiroth, belong to the lower material class, or, as the author says:
"Seven . . . . are applied to the Lower Creation, and three to the
spiritual man, the Heavenly Prototypic or first Adam."
When the Theosophists and Occultists
say that God is no BEING, for IT is nothing, No-Thing, they are more
reverential and religiously respectful to the Deity than those who call God a
HE, and thus make of Him a gigantic MALE.
He who studies the Kabala will soon
find the same idea in the ultimate thought of its authors, the earlier and
great Hebrew Initiates, who got this secret Wisdom at Babylonia from the
Chaldean Hierophants, while Moses got his in Egypt. The Zohar cannot well be
judged by its after translations in Latin and other tongues, as all those ideas
were, of course, softened and made to fit in with the views and policy of its
Christian arrangers; but in truth its ideas are identical with those of all
other religious systems. The various Cosmogonies show that the Archaic
Universal Soul was held by every nation as the "Mind" of the
Demiurgic Creator; and that it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Seven Angels of the
Face," with the Christians.
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was called the "Mother,"
Sophia with the Gnostics (or the female Wisdom), the Sephira with the Jews,
Saraswati or Vach, with the Hindus, the Holy Ghost being a female Principle.
Hence, born from it, the Kurios or
Logos was, with the Greeks, the "God, mind" (nous). "Now Koros
(Kurios) signifies the pure and unmixed nature of intellect -- wisdom,"
says Plato in "Cratylus"; and Kurios is Mercury, the Divine Wisdom,
and "mercury is the Sol" (Sun) ("Arnobius" vi., xii.), from
whom Thot-Hermes received this divine Wisdom. While, then, the Logoi of all
countries and religions are correlative (in their sexual aspects) with the
female Soul of the World or the "Great Deep;" the deity, from which
these two in one have their being, is ever concealed and called the
"Hidden One," connected only indirectly with Creation,* as it can act
only through the Dual Force emanating from the Eternal Essence. Even
AEsculapius, called the "Saviour of all," is identical, according to
ancient classics, with Phta, the Egyptian Creative Intellect (or Divine
Wisdom), and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis and Hercules (see Dunlap's "Mystery
of Adonis," pp. 23 and 95); and Phta is, in one of its aspects, the
"Anima Mundi," the Universal Soul of Plato, the "Divine
Spirit" of the Egyptians, the "Holy Ghost" of the early
Christians and Gnostics, and the Akasa of the Hindus, and even, in its lower
aspect, the Astral Light. For Phta was originally the "God of the
Dead," he in whose bosom they were received, hence the Limbus of the Greek
Christians, or the Astral Light. It is far later that Phta was classed with the
Sun-gods, his name signifying "he who opens," as he is shown to be
the first to unveil the face of the dead mummy, to call the soul to life in his
bosom. (See Maspero's "Bulaq Museum.") KNEPH, the Eternal Unrevealed,
is represented by the snake-emblem of eternity encircling a water-urn, with its
head hovering over the "waters" which it incubates with its breath --
another form of one and the same idea of "Darkness," its ray moving
on the waters, &c. As "Logos-Soul," this permutation is called
Phta; as Logos-Creator, he becomes Imhot-pou, his son, "the god of the
handsome face." In their primitive characters these two were the first
Cosmic Duad, Noot, "space or Sky," and Noo, "the primordial
Waters," the Androgyne Unity, above whom was the Concealed BREATH of
Kneph. And all of them had the aquatic animals and plants sacred to them, the
ibis, the swan, the goose, the crocodile, and the lotus.
Returning to the Kabalistic deity,
this Concealed Unity is then [[hebrew]] = [[to pan]] = [[apeiros]], Endless,
Boundless, non-Existent, [[hebrew]] so
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We use the term as one accepted and
sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible to the reader.
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long as the Absolute is within
Oulom,* the boundless and termless time, as such, En-Soph cannot be the Creator
or even the modeller of the Universe, nor can he be Aur (light). Therefore
En-Soph is also Darkness. The immutably Infinite and the absolutely Boundless
can neither will, think, nor act. To do this it has to become finite, and it
does so, by its ray penetrating into the mundane egg -- infinite space -- and
emanating from it as a finite god. All this is left to the ray latent in the
one. When the period arrives, the absolute will expands naturally the force
within it, according to the Law of which it is the inner and ultimate Essence.
The Hebrews did not adopt the egg as a symbol, but they substituted for it the
"Duplex heavens," for, translated correctly, the sentence "God
made the heavens and the earth" would read:-- "In and out of his own
essence as a womb (the mundane egg), God created the two heavens." But the
Christians have chosen as the symbol of their Holy Ghost, the dove.
"Whosoever acquaints himself
with [[hebrew]] the Mercaba and the lahgash (secret speech or incantation),
will learn the secret of secrets." Lahgash is nearly identical in meaning
with Vach, the hidden power of the Mantras.
When the active period has arrived,
from within the eternal essence of Ain-Soph, comes forth Sephira, the active
Power, called the Primordial Point, and the Crown, Kether. It is only through
her that the "Un-bounded Wisdom" could give a concrete form to the
abstract Thought. Two sides of the upper triangle by which the ineffable
Essence and the universe -- its manifested body -- are symbolized, the right
side and the base are composed of unbroken lines; the third, the left side, is
dotted. It is through the latter that emerges Sephira. Spreading in every
direction, she finally encompasses the whole triangle. In this emanation the
triple triad is formed. From the invisible Dew falling from the higher
Uni-triad (thus leaving 7 sephiroths only), the "Head" Sephira
creates primeval waters, i.e., Chaos takes shape. It is the first stage towards
the solidification of spirit which through various modifications will produce
earth. "It requires earth and water to make a living soul," says
Moses. It requires the image of an aquatic bird to connect it with water, the
female element of procreation with the egg and the bird that fecundates it.
When Sephira emerges like an active
power from within the latent Deity, she is female; when she assumes the office
of a creator, she becomes a male; hence, she is androgyne. She is the
"Father and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the ancient Jews, as shown by
Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant only a time whose beginning or end is not known.
The term "eternity," properly speaking, did not exist in the Hebrew
tongue with the meaning, for instance, applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahm.
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Mother Aditi," of the Hindu
Cosmogony and of the Secret Doctrine. If the oldest Hebrew scrolls had been
preserved, the modern Jehovah-worshipper would have found that many and
uncomely were the symbols of the creative god. The frog in the moon, typical of
his generative character, was the most frequent. All the birds and animals now
held "unclean" in the Bible had been the symbols of the Deity in days
of old. It was because they were too sacred that a mask of uncleanness was
placed over them, in order to preserve them from destruction. The brazen
serpent was not a bit more poetical than the goose or swan, if symbols are to
be accepted a 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" (Zohar I. 20a). The Spiritual substance sent
forth by the Infinite Light is the first Sephira or Shekinah: Sephira
exoterically contains all the other nine Sephiroths in her. Esoterically she
contains but two,* Chochmah or Wisdom, "a masculine, active potency whose
divine name is Jah ([[diagram]])," and BINAH, a feminine passive potency,
Intelligence, represented by the divine name Jehovah ([[diagram]]); which two
potencies form, with Sephira the third, the Jewish trinity or the Crown,
KETHER. These two Sephiroths called Father, Abba, and Mother Amona, are the
duad or the double-sexed logos from which issued the other seven Sephiroths.
(See Zohar.) This first Jewish triad (Sephira, Chochmah, and Binah) is the
Hindu Trimurti.* However veiled, even in the Zohar, and more still in the
exoteric Pantheon of India, every particular connected with one is reproduced
in the other. The Prajapati are the Sephiroths. Ten with Brahma they dwindle to
seven, when the Trimurti, and the Kabalistic triad, are separated from the
rest. The seven Builders (Creators) become the seven Prajapati, or the seven
Rishis, in the same order as the Sephiroths become the Creators; then the
Patriarchs, etc. In both Secret Systems, the One Universal Essence is
incomprehensible and inactive in its absoluteness, and can be connected with
the building of the Universe only in an indirect way. In both, the primeval
Malefemale or androgynous Principle, and their ten and seven Emanations
(Brahma-Viraj and Aditi-Vach on the one part and the Elohim-Jehovah, or
Adam-Adami (Adam Kadmon) and Sephira Eve on the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Indian Pantheon the
double-sexed Logos is Brahma, the Creator, whose seven "mind born"
sons are the primeval Rishis -- the "Builders."
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other), with their Prajapati and
Sephiroths, represent in their totality, first of all the Archetypal man, the
Proto-logos; and only in their secondary aspect do they become Cosmic powers,
and astronomical or sidereal bodies. If Aditi is the mother of the gods,
Deva-Matri, Eve is the mother of all living; they are the Sakti or generative
power in their female aspect of the "Heavenly man," and they are all
compound Creators. Says a "Gupta Vidya" Sutra: "In the
beginning, a ray issuing from Paramarthika (the one and only true existence),
it became manifested in Vyavaharika (conventional existence) which was used as
a Vahan to descend into the Universal Mother, and to cause her to expand
(swell, brih)." And in the Zohar it is stated: "The Infinite Unity,
formless and without similitude, after the form of the heavenly man was
created, used it. The Unknown Light* (Darkness) used the [[hebrew]](heavenly
form) as a chariot [[hebrew]] through which to descend, and wished to be called
by this form, which is the sacred name Jehovah."
As the Zohar 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 Soph, a
nebulous spark of matter, without shape or form. . . . Life is drawn from below,
and from above the source renews itself, the sea is always full and spreads its
waters everywhere." Thus the deity is compared to a shoreless sea, to
water which is "the fountain of life" (Zohar iii., 290). "The
seventh palace, the fountain of life, is the first in the order from
above" (ii. 261). Hence the Kabalistic tenet on the lips of the very
Kabalistic Solomon, who says in Proverbs ix., 1: "Wisdom hath builded her
house; it hath hewn out its seven pillars."
Whence then, all this identity of
ideas, if there was no primeval UNIVERSAL Revelation? The few points shown are
like a few straws in a hayrick, in comparison to that which will be shown as
the work proceeds. If we turn to that most hazy of all Cosmogonies -- the Chinese,
even there the same idea is found. Tsi-tsai (the Self-Existent) is the unknown
Darkness, the root of the Wuliang-sheu (Boundless Age), Amitabhe, and Tien
(heaven) come later on. The "great Extreme" of Confucius gives the
same idea, his "straws" notwithstanding. The latter are a source of
great amusement to the missionaries. These laugh at every "heathen"
religion, despise and hate that of their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says Rabbi Simeon: "Ah,
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 spoke; Let there be Light, and it was Light' . . .
and this is the two-fold man." ("Auszuge aus dem Sohar," p. 13,
15.) Light, then, in Genesis stood for the Androgyne Ray or "Heavenly
Man."
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brother Christians of other
denominations, and yet one and all accept a la lettre their own Genesis. If we
turn to Chaldea we find in it Anu, the concealed deity, the One, whose name,
moreover, shows it to be of Sanskrit origin. Anu, which means in Sanskrit
"atom," aniyamsam aniyasam (smallest of the small), is a name of
Parabrahm in the Vedantic philosophy; Parabrahm being described as smaller than
the smallest atom, and greater than the greatest sphere or universe: "Anagraniyam
and Mahatorvavat." This is what George Smith gives as the first verses of
the Akkadian Genesis as found in the Cuneiform Texts on the "Lateras
Coctiles." There also, we find Anu the passive deity or En-Soph, Bel, the
Creator, the Spirit of God (Sephira) moving on the face of the waters, hence
water itself, and Hea, the Universal Soul or wisdom of the three combined.
The first eight verses read thus:
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 its
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.
This was the chaotic or ante-genetic
period -- the double Swan and the Dark Swan, which becomes white, when Light is
created.*
The symbol chosen for the majestic
ideal of the Universal Principle will seem little calculated to answer its
sacred character. A goose, or even a swan, may appear unfit, no doubt, to
represent the grandeur of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it must have had some deep
occult meaning, since it figures not only in every cosmogony and world
religion, but even was chosen by the mediaeval Christians, the Crusaders, as
the vehicle of the Holy Ghost supposed to lead the army to Palestine, to wrench
the Tomb of the Saviour from the hands of the Saracen. If we are to credit
Professor Draper's statement in his "Intellectual Development of
Europe," the Crusaders, led on by Peter the Hermit, were preceded, at the
head of the army, by the Holy Ghost under the shape of a white gander in company
of a goat. The Egyptian God of Time, Seb, carries a goose on his head. Jupiter
assumes the form of a swan and Brahma also, because the root of all this is
that mystery of mysteries -- the MUNDANE EGG. (See preceding §).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Seven Swans that are believed
to land from Heaven into Lake Mansarovara, 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.
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One has to learn the reason of a
symbol before one depreciates it. The dual element of Air and Water is that of
the ibis, swan, goose and pelican, of crocodiles and frogs, lotus flowers and
water lilies, &c.; and the result is the choice of the most unseemly
symbols among the modern as much as the ancient mystics. Pan, the great god of
nature, was generally figured in connection with aquatic birds, geese
especially, and so were other gods. If, later on, with the gradual degeneration
of religion, the gods to whom geese were sacred, became Priapic deities, it
does not stand to reason that water fowls were made sacred to Pan and other
Phallic deities as some scoffers even of antiquity would have it (see Petronii
Satyrica, cxxxvi.); but that the abstract and divine power of procreative
nature had become grossly anthropomorphized. Nor does the Swan of Leda show
"Priapic doings and her enjoyment thereof," as Mr. Hargrave Jennings
chastely expresses it -- for the myth is but another version of the same
philosophical idea of cosmogony. Swans are frequently found associated with
Apollo, as they are the emblems of water and fire (sun-light also), before the
separation of the Elements.
Our modern symbologists might profit
by some remarks made by a well-known writer, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child. "From
time immemorial an emblem has been worshipped in Hindostan as the type of
creation, or the origin of life. . . . Siva or the Mahadeva 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 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." ("Progress of Religious Ideas," Vol. 1, p. 17, et
seq.)
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§ VI.
THE MUNDANE EGG.
WHENCE this universal symbol? The Egg
was incorporated as a sacred sign in the cosmogony of every people on the
Earth, and was revered both on account of its form and its inner mystery. From
the earliest mental conceptions of man, it was known as that which represented
most successfully the origin and secret of being. The gradual development of
the imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the inward working, without any
apparent outward interference of force, which from a latent nothing produced an
active something, needing nought save heat; and which, having gradually evolved
into a concrete, living creature, broke its shell, appearing to the outward
senses of all a self-generated, and self-created being -- must have been a
standing miracle from the beginning.
The secret teaching explains the reason
for this reverence by the Symbolism of the prehistoric races. The "First
Cause" had no name in the beginnings. Later it was pictured in the fancy
of the thinkers as an ever invisible, mysterious Bird that dropped an Egg into
Chaos, which Egg becomes the Universe. Hence Brahm was called Kalahansa,
"the swan in (Space and) Time." He became the "Swan of
Eternity," who lays at the beginning of each Mahamanvantara a "Golden
Egg." It typifies the great Circle, or O, itself a symbol for the universe
and its spherical bodies.
The second reason for its having been
chosen as the symbolical representation of the Universe, and of our earth, was
its form. It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi-form shape of our globe
must have been known from the beginning of symbology, since it was so
universally adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an
egg was the most widely diffused belief of antiquity. As Bryant shows (iii.,
165), it was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians.
In chap. liv. of the Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the god of Time and of the Earth, is
spoken of as having laid an egg, or the Universe, "an egg conceived at the
hour of the great one of the Dual Force" (Sec. V., 2, 3, etc.).
Ra is shown like Brahma gestating in
the Egg of the Universe. The deceased is "resplendent in the Egg of the
land of mysteries" (xxii., 1). For, this is "the Egg to which is
given life among the gods" (xlii., 11). "It is the Egg of the great
clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a hawk" (lxiv., 1,
2, 3; lxxvii., 1).
With the Greeks the Orphic Egg is
described by Aristophanes, and was part of the Dionysiac and other mysteries,
during which
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the Mundane Egg was consecrated and
its significance explained; Porphyry showing it a representation of the world,
[[Ermenenei de to oon kosmon]]. Faber and Bryant have tried to show that the
egg typified the ark of Noah, which, unless the latter is accepted as purely
allegorical and symbolical, is a wild belief. It can have typified the ark only
as a synonym of the moon, the argha which carries the universal seed of life;
but had surely nothing to do with the ark of the Bible. Anyhow, the belief that
the universe existed in the beginning in the shape of an egg was general. And
as Wilson has it: "A similar account of the first aggregation of the
elements in the form of an egg is given in all the (Indian) Puranas, with the
usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, 'golden' as it occurs in Manu." Hiranya,
however, means "resplendent," "shining," rather than
"golden," as proven by the great Indian scholar, the late Swami
Dayanand Sarasvati, in his unpublished polemics with Professor Max Muller. As
said in the Vishnu Purana: "Intellect (Mahat) . . . the (unmanifested)
gross elements inclusive, formed an egg . . . and the lord of the Universe
himself abided in it, in the character of Brahma. In that egg, O Brahman, were
the continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the
universe, the gods, the demons and mankind." (Book i., ch. 2.) Both in
Greece and in India the first visible male being, who united in himself the
nature of either sex, abode in the egg and issued from it. This "first
born of the world" was Dionysius, with some Greeks; the god who sprang
from the mundane egg, and from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. The
god Ra is shown in the Ritual (Book of the Dead, xvii., 50) beaming in his egg
(the Sun), and he starts off as soon as the god Shoo (the Solar energy) awakens
and gives him the impulse. "He is in the Solar egg, the egg to which is
given life among the gods" (Ibid., xlii., 13). The Solar god exclaims:
"I am the creative soul of the celestial abyss. None sees my nest, none
can break my egg, I am the Lord!" (Ibid., LXXXV.).
In view of this circular form, the
"|" issuing from the "[[diagram]]," or the egg, or the male
from the female in the androgyne, it is strange to find a scholar saying -- on
the ground that the most ancient Indian MSS. show no trace of it -- that the
ancient Aryans were ignorant of the decimal notation. The 10, being the sacred
number of the universe, was secret and esoteric, both as the unit and cipher,
or zero, the circle. Moreover, Professor Max Muller says that "the two
words cipher and zero, which are but one, are sufficient to prove that our
figures are borrowed from the Arabs.* Cipher is the Arabic "cifron,"
and means
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Our
Figures."
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empty, a translation of the Sanscrit
name of nought "sunya," he says.* The Arabs had their figures from
Hindustan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves.** As to the
Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius's
Geometry, composed in the sixth century, to find among the Pythagorean
numerals*** the 1 and the nought, as the first and final ciphers. And Porphyry,
who quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,**** says that the numerals of
Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained
ideas concerning the nature of things," or the origin of the universe.
Now, if, on the other hand, the most
ancient Indian manuscripts show as yet no trace of decimal notation in them,
and Max Muller states very clearly that until now he has found but nine letters
(the initials of the Sanscrit numerals) in them; on the other hand, we have
records as ancient to supply the wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and
the sacred imagery in the most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras
derived his knowledge from India; and we find Professor Max Muller
corroborating this statement, at least so far as to allow the Neo-Pythagoreans
to have been the first teachers of "ciphering," among the Greeks and
Romans; that "they at Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the
Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean abacus" (our figures).
This cautious admission implies that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with but
nine figures. Thus we might reasonably answer that, although we possess no
certain proof (exoterically) that the decimal notation was known by Pythagoras,
who lived on the very close of the archaic ages,***** we have yet sufficient
evidence to show that the full numbers, as given by Boethius, were known to the
Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built.****** This evidence we find in
Aristotle, who says that "some philosophers hold that ideas and numbers are
of the same nature, and amount to TEN in all."******* This, we believe,
will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known among them at
least as early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the
question as an innovation of the "Neo-Pythagoreans."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Kabalist would be rather inclined
to believe that as the Arabic cifron was taken from the Indian Synya, nought,
so the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (Sephrim) were taken from the word cipher,
not in the sense of emptiness but the reverse -- that of creation by number and
degrees in their evolution. And the Sephiroth are 10 or [[diagram]].
** See Max Muller's "Our
Figures."
*** See King's "Gnostics and
their Remains," plate xiii.
**** "Vita Pythag."
***** 608 B.C.
****** This city was built 332 B.C.
******* "Metaph." vii., F.
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But we know more than that: we know
that the decimal system must have been known to the mankind of the earliest
archaic ages, since the whole astronomical and geometrical portion of the
secret sacerdotal language was built upon the number 10, or the combination of
the male and female principles, and since the Pyramid of "Cheops" is
built upon the measures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and
their combinations with the nought. Of this, however, sufficient was said in
Isis Unveiled, and it is useless to repeat and return to the same subject.
The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar
Deities is so inextricably mixed up, that it is next to impossible to separate
such glyphs as the egg, the lotus, and the "sacred" animals from each
other. The ibis, for instance, sacred to Isis, who is often represented with
the head of that bird, sacred also to Mercury or Thoth, because that god
assumed its form while escaping from Typhon, -- the ibis was held in the
greatest veneration in Egypt. There were two kinds of ibises, Herodotus tells
us (Lib. II. c. 75 et seq.) in that country: one quite black, the other black
and white. The former is credited with fighting and exterminating the winged
serpents which came every spring from Arabia and infested the country. The
other was sacred to the moon, because the latter planet is white and brilliant
on her external side, dark and black on that side which she never turns to the
earth. Moreover, the ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible
havoc amongst the eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt from having the
Nile infested by those horrible Saurians. The bird is credited with doing so in
the moonlight, and thus being helped by Isis, as the moon, her sidereal symbol.
But the nearer esoteric truth underlying these popular myths is, that Hermes,
as shown by Abenephius (De cultu Egypt.), watched under the form of that bird
over the Egyptians, and taught them the occult arts and sciences. This means
simply that the ibis religiosa had and has "magical" properties in
common with many other birds, the albatross pre-eminently, and the mythical
white swan, the swan of Eternity or Time, the KALAHANSA.
Were it otherwise, indeed, why should
all the ancient peoples, who were no more fools than we are, have had such a
superstitious dread of killing certain birds? In Egypt, he who killed an ibis,
or the golden hawk -- the symbol of the Sun and Osiris -- risked and could
hardly escape death. The veneration of some nations for birds was such that
Zoroaster, in his precepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime. We
laugh in our age at every kind of divination. Yet why should so many
generations have believed in divination by birds, and even in zoomancy, said by
Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how to perceive in the yoke
and white of
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the egg, under certain conditions,
that which the bird born from it would have seen around it during its short
life. This occult art, which demanded 3,000 years ago the greatest learning and
the most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into the depths of
degradation: it is old cooks and fortune-tellers who read their future to
servant-girls in search of husbands, by means of the white of an egg in a
glass.
Nevertheless, even Christians have to
this day their sacred birds; for instance, the dove, the symbol of the Holy
Ghost. Nor have they neglected the sacred animals. The Evangelical zoolatry --
the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Angel (in reality the Cherub, or Seraph,
the fiery-winged Serpent), is as much pagan as that of the Egyptians or the
Chaldeans. These four animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four
elements, and of the four lower principles in man. Nevertheless, they
correspond physically and materially to the four constellations that form, so
to speak, the suite or cortege of the Solar God, and occupy during the winter
solstice the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These four
"animals" may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments
where the portraits of the evangelists are given. They are the animals of
Ezekiel's Mercabah.
As truly stated by Ragon, "the
ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas and symbols of their
religious philosophies, that these symbols can be fully explained only by the
combination and knowledge of all the keys." They can be only approximately
interpreted, even if one finds out three out of these seven systems: the
anthropological, the psychic, and the astronomical. The two chief
interpretations, the highest and the lowest, the spiritual and the
physiological, they preserved in the greatest secrecy until the latter fell
into the dominion of the profane. Thus far, with regard only to the
pre-historic Hierophants, with whom that which has now become purely (or
impurely) phallic, was a science as profound and as mysterious as biology and
physiology are now. This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their
studies and discoveries. The other two were those which dealt with the creative
gods (theogony), and with creative man, i.e., the ideal and the practical
mysteries. These interpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that
many were those who, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were
baffled in understanding the significance of the others, and could never
unriddle them sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the
first and the fourth -- theogony in relation to anthropogony -- were almost
impossible to fathom. We find the proofs of this in the Jewish "Holy
Writ."
It is owing to the serpent being
oviparous, that it became a symbol of wisdom and an emblem of the Logoi, or the
self-born. In the temple of Philoe in Upper Egypt, an egg was artificially
prepared of clay made of
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various incenses, and it was made to
hatch by a peculiar process, when a cerastes (the horned viper) was born. The
same was done in antiquity for the cobra in the Indian temples. The creative
God emerges from the egg that issues from the mouth of Kneph -- as a winged
serpent -- because the Serpent is the symbol of the All-wisdom. With the
Hebrews he is glyphed by the "flying or fiery serpents" of the Wilderness
and Moses, and with the Alexandrian mystics he becomes the Ophio-Christos, the
Logos of the Gnostics. The Protestants try to show that the allegory of the
Brazen Serpent and of the "fiery serpents" has a direct reference to
the mystery of Christ and Crucifixion*; but it has a far nearer relation, in
truth, to the mystery of generation, when dissociated from the egg with the
central germ, or the circle with its central point. The brazen Serpent had no
such holy meaning as that; nor was it, in fact, glorified above the "fiery
serpents" for the bite of which it was only a natural remedy. The
symbological meaning of the word "brazen" being the feminine
principle, and that of fiery, or "gold," the male one.**
In the Book of the Dead, as just
shown, reference is often made to the Egg. Ra, the mighty one, remains in his
Egg, during the struggle between the "children of the rebellion" and
Shoo (the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness) (ch. xvii.). The deceased is
resplendent in his
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And this only because the brazen
serpent was lifted on a pole! It had rather a reference to Mico the Egyptian
egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg and the Serpent
are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt, and since both the
Brazen and "fiery" serpents were Saraphs, the "burning
fiery" messengers, or the serpent Gods, the nagas of India. It was a
purely phallic symbol without the egg, while when associated with it -- it
related to cosmic creation.
** "Brass was a metal
symbolizing the nether world . . . . that of the womb where life should be
given . . . The word for serpent was in Hebrew Nakash, but this is the same
term for brass." It is said in Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews complained of
the Wilderness where there was no water (v. 5); after which "the Lord sent
fiery serpents" to bite them, when, to oblige Moses, he gives him as a
remedy the brazen serpent on a pole to look at; after which "any man when
he beheld the serpent of brass . . . . lived" (?). After that the
"Lord," gathering the people together at the well of Beer, gives them
water, (14-16), and grateful Israel sang this song, "Spring up, O
Well," (v. 17). When, after studying symbology, the Christian reader comes
to understand the innermost meaning of these three symbols -- water, brazen,
the serpent, and a few more -- in the sense given to them in the Holy Bible, he
will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his Saviour with the
"Brazen Serpent" incident. The Seraphim [[hebrew]] (fiery winged
serpents) are no doubt connected with, and inseparable from, the idea "of
the serpent of eternity -- God," as explained in Kenealy's Apocalypse. But
the word cherub also meant serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning is
different; because the Cherubim and the Persian winged [[gruphes]]
"griffins" -- the guardians of the golden mountain -- are the same,
and their compound name shows their character, as it is formed of [[hebrew]]
(kr) circle, and [[hebrew]] "aub," or ob -- serpent -- therefore, a
"serpent in a circle." And this settles the phallic character of the
Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it. (See II. Kings, 18, 4).
Verbum sat. sapienti.
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Egg when he crosses to the land of
mystery (xxii. i.). He is the Egg of Seb (liv. 1-3). . . . The Egg was the
symbol of life in immortality and eternity; as also the glyph of the generative
matrix; and the tau, associated with it, only of life and birth in generation.
The Mundane Egg was placed in Khnoom, the "Water of Space," or the
feminine abstract principle (Khnoom becoming, with the fall of mankind into
generation and phallicism, Ammon, the creative God); and when Phtah, the
"fiery god," carries the Mundane egg in his hand, then the symbolism
becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance. In conjunction with
the hawk, the symbol of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual: it relates to both
lives -- the mortal and the immortal. In Kircher's OEdipus Egyptiacus (vol.
iii., p. 124) one can see, on the papyrus engraved in it, an egg floating above
the mummy. This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a second birth for the
Osirified dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will gestate in
this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it into a new life on earth. For
this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is the Devachan, the abode of Bliss; the
winged scarabeus being alike a symbol of it. The "winged globe" is
but another form of the egg, and has the same significance as the scarabeus,
the Khopiroo (from the root Khoproo "to become," "to be
reborn,") which relates to the rebirth of man, as well as to his spiritual
regeneration.
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find
AEther first, and then the air, from which Ulom, the intelligible ([[noetos]])
deity (the visible Universe of Matter) is born out of the Mundane Egg. (Mover's
Phoinizer, p. 282.)
In the Orphic Hymns, the Eros-Phanes
evolves from the divine Egg, which the AEthereal Winds impregnate, wind being
"the Spirit of the unknown Darkness" -- "the spirit of God"
(as explains K. O. Muller, 236); the divine "Idea," says Plato,
"who is said to move AEther."
In the Hindu Katakopanishad, Purusha,
the divine spirit, already stands before the original matter, "from whose
union springs the great soul of the world," Maha-Atma, Brahma, the Spirit
of Life,* etc., etc.** Besides this there are many charming allegories on this
subject scattered through the sacred books of the Brahmins. In one place it is
the female creator who is first a germ, then a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl,
and then an egg. In such cases -- of which there are too many to enumerate them
separately -- the Egg gives birth to the four elements within the fifth, Ether,
and is covered with seven coverings, which become later on the seven upper and
the seven lower worlds. Breaking in two, the shell becomes the heaven, and the
meat in the egg the earth, the white forming the terres-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The latter appellations are all
identical with Anima Mundi, or the "Universal Soul," the astral light
of the Kabalist and the Occultist, or the "Egg of Darkness."
** Weber, "Akad Vorles,"
pp. 213, 214 et seq.
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trial waters. Then again, it is
Vishnu who emerges from within the egg with a lotus in his hand. Vinata, a
daughter of Daksha and wife of Kasyapa ("the Self-born sprung from
Time," one of the seven "creators" of our world), brought forth
an egg from which was born Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu, the latter allegory
having a relation to our Earth only, as Garuda is the Great Cycle.
The egg was sacred to Isis; the
priests of Egypt never ate eggs on that account.*
Diodorus Siculus states that Osiris
was born from an Egg, like Brahma. From Leda's Egg Apollo and Latona were born,
as also Castor and Pollux -- the bright Gemini. And though the Buddhists do not
attribute the same origin to their Founder, yet, no more than the ancient
Egyptians or the modern Brahmins, do they eat eggs, lest they should destroy
the germ of life latent in them, and commit thereby Sin. The Chinese believe
that their first man was born from an egg, which Tien, a god, dropped down from
heaven to earth into the waters.** This symbol is still regarded by some as
representing the idea of the origin of life, which is a scientific truth,
though the human ovum is invisible to the naked eye. Therefore we see respect
shown to it from the remotest past, by the Greeks, Phoenicians, 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 (Mon). All their gods were dual: the scientific reality for the
Sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for the masses. For
instance, as observed in "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," the older Horus was
the Idea of the world remaining in the demiurgic mind "born in Darkness
before the creation of the world;" the second Horus*** was the same Idea
going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter and assuming an actual
existence. (Compare Mover's "Phoinizer," p. 268.) The same with
Khnoum and Ammon;**** both are represented ram-headed, and both often confused,
though their functions are different. Khnoum is "the modeller of
men," fashioning men and things out of the Mundane Egg on a potter's
wheel;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Isis is almost always represented
holding a lotus in one hand and in the other a circle and the Cross (crux
ansata), the Egg being sacred to her.
** 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?
*** Horus -- the "older,"
or Haroiri, is an ancient aspect of the solar god, contemporary with Ra and
Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. The
Egyptians very often represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor the
older, rising from a full-blown lotus, the Universe, when the solar disc is
always found on the hawk-head of that god. Haroiri is Khnoum.
**** Ammon or Mon, the
"hidden," the Supreme Spirit.
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Ammon-Ra, the generator, is the
secondary aspect of the concealed deity. Khnoum was adored at Elephanta and
Philoe,* Ammon at Thebes. But it is Emepht, the One, Supreme Planetary
principle, who blows the egg out of his mouth, and who is, therefore, Brahma.
The shadow of the deity, Kosmic and universal, of that which broods over and permeates
the egg with its vivifying Spirit until the germ contained in it is ripe, was
the mystery god whose name was unpronounceable. It is Phtah, however, "he
who opens," the opener of life and Death,** who proceeds from the egg of
the world to begin his dual work. (Book of Numbers.)
According to the Greeks, the phantom
form of the Chemis (Chemi, ancient Egypt) which floats on the ethereal waves of
the Empyrean Sphere, was called into being by Horus-Apollo, the Sun god, who
caused it to evolve out of the Mundane egg.***
In the Scandinavian Cosmogony --
placed by Professor Max Muller, in point of time, as "far anterior to the
Vedas" in the poem of Voluspa (the song of the prophetess), the Mundane
egg is again discovered in the phantom-germ of the Universe, which is
represented as lying in the Ginnungagap -- the cup of illusion (Maya) the
boundless and void abyss. In this world's matrix, formerly a region of night
and desolation, Nebelheim (the mist-place, the nebular as it is called now, in
the astral light) dropped a ray of cold light which overflowed this cup and
froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a scorching wind which dissolved the
frozen waters and cleared the mist. These waters (chaos), called the streams of
Elivagar, distilling in vivifying drops, fell down and created the earth and
the giant Ymir, who only had "the semblance of man" (the Heavenly
man), and the cow, Audhumla (the "mother" or astral light, Cosmic
Soul) from whose udder flowed four streams of milk (the four cardinal points:
the four heads of the four rivers of Eden, etc., etc.) and which
"four" allegorically are symbolized by the cube in all its various
and mystical meanings.
The Christians -- especially the
Greek and Latin Churches -- have fully adopted the symbol, and see in it a
commemoration of life eternal,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* His triadic goddesses are Sati and
Anouki.
** Phtah was originally the god of
death, of destruction, like Siva. 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." (See Saqquarah Bronzes, Saitic Epoch.)
*** The Brahmanda Purana contains the
mystery about Brahma's golden egg fully; and this is why, perhaps, it is
inaccessible to the Orientalists, who say that this Purana, like the Skanda, is
"no longer procurable in a collective body," but "is represented
by a variety of Khandas and Mahatmyas professing to be derived from it."
The "Brahmanda Purana" is described as "that which is declared
in 12,200 verses, the magnificence of the egg of Brahma, and in which an
account of the future Kalpas is contained as revealed by Brahma." Quite
so, and much more, perchance.
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of salvation and of resurrection.
This is found in and corroborated by the time-honoured custom of exchanging
"Easter Eggs." From the anguinum, the "Egg" of the
"pagan" Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the
red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet, whether
in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central America, we find
the same archaic, primitive thought; if we only search for it and do not
disfigure -- in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority
-- the original idea of the symbol.
--------------
§ VII.
THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA.
THIS is the name given to the Periods
called MANVANTARA (Manuantara, or between the Manus) and PRALAYA (Dissolution);
one referring to the active periods of the Universe, the other to its times of
relative and complete rest -- according to whether they occur at the end of a
"Day," or an "Age" (a life) of Brahma. These periods, which
follow each other in regular succession, are also called Kalpas, small and
great, the minor and the Maha Kalpa; though, properly speaking, the Maha Kalpa
is never a "day," but a whole life or age of Brahma, for it is said
in the Brahma Vaivarta: "Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the Life of
Brahma; minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous." In sober
truth they are infinite; as they have never had a commencement, i.e., there
never was a first Kalpa, nor will there ever be a last one, in Eternity.
One Parardha -- in the ordinary
acceptation of this measure of time -- or half of the existence of Brahma (in
the present Maha Kalpa) has already expired; the last Kalpa was the Padma, or
that of the Golden Lotos; the present one being Varaha* (the "boar"
incarnation, or Avatar).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, having little of the solemn element
in it. This is explained as an allegorical reference to his having been born in
the "Boar," or Varaha-Kalpa when Brahma assumed the form of that
animal to raise the Earth out of the "Waters of Space." And as the
Brahmins descend direct from Brahma 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 the curious allegorical hint and combination. Brahminism (of the Boar, or
Varaha Kalpa) has slaughtered the religion of Buddha in India, swept it away
from its face; therefore Buddha, identified with his philosophy, is said to
have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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By the scholar who studies the Hindu
religion from the Puranas, one thing is to be especially noted. He must not
take literally, and in one sense only, the statements therein found; since
those which especially concern the Manvantaras or Kalpas have to be understood
in their several references. So, for instance, these periods relate in the same
language to both the great and the small periods, to Maha Kalpas and to minor
Cycles. The Matsya, or Fish Avatar, happened before the Varaha or Boar Avatar;
the allegories, therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present
manvantara, and also to the minor cycles which took place since the
reappearance of our Chain of Worlds and Earth. And, as the Matsya Avatar of
Vishnu and Vaivasvata's Deluge are correctly connected with an event that
happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that while it may relate
to pre-cosmic events (in the sense of our Kosmos or Solar system) it has
reference in our case to a distant geological period. Not even Esoteric
philosophy can claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took
place before the reappearance of our Solar System and previous to the last Maha
Pralaya. But it teaches distinctly that after the first geological disturbance
in the Earth's axis which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the Seas
of the whole second Continent, with its primeval races -- of which successive
"Earths" or Continents Atlantis was the fourth -- there came another
disturbance by the axis resuming as rapidly its previous degree of inclination;
when the Earth was indeed raised once more out of the Waters, and -- as above
so it is below; and vice versa. There were "gods" on Earth in those
days -- gods, and not men, as we know them now, says the tradition. As will be
shown in Book II., the computation of periods in exoteric Hinduism refers to
both the great cosmic and the small terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the
same may be shown for names. For instance Yudishthira -- the first King of the
Sacea, who opens the Kali Yuga era, which has to last 432,000 years -- "an
actual King and man who lived 3,102 years B.C.," applies also, name and
all, to the great Deluge at the time of the first sinking of Atlantis. He is
the "Yudishthira* born on the mountain of the hundred peaks at the
extremity of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] The idea alone of one who established the most rigorous vegetarianism
and respect for animal life -- even to refusing to eat eggs as vehicles of a
latent future life -- dying of a meat indigestion, is absurdly contradictory
and has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But this explanation, unveiling the
allegory, explains all the rest. The Varaha, however, is no simple boar, and
seems to have meant at first some antediluvian lacustrine animal
"delighting to sport in water." (Vayu Purana.)
* According to Colonel Wilford, the
conclusion of the "Great War" was B.C. 1370. (See A. R., Vol.9, p.
116); according to Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may hope, perhaps, that before the
end of this century, the Mahabharatean epics will be found and proclaimed
identical with the wars of the great Napoleon.
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the world beyond which nobody can
go" and "immediately after the flood." (See Royal Asiat. Soc.,
Vol. 9, p. 364.) We know of no "Flood" 3,102 years B.C. -- not even
that of Noah, for, agreeably with Judaeo-Christian chronology, it took place
2,349 years B.C.
This relates to an esoteric division
of time and a mystery explained elsewhere, and may therefore be left aside for
the present. Suffice to remark at this juncture that all the efforts of
imagination of the Wilfords, Bentleys, and other would-be OEdipuses of esoteric
Hindu Chronology have sadly failed. No computation of either the Four Ages, or
the Manvantaras, has ever been unriddled by our very learned Orientalists, who
have therefore cut the Gordian Knot by proclaiming the whole "a figment of
the Brahmanical brain." So be it, and may the great scholars rest in
peace. This "figment" is given in the Preliminary Sections which
preface Anthropogenesis in Book II., and with esoteric additions.
Let us see, however, what were the
three kinds of pralayas, and what is the popular belief about them. For once it
agrees with Esotericism.
Of the pralaya before which fourteen
Manvantaras elapse, having over them as many presiding Manus, and at whose
close occurs the "incidental" or Brahma's dissolution, it is said in
Vishnu Purana, in condensed form, that "at the end of a thousand periods
of four ages, which complete a day of Brahma, the earth is almost exhausted.
The eternal Avyaya (Vishnu) assumes then the character of Rudra (the destroyer,
Siva) and re-unites 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 sevens suns by dilation, and they finally set the world on fire.
Hari, the destroyer of all things, who is 'the flame of time, Kalagni,' finally
consumes the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming Janardana, breathes clouds and
rain."
There are many kinds of Pralaya, but
three chief ones are specially mentioned in old Hindu books; and of these, as
Wilson shows:-- The first is called NAIMITTIKA* "occasional" or
"incidental," caused by the intervals of "Brahma's Days;"
it is the destruction of creatures, of all that lives and has a form, but not
of the substance which remains in statu quo till the new DAWN in that
"Night." The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Vedanta and Nyaya
"nimitta" (from which "Naimittika") is rendered as the
efficient cause, when antithesized with upadana the physical or material cause.
In the Sankhya pradhana is a cause inferior to Brahma, or rather Brahma being
himself a cause, is superior to Pradhana. Hence "incidental" is
wrongly translated, and ought to be translated, as shown by some scholars,
"Ideal" cause, and even real cause would have been better.
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other is called PRAKRITIKA -- and
occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahma, when everything that exists is
resolved into the primal element, to be remodelled at the end of that longer
night. But the third, Atyantika, does not concern the Worlds or the Universe,
but only the individualities of some people; it is thus individual pralaya or
NIRVANA; after having reached which, there is no more future existence
possible, no rebirth till after the Maha Pralaya. The latter night, lasting as
it does 311,040,000,000,000 years, and having the possibility of being almost
doubled in case the lucky Jivanmukti reaches Nirvana at an early period of a
Manvantara, is long enough to be regarded as eternal, if not endless. The
Bhagavata (XII., iv, 35) speaks of a fourth kind of pralaya, the Nitya or
constant dissolution, and explains it as the change which takes place
imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the globe down to the atom --
without cessation. It is growth and decay (life and death).
When the Maha Pralaya arrives, the
inhabitants of Swar-loka (the upper sphere) disturbed by the conflagration,
seek refuge "with the Pitris, their progenitors, the Manus, the Seven
Rishis, the various orders of celestial Spirits and the Gods, in
Maharloka." When the latter is reached also, the whole of the above
enumerated beings migrate in their turn from Maharloka, and repair to Jana-loka
in "their subtile forms, destined to become re-embodied, in similar
capacities as their former, when the world is renewed at the beginning of the
succeeding Kalpa;" (Vayu Purana).
" . . . . These clouds, mighty
in size, and loud in thunder, fill up all space (Nabhas-tala)," goes on
Vishnu Purana. -- (Book VI., ch. iii.) "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 (Bhuvaloka) 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 Brahma
reigns supreme over the scene of desolation . . . . ."
This is what we call in the Esoteric
Doctrine a "Solar Pralaya" . . . When the waters have reached the
region of the Seven Rishis, and the world (our Solar System) is one ocean, they
stop. The breath of Vishnu becomes a strong wind, which blows for another
hundred (divine) years until all clouds are dispersed. The wind is then
reabsorbed: 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 Sesha (the Serpent of Infinity) in the midst
of the deep. The Adikrit
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(Creator?) Hari, sleeps upon the
ocean of Space in the form of Brahma -- glorified by Sanaka* and the Siddha
(Saints) 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 Pratisanchara
(dissolution?) termed incidental because Hari is its incidental (ideal) Cause.
. . . .** 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
1,000 great ages constitute a Day of Brahma (in the original it is Padma-yoni,
the same as Abjayoni -- "lotos-born," not Brahma), so his Night
consists of the same period. "Awaking at the end of his night, the unborn
. . . creates the Universe anew. . . ." (Vishnu Purana.)
This is "incidental"
pralaya; what is the Elemental Dissolution? "When by dearth and
fire," says Parasara to Maitreya, "all the worlds and Patalas (hells)
are withered up . . .*** 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 locked up by the elements of
fire . . . on account of which the waters themselves are destroyed . . . and
become one with fire; and the Universe is therefore, entirely filled with flame
(ethereal) 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 (pralina) all becomes of the
nature of air. The rudiment of form being destroyed, and Vibhavasu (fire?)
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 cohesion (Sparsa -- Touch?) its
rudimental property, by the loss of which, air is destroyed, and KHA remains
unmodified; devoid of form, flavour, touch (Sparsa), and smell, it exists,
embodied (murttimat) and vast, and pervades the whole Space. Akasa, whose
characteristic property and rudiment is sound (the "Word"), occupies
the whole containment of Space. Then the origin (Noumenon?) of the Elements
(Bhutadi), devours sound (collective Demiurgos); and the hosts of Dhyan
Chohans, and all the existing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The chief Kumara or Virgin-god (a
Dhyan Chohan) who refuses to create. A prototype of St. Michael, who refuses to
do the same.
** See concluding lines in Section,
"Chaos, Theos, Kosmos."
*** This prospect would hardly suit
Christian theology, which prefers an eternal, everlasting hell for its
followers.
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Elements* are at once merged into
their original. The primary Element, Consciousness, combined with tamasa
(spiritual darkness) is itself disintegrated by MAHAT (the Universal
Intellect), whose characteristic property is Buddhi, and earth and Mahat are
the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe." Thus as (in the
beginning) "were the seven forms of Prakriti (nature) reckoned from Mahat
to earth, so these seven successively re-enter into each other."**
"The Egg of Brahma
(Sarva-mandala) is dissolved in the waters that surround it, with its seven
zones (dwipas) seven oceans, seven regions, and their mountains; the investure
of water is drunk by the fire; the (stratum of) fire is absorbed by (that of)
air; air blends itself with ether (Akasa); the Bhutadi (the origin, or rather
the cause, of the primary element) devours the ether and is (itself) destroyed
by Mahat (the Great, the Universal mind), which along with all these is seized
upon by Prakriti and disappears. The Prakriti is essentially the same, whether
discrete or indiscrete; only that which is discrete is finally absorbed by and
lost in the indiscrete. PUMS (Spirit) also, which is one, pure, imperishable,
eternal, all-pervading, is a portion of that Supreme spirit which is all
things. That Spirit (Sarvesa) which is other than (embodied) Spirit, and in
which there are no attributes of name, species (naman and jati, or rupa, hence
body rather than species), or the like -- remains as the sole existence
(SATTA). . . Prakriti and Purusha both resolving finally into SUPREME SPIRIT. .
. ." (From Vishnu Purana, Wilson's mistakes being here corrected, and
original words put in brackets).
This is the final PRALAYA*** -- the
Death of Kosmos -- after which its Spirit rests in Nirvana, or in THAT for
which there is neither Day nor Night. All the other pralayas are periodical and
follow, in regular succession, the Manvantaras, as the night follows the day of
every human creature, animal, and plant. The cycle of creation of the lives of
Kosmos is run down, the energy of the manifested "Word" having
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The term "Elements" must
be understood here 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 form.
** 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.
*** As it is the Maha, the Great, or
so-called final PRALAYA which is here described, every thing is re-absorbed
into its original ONE Element -- the "Gods themselves, Brahma and the
rest" being said to die and disappear during that long NIGHT.
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its growth, culmination, and
decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their duration. The
Creative Force is Eternal as Noumenon; as a phenomenal manifestation in its
aspects, it has a beginning and must, therefore, have an end. During that
interval it has its periods of activity and its periods of rest. And these are
the "Days and the nights of Brahma." But Brahma, the Noumenon, never
rests, as IT never changes and ever IS, though IT cannot be said to be
anywhere. . . . .
The Jewish Kabalists felt this necessity
of immutability in an eternal, infinite Deity, and therefore applied the same
thought to the anthropomorphic god. The idea is poetical and very appropriate
in its application. In the Zohar we read as follows:--
"As Moses was keeping a vigil on
Mount Sinai, in company with the deity, who was concealed from his sight by a
cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him, and suddenly asked: 'Lord, where art
thou . . . . sleepest thou, O Lord? . . .' And the Spirit answered him: 'I
never sleep: were I to fall asleep for a moment BEFORE MY TIME, all the
creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.' "
"Before my time" is very
suggestive. It shows the God of Moses to be only a temporary substitute, like
Brahma the male, a substitute and an aspect of THAT which is immutable, and
which therefore can take no part in the "days," or in the
"nights," nor have any concern whatever with reaction or dissolution.
While the Eastern Occultists have
seven modes of interpretation, the Jews have only four -- namely, the
real-mystical; the allegorical; the moral; and the literal or Pashut. The
latter is the key of the exoteric Churches and not worth discussion. Read in
the first, or mystical key, here are several sentences which show the identity
of the foundations of construction in every Scripture. It is given in Mr. T.
Myer's excellent book on the Kabalistic works he seems to have well studied. I
quote verbatim. "B'raisheeth barah elohim ath hash ama 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,* over which
B'raisheeth stands, all belong Below. It created six (and) on these stand 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 'phath) -- i.e., hovering, brooding over, moving. . . . .
Thirteen depend on thirteen
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Builders" of the
Stanzas.
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(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) as is written. . . . . In the thirteenth, It (the Deity) shall restore
all . . . . and everything shall be renewed as before; and all those six shall
continue . . . . etc." (Qabbalah, p. 233, from Siphrah Dzeniuta, c. i., §
16, s. 9.)
The "Sephiroth of
Construction" are the six Dhyan Chohans, or Manus, or Prajapati,
synthesized by the seventh "B'raisheeth (the First Emanation or Logos),
and who are called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or physical
Universe" all belong Below. These six [[diagram]] whose essence is of the
Seventh -- are the Upadhi, the base or fundamental stone on which the objective
Universe is built, the noumenoi of all things. Hence they are, at the same
time, the Forces of nature, the Seven Angels of the Presence, the sixth and
seventh principles in man; the spirito-psycho-physical spheres of the Septenary
chain, the Root Races, etc., etc. They all "depend upon the Seven forms of
the Cranium" up to the highest. The "second Earth" "does
not come into calculation" because it is no Earth, but the Chaos or Abyss
of Space in which rested the paradigmatic, or model universe in ideation of the
OVER-SOUL brooding over it. The term "Curse" is here very misleading,
for it means simply doom or destiny, or that fatality which sent it forth into
the objective state. This is shown by that "Earth" under the
"Curse" being described as "without form and void," in
whose abysmal depths the "Breath" of the Elohim (collective Logoi)
produced or photographed the first divine IDEATION of the things to be. This
process is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new
Manvantara, or period of sentient individual being. "Thirteen depend on
thirteen forms," refers to the thirteen periods personified by the
thirteen Manus, with Swayambhuva the fourteenth (13, instead of 14, being an
additional veil): those fourteen Manus who reign within the term of a Mahayuga,
a "Day" of Brahma. These (thirteen-fourteen) of the objective
Universe depend on the thirteen (fourteen) paradigmatic, ideal forms. The
meaning of the "Six thousand years" which "hang in the first six
words," has again to be sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the
primordial six (seven) "Kings of Edom" who typify the worlds (or
spheres) of our chain during the first Round, as well as the primordial men of
this Round. They are the septenary pre-Adamic (or before the Third, Separated
Race) first Root-race. As they were shadows, and senseless (they had not eaten
yet of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge), they could not see the
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Parguphim, or "Face could not
see Face" (primeval men were unconscious), "therefore, the primordial
(seven) Kings died," i.e., were destroyed (vide Sepherah Djenioutha). Now,
who are they? They are the Kings who are "the Seven Rishis, certain
(secondary) divinities, Sakra (Indra), Manu, and the Kings his Sons, who are
created and perish at one period," as said in Vishnu Purana (Book I. chap.
iii.). For the seventh ("thousand") (not the millennium of exoteric
Christianity, but that of Anthropogenesis) represents both the "seventh
period of creation," that of physical man (Vishnu Purana), and the seventh
Principle -- both macrocosmic and microcosmic, -- as also the pralaya after the
Seventh period, the "Night" which has the same duration as the
"Day" of Brahma. "It was rendered entirely desolate during
twelve hours, as is written." It is in the Thirteenth (twice six and the Synthesis)
that everything shall be restored "and the six will 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, Hindus, etc. . . ." and that . . .
. . "The Qabbalah most likely originally came from Aryan sources, through
Central Asia, Persia, India and Mesopotamia, for from Ur and Haran came Abraham
and many others into Palestine" (p. 221). And such was the firm conviction
of C. W. King, the author of "The Gnostics and their Remains."
Vamadeva Modelyar (Modely) describes
the coming "night" most poetically. Though it is given in Isis
Unveiled, it is worthy of repetition.
"Strange noises are heard,
proceeding from every point . . . These are the precursors of the Night of
Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind the
thirteenth degree of Macara (sign of the Zodiac), and will reach no more the
sign of the Minas (zodiacal pisces, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas
appointed to watch the rasichakr (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
rarified; 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. Surya (the Sun) flickers
and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back
into Dayus, the Unrevealed God, and, his task being
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accomplished, he falls asleep.
Another day is passed, night sets in, and continues until the future dawn.
"And now again he re-enters 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."*
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 reigns now supreme in India, and it seems to
coincide with that of the Western age. Anyhow, it is curious to see how
prophetic in almost all things was the writer of Vishnu Purana when foretelling
to Maitreya some of the dark influences and sins of this Kali Yug. For after
saying that the "barbarians" will be masters of the banks of the
Indus, of Chandrabhaga and Kasmera, 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,
and be intent upon the wives of others; they will be of unlimited 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, while
purer tribes are neglected, the people will perish (or, as the Commentator has
it, 'The Mlechchhas will be in the centre and the Aryas in the end.')** Wealth
and piety will decrease 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; . . . . . a man if rich will be reputed pure;
dishonesty (anyaya) will be the universal means of subsistence, weakness the
cause of dependence, menace and presumption will be substituted for learning;
liberality will be devotion; mutual assent, marriage; fine clothes, dignity. He
who is the strongest will reign; the people, unable to bear the heavy burthen, Khara
bhara (the load of taxes) will take refuge among the valleys. . . . Thus, in
the Kali age will decay constantly proceed, until
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Jacquolliot's "Les Fils de
Dieu"; l'Inde des Brahmes, p. 230.
** If this is not prophetic, what is?
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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 . . .
shall descend on Earth . . . (Kalki Avatar) endowed with the eight superhuman
faculties. . . . He will re-establish righteousness on earth, and the minds of
those who live at the end of Kali Yuga shall be awakened and become as pellucid
as crystal. The men who are thus changed . . . shall be the seeds of human
beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita
age, the 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.' "
". . . . Two persons, Devapi, of
the race of Kuru and Moru, of the family of Ikshwaku, continue alive throughout
the four ages, residing at Kalapa.* They will return hither in the beginning of
the Krita age . . . Moru** the son of Sighru through the power of Yoga is still
living . . . . and will be the restorer of the Kshattriya race of the Solar
dynasty."*** (Vayu Purana, Vol. III, p. 197).
Whether right or wrong with regard to
the latter prophecy, the blessings of Kali Yuga are well described, and fit in
admirably even with that which one sees and hears in Europe and other civilized
and Christian lands in full XIXth, and at the dawn of the XXth century of our
great era of ENLIGHTENMENT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Matsya Purana gives Katapa.
** Max Muller translates the name as
Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to which Chandragupta belonged (see Sanscrit
Literature). In Matsya Purana, chapter cclxxii, the dynasty of ten Moryas (or
Maureyas) is spoken of. In the same chapter, cclxxii, 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 Avatar. Colonel Tod
believes the name Morya (or Maureyas) a corruption of Mori, a Rajpoot tribe,
and the commentary on Mahavansa thinks that some princes have taken their name
Maurya from their town called Mori, or, as Professor Max Muller gives it,
Morya-Nagara, which is more correct, after the original Mahavansa.
Vachaspattya, we are informed by our Brother, Devan Badhadur R. Ragoonath Rao,
of Madras, a Sanscrit Encyclopedia, places Katapa (Kalapa) on the northern side
of the Himalayas, hence in Tibet. The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda)
of Bhagavat, Vol. III, p. 325.
*** The Vayu Purana declares that
Moru will re-establish the Kshattriya in the Nineteenth coming Yuga. (See
"Five years of Theosophy," p. 483. "The Moryas and
Koothoomi.")
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§ VIII.
THE LOTUS, AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL.
THERE are no ancient symbols, without
a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them; their importance and
significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the LOTUS. It is the
flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the
Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both
spiritual and physical nature. It was held sacred from the remotest antiquity
by the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the Buddhists after them; revered in
China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin
Churches, who made of it a messenger as the Christians do now, who replace it
with the water lily.* It had, and still has, its mystic meaning which is
identical with every nation on the earth. We refer the reader to Sir William
Jones.** With the Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of
nature, through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter).
"Eternal!" says a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahm the
creator enthroned in thee above the lotus!"; and Sir W. Jones shows, as
noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the lotus contain, even before they
germinate, perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as
perfected plants, they will become. The lotus, in India, is the symbol of
prolific earth, and what is more, of Mount Meru. The four angels or genii of
the four quarters of Heaven (the Maharajahs, see Stanzas) stand each on a
lotus. The lotus is the two-fold type of the Divine and human hermaphrodite,
being of dual sex, so to say.
The spirit of Fire (or Heat), which
stirs up, fructifies, and develops into concrete form everything (from its
ideal prototype), which is born of WATER or primordial Earth, evolved Brahma --
with the Hindus. The lotus flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu's navel
-- that God resting on the waters of space and his Serpent of Infinity -- is
the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central
Sun, the POINT, the ever-concealed germ. Lakshmi, who is the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Christian religion Gabriel,
the Archangel, holding in his hand a spray of water lilies, appears to the
Virgin Mary in every picture of the Annunciation. This spray typifying fire and
water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the same
idea as the lotus in the hand of the Bodhisat who announces to Maha-Maya,
Gautama's mother, the birth of the world's Saviour, Buddha. Thus also, Osiris
and Horus were represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with the
lotus-flower, the two being Sun-gods or Fire (the Holy Ghost being still
typified by "tongues of fire"), (Acts).
** See Sir William Jones'
"Dissertations Relating to Asia."
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female aspect of Vishnu,* and who is
also called Padma, the lotus, is likewise shown floating at
"Creation," on a lotus flower, and during the "churning of the
ocean" of space, springing from the "sea of milk," like Venus
from the froth.
". . . Then seated on a lotus
Beauty's bright goddess, peerless
Sri, arose
Out of the waves . . . "
sings an English Orientalist and poet
(Sir Monier Williams).
The underlying idea in this symbol is
very beautiful, and it shows, furthermore, its identical parentage in all the
religious systems. Whether in the lotus or water-lily shape it signifies one
and the same philosophical idea -- namely, the emanation of the objective from
the subjective, divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete or
visible form. For, as soon as DARKNESS -- or rather that which is
"darkness" for ignorance -- has disappeared in its own realm of
eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its divine manifested Ideation, the
creative Logoi have their understanding opened, and they see in the ideal world
(hitherto concealed in the divine thought) the archetypal forms of all, and
proceed to copy and build or fashion upon these models forms evanescent and
transcendent.
At this stage of action, the
Demiurge** is not yet the Architect. Born in the twilight of action, he has yet
to first perceive the plan, to realise the ideal forms which lie buried in the
bosom of Eternal Ideation, as the future lotus-leaves, the immaculate petals,
are concealed within the seed of that plant. . . . .
In chapter lxxxi. of the Ritual (Book
of the Dead), called "Transformation into the Lotus," a head emerging
from this flower, the god exclaims: "I am the pure lotus, emerging from
the Luminous one. . . . . I carry the messages of Horus. I am the pure lotus
which comes from the Solar Fields. . . . ."
The lotus-idea may be traced even in
the Elohistic chapter, the 1st of Genesis, as stated in Isis.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lakshmi is Venus -- Aphrodite, and,
like the latter, she sprang from the froth of the ocean with a lotus in her
hand. In the Ramayana she is called Padma.
** In Esoteric philosophy the
Demiurge or Logos, regarded as the CREATOR, is simply an abstract term, an
idea, like "army." As the latter is the all-embracing term for a body
of active forces or working units -- soldiers -- so is the Demiurge the
qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great
Orientalist, has seized the idea perfectly when saying that Brahma does not
create the earth, any more than the rest of the universe. "Having evolved
himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the first cause, he evaporates
with, and emanates all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but
is mixed up with it; Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of
which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself."
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It is in this idea that we must look
for the origin and explanation of the verse in the Jewish cosmogony, which
reads: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth . . . . the fruit-tree
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." In all the
primitive religions, the "Son of the Father" is the creative God --
i.e., His thought made visible; and before the Christian era, from the Trimurti
of the Hindus down to the three kabalistic heads of the scriptures as explained
by the Jews, the triune godhead of each nation was fully defined and
substantiated in its allegories.
Such is the cosmic and ideal
significance of this great symbol with the Eastern peoples. But, applied to
practical and exoteric worship -- which had also its esoteric symbology -- the
lotus became in time the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No
dogmatic religion has ever escaped the sexual element in it; and to this day it
soils the moral beauty of the root idea. The following is quoted from the same
Kabalistic MSS. already mentioned:--
"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 with mother-earth, or
the womb of Isis, through the water of the womb, that is, the river Nile, by
means of 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.* Thus Osiris and
Isis, the children of Chronos, or time without end, in the development of their
nature-forces, in this picture become the parents of man under the name Horus.
. ." (See § X., "Deus Lunus.")
"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, surpasses all efforts of the human intellect.** The
new born is an ever-recurring miracle, an evidence that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In Indian Puranas it is Vishnu, the
first, and Brahma, the second logos, or the ideal and practical creators, who
are respectively represented, one as manifesting the lotus, the other as
issuing from it.
** Not the "efforts" 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.
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within the workshop of the womb an
intelligent creative power has intervened to fasten a living soul to a physical
machine. The amazing wonderfulness of the fact attaches a holy sacredness to
all connected with the organs of reproduction, as the dwelling and place of
evident constructive intervention of deity."
This is a correct rendering of the
underlying ideas of old, of the purely pantheistic conceptions, impersonal and
reverential, of the archaic philosophers of the prehistoric ages. Not so,
however, when applied to sinful humanity, to the gross ideas attached to
personality. Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher would fail to find the
remarks that follow the above and which represent the anthropomorphism of
Judean symbology, other than dangerous for the sacredness of true religion, and
fitting only our materialistic age, which is the direct outcome and result of
that anthropomorphic character. For this is the key-note to the entire spirit
and essence of the Old Testament. "Therefore," goes on the MSS.,
treating of the symbolism of art-speech of the Bible:--
"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.* 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** by metaphor, this part of the house is described
in the Sacred Books as the "between the thighs of the house," and
sometimes the idea is carried out constructively in the great door-opening of
Churches placed inward between flanking buttresses."
No such thought "carried to the
extreme" ever existed among the old primitive Aryans. This is proven by
the fact that in the Vedic period their women were not placed apart from men in
penetralia, or "Zenanas." Their seclusion began when the Mahomedans
-- the next heirs to Hebrew symbolism after Christian ecclesiasticism -- had
conquered the land and gradually enforced their ways and customs upon the
Hindus. The pre- and post-Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure
terrestrial thought was ever mixed with the religious symbo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Surely the words of the old
Initiate into the primitive mysteries of Christianity, "Know ye not ye are
the Temple of God" (I Corinth. iii. 16) could not be applied in this sense
to men? The meaning may have been, and was so, undeniably, 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 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.
** It was so carried only in the
Hebrew Bible, and its servile copyist, Christian theology.
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logy of the early Aryans. The idea
and application are purely Semitic. This is corroborated by the writer of the
said intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation himself, when he closes the
above-quoted passages by adding:--
"If to these organs as symbols
of creative cosmic agencies the idea of the origin of measures as well as of
time-periods can be attached, then indeed, in the constructions of the Temples
as Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that part designated as the Holy of
Holies, or the Most Holy place, should borrow its title from the recognised sacredness
of the generative organs, considered as symbols of measures as well as of
creative cause. With the ancient WISE, there was no name and no idea, and no
symbol of A FIRST CAUSE." . . . .
Most decidedly not. Rather never give
a thought to it and leave it for ever nameless, as the early Pantheists did,
than degrade the sacredness of that Ideal of Ideals, by dragging down its
symbols into such anthropomorphic forms! Here again one perceives the immense
chasm between Aryan and Semitic religious thought: two opposite poles --
Sincerity and Concealment. With the Brahmins, who have never invested with an
"original Sin" element the natural procreative functions of mankind,
it is a religious duty to have a son. A Brahmin, in days of old, having accomplished
his mission of human creator, retired to the jungle and passed the rest of his
days in religious meditations. He had accomplished his duty to nature as mortal
man and its co-worker, and henceforth gave all his thoughts to the spiritual
immortal portion in himself, regarding the terrestrial as a mere illusion, an
evanescent dream -- which it is. With the Semite, it was different. He invented
a temptation of flesh in a garden of Eden; showed his God (esoterically, the
Tempter and the Ruler of Nature) CURSING for ever an act, which was in the
logical programme of that nature.* All this exoterically, as in the cloak and
dead letter of Genesis and the rest; and at the same time esoterically he
regarded the supposed sin and FALL as an act so sacred, as to choose the organ,
the perpetrator of the original sin, as the fittest and most sacred symbol to
represent that God, who is shown as branding its entering into function as
disobedience and everlasting SIN!
Who can ever fathom the paradoxical
depths of the Semitic mind? And this paradoxical element, minus its innermost
significance, has now passed entirely into Christian theology and dogma!
Whether the early Fathers of the
Church knew the esoteric meaning of the Hebrew (Old) Testament, or whether only
a few of them were aware of it, while the others remained ignorant of the
secret, is for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The same idea is carried out
exoterically in the incidents of Egypt. The Lord God tempts sorely Pharaoh 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."
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posterity to decide. One thing is
certain, at any rate. As the esotericism of the New Testament agrees perfectly
with that of the Hebrew Mosaic Books; and since, at the same time, a number of
purely Egyptian symbols and pagan dogmas in general -- the Trinity for example
-- have been copied by, and incorporated into, the Synoptics and St. John, it
becomes evident that the identity of those symbols was known to the writers of
the New Testament, whoever they were. They must have been aware also of the
priority of the Egyptian esotericism, since they have adopted several such
symbols that typify purely Egyptian conceptions and beliefs -- in their outward
and inward meaning -- and which are not to be found in the Jewish Canon. One of
such is the water-lily in the hands of the Archangel in the early
representations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary; and these symbolical
images are preserved to this day in the iconography of the Greek and Roman
Churches. Thus water, fire, the Cross, as well as the Dove, the Lamb, and other
sacred animals, with all their combinations, yield esoterically an identical
meaning, and must have been accepted as an improvement upon Judaism pure and
simple.
For the Lotus and Water are among the
oldest symbols, and in their origin are purely Aryan, though they became common
property during the branching-off of the fifth race. Let us give an example.
Letters, as much as numbers, were all mystic, whether in combination or each taken
separately. The most sacred of all is the letter M. It is both feminine and
masculine, or androgyne, and is made to symbolize WATER, the great deep, in its
origin. It is mystic in all the languages, Eastern and Western, and stands as a
glyph for the waves, thus: [[diagram]]. In the Aryan Esotericism, as in the
Semitic, this letter has always stood for the waters; e.g., in Sanskrit MAKARA
-- the tenth sign of the Zodiac -- means a crocodile, or rather an aquatic
monster associated always with water. The letter MA is equivalent to and
corresponds with number 5 -- composed of a binary, the symbol of the two sexes
separated, and of the ternary, symbol of the third life, the progeny of the
binary. This, again, is often symbolised by a Pentagon, the latter being a
sacred sign, a divine Monogram. MAITREYA is the secret name of the Fifth
Buddha, and the Kalki Avatar of the Brahmins -- the last MESSIAH who will come
at the culmination of the Great Cycle. It is also the initial letter of the
Greek Metis or Divine Wisdom; of Mimra, the "word" or Logos; and of
Mithras (the Mihr), the Monad, Mystery. All these are born in, and from, the
great Deep, and are the Sons of Maya -- the Mother; in Egypt, Mouth, in Greece
Minerva (divine wisdom), Mary, or Miriam, Myrrha, etc.; of the Mother of the
Christian Logos, and of Maya, the mother of Buddha. Madhava and Madhavi are the
titles of the most important gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon. Finally,
Mandala is in
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Sanskrit "a circle," or an
orb (the ten divisions of the Rig Veda). The most sacred names in India begin
with this letter generally -- from Mahat, the first manifested intellect, and
Mandara, the great mountain used by the gods to churn the Ocean, down to
Mandakin, the heavenly Ganga (Ganges), Manu, etc., etc.
Shall this be called a coincidence? A
strange one it is then, indeed, when we find even Moses -- found in the water
of the Nile -- having the symbolical consonant in his name. And Pharaoh's
daughter "called his name Moses . . . because," she said, "I
drew him out of WATER" (Exod. ii., 10.)* 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 M'bul. A
reminder of the "three Maries" at the Crucifixion and their
connection with Mar, the Sea, or Water, may close this example. This is why in
Judaism and Christianity the Messiah is always connected with Water, Baptism,
the Fishes (the sign of the Zodiac called Meenam in Sanskrit), and even with
the Matsya (fish) Avatar, and the Lotus -- the symbol of the womb, or the
water-lily, which is the same.
In the relics of ancient Egypt, the
greater the antiquity of the votive symbols and emblems of the objects exhumed,
the oftener are the lotus flowers and the water found in connection with the
Solar Gods. The god Khnoom -- the moist power -- water, as Thales taught it,
being the principle of all things, sits on a throne enshrined in a lotus
(Saitic epoch, Serapeum). The god Bes stands on a lotus, ready to devour his
progeny. (Ibid, Abydos.) Thot, the god of mystery and Wisdom, the sacred Scribe
of Amenti, wearing the Solar disc as head gear, sits with a bull's head (the
sacred bull of Mendes being a form of Thot) and a human body, on a full blown
lotus. (IVth Dynasty.) Finally it is the goddess Hiquet, under her shape of a
frog, who rests on the lotus, thus showing her connection with water. And it is
this frog-symbol, undeniably the most ancient of their Egyptian deities, from
whose unpoetical shape the Egyptologists have been vainly trying to unravel her
mystery and functions. Its adoption in the Church by the early Christians shows
that they knew it better than our modern Orientalists. The "frog or toad
goddess" was one of the chief cosmic deities connected with creation, on
account of her amphibious nature, and chiefly because of her apparent
resurrection, after long ages of solitary life enshrined in old walls, in
rocks, etc. She not only participated in the organization of the world,
together with Khnoom, but was also connected with the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Even to the seven daughters of the
Midian priest, who, coming to draw the water, had Moses water their flock, for
which service the Midian gives to Moses Zipporah (sippara = the shining wave)
as wife (Exod. ii.) All this has the same secret meaning.
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dogma of resurrection.* There must
have been some very profound and sacred meaning attached to this symbol, since,
notwithstanding the risk of being charged with a disgusting form of zoolatry,
the early Egyptian Christians adopted it in their Churches. A frog or toad
enshrined in a lotus flower, or simply without the latter emblem, was the form
chosen for the Church lamps, on which were engraved the words "I am the
resurrection" "[[ego eimi anastasis]]."** These frog goddesses
are also found on all the mummies.
-------------
§ IX
THE MOON, DEUS LUNUS, PHOEBE.
THIS archaic symbol is the most
poetical of all symbols, as also the most philosophical. The ancient Greeks
brought it into prominence, and the modern poets have worn it threadbare. The
Queen of Night, riding in the majesty of her peerless light in heaven, throwing
all, even Hesperos, into darkness, and spreading her silver mantle over the
whole sidereal world, has ever been a favourite theme with all the poets of
Christendom, from Milton and Shakespeare down to the latest versifier. But the
refulgent lamp of night, with her suite of stars unnumbered, spoke only to the
imagination of the profane. Until lately, Religion and Science had nought to do
with the beautiful mythos. Yet, the cold chaste moon, she, in the words of
Shelley --
. . . . "Who 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, but not illumines." .
. . .
stands in closer relations to Earth
than any other sidereal orb. The Sun is the giver of life to the whole
planetary system; the Moon is the giver of life to our globe; and the early
races understood and knew it, even in their infancy. She is the Queen and she
is the King, and was King Soma before she became transformed into Phoebe and
the chaste Diana. She is pre-eminently the deity of the Christians, through the
Mosaic and Kabalistic Jews, though the civilized world may have remained
ignorant of the fact for long ages; in fact, ever since the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the Egyptians it was the
resurrection in rebirth after 3,000 years of purification, either in Devachan
or "the fields of bliss."
** Such "frog-goddesses"
may be seen at Bulaq, in the Cairo Museum. For the statement about the Church
lamps and inscriptions it is the learned ex-director of the Bulaq Museum, Mr.
Gaston Maspero, who must be held responsible. (See his "Guide du Visiteur
au Musee de Bulaq," p. 146.)
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last initiated Father of the Church
died, carrying with him into his grave the secrets of the pagan temples. For
the "Fathers" -- such as Origen or Clemens Alexandrinus -- the Moon
was Jehovah's living symbol: the giver of Life and the giver of Death, the
disposer of being -- in our World. For, if Artemis was Luna in Heaven, and,
with the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child-birth and life: with
the Egyptians, she was Hekat (Hecate) in Hell, the goddess of Death, who ruled
over magic and enchantments. More than this: as the personified moon, whose
phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecate-Luna is the three in one. For she is Diva
triformis, tergemina, triceps -- three heads on one neck,* like
Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. Hence she is the prototype of our Trinity, which has not
always been entirely male. The number seven, so prominent in the Bible, so
sacred in its seventh (Sabbath) day, came to the Jews from Antiquity, deriving
its origin from the four-fold number 7 contained in the 28 days of the lunar
month, each septenary portion thereof being typified by one quarter of the
moon.
It is worth the trouble of presenting
in this work a bird's-eye view of the origin and development of the lunar myth
and worship in historical antiquity, on our side of the globe. Its earlier
origin is untraceable by exact science, rejecting as it does tradition; while
for Theology, which, under the guidance of the crafty Popes, has put a brand on
every fragment of literature that does not bear the imprimatur of the Church of
Rome, its archaic history is a sealed book. Whether the Egyptian or the Aryan
Hindu religious philosophy is the more ancient -- and the Secret Doctrine says
it is the latter -- does not much matter in this instance, as the lunar and
solar "worship" are the most ancient in the world. Both have
survived, and prevail to this day throughout the whole world, with some openly,
with others -- e.g., in Christian symbolics -- secretly. The cat, a lunar
symbol, was sacred to Isis, herself the Moon in one sense, as Osiris was the
Sun. The cat is often seen on the top of the Sistrum in the hand of the
goddess. This animal was held in great veneration in the city of Bubaste, which
went into deep mourning after the death of every sacred cat, because Isis, as
the Moon, was particularly worshipped in this city of mysteries. The
astronomical symbolism connected with it has already been given in Section I.
of "Symbolism," and no one has better described it than Mr. G.
Massey, in his Lectures and in "The Natural Genesis." The eye of the
cat, it is said, seems to follow the lunar phases in its growth and decline,
and its orbs shine like two stars in the darkness of night. Hence the
mythological allegory which shows Diana hiding under the shape of a cat in the
Moon, when, in company with other deities, she was seeking to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The goddess [[Trimorphos]] in the
statuary of Alcamenes.
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escape the pursuit of Typhon (Vide
the Metamorphoses of Ovid). The moon in Egypt was both the "Eye of
Horus" and the "Eye of Osiris," the Sun.
The same with the Cynocephalus. The
dog-headed ape was a glyph to symbolise the sun and moon, in turn, though the
Cynocephalus is more a Hermetic than a religious symbol. For it is the
hieroglyph of Mercury, the planet, as of the Mercury of the Alchemical
philosophers, "as," say the Alchemists, "Mercury has to be ever
near Isis, as her minister, as without Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can
accomplish anything in the GREAT WORK." Cynocephalus, whenever represented
with the Caduceus, the Crescent, or the Lotus, is a glyph of the
"philosophical" Mercury; but when seen with a reed, or a roll of
parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and adviser of Isis, as Hanuman
filled the same office with Rama.
Though the regular Sun-Worshippers,
the Parsis, are few, yet not only is the bulk of the Hindu mythology and
history based upon and interblended with these two worships, but so is also the
Christian religion itself. From their origin down to our modern day it has
coloured the theologies of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. The
difference, indeed, between the Aryan Hindu and the Aryan European faiths is
very small, if only the fundamental ideas of both are taken into consideration.
Hindus are proud of calling themselves Suryas and Chandravansas (of the Solar
and Lunar dynasties). The Christians pretend to regard it as idolatry, and yet
they adhere to a religion entirely based upon the solar and lunar worships. It
is useless and vain for the Protestants to exclaim against the Roman Catholics
for their "Mariolatry," based on the ancient cult of lunar goddesses,
when they themselves worship Jehovah, pre-eminently a lunar god, and when both
Churches have accepted in their theologies the "Sun"-Christ and the
lunar trinity.
What is known of Chaldaean
Moon-Worship, of the Babylonian god, Sin, called by the Greeks "Deus
Lunus," is very little, and that little is apt to mislead the profane
student who fails to grasp the esoteric significance of the symbols. As
popularly known to the ancient profane philosophers and writers (for those who
were initiated were pledged to silence) the Chaldaea were the worshippers of
the moon under her (and his) various names, just as were the Jews, who came
after them.
In the unpublished MSS. on the Art
Speech, already mentioned, giving a key to the formation of the ancient
(symbolical) languages a logical raison d'etre is brought forward for this
double worship. It is written by a wonderfully well-informed and acute scholar
and Mystic, who gives it in the comprehensive form of a hypothesis. The latter,
however, becomes forcibly a proven fact in the history of religious
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evolution in human thought, to anyone
who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of ancient Symbology. Thus, he
says:--
"One of the first occupations
among men, connected with those of actual necessity, would be the perception of
time periods,* 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. . . . ."
On this basis, the author seeks for
some natural physical function possessed in common by the human race, and
connected with the periodical manifestations, such that "the connection
between the two kinds of phenomena . . . became fixed in popular usage."
He finds it "(a) in 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 foetus 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:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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"The basic idea underlying the
religious philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained all things within
himself*; 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,** 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 women of the Hebrews was not intended as of any radical
difference of signification, but a concurrence in the teaching intended, and
merely as a 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 four weeks each. And in this period
consisted the essential value of this animal symbol, whose mark was that of the
crescent moon.*** . . . These parturient and natural periods are found to have
been subjects of symbolism all over the world. They were thus used by the
Hindus, and are found to be most plainly set forth by the ancient Americans, in
the Richardson and Gest tablets, in the Palenque Cross; and manifestly lay at
the base of the formation of the calendar forms of the Mayas of Yucatan, the
Hindus, 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, . . . or 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'cabrah, or literally, phallus and yoni,**** 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 was considered; then would come into
indication a mode of measures of lunar time, and, through lunar, of solar
time." . . .
This is the physiological or
anthropological key to the Moon symbol. The key that opens the mystery of
theogony, or the evolution of the Manvantaric gods, is more complicated, and
has nothing phallic in it. All is mystical and divine there. But the Jews,
beyond connecting Jehovah directly with the Moon as a generative god, preferred
to ignore the higher hierarchies, and have made of some of them (zodiacal
constellations and planetary gods) their Patriarchs, thus euhemerizing the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A caricatured and dwarfed Vedantin
notion of Parabrahmam containing within itself the whole Universe as being that
boundless Universe itself, and there existing nothing outside of itself.
** Just as they are to this day in
India, the bull of Siva and the cow representing several Sakti -- goddesses.
*** Hence the worship of the moon by
the Hebrews.
**** "Male and female, created
he them."
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purely theosophical idea and dragging
it down to the level of sinful humanity. (See section "Holy of
Holies" in the "Symbolism" of Book II.) The MSS. from which the
above is extracted explains very clearly to what hierarchy of gods Jehovah belonged,
and who this Jewish GOD was; for it shows in clear language that which the
writer has always insisted upon -- namely, that the God with which the
Christians have burdened themselves was no better than the lunar symbol of the
reproductive or generative faculty in nature. They have ever ignored even the
Hebrew secret god of the Kabalists, Ain-Soph, as grand as Parabrahmam in the
earliest Kabalistic and mystical conceptions. But it is not the Kabala of
Rosenroth that can ever give the true original teachings of Simeon-Ben-Iochai,
as metaphysical and philosophical as any. And how many are there among the
students of the Kabala who knew anything of them except in their distorted
Latin translations. Let us glance at the idea which led the ancient Jews to
adopt a substitute for the ever UNKNOWABLE, and which has misled the Christians
into mistaking the substitute for the reality.
"If to these organs (phallus and
yoni) as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea of . . . . time periods
can be attached, then, indeed, in the construction of Temples as Dwellings of
Deity, or of Jehovah, that post designated as the Holy of Holies, or the most
High 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.* With the Hebrews,
the indirect conception of such was couched in a term of negation of
comprehension -- viz., Ain-Soph, or the Without Bounds. But the symbol of its
first comprehensible manifestation, was the conception of a circle with its
diameter line. . . . . (See the Proem of Book I., Part I.) to carry at once a
geometric, phallic, and astronomic idea . . . . for the one takes its birth
from the nought or the Circle, without which it could not be, and from one, or
primal one, spring the nine digits, and, geometrically, all plane shapes. So in
the Kabala this Circle, with its diameter line, is the picture of the ten
Sephiroth or Emanations, composing the Adam Kadmon, the Archetypal Man, the
creative origin of all things. . . . . This idea of connecting the circle and
its diameter line, that is, number ten, 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 he [[diagram]] is at the same
time the number 5 and 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* 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 any cause, at one time.
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the highest, spiritual, down to the
lowest or terrestrial plane; and by the Jews limited to the latter. With them,
therefore the number 7 has acquired the most prominent place in their exoteric
religion, a cult of external forms and empty rituals; as their Sabbath, for
instance, the seventh day sacred to their deity, the moon, symbolical of the
generative Jehovah. While with other nations the number seven was typical of
theogonic evolution, of cycles, cosmic planes, and the Seven Forces and Occult
Powers in Kosmos, as a boundless whole, whose first upper triangle was
unreachable to the finite intellect of man -- while other nations, therefore,
busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos in Space and Time,
only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred this member solely
in the moon, and based all their sacred calculations thereupon. Hence we find
the thoughtful author of the MSS. just quoted, remarking, in reference to the
metrology of the Jews that: "If 20,612 be multiplied by 4/3 the product
will afford a base for the ascertainment of the mean revolution of the moon,
and if this product be again multiplied by 4/3, this continued product will
afford a base for finding the exact period of the mean solar year, . . . this
form . . . becoming, for the finding of astronomical periods of time, of very
great service." This double number (male and female) is symbolized also in
some well-known idols: e.g., "Ardanari-Iswara, the Isis of the Hindus,
Eridanus, or Ardan, or the Hebrew Jordan, or source of descent. She is standing
on a lotus-leaf flowing 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 Jod [[diagram]], 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;" therefore rather a synonym of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, than of
his Father; that "Mother, being the Latin Mare" the Sea is here also,
Venus, the Stella del Mare, or "Star of the Sea."
The ancestors of the mysterious
Akkadians -- the Chandra or Indovansas, the Lunar Kings whom tradition shows
reigning at Prayag (Allahabad) ages before our era -- had come from India, and
brought with them the worship of their forefathers, of Soma, and his son Budha,
which afterwards became that of the Chaldeans. Yet such adoration, apart from
popular Astrolatry and Heliolatry, was in no sense idolatry. No more, at any
rate, than the modern Roman Catholic symbolism which connects their Virgin Mary
-- the Magna Mater of the Syrians and Greeks -- with the Moon.
Of this worship, the most pious Roman
Catholics feel quite proud,
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and loudly confess to it. In a
Memoire to the French Academy, the Marquis De Mirville says:--
"It is only natural that, as an
unconscious prophecy, Ammon-Ra 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 Neithis throws radiance on the sun,
while remaining the Moon, since the VIRGIN, who is the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, as
Neith was, clothes herself in her radiance, and clothes in his turn the
CHRIST-SUN. "Tu vestis solem et te sol vestit.". . . is sung by the
Roman Catholics during their service, and he adds:--
"We (Christians) understand also
how it is that the famous inscription at Sais should have stated that 'none has
ever lifted my peplum (veil),' considering that this sentence, literally
translated, is the summary of what is sung in the Church on the day of the
immaculate conception." (ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER," p. 117.)
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."
A charming allegory is found in the
Zohar, one which unveils better than anything ever did the true character of
Jehovah or YHVH in the primitive conception of the Hebrew Kabalists. It is now
found in the philosophy of I'bn Gebirol's Kabbalah, translated by Isaac Myer.
"In the introduction written by R'Hez'quee-yah, which is very old,"
says our author, "and forms part of our Brody edition of the Zohar (I, 5b.
sq.) is an account of a journey taken by R. El'azar, son of R. Shim-on b. Io'hai,
and Rabbi Abbah." They met a man with a heavy burden and asked his name;
but he refused to give it and proceeded to explain to them Thorah
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(Law). "They asked: 'Who caused
thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy load?' He answered: 'The letter
[[diagram]], (Yod, which = 10, and is the symbolical letter of Kether and the
essence and germ of the Holy name [[diagram]] YHVH) . . . . 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 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. Then
the author explains that the feminine Sephiroth, Binah, is termed by the Kabalist
the great sea: therefore Binah, whose divine names are Jehovah, Yah, and
Elohim, is simply the Chaldean Tiamat, the female power, the Thalatth of
Berosus, who presides over the Chaos, and was made out later by Christian
theology to be the serpent and the Devil. She-He (Yah-hovah) is the supernal
(Heh, and Eve). This Yah-hovah then or Jehovah, is identical with our Chaos --
Father, Mother, Son, -- on the material plane and in the purely physical World.
Demon and Deus at one and the same time; the sun and moon, good and evil, God
and Demon.
Lunar magnetism generates life,
preserves and destroys it, psychically as well as physically. And if,
astronomically, she is one of the seven planets of the ancient world, in
theogony she is one of the regents thereof; with Christians now as much as with
Pagans, the former referring to her under the name of one of their archangels,
and the latter under that of one of their gods.
Therefore the meaning of the
"fairy tale" translated by Chwolson from an old Chaldean MSS. translated
into Arabic, about Qu-tamy being instructed by the idol of the moon, is easily
understood (vide Book III.) Seldenus tells us the secret as well as Maimonides
(More Nevochim, Book III., ch. xxx). The worshippers of the Teraphim (the
Jewish Oracles) "carved images and claimed that the light of the principal
stars (planets) permeating these through and through, the angelic VIRTUES (or
the regents of the stars and planets) conversed with them, teaching them many
most useful things and arts." And Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were
built and composed after the position of certain planets, those which the
Greeks called [[stoicheia]], and according to figures that were located in the
sky and called [[alexeteroi]], or the tutelary gods. Those who traced out the
[[stoicheia]] were called [[stoicheiomatichoi]], or the diviners by the
[[stoicheia]]. (De Diis Syriis, Teraph, II. Synt. p. 31) vide infra, the
Teraphim.
It is such sentences, however, in the
"Nabathean agriculture," that
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have frightened the men of science
and made them proclaim the work "either an apocrypha or a fairy tale,
unworthy of the notice of an Academician." At the same time, as shown,
zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants tore it metaphorically to pieces; the
former because "it described the worship of demons," the latter
because it is "ungodly." They are all wrong, once more. It is not a
fairy tale; and as far as regards pious Churchmen, the same worship may be
shown in the Scriptures, however disfigured by translation. Solar and Lunar
worship, as well as that of the Stars and Elements, are traced, and figure in
the Christian theology; defended by Papists, they are stoutly denied by the
Protestants only at their own risk and peril. Two instances may be given.
Ammianus Marcellinus teaches that
ancient divinations were always accomplished with the help of the Spirits of
the Elements, "Spiritus elementorum, and in Greek [[pneumata ton
stoicheion]]" (1. I., 21).
But it is found now that the planets,
the Elements, and the Zodiac, were figured not only in Heliopolis by the twelve
stones called "mysteries of the elements," elementorum arcana, but
also in Solomon's temple, and, as pointed out by various writers, in several
old Italian churches and even at Notre Dame de Paris where they can be seen to
this day.
No symbol -- the sun included -- was
more complex in its manifold meanings than the lunar symbol. The sex was, of
course, dual. With some it was male, e.g., the Hindu "King Soma," and
the Chaldean Sin; with other nations it was female, the beauteous goddesses
Diana-Luna, I'lythia, Lucina. In Tauris, human victims were sacrificed to
Artemis, a form of the lunar goddess; the Cretans called her Dictynna, and the
Medes and Persians Anaitis, as shown by an inscription of Koloe: '[[Artemidi
'Anaeiti]]. But, we are now concerned chiefly with the most chaste and pure of
the virgin goddesses, Luna-Artemis, to whom Pamphos was the first to give the
surname of [[Kalliste]], and of whom Hippolitus wrote: [[Kallista polu
parthenon]]. (See Pausanias viii., 35, 8.) This Artemis-Lochia, the goddess
that presided at conception and child-birth (Iliad, Pausanias, etc., etc.), is,
in her functions and as the triple Hecate, the Orphic deity, the predecessor of
the God of the Rabbins and pre-Christian Kabalists, and his lunar type. The
goddess [[Trimorphos]] was the personified symbol of the various and successive
aspects represented by the moon in each of her three phases; and this
interpretation was already that of the Stoics (Cornut. De Nat, D. 34, 1), while
the Orpheans explained the epithet ([[Trimorphos]]) by the three kingdoms of
nature over which she reigned. jealous, blood-thirsty, revengeful and exacting,
Hecate-Luna is a worthy counterpart of the "Jealous God" of the
Hebrew prophets.
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The whole riddle of the solar and
lunar worship, as now traced in the churches, hangs indeed on this world-old
mystery of lunar phenomena. The correlative forces in the "Queen of
Night," that lie latent for modern science, but are fully active to the
knowledge of Eastern adepts, explain well the thousand and one images under
which the moon was represented by the ancients. It also shows how much more
profoundly learned in the Selenic mysteries were the ancients than are now our
modern astronomers. The whole Pantheon of the lunar gods and goddesses, Nephtys
or Neith, Proserpina, Melytta, Cybele, Isis, Astarte, Venus, and Hecate, on the
one hand, and Apollo, Dionysius, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Atys, Thammuz, etc.,
etc., on the other, all show on the face of their names and titles -- those of
"Sons" and "Husbands" of their mothers -- their identity
with the Christian Trinity. In every religious system the gods were made to
merge their functions as Father, Son, and Husband, into one, and the goddesses
were identified as "Wife, Mother, and Sister" of the male God; the
former synthesizing the human attributes as the "Sun, the giver of
Life," the latter merging all the other titles in the grand synthesis
known as Maia, Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name. Maia, in its forced
derivation, has come to mean with the Greeks, "mother," from the root
ma (nurse), and even gave its name to the month of May, which was sacred to all
those goddesses before it became consecrated to Mary.* Its primitive meaning,
however, was Maya, Durga, translated by the Orientalists as
"inaccessible," but meaning in truth the "unreachable," in
the sense of illusion and unreality; as being the source and cause of spells,
the personification of ILLUSION.
In religious rites the moon served a
dual purpose. Personified as a female goddess for exoteric purposes, or as a
male god in allegory and symbol, in occult philosophy our satellite was
regarded as a sexless Potency to be well studied, because it was to be dreaded.
With the initiated Aryans, Khaldii, 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,** were the occult potencies of the moon. But whether male or
female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the Occult
mystery of mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of good. Her seven phases
(original, esoteric division) are divided into three astronomical phenomena and
four
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 ([[Maia]]) or Vesta"
(Aulus-Gellius, word Maia) -- our mother-earth, our nurse and nourisher
personified.
** Thot-Lunus is
"Budha-Soma" of India, or "Mercury and the Moon."
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purely psychic phases. That the moon
was not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in which the death of the
moon-god (the three phases of gradual waning and final disappearance) was
allegorized by the moon standing for the genius of evil that triumphs for the
time over the light and life-giving god (the sun), and all the skill and
learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic was required to turn this triumph
into a defeat.
It was the most ancient worship of
all, that of the third Race of our Round, the Hermaphrodites, to whom the
male-moon became sacred, when after the "Fall" so-called, the sexes
had become separated. "Deus Lunus" then became an androgyne, male and
female in turn; to serve finally, for purposes of sorcery, as a dual power, to
the Fourth Root-race, the Atlanteans. With the Fifth (our own) the lunar-solar
worship divided the nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to
events described aeons later in the Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is
the fabulous, to the Hindus and Occultists the historical, strife between the
Suryavansas and the Indovansas. Originating in the dual aspect of the moon, the
worship of the female and the male principles respectively, it ended in
distinct solar and lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the sun was for a very
long time feminine and the moon masculine -- the latter notion being adopted by
them from the Atlantean traditions. The moon was called "the Lord of the
sun," Bel-Skemesh,* before the Shemesh worship. The ignorance of the
incipient reasons for such a distinction, and of occult principles, led the
nations into anthropomorphic idol-worship. But the religion of every ancient
nation had been primarily based upon the Occult manifestations of a purely
abstract Force or Principle now called "God." The very establishment
of such worship shows, in its details and rites, that the philosophers who
evolved those systems of nature, subjective and objective, possessed profound
knowledge, and were acquainted with many facts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* During that period which is absent
from the Mosaic books -- from the exile of Eden to the allegorical Flood -- the
Jews worshipped with the rest of the Semites Dayanisi [[hebrew]] "the
Ruler of Men," the "Judge," or the SUN. Though the Jewish canon
and Christianism have made the sun become the "Lord God" and Jehovah
in the Bible, yet the latter is full of indiscreet traces of the androgyne
Deity, which was Jehovah the sun, and Astoreth the moon in its female aspect,
and quite free from the present metaphorical element given to it. God is a
"consuming fire," appears in, and is encompassed by fire." It
was not only in vision that Ezekiel (viii., 16) saw the Jews "worshipping
the sun." The Baal of the Israelites (the Shemesh of the Moabites and the
Moloch of the Ammonites) was the identical "Sun-Jehovah," and he is
till now "the King of the Host of Heaven," the Sun, as much as
Astoreth was the "Queen of Heaven" -- or the moon. The "Sun of
Righteousness" has become a metaphorical expression only now.
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of a scientific nature. For besides
being purely Occult, the rites of lunar worship were based, as just shown, upon
a knowledge of physiology (quite a modern science with us), psychology, sacred
mathematics, geometry and metrology, in their right applications to symbols and
figures, which are but glyphs, recording observed natural and scientific facts;
in short, upon a most minute and profound knowledge of nature. Lunar magnetism
generates life, preserves and kills it. Soma embodies the triple power of the
Trimurti, though it passes unrecognized by the profane to this day. The
allegory that makes Soma, the moon, produced by the churning of the Ocean of
Life (Space) by the gods in another Manvantara (i.e., in the pregenetic day of
our planetary system), and that other allegory, which shows "the Rishis
milking the earth, whose calf was Soma, the moon," has a deep cosmographical
meaning; for it is neither our earth which is milked, nor was the moon, which
we know, the calf.* Had our wise men of science known as much of the mysteries
of nature as the ancient Aryans did, they would surely never have imagined that
the moon was projected from the Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in
theogony, the Son becoming his own father and the mother generated by the Son,
has to be remembered and taken into consideration if the symbolical language of
the ancients is to be understood by us. Otherwise mythology will be ever
haunting the Orientalists as simply "the disease which springs up at a
peculiar stage of human culture!" -- as Renouf gravely observes in a
Hibbert lecture.
The ancients taught the, so to speak,
auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence, unmanifested, perpetually
begetting a second-self, manifested, which second-self, androgynous in its
nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to everything macro- and
micro-cosmical in this universe. This was shown in the Circle and the Diameter,
or the Sacred 10, a few pages back.
But our Orientalists, their extreme
desire to discover one homogeneous element in nature notwithstanding, will not
see it; cramped in their researches by such ignorance, they -- the Aryanists
and Egyptologists -- are constantly led astray from truth in their
speculations. Thus, de Rouge is unable to understand, in the text which he
translates, the meaning of Ammon-Ra saying to King Amenophes (supposed to be
Memnon), "Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee"; and as he
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Brahma.
Therefore, it is not our Earth. Again, in every Purana, the calf changes name.
In one it is Manu Swayambhuva, in another Indra, in a third the Himavat
(Himalayas) itself, while Meru was the milker. This is a deeper allegory than
one thinks.
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finds the same idea in many a text
and under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist is finally compelled
to exclaim that "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 an impossible prophecy, when the whole secret is explained by the later
religion copying the earlier?
That doctrine was universal, and it
was not the mind of any one hierogrammatist that evolved it; for the Indian
avatars are a proof to the contrary. After which, having come "to realize
clearer"* what "the Divine Father and Son" were with the
Egyptians, de Rouge still fails to account for, and perceive what were the functions
attributed to the feminine principle in that primordial generation. He does not
find it in the goddess Neith, of Sais. Yet he quotes the sentence of the
Commander to Cambyses when introducing that king into the Saitic temple:
"I made known to his Majesty the dignity of Sais, which is the abode of
Neith, the great (female) producer, genitrix of the Sun, who is the first-born,
and who is not begotten, but only brought forth," and hence is the fruit
of an immaculate mother.
How much more grandiose, philosophical
and poetical is the real distinction -- for whoever is able to understand and
appreciate it -- made between the immaculate virgin of the ancient Pagans and
the modern Papal conception. With the former, the ever-youthful mother nature,
the antitype of her prototypes, the sun and moon, generates and brings forth
her "mind-born" son, the Universe. The Sun and Moon, as male-female
deities, fructify the earth, the microcosmical mother, and the latter conceives
and brings forth, in her turn. With the Christians, "the first-born"
(primogenitus) is indeed generated, i.e., begotten, "genitum, non
factum," and positively conceived and brought forth -- "Virgo
pariet," explains the Latin Church. Thus, she drags down the noble spiritual
ideal of the Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her "of the earth
earthy," degrades that ideal to the lowest of the anthropomorphic
goddesses of the rabble.
Truly, Neith, Isis, Diana, etc.,
etc., were each of them "a demiurgical goddess, at once visible and
invisible, having her place in Heaven, and helping to the generation of
species" -- the moon, in short. Her occult aspects and powers are
numberless, and, in one of them, the moon becomes with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* His clear realization of it is,
that the Egyptians prophesied Jehovah (!) and his incarnated Redeemer (the good
serpent), etc., etc.; even to identifying Typhon with the wicked dragon of the
garden of Eden, and this passes as serious and sober science.
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the Egyptians Hathor, another aspect
of Isis,* and both of these goddesses are shown suckling Horus. Behold in the
Egyptian Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped by Pharaoh Thotmes, who
stands between her and the Lord of Heavens. The monolith was taken from Karnac;
and 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 Rochetti shows the moon-goddess of the Athenians -- Pallas, or Cybele,
Minerva, or again Diana -- holding her child-son on the lap, invoked in her
festivals as [[Monogenes Theou]], "the one Mother of God," sitting on
a lion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist recognises
the twelve great gods, and the pious Christian Orientalist the apostles, or
rather the Grecian pagan prophecy thereof.
They are both right, for the
immaculate goddess of the Latin Church is a faithful copy of the older pagan
goddesses; the number (twelve) of the apostles is that of the twelve tribes,
and the latter are a personification of the twelve great gods, and of the
twelve signs of the Zodiac. Every detail almost in the Christian dogma is
borrowed from the heathens. Semele, the wife of Jupiter and mother of Bacchus,
the Sun, is, according to Nonnus, also "carried," or made to ascend
to heaven after her death, where she presides between Mars and Venus, under the
name of the Queen of the World, or the universe, [[panbasileia]]; "at the
names of which, as at the names of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal
goddesses," "tremble all the demons."**
"[[Semelen premousi
daimones]]." This Greek inscription on a small temple, reproduced on a
stone that was found by somebody, and copied by Montfaucon, as De Mirville
tells us (113, Archaeologie de la Vierge mere) informs us of the stupendous
fact, that the Magna Mater of the old world was an impudent plagiarism, perpetrated
by the Demon, of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of his Church. Whether so, or
vice versa, is of no importance. That which is interesting to note is the
perfect identity between the ARCHAIC COPY and the MODERN ORIGINAL.
Did space permit we might show the
inconceivable coolness and unconcern exhibited by certain followers of the
Roman Catholic Church, when made to face the revelations of the Past. To
Maury's remark that "the Virgin took possession of all the Sanctuaries of
Ceres and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hathor is the infernal Isis, the
goddess pre-eminently of the West or the nether world.
** This is De Mirville, who proudly
confesses the similarity, and he ought to know.
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Venus, and that the pagan rites,
proclaimed and practised in honour of those goddesses, were in a good measure
transferred to the mother of Christ," the advocate of Rome answers:--
"That such is the fact, and that
it is just as it should be and quite natural. As the dogma, the liturgy, and
the rites professed by the Roman Apostolical Church in 1862 are found engraved
on monuments, inscribed on papyri, and cylinders hardly posterior to the
Deluge, it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a FIRST
ANTE-HISTORICAL (Roman) CATHOLICISM OF WHICH OUR OWN IS BUT THE FAITHFUL
CONTINUATION. . . . But while the former was the culmination, the summum of the
impudence of demons and Goetic 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 nothing more in common with the humble
servant of Nazareth (sic.), it is because she has now become the greatest of
theological and cosmological powers in our universe." -- (Archaeol. de la
Vierge, pp. 116 and 119, and by the Marquis de Mirville).
Verily so, since Pindar's Hymns to
Minerva (p. 19) . . . "who sits at the right hand of her Father Jupiter,
and who is more powerful than all the other (angels or) gods," are
likewise applied to the Virgin. It is St. Bernard, who, quoted by Cornelius a
Lapide, is made to address the Virgin Mary in this wise:--
"The Sun-Christ lives in thee
and thou livest in him." (Sermon on the Holy Virgin.) . . . .
Again the Virgin is admitted to be
the MOON by the same unsophisticated holy man. Being the Lucina of the Church,
that is in childbirth, the verse of Virgil -- "Casta fove Lucina, tuus jam
regnat Apollo" -- is applied to her. Like the moon, the Virgin is the
Queen of Heaven," adds the innocent saint; (Apocal., ch. xii., Comm. by
Cornelius a Lapide).
This settles the question. The more
similarity, according to such writers as De Mirville, there exists between the
pagan conceptions and the Christian dogmas, the more divine appears the
Christian religion, and the more is it seen to be the only truly inspired one,
especially in its Roman Catholic form. The unbelieving scientists and the
academicians who think they see in the Latin Church quite the opposite of
divine inspiration, and who will not believe in the satanic tricks of
plagiarism by anticipation, are severely taken to task. But then "they
believe in nothing and reject even the 'Nabathean Agriculture' as a romance and
a pack of superstitious nonsense," complains the memorialist. "In
their perverted opinion Qu-ta-my's 'idol of the moon' and the statue of the
Madonna are one!" A noble Marquis wrote twenty years ago six huge volumes,
or, as he calls them "Memoires to the French Academy," with the sole
object of showing Roman Catholicism an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof
thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the entire
ancient world, ever since
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the deluge, had been, with the help
of the devil, systematically plagiarizing the rites, ceremonies, and dogmas of
the future Holy Church to be born ages later. What would that faithful son of
Rome have said had he heard his co-religionist -- M. Renouf, the distinguished
Egyptologist of the British Museum -- declaring, in one of his learned
lectures, that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas
from Egypt?"*
But perhaps it is just this that M.
Renouf intended to say namely -- that it is the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the
Aryans, who borrowed theirs from the Latin Church? And if so, why, in the name
of logic, do the Papists reject the additional information which the Occultists
may give them on Moon-worship, since it all tends to show their (the Roman
Catholic) worship as old as the world -- OF SABAEANISM AND ASTROLATRY?
The reason of early Christian and
later Roman Catholic astrolatry, or the symbolical worship of Sun and Moon --
identical with that of the Gnostics, though less philosophical and pure than
the "Sun worship" of the Zoroastrians -- is a natural consequence of
its birth and origin. The adoption by the Latin Church of such symbols as the
water, fire, sun, moon and stars, and a good many other things, is simply a
continuation by the early Christians of the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus
Odin got his wisdom, power, and knowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the
thrice-wise Jotun, who passed his life by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the
crystalline waters of which increased his knowledge daily. Mimir "drew the
highest knowledge from the fountain, because the world was born of water; hence
primeval wisdom was to be found in that mysterious element" ("Asgard
and the Gods," 86). The eye which Odin had to pledge to acquire that knowledge
may be "the Sun, which enlightens and penetrates all things; his other eye
being the moon, whose reflection gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when
setting, sinks into the Ocean." (Ibid.) But it is something more, besides
this. Loki, the fire-god, is said to have hidden in the water, as well as in
the moon, the light-giver, whose reflection he found therein; and this belief
that the fire finds refuge in the water was not limited to the old
Scandinavians. It was shared by all nations and was finally taken up by the early
Christians, who symbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, "cloven
tongues like as fire" -- the breath of the Father-SUN. This
"Fire" descends also into the Water or the Sea: Mar, Mary. The dove
was the symbol of the Soul with several nations, it was sacred to Venus, the
goddess born from the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Quoted in Mr. G. Massey's Lecture.
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sea-foam, and it became later the
symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi, or the Holy Spirit.
One of the most occult chapters in
the "Book of the Dead" is ch. lxxx., entitled: "To make the
transformation into the god giving light to the path of Darkness," wherein
"Woman-light of the Shadow" serves Thot in his retreat in the moon.
Thot-Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the representative of the
Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested logos of its light side, the concealed
deity or "Dark Wisdom" when he is supposed to retire to the opposite
hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the moon calls herself repeatedly: "The
Light which shineth in Darkness," the "Woman-Light." Hence it
became the accepted symbol of all the Virgin-Mother goddesses. As the wicked
"evil" spirits warred against the moon in days of yore, so they are
supposed to war now, without being able to prevail, however, against the actual
Queen of Heaven, Mary, the moon. Hence also the moon was intimately connected
in all the Pagan theogonies with the Dragon, her eternal enemy; the Virgin, or
Madonna, standing on the mythical Satan under that form, crushed and made
powerless, under her feet. This, because the head and tail of the Dragon, which
represent in Eastern astronomy to this day the ascending and descending nodes
of the moon, were also symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents.
Hercules kills them on the day of his birth, and so does the babe in his virgin
mother's arms. As Mr. Gerald Massey aptly observes in this connection:
"All such symbols figured their own facts from the first, and did not
pre-figure others of a totally different order. The Iconography (and dogmas,
too) had survived in Rome from a period remotely pre-Christian. There was
neither forgery nor interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of imagery
with a perversion of its meaning."
--------------
§ 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 CHATEAUBRIAND.
THE Ophites asserted that there were
several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the relative superiority of these
was ruled by the degree
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of light that was accorded to each;
and they maintained that the serpent had to be constantly called upon and to be
thanked for the signal service it had rendered humanity. For it taught Adam
that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would
raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire.
Such was the exoteric reason given.
It is easy to see whence the primal
idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent: the good and the bad.
This symbol is one of the most ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird,
and the bird the mammal. Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the
savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form,
and the general association of the Serpent with the tree. The legends about the
various things it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are
allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on ignorance
and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates that the
natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of serpents in order to
learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with that faculty,
he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. (See De Vita
Apollonii, lib. 1, c. xiv.) As will be found more than once as we proceed, the
"Serpent" and "Dragon" were the names given to the
"Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden times. It was their wisdom
and their learning that were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence
the allegory. When the Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart
of Fafnir, the Dragon, whom he had slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men,
it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and magical
charms; he had received the "word" from an initiate of that name, or
from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as many do, after "passing
the word." Epiphanius lets out a secret of the Gnostics while trying to
expose their heresies. The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honouring
the Serpent: it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries (Adv.
Haeres. 37). Verily so; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the garden in
their minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is stated above.
The Nagas of the Hindu and Tibetan adepts were human Nagas (Serpents), not
reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive or serial
rejuvenation, of IMMORTALITY and TIME.
The numerous and extremely
interesting readings, the interpretations and facts about Serpent worship,
given in "The Natural Genesis," are very ingenious and scientifically
correct. But they are far from covering the whole of the meanings implied. They
divulge only the astronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of
some cosmic phenomena. On the lowest plane of materiality the Serpent was, no
doubt,
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"the great mystery in the
mysteries," and was, very likely, "adopted as a type of feminine
pubescence, on account of its sloughing and self-renewal." It was so,
however, only with regard to mysteries concerning terrestrial animal life, for
as symbol of "reclothing and rebirth in the (universal) mysteries"
its "final phase"* -- or shall we rather say its incipient and
culminating phases -- they were not of this plane. They were generated in the
pure realm of ideal light, and having accomplished the round of the whole cycle
of adaptations and symbolism, the "mysteries" returned from whence
they had come -- into the essence of immaterial causality. They belonged to the
highest gnosis. And surely this could have never obtained its name and fame
solely on account of its penetration into physiological and especially feminine
functions!
As a symbol, the Serpent had as many
aspects and occult meanings as the Tree itself; the "Tree of Life,"
with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. Whether
viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly,
or separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in
this our age of the breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the
more gross matter. The revelations and interpretations in "The Rivers of
Life" would have astounded the worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in the
days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom; and even the early Saivas would
have recoiled in horror at the theories and suggestions of the author of the
said work. "The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that the cross or Tau is
simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is radically false,"
writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this is a statement that
could be as justly applied to almost all the modern interpretations of ancient
symbols. "The Natural Genesis," a monumental work of research and
thought, the most complete on that subject that has ever been published,
covering as it does a wider field, and explaining much more than all the
symbologists who have hitherto written, does not yet go beyond the
"psycho-theistic" stage of ancient thought. Nor were Payne Knight and
Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see that their
interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross and phallus,
fitted the symbol, and approximated it, only on the lowest and last stage of
the evolutionary development of the idea of the GIVER OF LIFE. It was the last
and the grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird,
and even plant; for biune, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction of
the contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile and
bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern symbologists and
Orientalists -- from first to last --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Natural Genesis, by Gerald
Massey, Vol. 1, p. 340.
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being ignorant of the real mysteries
revealed by occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told that
this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being has now in common on
this earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of furnishing the
conditions to, and producing the phenomena of life which will alter with this,
and disappear with the next Root-Race -- they would laugh at such a
superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned Occultists assert
this because they know it. The universe of living beings, of all those which
procreate their species, is the living witness to the various modes of
procreation in the evolution of animal and human species and races; and the
naturalist ought to sense this truth intuitionally, even though he is yet
unable to demonstrate it. And how could he, indeed, with the present modes of
thought! The landmarks of the archaic history of the past are few and scarce,
and those that men of science come across are mistaken for finger-posts of our
little era. Even so-called "universal" (?) history embraces but a
tiny field in the almost boundless space of the unexplored regions of our
latest, fifth Root-Race. Hence, every fresh sign-post, every new glyph of the
hoary Past that is discovered, is added to the old stock of information, to be interpreted
on the same lines of pre-existing conceptions, and without any reference to the
special cycle of thought which that particular glyph may belong to. How can
Truth ever come to light if this method is never changed!
Thus, in the beginning of their joint
existence as a glyph of Immortal Being, the Tree and Serpent were divine
imagery, truly. The tree was reversed, and its roots were generated in Heaven
and grew out of the Rootless Root of all-being. Its trunk grew and developed,
crossing the planes of Pleroma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant branches,
first on the plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward till they
touched the terrestrial plane. Thus, the Asvattha, tree of Life and Being,
whose destruction alone leads to immortality, is said in the Bhagavatgita to
grow with its roots above and its branches below (ch. xv.). The roots represent
the Supreme Being, or First Cause, the LOGOS; but one has to go beyond those
roots to unite oneself with Krishna, who, says Arjuna (XI.), is "greater
than Brahman, and First Cause . . . the indestructible, that which is, that
which is not, and what is beyond them." Its boughs are Hiranyagharba
(Brahma or Brahman in his highest manifestations, say Sridhara and
Madhusudana), the highest Dhyan Chohans or Devas. The Vedas are its leaves. He
only who goes beyond the roots shall never return, i.e., shall reincarnate no
more during this "age" of Brahma.
It is only when its pure boughs had
touched the terrestrial mud of the garden of Eden, of our Adamic race, that
this Tree got soiled by the contact and lost its pristine purity; and that the
Serpent of
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Eternity -- the heaven-born LOGOS --
was finally degraded. In days of old -- of the divine Dynasties on Earth -- the
now dreaded Reptile was regarded as the first beam of light that radiated from
the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms which it was made to
assume, and numerous the natural symbols adapted to it, as it crossed aeons of
Time: as from Infinite Time itself -- Kala -- it fell into the space and time
evolved out of human speculation. These forms were Cosmic and astronomical,
theistic and pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar
Dragon and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the
Hindu-Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never swallows the Sun during
its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, for it was sprinkled by
the waters of life; the great Dragon, ever divine, so long as it was kept
within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the tree grew and its lower
boughs touched at last the infernal regions -- our Earth. Then the great
serpent Nidhogg -- he who devours the corpses of the evil-doers in the
"Hall of Misery" (human life), so soon as they are plunged into
"Hwergelmir," the roaring cauldron (of human passions) -- gnawed the
World-tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy and mighty roots,
and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk; while the
Midgard-snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the Earth, and,
through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend herself.
They are all seven-headed, the
dragons and serpents of antiquity -- "one head for each race, and every
head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has it. Aye, from Ananta,
the Serpent of Eternity which carries Vishnu through the Manvantara, from the
original primordial Sesha, whose seven heads become "one thousand
heads" in the Puranic fancy, down to the seven-headed Akkadian Serpent.
This typifies the Seven principles throughout nature and man; the highest or
middle head being the seventh. It is not of the Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that
Philo speaks in his Creation of the World, when saying that the world was
completed "according to the perfect nature of number 6." For,
"when that reason (nous) which is holy in accordance with the number
seven, has entered the soul (rather the living body), the number six 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." . . . (Par. pp. 30 and 419). The author of The Natural Genesis
thinks that "the Septenary of Stars seen in the great bear (the
Septarshis) and seven-headed Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic
seven of time above. The goddess of the seven stars," he adds --
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"Was the mother of time, as Kep;
whence Kepti and Sebti for the two times and number seven. So this is the star
of the Seven by name. Sevekt (Kronos), 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.* The number seven
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 days being the
registered result.** . . . In the Chinese arrangement the four sevens are given
to four genii that preside over the four cardinal points. . . ." (In
Chinese Buddhism and Esotericism the genii are represented by four Dragons --
the "Maharajahs" of the Stanzas.) "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 genetive 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" ("Typology of Time," Vol.
II. p. 313, Nat. Gen.).
The author shows that it was the
goddess of the Great Bear and mother of Time who was in Egypt from the earliest
times the "Living Word," and that "Sevekh-Kronus, whose type was
the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary form of Saturn, was called her son and
consort; he was her Word-Logos" (p. 321, Vol. I.).
The above is quite plain, but it was
not the knowledge of astronomy only that led the ancients to the process of
Sevening. The primal cause goes far deeper and will be explained in its place.
The above quotations are no
digressions. They are brought forward as showing (a) the reason why a full
Initiate was called a "Dragon," a "Snake" a
"Naga"; and (b) that our septenary division was used by the priests
of the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason and on the same basis
as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already stated, that
which Mr. G. Massey calls the four genii of the four cardinal points; and the
Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Ver-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For the same reason the division of
the principles in man into seven are thus reckoned, as they describe the same
circle in the human higher and lower nature.
** Thus the septenary division is the
oldest and preceded the four-fold division. It is the root of archaic
classification.
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milion Bird, and Azure Dragon, is
called in the Secret Books, -- the "Four Hidden Dragons of Wisdom"
and the "Celestial Nagas." Now, as shown, the seven-headed or
septenary DRAGON-LOGOS had been in course of time split up, so to speak, into
four heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions. Each lunar week has a distinct
occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its
special characteristics; as each of the twelve constellations, whether
separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either
for good or for evil. This represents the sum of knowledge that men can acquire
on this earth; yet few are those who acquire it, and still fewer are the wise
men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root Dragon, the
spiritual LOGOS of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of
"Dragons," and they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths of the 28
Faculties," or attributes, and have always been so called.
The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists
asserted that to become real Chaldees or Magi, one had to master the science or
knowledge of the periods of the Seven Rectors of the world, in whom is all
wisdom. In "Proclus in Timaeus," b. 1, Jamblichus is credited with
another version, which does not however, alter, the meaning. He says that
"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." The legends
of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point to the once
universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the Serpents. They are
"charmers." They hypnotise the bird with their eye, and man himself,
very often, does not feel above their fascinating influence; therefore the
symbol is a most fitting one.
The crocodile is the Egyptian dragon.
It was the dual symbol of Heaven and Earth, of Sun and Moon, and was made
sacred, in consequence of its amphibious nature, to Osiris and Isis. According
to Eusebius, the Egyptians represented the sun in a ship as its pilot, this
ship being carried along by a crocodile "to show the motion of the Sun in
the moyst (Space)", (Prepar. Evang., 1, 3, c. 3). The crocodile was
moreover, the symbol of Egypt herself -- the lower, as being the more swampy of
the two countries. The Alchemists claim another interpretation. They say that
the symbol of the sun in the ship on the Ether of Space meant that the hermetic
matter is the principle, or basis, of gold, or again the philosophical sun; the
water, within which the crocodile is swimming, is that water or matter made
liquid; the ship herself, finally, representing the vessel of nature, in which
the sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a pilot: because it is
the sun
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which conducts the work by his action
upon the moist or mercury. The above is only for the Alchemists.
The Serpent became the type and
symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the middle ages. The early
Christians -- besides the Ophite Gnostics -- had their dual Logos: the Good and
the Bad Serpent, the Agathodaemon and the Kakodaemon. This is demonstrated by
the writings of Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and especially in Pistis
Sophia -- certainly a document of the earliest centuries of Christianity. On
the marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near the Porta Pia, one
sees the scene of the adoration of the Magi, "or else," remarks the
late C. W. King in "The Gnostics," "the prototype of that scene,
the 'Birth of the New Sun.'" The mosaic floor exhibited a curious design
which might have represented either (a) Isis suckling the babe Harpocrates, or
(b) the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In the smaller sarcophagi that
surrounded the larger one, eleven leaden plates rolled like scrolls were found,
three of which have been deciphered. The contents of these ought to be regarded
as final proof of a much-vexed question, for they show that either the early
Christians, up to the VIth Century, were bond fide pagans, or that dogmatic
Christianity was borrowed wholesale, and passed in full into the Christian
Church -- Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile and all.
"On the first is seen Anubis . .
. holding out a scroll; at his feet are two female busts; below all are two
serpents entwined . . . 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
Agathodaemon, guardian of the deceased. . . . . In the third scroll, Anubis
bears on his arm . . . . . the outline of . . 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
[[omega]] 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."
(King's "Gnostics," p. 366.)
And this "True and Perfect
Serpent" is the seven-lettered God who is now credited with being Jehovah,
and Jesus One with him. To this Seven-vowelled god the candidate for initiation
is sent by Christos, in the Pistis Sophia, a work earlier than St. John's
Revelation, and evidently of the same school. "The (Serpent of the) Seven
Thunders uttered
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these seven vowels," but
"Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them
not," says Revelation. "Do ye seek after these mysteries?"
inquiries Jesus in Pistis Sophia. "No mystery is more excellent than they
(the seven vowels): for they shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights"
-- i.e., true Wisdom. "Nothing, therefore, is more excellent than the
mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the mystery of the Seven Vowels and
their FORTY AND NINE Powers, and the numbers thereof."
In India, it was the mystery of the
Seven FIRES and their forty-nine fires or aspects, or "the members
thereof," just the same.
These seven vowels are represented by
the Swastika signs on the crowns of the seven heads of the Serpent of Eternity,
in India, among esoteric Buddhists, in Egypt, in Chaldea, etc. etc., and among
the Initiates of every other country. It is on the Seven zones of post mortem
ascent, in the Hermetic writings, that the "mortal" leaves, on each,
one of his "Souls" (or Principles); until arrived on the plane above
all zones he remains as the great Formless Serpent of absolute wisdom -- or the
Deity itself. The seven-headed serpent has more than one signification in the
Arcane teachings. It is the seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star
of the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and pre-eminently, the Serpent of Darkness
(i.e., inconceivable and incomprehensible) whose seven heads were the seven
Logoi, the reflections of the one and first manifested Light -- the universal
LOGOS.
--------------
§ XI.
DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS.
THIS symbolical sentence, in its
many-sided forms, is certainly most dangerous and iconoclastic in the face of
all the dualistic later religions -- or rather theologies -- and especially so
in the light of Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct to say that it
is Christianity which has conceived and brought forth Satan. As an
"adversary," the opposing Power required by the equilibrium and
harmony of things in Nature -- like Shadow to throw off still brighter the
Light, like Night to bring into greater relief the Day, and like cold to make
one appreciate the more the comfort of heat -- SATAN has ever existed.
Homogeneity is one and indivisible. But if the homogeneous One and Absolute is
no mere figure of speech, and if heterogeneity in its dualistic aspect, is its
offspring -- its bifurcous shadow or reflection -- then even that divine
Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of
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both good and evil. If
"God" is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root of all and
everything in Nature and its universe, whence comes Evil or D'Evil if not from
the same "Golden Womb" of the absolute? Thus we are forced either to
accept the emanation of good and evil, of Agathodaemon and Kakodaemon as
offshoots from the same trunk of the Tree of Being, or to resign ourselves to
the absurdity of believing in two eternal Absolutes!
Having to trace the origin of the
idea to the very beginnings of human mind, it is but just, meanwhile, to give
his due even to the proverbial devil. Antiquity knew of no isolated, thoroughly
and absolutely bad "god of evil." Pagan thought represented good and evil
as twin brothers, born from the same mother -- Nature; so soon as that thought
ceased to be Archaic, Wisdom too became Philosophy. In the beginning the
symbols of good and evil were mere abstractions, Light and Darkness; then their
types became chosen among the most natural and ever-recurrent periodical Cosmic
phenomena -- the Day and the 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 (See Stanzas V., VII. of Book I.) The
Host of Satan is a Son of God, no less than the Host of the B'ni Alhim, these
children of God coming to "present themselves before the Lord," their
father (see Job ii.). "The Sons of God" become the "Fallen
Angels" only after perceiving that the daughters of men were fair,
(Genesis vi.) In the Indian philosophy, the Suras are among the earliest and
the brightest gods, and become Asuras only when dethroned by Brahminical fancy.
Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic, individualized shape, until the
creation by man, of a "one living personal god," had been
accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime necessity. A screen was
needed; a scape-goat to explain the cruelty, blunders, and but too-evident
injustice, perpetrated by him for whom absolute perfection, mercy, and goodness
were claimed. This was the first Karmic effect of abandoning a philosophical
and logical Pantheism, to build, as a prop for lazy man, "a merciful
father in Heaven," whose daily and hourly actions as Natura naturans, the
"comely mother but stone cold," belie the assumption. This led to the
primal twins, Osiris-Typhon, Ormazd-Ahriman, and finally Cain-Abel and the
tutti-quanti of contraries.
Having commenced by being synonymous
with Nature, "God," the Creator, ended by being made its author.
Pascal settles the difficulty very cunningly: "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," he says.
The further back one recedes into the
darkness of the prehistoric
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ages, the more philosophical does the
prototypic figure of the later Satan appear. The first "Adversary" in
individual human form that one meets with in old Puranic literature is one of
her greatest Rishis and Yogis -- Narada, surnamed the "Strife-maker."
And he is a Brahmaputra, a son of
Brahma, the male. But of him later on. Who the great "Deceiver"
really is, one can ascertain by searching for him with open eyes and an
unprejudiced mind, in every old cosmogony and Scripture.
It is the anthropomorphised Demiurge,
the Creator of Heaven and Earth, when separated from the collective Hosts of
his fellow-Creators, whom, so to speak, he represents and synthesizes. It is
now the God of theologies. "The thought is father to the wish." Once
upon a time, a philosophical symbol left to perverse human fancy; afterwards
fashioned into a fiendish, deceiving, cunning, and jealous God.
Dragons and other fallen angels being
described in other parts of this work, a few words upon the much-slandered
Satan will be sufficient. That which the student will do well to remember is
that, with every people except the Christian nations, the Devil is to this day
no worse an entity than the opposite aspect in the dual nature of the so-called
Creator. This is only natural. One cannot claim God as the synthesis of the
whole Universe, as Omnipresent and Omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce
him from evil. As there is far more evil than good in the world, it follows on
logical grounds that either God must include evil, or stand as the direct cause
of it, or else surrender his claims to absoluteness. The ancients understood
this so well that their philosophers -- now followed by the Kabalists --
defined evil as the lining of God or Good: Demon est Deus inversus, being a
very old adage. Indeed, evil is but an antagonizing blind force in nature; it
is reaction, opposition, and contrast, -- evil for some, good for others. There
is no malum in se: only the shadow of light, without which light could have no
existence, even in our perceptions. If evil disappeared, good would disappear
along with it from Earth. The "Old Dragon" was pure spirit before he
became matter, passive before he became active. In the Syro-Chaldean magic both
Ophis and Ophiomorphos are joined in the Zodiac, at the sign of the Androgyne
Virgo-Scorpio. Before its fall on earth the "Serpent" was
Ophis-Christos, and after its fall it became Ophiomorphos-CHRESTOS. Everywhere
the speculations of the Kabalists treat of Evil as a FORCE, which is
antagonistic, but at the same time essential, to Good, as giving it vitality
and existence, which it could never have otherwise. There would be no life
possible (in the Mayavic sense) without Death, nor regeneration and
reconstruction without destruction. Plants would perish in eternal sunlight,
and so would man, who would become an automaton without the exercise of his
free will and aspirations
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after that sunlight, which would lose
its being and value for him had he nothing but light. Good is infinite and
eternal only in the eternally concealed from us, and this is why we imagine it
eternal. On the manifested planes, one equilibrates the other. Few are those
theists and believers in a personal God, who do not make of Satan the shadow of
God; or who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right to pray to that
idol asking its help and protection for the exercise and impunity of their evil
and cruel deeds. "Lead us not into Temptation" is addressed daily to
"our Father, which art in Heaven," and not to the Devil, by millions
of human Christian hearts. They do so, repeating the very words put in the
mouth of their Saviour, and do not give one thought to the fact that their
meaning is contradicted point blank by James "the brother of the
Lord." "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for
God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." -- (The
Gen. Ep. of James, i, 13). Why, then, say that it is the Devil who tempts us,
when the Church teaches us on the authority of Christ that it is God who does
so? Open any pious volume in which the word "temptation" is defined
in its theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions: (1)
"Those afflictions and troubles whereby God tries his people;" (2)
Those means and enticements which the Devil makes use of to ensnare and allure
mankind. (St. James i., 2, 12, and Mat. vi., 13.) If accepted literally, the two
teachings of Christ and James contradict each other, and what dogma can
reconcile the two if the occult meaning is rejected?
Between the alternative allurements,
wise will be that philosopher who will be able to decide where God disappears
to make room for the Devil! Therefore when we read that "the Devil is a
liar and the father of it," i.e., INCARNATE LIE, and are told in the same
breath that Satan -- the Devil -- was a son of God and the most beautiful of
his archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son are a gigantic,
personified and eternal LIE, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and to Pagan
philosophy for information.
Once that the key to Genesis is in
our hands, it is the scientific and symbolical Kabala which unveils the secret.
The great Serpent of the Garden of Eden and the "Lord God" are
identical, and so are Jehovah and Cain ONE -- that Cain who is referred to in
theology as the "murderer" and the LIAR to God! Jehovah tempts the
King of Israel to number the people, and Satan tempts him to do the same in
another place. Jehovah turns into the fiery serpents to bite those he is
displeased with; and Jehovah informs the brazen serpent that heals them.
These short, and seemingly
contradictory, statements in the Old Testament (contradictory because the two
Powers are separated instead of being regarded as the two faces of one and the
same thing) are the
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echoes -- distorted out of
recognition by exotericism and theology -- of the universal and philosophical
dogmas in nature, so well understood by the primitive Sages. We find the same
groundwork in several personifications in the Puranas, only far more ample and
philosophically suggestive.
Thus Pulastya, a "Son of
God" -- one of the first progeny -- is made the progenitor of Demons, the
Rakshasas, the tempters and the Devourers of men. Pisacha (female Demon) is a
daughter of Daksha, a "Son of God" too, and a God, and the mother of
all the Pisachas (Padma Purana). The Demons, so called in the Puranas, are very
extraordinary devils when judged from the standpoint of European and orthodox views
about these creatures, since all of them -- Danavas, Daityas, Pisachas, and the
Rakshasas -- are represented as extremely pious, following the precepts of the
Vedas, some of them even being great Yogis. But they oppose the clergy and
Ritualism, sacrifices and forms -- just what the full-blown Yogins do to this
day in India -- and are no less respected for it, though they are allowed to
follow neither caste nor ritual; hence all those Puranic giants and Titans are
called Devils. The Missionaries, ever on the watch to show, if they can, the
Hindu traditions no better than a reflection of the Jewish Bible, have evolved
a whole romance on the alleged identity of Pulastya with Cain, and of the
Rakshasas with the Cainites, "the accursed," the cause of the Noachian
Deluge. (See the work of Abbe Gorresio, who "etymologises" Pulastya's
name as meaning the "rejected," hence Cain, if you please). Pulastya
dwells in Kedara, he says, which means a "dug-up place," a mine, and
Cain is shown in tradition and the Bible as the first worker in metals and a
miner thereof!
While it is very probable that the
Gibborim (the giants) of the Bible are the Rakshasas of the Hindus, it is still
more certain that both are Atlanteans, and belong to the submerged races.
However it may be, no Satan could be more persistent in slandering his enemy,
or more spiteful in his hatred, than the Christian theologians are in cursing
him as the father of every evil. Compare their vituperations and opinions given
about the Devil with the philosophical views of the Puranic sages and their
Christ-like mansuetude. When Parasara, whose father was devoured by a Rakshasa,
was preparing himself to destroy (magically) the whole race, his grandsire,
Vasishta, says a few extremely suggestive words to him. He shows the irate
Sage, on his own confession, that there is Evil and Karma, but no "evil
spirits." "Let thy wrath be appeased," he says. "The
Rakshasas are not culpable; thy father's death was the work of 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
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all that man obtains . . . and
prevents the attainment of emancipation. The sages shun wrath. Be not thou, my
child, subject to its influence. Let not those unoffending spirits of darkness
be consumed; let thy sacrifice cease. Mercy is the might of the righteous"
(Vishnu Purana, Book i., ch. i.). Thus, every such "sacrifice" or
prayer to God for help is no better than an act of black magic. That which
Parasara prayed for, was the destruction of the Spirits of Darkness, for his
personal revenge. He is called a Pagan, and the Christians have doomed him as
such, to eternal hell. Yet, in what respect is the prayer of sovereigns and
generals, who pray before every battle for the destruction of their enemy, any
better? Such a prayer is in every case black magic of the worst kind, concealed
like a demon "Mr. Hyde" under a sanctimonious "Dr. Jekyll."
In human nature, evil denotes only
the polarity of matter and Spirit, a struggle for life between the two
manifested Principles in Space and Time, which principles are one per se,
inasmuch they are rooted in the Absolute. In Kosmos, the equilibrium must be
preserved. The operations of the two contraries produce harmony, like the
centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other --
mutually inter-dependent -- "in order that both should live." If one
is arrested, the action of the other will become immediately self-destructive.
Since the personification called
Satan has been amply analyzed from its triple aspect -- in the Old Testament,
Christian theology and the ancient Gentile attitude of thought -- those who
would learn more of it are referred to Vol. II. of ISIS UNVEILED, chap. x. See
also several sections in Book II., Part II. of this work. The present subject
is touched upon and fresh explanations attempted for a very good reason. Before
we can approach the evolution of physical and divine man, we have first to
master the idea of cyclic evolution, to acquaint ourselves with the philosophies
and beliefs of the four races which preceded our present race, to learn what
were the ideas of those Titans and giants -- giants, verily, mentally as well
as physically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy which
teaches the involution of spirit into matter, the progressive, downward cyclic
descent, or active, self-conscious evolution. The Alexandrian Gnostics have
sufficiently divulged the secret of initiations, and their records are full of
"the sliding down of AEons" in their double qualification of Angelic
Beings and Periods: the one the natural evolution of the other. On the other
hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of the "black water" -- the
oceans that separate the two Easts -- are as full of allegories about the
downfall of Pleroma, of that of the gods and Devas. One and all, they
allegorized and explained the FALL as the
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desire to learn and acquire knowledge
-- to KNOW. This is the natural sequence of mental evolution, the spiritual
becoming transmuted into the material or physical. The same law of descent into
materiality and re-ascent into spirituality asserted itself during the
Christian era, the reaction having stopped only just now, in our own special
sub-race.
That which, perhaps ten millenniums
ago, was allegorized in Pymander in a triune character of interpretation, meant
as a record of an astronomical, anthropological, and even alchemical fact,
namely, the allegory of the seven rectors breaking through the seven circles of
fire, was dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic interpretation -- the
rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal, profoundly philosophical
narrative, under its poetical form of the "Marriage of Heaven with
Earth," the love of nature for Divine form and the "Heavenly
man," enraptured with his own beauty mirrored in nature -- i.e., Spirit
attracted into matter -- has now become, under theological handling: "the
seven Rectors disobeying Jehovah, self admiration generating Satanic Pride,
followed by their FALL, Jehovah permitting no worship to be lost save upon
himself." In short, the beautiful Planet-Angels, the glorious cyclic aeons
of the ancients, became henceforward synthesized in their most orthodox shape
in Samael, the chief of the Demons in the Talmud, "That great serpent with
twelve wings that draws down after himself, in his Fall, the solar system, or
the Titans." But Schemal, the alter ego and the Sabean type of Samael,
meant, in his philosophical and esoteric aspect, the "year" in its
astrological evil aspect, its twelve months or wings of unavoidable evils, in
nature; and in esoteric theogony (see Chwolson in NABATHEAN AGRICULTURE, Vol.
II., p. 217), both Schemal and Samael represented a particular divinity. With
the Kabalists they are "the Spirit of the Earth," the personal god
that governs it, identical de facto with Jehovah. For the Talmudists admit themselves
that SAMAEL is a god-name of one of the seven Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover,
show the two, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical form of Saturn, CHRONOS, the
twelve wings standing for the 12 months, and the symbol in its collectivity
representing a racial cycle. Jehovah and Saturn are also glyphically identical.
This leads in its turn to a very
curious deduction from a Roman Catholic dogma. Many renowned writers belonging
to the Latin Church admit that a difference exists, and should be made, between
the Uranian Titans, the antediluvian giants (also Titans), and those
post-diluvian giants in whom they (the Roman Catholics) will see the
descendants of the mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference to be
made between the Cosmic, primordial opposing Forces -- guided by cyclic law --
the Atlantean human giants, and the post-diluvian great adepts, whether
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of the right or the left hand. At the
same time they show that Michael, "the generalissimos of the fighting
Celestial Host, the bodyguard of Jehovah," as it would seem (see de
Mirville) is also a Titan, only with the adjective of "divine" before
the cognomen. Thus those "Uranides" who are called everywhere
"divine Titans," and who, having rebelled against Kronos (Saturn),
are therefore also shown to be the enemies of Samael (an Elohim, also and
synonymous with Jehovah in his collectivity), are identical with Michael and
his host. In short, the roles are reversed, all the combatants are confused,
and no student is able to distinguish clearly which is which. Esoteric
explanation may, however, bring some order into this confusion, in which
Jehovah becomes Saturn, and Michael and his army, Satan and the rebellious
angels, owing to the indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful zealots to see
in every pagan god a devil. The true meaning is far more philosophical, and the
legend of the first "Fall" (of the angels) assumes a scientific
colouring when correctly understood.
Kronos stands for endless (hence
immovable) Duration, without beginning, without an end, beyond divided Time and
beyond Space. Those "Angels," genii, or Devas, who were born to act
in space and time, i.e., to break through the seven circles of the
superspiritual planes into the phenomenal, or circumscribed, super-terrestrial
regions, are said allegorically to have rebelled against Kronos and fought the
(then) one living and highest God. In his turn, when Kronos is represented as
mutilating Uranus, his father, the meaning of this mutilation is very simple:
Absolute Time is made to become the finite and the conditioned; a portion is
robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn, the father of the gods, has
been transformed from Eternal Duration into a limited Period. Chronos cuts down
with his scythe even the longest and (to us) seemingly endless cycles, yet, for
all that, limited in Eternity, and puts down with the same scythe the mightiest
rebels. Aye, not one will escape the scythe of Time! Praise the god or gods, or
flout, one or both, and that scythe will not be made to tremble one millionth
of a second in its ascending or descending course.
The Titans of Hesiod's Theogony were
copied in Greece from the Suras and Asuras of India. These Hesiodic Titans, the
Uranides, numbered once upon a time as only six, have been recently discovered
to be seven -- the seventh being called Phoreg -- in an old fragment relating
to the Greek myth. Thus their identity with the Seven rectors is fully
demonstrated. The origin of the "War in Heaven" and the FALL has, in
our mind, to be traced unavoidably to India, and perhaps far earlier than the
Puranic accounts thereof. For TARAMAYA was in a later age, and there are three
accounts, each of a distinct war, to be traced in almost every Cosmogony.
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The first war happened in the night
of time, between the gods the (A)-suras, and lasted for the period of one
"divine year."* On this occasion the deities were defeated by the
Daityas, under the leadership of Hrada. After that, owing to a device of
Vishnu, to whom the conquered gods applied for help, the latter defeated the
Asuras. In the Vishnu Purana no interval is found between the two wars. In the
Esoteric Doctrine, one war takes place before the building of the Solar system;
another, on earth, at the "creation" of man; and a third
"war" is mentioned as taking place at the close of the 4th Race,
between its adepts and those of the 5th Race, i.e., between the Initiates of
the "Sacred Island" and the Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice
the first contest, as recounted by Parasara, while trying to separate the two
accounts, purposely blended together. It is there stated that as the Daityas
and Asuras were engaged in the duties of their respective orders (Varna) and followed
the paths prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance (a queer
employment for demons if they are identical with our devils, as it is claimed)
-- it was impossible for the gods to destroy them. The prayers addressed by the
gods to Vishnu are curious as showing the ideas involved in an anthropomorphic
deity. Having, after their defeat, "fled to the Northern shore of the
Milky Ocean (Atlantic Ocean),** the discomfited gods address many supplications
"to the first
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* One "Day of Brahma"
lasting 4,320,000,000 years -- multiply this by 365! The Asuras here (no-gods,
but demons) are 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 that they are only the personified Cosmic powers. It is
evidently for sectarian purposes and out of odium theologicum that the illusive
form assumed by Vishnu Mayamoha, was attributed in later rearrangements of old
texts to Buddha and the Daityas, in the Vishnu Purana, unless it was a fancy of
Wilson himself. He also fancied he found an allusion to Buddhism in
Bhagavatgita, whereas, as proved by K. T. Telang, he had only confused the
Buddhists and the older Charvaka materialists. The version exists nowhere in
other Puranas if the inference does, as Professor Wilson claims, in the
"Vishnu Purana"; 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 Puranic texts. "I affirm," wrote the Colonel at
Bombay, in 1840, "that the Puranas 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 Puranas 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 Purana, trans. by
Wilson, edit. by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. V., Appendix.)
** This statement belongs to the
third War, since the terrestrial continents, seas and rivers are mentioned in
connection with it.
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of beings, the divine Vishnu,"
and among others this one: "Glory to thee, who art one with the Saints,
whose perfect nature is ever blessed. . . . 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 size (ghana), nor any predicable qualities, and whose
essence (rupa), purest of the pure is appreciable only by holy Paramarshi
(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
Vasudeva, the lord of all, who is without soil, the seed of all things, exempt
from dissolution, unborn, eternal; being in essence Paramapadatmavat (beyond
the condition of spirit) and in essence and substance (rupa), the whole of this
(Universe)." (Book III., ch. xvii., Vish. Purana.)
The above is quoted as an
illustration of the vast field offered by the Puranas to adverse and erroneous
criticism, by every European bigot who forms an estimate of an alien religion
on mere external evidence. Any man accustomed to subject what he reads to
thoughtful analysis, will see at a glance the incongruity of addressing the
accepted "Unknowable," the formless, and attributeless ABSOLUTE, such
as the Vedantins define BRAHMA, as being "one with the serpent-race,
double-tongued, cruel and insatiable," thus associating the abstract with
the concrete, and bestowing adjectives on that which is freed from any
limitations, and conditionless. Even Dr. Wilson, who, after living surrounded
by Brahmins and Pundits in India for so many years, ought to have known better
-- even that scholar lost no opportunity to criticize the Hindu Scriptures on
this account. Thus, he exclaims:--*
"The Puranas constantly teach
incompatible doctrines! According to this passage, 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 Puranas. . . . ."
Less frequent, in sober truth, than
in the Mosaic Bible. But prejudice is great in the hearts of our Orientalists
-- especially in those of "reverend" scholars. UNIVERSAL SOUL is not
the inert Cause of Creation or (Para) Brahma, but simply that which we call the
sixth principle of intellectual Kosmos, on the manifested plane of being. It is
Mahat, or Mahabuddhi, the great Soul, the vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval
reflection of the formless CAUSE, and that which is even beyond SPIRIT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In Book I., chap. xvii., narrating
the story of Prahlada -- the Son of Hiranyakasipu, the Puranic Satan, the great
enemy of Vishnu, and the King of the three worlds -- into whose heart Vishnu
entered.
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So much for Professor Wilson's
uncalled-for fling. As for the apparently incongruous appeal to Vishnu by the
defeated gods, the explanation is there, in the text of Vishnu Purana, if
Orientalists would only notice it.* There is Vishnu, as Brahma, and Vishnu in
his two aspects, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahma, "essentially
prakriti and Spirit," &c.
Therefore, it is not Vishnu --
"the inert cause of creation" -- which exercised the functions of an
active Providence, but the Universal Soul, that which E. Levi calls Astral
Light in its material aspect. And this "Soul" is, in its dual aspect
of spirit and matter, the true anthropomorphic God of the Theists; as this God
is a personification of that Universal Creative Agent, pure and impure both,
owing to its manifested condition and differentiation in this Mayavic World --
God and Devil -- truly. But Dr. Wilson failed to see how Vishnu, in this
character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, "especially in his
policy of deception, temptation, and cunning."
In the Vishnu Purana this is made as
plain as can be. For it is said there, that "at the conclusion of their
prayers (stotra) the gods beheld the Sovereign Deity Hari (Vishnu) armed with
the conch, the discus, and the mace, riding on Garuda. ." Now
"Garuda" is the manvantaric cycle, as will be shown in its place.
Vishnu, therefore, is the deity in space and time; the peculiar God of the
Vaishnavas (a tribal or racial God, as they are called in esoteric philosophy):
i.e., one of the many Dhyanis or Gods, or Elohim, one of whom was generally
chosen for some special reasons by a nation or a tribe, and thus became
gradually a "God above all Gods" (2 Chronicles ii. 5,) 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. The latter, we have either
to judge by the dead-letter narratives, or to accept allegorically. If we
compare the two -- Vishnu, as the defender and champion of the defeated gods;
and Jehovah, the defender and champion of the "chosen" people, so
called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is the Jews who had chosen that
"jealous" God -- we shall find that both use deceit and cunning. They
do so on the principle of "the end justifying the means," in order to
have the best of their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This ignorance is truly and
beautifully expressed in the praise of the Yogins to Brahma, "the upholder
of the earth" (in Book I., chap. iv. of V. P.), 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!"
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respective opponents and foes -- the
demons. Thus while (according to the Kabalists) Jehovah assumes the shape of
the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden; sends Satan with a special mission
to tempt Job; and harasses and wearies Pharaoh with Sarai, Abraham's wife, and
"hardens" his heart against Moses, lest there should be no
opportunity for plaguing his victims "with great plagues" (Genesis
xii., Exodus) -- Vishnu is made in his Purana to resort to a trick no less
unworthy of any respectable god.
"Have compassion upon us, O
Lord, and protect us, who have come to thee for succour from the Daityas (demons)!"
pray the defeated Gods. "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.* . .
. . 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
(Ameyatman) 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 (Mayamoha, "the
deluder by illusion") which he gave to the Gods and thus spake: "This
Mayamoha 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,
Mayamoha, descending 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., etc. (Book II., xviii.).
Finally the Daityas were seduced by
the wily talk of Mahamoha, as Eve was seduced by the advice of the Serpent.
They became apostates to the Vedas. As Dr. Muir translates the passage:--
"The great Deceiver, practising
illusion, next beguiled other Daityas, by means of many other sorts of heresy.
In a very short time, these Asuras (-Daityas) deluded by the Deceiver (who was
Vishnu) abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of the triple
Veda. Some reviled the Vedas, others the Gods, others the ceremonial of
sacrifice, and others the Brahmans. 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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).
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they had entered on the path of
error, the gods 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." (Journal of the Royal Asiat.
Society, Vol. XIX., p. 302.)
Whatever may be thought of Hindus, no
enemy of theirs can regard them as fools. A people whose holy men and sages
have left to the world the greatest and most sublime philosophies that ever
emanated from the minds of men, must have known the difference between right
and wrong. Even a savage can discern white from black, good from bad, and
deceit from sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in
the biography of their god, must have seen that in this case it was that God
who was the arch-Deceiver, and the Daityas, who "never transgressed the
precepts of the Vedas," who had the sunny side in the transaction, and who
were the true "Gods." Thence there must have been, and there is a
secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of Society, in no
nation, are deceit and craft considered as Divine virtues -- except perhaps in
the clerical classes of theologians and modern Jesuitism.
The Vishnu Purana,* like all other
works of this kind, has passed at a later period into the hands of the
temple-Brahmins, and the old MSS. have, no doubt, been once more tampered with
by sectarians. But there was a time when the Puranas 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 Brahmin Initiates will
ever give out the full meaning of these allegories, is a question with which
the writer is not concerned. The present object is to show that, while
honouring the creative Powers in their multiple forms, no philosopher could, or
ever has, accepted the allegory for the true Spirit, except, perhaps, some
philosophers belonging to the present "superior and civilized"
Christian races. For, as shown, Jehovah is not one whit the superior of Vishnu
on the plane of ethics. This is why the Occultists and even some Kabalists,
whether they regard or not those creative Forces as living and conscious
Entities -- and one does not see why they should not be so accepted -- will
never confuse the CAUSE with the effect, and accept the Spirit of the Earth for
Parabrahm or Ain-Soph. At all events they know well the true nature of what was
called Father-AEther by the Greeks, Jupiter-Titan, etc., etc. They know that
the soul of the ASTRAL LIGHT is divine, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Wilson's opinion that the
"Vishnu Purana" 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.
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its body (the light-waves on the
lower planes) infernal. This Light is symbolized by the "Magic Head"
in the Zohar, the double Face on the double Pyramid: the black pyramid rising
against a pure white ground, with a white head and face within its black
triangle; the white pyramid, inverted -- the reflection of the first in the
dark waters, showing the black reflection of the white face. . . . .
This is the "Astral Light,"
or DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS.
--------------
§ XII.
THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS.
TO thoroughly comprehend the idea
underlying every ancient cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative
analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is only by this method
that the root idea will be made plain. Exact science -- could the latter soar so
high, while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate and original
sources -- would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original,
transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as systems began to
reflect with every age more and more the idiosyncracies of nations; and as the
latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its
own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled with the
overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or rather the
intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours they were hardly entitled
to, in others -- as now in Europe and the civilized lands -- the very thought
of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed
unscientific. Therefore one finds relief in such statements as are found in the
Introduction to "Asgard and the Gods: Tales and Traditions of our Northern
Ancestors," by W. S. W. Anson. The author remarks, on p. 3: "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." And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of
Eastern Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that "the religious con-
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ceptions of the most famous nations
of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of civilization amongst the
Germanic races," he is yet glad to find such truths expressed as that:
"These fairy tales are not senseless stories written for the amusement of
the idle; they embody the profound religion of our forefathers . . . "
Precisely so. Not only their religion,
but likewise their History. For a myth, in Greek [[mythos]], means oral
tradition, passed from mouth to mouth from one generation to the other; and
even in the modern etymology the term stands for a fabulous statement conveying
some important truth; a tale of some extraordinary personage whose biography
has become overgrown, owing to the veneration of successive generations, with
rich popular fancy, but which is no wholesale fable. Like our ancestors, the
primitive Aryans, we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of more
than one phenomenon-producing Force in nature.
As time rolled on, the archaic
teaching grew dimmer; and those nations more or less lost sight of the highest
and One principle of all things, and began to transfer the abstract attributes
of the "causeless cause" to the caused effects -- become in their
turn causative -- the creative Powers of the Universe: the great nations, out
of the fear of profaning the IDEA, the smaller, because they either failed to
grasp it or lacked the power of philosophic conception needed to preserve it in
all its immaculate purity. But one and all, with the exception of the latest
Aryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this veneration in their
Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,* the most intuitional of all the translators of
Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived the One principle as the
immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no sane man would credit a
planner and architect with having built the edifice he admires with his own
hands. On the testimony of Damascius ([[Peri archon]]) they referred to it as
"the Unknown DARKNESS." The Babylonians passed over this principle in
silence: "To that god," says Porphyry, in [[Peri apoches empsuchon]],
"who is above all things, neither external speech ought to be addressed,
nor yet that which is inward. . . . ." Hesiod begins his theogony with:
"Chaos of all things was the first produced,"** thus allowing the
inference that its cause or producer must be passed over in reverential silence.
Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night, whom he represents Zeus as
reverencing. According to all the ancient theologists, and to the doctrines of
Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Magazine" for April,
1797.
** [[Etoi men protista chaos genet;
geneto]] being considered in antiquity as meaning "Was generated" and
not simply was. (See "Taylor's Introd. to the Parmenides of Plato,"
p. 260.
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immediate artificer of the universe,
is not the highest god; any more than Sir Christopher Wren in his physical,
human aspect is the MIND in him which produced his great works of art. Homer,
therefore, is not only silent with respect to the first principle, but likewise
with respect to those two principles immediately posterior to the first, the
AEther and Chaos of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the bound and infinity of
Pythagoras and Plato.* . . . . Proclus says of this highest principle that it
is. . . . "the Unity of Unities, and beyond the first adyte. . . . . more
ineffable than all silence, and more occult than all Essence. . . . . concealed
amidst the intelligible gods." (Ibid.)
To what was written by Thomas Taylor
in 1797 -- namely, that the "Jews appear to have ascended no higher. . . .
than the immediate artificer of the universe"; as "Moses introduces a
darkness on the face of the deep, without even insinuating that there was any
cause of its existence,"** one might add something more. Never have the
Jews in their Bible (a purely esoteric, symbolical work) degraded so profoundly
their metaphorical deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their
one living yet personal God.
This first, or rather ONE, principle
was called "the circle of Heaven," symbolized by the hierogram of a
point within a circle or equilateral triangle, the point being the LOGOS. Thus,
in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahma is not even named, Cosmogony is preluded with
the Hiranyagharha, "the Golden Egg," and Prajapati (Brahma later on),
from whom emanate all the hierarchies of "Creators." The Monad, or
point, is the original and is the unit from which follows the entire numeral
system. This Point is the First Cause, but THAT from which it emanates, or of
which, rather, it is the expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In
its turn, the universal symbol, the point within the circle, was not yet the
Architect, but the cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in
precisely the same relation as the point itself stood to the circumference of
the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry
shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical with Plato's
infinite and finite in "Philebus" -- or what Plato calls the
[[apeiron]] and [[peras]]. It is the latter only (the mother) which is
substantial, the former being the "cause of all unity and measure of all
things" (Vit. Pyth. p. 47); the Duad (Mulaprakriti, the VEIL) being thus
shown to be the mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his daughter --
i.e., the object of his perception -- the produced
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the "bound"
confused with the "Infinite," that Kapila overwhelms with sarcasms in
his disputations with the Brahman Yogis, who claim in their mystical visions to
see the "Highest One."
** See T. Taylor's article in his
Monthly Magazine quoted in the Platonist, edited by T. M. Johnson, F.T.S.,
Osceola, Missouri. (Feb. Number of 1887.)
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producer and the secondary cause of
it. With Pythagoras, the MONAD returns into silence and Darkness as soon as it
has evolved the triad, from which emanate the remaining seven numbers of the 10
(ten) numbers which are at the base of the manifested universe.
In the Norse cosmogony it is again
the same. "In the beginning was a great abyss (Chaos), neither day nor
night existed; the abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, without beginning,
without end. ALL FATHER, the Uncreated, the Unseen, dwelt in the depth of the
'Abyss' (SPACE) and willed, and what was willed came into being." (See
"Asgard and the Gods.") As in the Hindu cosmogony, the evolution of
the universe is divided into two acts: called in India the Prakriti and Padma
Creations. Before the warm rays pouring from the "Home of Brightness"
awake life in the Great Waters of Space, the Elements of the first creation
come into view, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir (also Orgelmir) --
primordial matter differentiated from Chaos (literally seething clay). Then
comes the cow Audumla, the nourisher,* from whom is born Buri (the Producer)
who, by Bestla, the daughter of the "Frost-Giants" (the sons of Ymir)
had three sons, Odin, Willi and We, or "Spirit," "Will,"
and "Holiness." (Compare the Genesis of the Primordial Races, in this
work.) This was when Darkness still reigned throughout Space, when the Ases,
the creative Powers (Dhyan Chohans) were not yet evolved, and the Yggdrasil,
the tree of the universe of Time and of Life, had not yet grown, and there was,
as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The Scandinavian legends of creation,
of our earth and world, begin with time and human life. All that precedes it is
for them "Darkness," wherein All-Father, the cause of all, dwells. As
observed by the editor of "Asgard and the Gods," though these legends
have in them the idea of that ALL-FATHER, the original cause of all, "he
is scarcely more than mentioned in the poems," not because, as he thinks,
before the preaching of the gospel, the idea "could not rise to distinct
conceptions of the Eternal," but on account of its great esoteric
character. Therefore, all the creative gods, or personal Deities, begin at the
secondary stage of Cosmic evolution. Zeus is born in, and out of Kronos --
Time. So is Brahma the production and emanation of Kala, "eternity and
time," Kala being one of the names of Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the
father of the gods and of the Ases, as Brahma is the father of the gods and of
the Asuras, and hence also the androgyne character of all the chief creative
gods, from the second MONAD of the Greeks down to the Sephiroth Adam Kadmon,
the Brahma or Prajapati-Vach of the Vedas, and the androgyne of Plato, which is
but another version of the Indian symbol.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vach -- the "melodious cow,
who milks sustenance and water," and yields us "nourishment and
sustenance" as described in Rig-Veda.
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The best metaphysical definition of
primeval theogony in the spirit of the Vedantins may be found in the
"Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," by Mr. T. Subba Row. (See
"Theosophist" for February, 1887.) Parabrahmam, the unknown and the
incognisable, as the lecturer tells his audience:
". . . . . Is not Ego, it is not
non-ego, nor is it consciousness . . . . . it is not even Atma" . . . . .
"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 Logos.
This Logos is the Sabda Brahmam of
the Hindus, which he will not even call Iswara (the "lord" God), lest
the term should create confusion in the people's minds. But it is the
Avalokiteswara of the Hindus, the Verbum of the Christians in its real esoteric
meaning, not in the theological disfigurement.
"It is," he says, "the
Gnatha 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 Parabrahmam 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 Parabrahmam . . . . ." "It must not be
supposed, that even the logos is the Creator, or that it is but a single centre
of energy . . . . . . their number is almost infinite." "This
Ego," he adds, "is the first that appears in Kosmos, and is the end
of all evolution. It is the abstract Ego" . . . . . "this is the
first manifestation (or aspect) of Parabrahmam." "When once it starts
into conscious being . . . . . . from its objective standpoint, Parabrahmam
appears to it as Mulaprakriti." "Please bear this in mind,"
observes the lecturer, "for here is the root of the whole difficulty about
Purusha and Prakriti felt by the various writers on Vedantic philosophy. This
Mulaprakriti is material to it (the Logos), as any material object is material
to us. This Mulaprakriti is no more Parabrahmam than the bundle of attributes
of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute
reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it. Parabrahmam 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. . . ."
"Parabrahmam, after having appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the
other as Mulaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the Logos."
And the lecturer explains what he
means by this acting of something which is nothing, though it is the ALL, by a
fine simile. He compares the Logos to the sun through which light and heat
radiate, but whose energy, light and heat, exist in some unknown condition in
Space and are diffused in Space only as visible light and heat, the sun being
only the agent thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is
made up by the energizing light shed by the Logos.
The Hebrew Kabalists give it in a
shape which esoterically is
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identical with the Vedantic.
AIN-SOPH, they taught, could not be comprehended, could not be located, nor
named, though the causeless cause of all. Hence its name -- AIN-SOPH -- is a
term of negation, "the inscrutable, the incognizable, and the unnameable."
They made of it, therefore, a boundless circle, a sphere, of which human
intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only perceive the vault. In the words
of one who has unriddled much in the Kabalistical system, in one of its
meanings thoroughly, in its numerical and geometrical esotericism:--
"Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception try and
think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You will find that
equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly in all directions, so that
the utmost effort of perception will terminate in the vault of a sphere. The
limitation of this sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct
rays of thought in any and every direction must be right line radii of the
circle. This, then, must be, humanly speaking, the extremest all-embracing
conception of the Ain-Soph 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
recognisable means of connection between the Ain-Soph and the intelligence of
man."*
This great circle (which Eastern
Esotericism reduces to the point within the Boundless Circle) is the
Avalokiteswara, the Logos or Verbum of which Mr. Subba Row speaks. But this
circle or manifested God is as unknown to us, except through its manifested
universe, as the ONE, though easier, or rather more possible to our highest
conceptions. This Logos which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahmam during
Pralaya, as our "Ego is latent (in us) at the time of sushupti,
sleep"; which cannot cognize Parabrahmam otherwise than as Mulaprakriti --
the latter being a cosmic veil which is "the mighty expanse of cosmic
matter" -- is thus only an organ in cosmic creation, through which radiate
the energy and wisdom of Parabrahmam, unknown to the Logos, as it is to
ourselves. Moreover, as the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahmam is unknown
in reality to the Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabala -- in order to
bring the Logos within the range of our conceptions -- have resolved the
abstract synthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or
multiplied aspects of that Logos or Avalokiteswara, Brahma, Ormazd, Osiris,
Adam-Kadmon, call it by any of these names -- which aspects or Manvantaric
emanations are the Dhyan Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the Amshaspends,
&c., &c. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter,
according to Mr. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahmam,
"the highest trinity that we
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the Masonic Review for June,
1886.
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are capable of understanding,"
which is Mulaprakriti (the veil), the Logos, and the conscious energy "of
the latter," or its power and light*; or -- "matter, force and the
Ego, or the one root of self, of which every other kind of self is but a
manifestation or a reflection." It is then only in this "light"
(of consciousness) of mental and physical perception, that practical Occultism
can throw this into visibility by geometrical figures; which, when closely
studied, will yield not only a scientific explanation of the real, objective,
existence** of the "Seven sons of the divine Sophia," which is this
light of the Logos, but show by means of other yet undiscovered keys that, with
regard to Humanity, these "Seven Sons" and their numberless
emanations, centres of energy personified, are an absolute necessity. Make away
with them, and the mystery of Being and Mankind will never be unriddled, not
even closely approached.
It is through this light that
everything is created. This ROOT of mental SELF is also the root of physical
Self, for this light is the permutation, in our manifested world, of
Mulaprakriti, called Aditi in the Vedas. In its third aspect it becomes
Vach,*** the daughter and the mother of the Logos, as Isis is the daughter and
the mother of Osiris, who is Horus; and Mout, the daughter, wife, and mother of
Ammon, in the Egyptian Moon-glyph. In the Kabala, Sephira is the same as
Shekinah, and is, in another synthesis, the wife, daughter, and mother of the
"Heavenly man," Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with him, just as
Vach is identical with Brahma, and is called the female Logos. In the Rig-Veda,
Vach is "mystic speech," by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are
communicated to man, and thus Vach is said to have "entered the
Rishis." She is "generated by the gods;" she is the divine Vach
-- the "Queen of gods"; and she is associated -- like Sephira with
the Sephiroth -- with the Prajapati in their work of creation. Moreover, she is
called "the mother of the Vedas," "since it is through her power
(as mystic speech) that Brahma revealed them, and also owing to her power that
he produced the universe" -- i.e., through speech, and words (synthesized
by the "WORD") and numbers.****
But Vach being also spoken of as the
daughter of Daksha -- "the god who lives in all the Kalpas" -- her
Mayavic character is thereby shown:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Called, in the Bhagavat-Gita,
Daiviprakriti.
** Objective -- in the world of Maya,
of course; still as real as we are.
*** "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
Bhagavat-Gita," p. 305, Theosophist.)
**** The wise men, like Stanley
Jevons amongst the moderns, who invented the scheme which makes the
incomprehensible assume a tangible form, could only do so by resorting to
numbers and geometrical figures.
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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 those personations of the
female Power in nature, or nature -- the noumenal and the phenomenal. One is
its purely metaphysical aspect, as described by the learned lecturer in his
"Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita;" the other terrestrial and physical, and
at the same time divine from the stand-point of practical human conception and
Occultism. They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the
"Great Deep" or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable VEIL
between the INCOGNISABLE and the LOGOS of Creation. "Connecting himself
through his mind with Vach, Brahma (the Logos) created the primordial
waters." In the Kathaka Upanishad it is stated still more clearly:
"Prajapati was this Universe. Vach was a second to him. He associated with
her . . . she produced these creatures and again re-entered Prajapati."*
And here we may incidentally point
out one of the many unjust slurs thrown by the pious and good missionaries in
India on the religion of the land. This allegory -- in the "Satapatha
Brahmana" -- namely, that Brahma, as the father of men, performed the work
of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his own daughter Vach, also
called Sandhya (twilight), and Satarupa (the hundred formed), is incessantly
thrown into the teeth of the Brahmins, as condemning their "detestable,
false religion." Besides the fact, conveniently forgotten by the
Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown guilty of the same crime under the
human form, whereas Brahma, or rather Prajapati, accomplished the incest under
the form of a buck with his daughter, who had that of a hind (rohit), the
esoteric reading of Genesis (ch. iii.) shows the same. Moreover, there is
certainly a cosmic, not a physiological meaning attached to the Indian
allegory, since Vach is a permutation of Aditi and Mulaprakriti (Chaos), and
Brahma a permutation of Narayana, the Spirit of God entering into, and
fructifying nature; therefore, there is nothing phallic in the conception at
all.
As already stated, Aditi-Vach is the
female Logos, or the "word," Verbum; and Sephira in the Kabala is the
same. These feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of
Light, and Sound, and Ether, showing how well-informed were the ancients both
in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This connects Vach and Sephira with
the goddess Kwan-Yin, the "merciful mother," the divine VOICE of the
soul even in Exoteric Buddhism; and with the female aspect of Kwan-Shai-yin,
the Logos, the verbum of Creation, and at the same time with the voice that
speaks audibly to the Initiate, according to Esoteric Buddhism. Bath Kol, the
filia Vocis, the daughter of the divine voice of the Hebrews, responding from
the mercy seat within the veil of the temple is -- a result.
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physical science (as now known to the
moderns), and as to the birth of that science in the Spiritual and Astral
spheres.
"Our old writers said that Vach
is of four kinds . . . . para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari (a statement found
in the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads) . . . . Vaikhari Vach is what we
utter." It is sound, speech, that again which becomes comprehensive and
objective to one of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws of
perception. Hence: "Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its Madhyama . .
. . Pasyanti and ultimately in its Para form. . . . . The reason why this
Pranava* is called Vach is this, that these four principles of the great Kosmos
correspond to these four forms of Vach. . . . . The whole Kosmos in its
objective form is Vaikhari Vach; the light of the Logos is the madhyama form;
and the Logos itself the pasyanti form; while Parabrahmam is the para (beyond
the noumenon of all Noumena) aspect of that Vach." (Notes on the
Bhagavad-Gita).
Thus Vach, Shekinah, or the
"music of the spheres" of Pythagoras, are one, if we take for our
example instances in the three most (apparently) dissimilar religious
philosophies in the world -- the Hindu, the Greek and the Chaldean Hebrew.
These personations and allegories may be viewed under four (chief) and three
(lesser) aspects or seven in all, as in Esotericism. The para form is the ever
subjective and latent Light and Sound, which exist eternally in the bosom of
the INCOGNISABLE; when transferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its
latent light, it is called pasyanti, and when it becomes that light expressed,
it is madhyama.
Now the Kabala gives the definition
thus: "There are three kinds of light, and that (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 Kabala the 10 words, D-BRIM
(Dabarim), the numbers and the Emanations of the heavenly light, which is both
Adam Kadmon and Sephira, or (Brahma) Prajapati-Vach. Light, Sound, Number, are
the three factors of creation in the Kabala. Parabrahmam cannot be known except
through the luminous Point (the LOGOS), which knows not Parabrahmam but only
Mulaprakriti. Similarly Adam Kadmon knew only Shekinah, though he was the
vehicle of Ain-Soph. And, as Adam Kadmon, he is in the esoteric interpretation
the total of the number ten, the Sephiroth (himself a trinity, or the three
attributes of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pranava, like Om, is a mystic term
pronounced by the Yogis during meditation; of the terms called, according to
exoteric Commentators, Vyahritis, or "Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar" (Om,
earth, sky, heaven) -- Pranava is the most sacred, perhaps. They are pronounced
with breath suppressed. See Manu II. 76-81, and Mitakshara commenting on the
Yajnavahkya-Suriti, i. 23. But the esoteric explanation goes a great deal
further.
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incognisable DEITY in One).*
"When the Heavenly man (or LOGOS) first assumed the form of the Crown**
(Kether) and identified himself with Sephira, he caused seven splendid lights
to emanate from it (the Crown)," which made in their totality ten; so the
Brahma-Prajapati, once he became separated from, yet identical with Vach,
caused the seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Prajapatis to issue from that
crown. In Exotericism one will always find 10 and 7, of either Sephiroth or
Prajapati; in Esoteric rendering always 3 and 7, which yield also 10. Only when
divided in the manifested sphere into 3 and 7, they form [[diagram]], the
androgyne, and [[diagram]], or the figure X manifested and differentiated.
This will help the student to
understand why Pythagoras esteemed the Deity (the Logos) to be the centre of
unity and "Source of Harmony." We say this Deity was the Logos, not
the MONAD that dwelleth in Solitude and Silence, because Pythagoras taught that
UNITY being indivisible is no number. And this is also why it was required of
the candidate, who applied for admittance into his school, that he should have
already studied as a preliminary step, the Sciences of Arithmetic, Astronomy,
Geometry and Music, held as the four divisions of Mathematics.*** Again, this
explains why the Pythagoreans asserted that the doctrine of Numbers -- the
chief of all in Esotericism -- had been revealed to man by the celestial deities;
that the world had been called forth out of Chaos by Sound or Harmony, and
constructed according to the principles of musical proportion; that the seven
planets which rule the destiny of mortals have a harmonious motion "and
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." (Censorinus.)
In the Pythagorean Theogony the
hierarchies of the heavenly Host and Gods were numbered and 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is this trinity that is meant by
the "three steps of Vishnu"; which means: (Vishnu being considered as
the Infinite in exotericism) -- that from the Parabrahm issued Mulaprakriti,
Purusha (the Logos), and Prakriti: the four forms (with itself, the synthesis)
of Vach. And in the Kabala -- Ain-Soph, Shekinah, Adam Kadmon and Sephirah, the
four -- or the three emanations being distinct -- yet ONE.
** Chaldean Book of Numbers. In the
current Kabala the name Jehovah replaces Adam Kadmon.
*** 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.
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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." -- (Diogenes
Laertius in Vit. Pythag.)
And this may also, if it does not
unriddle the mystery altogether, at any rate lift a corner of the veil off
those wondrous allegories that have been thrown upon Vach, the most mysterious
of all the Brahmanical goddesses, she who is termed "the melodious cow who
milked forth sustenance and water" (the Earth with all her mystic powers);
and again she "who yields us nourishment and sustenance" (physical
Earth). Isis is also mystic Nature and also Earth; and her cow's horns identify
her with Vach. The latter, after having been recognised in her highest form as
para, becomes at the lower or material end of creation -- Vaikhari. Hence she
is mystic, though physical, Nature, with all her magic ways and properties.
Again, as goddess of Speech and of
Sound, and a permutation of Aditi -- she is Chaos, in one sense. At any rate,
she is the "Mother of the gods," and it is from Brahma (Iswara, or
the Logos) and Vach, as from Adam Kadmon and Sephira, that the real manifested
theogony has to start. Beyond, all is darkness and abstract speculation. With
the Dhyan Chohans, or the gods, the Seers, the Prophets and the adepts in
general are on firm ground. Whether as Aditi, or the divine Sophia of the Greek
Gnostics, she is the mother of the seven sons: the "Angels of the
Face," of the "Deep," or the "Great Green One" of the
"Book of the Dead." Says the Book of Dzyan (Knowledge through
meditation) --
"The great mother lay with
[[diagram]], and the |, and the [[diagram]], the second | and the [[diagram]]*
in her bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant sons of the [[diagram]]
[[diagram]] || (or 4,320,000, the Cycle) whose two elders are the [[diagram]]
and the (Point)."
At the beginning of every cycle of
4,320,000, the Seven (or, as some nations had it, eight) great gods, descended
to establish the new order of things and give the impetus to the new cycle.
That eighth god was the unifying Circle or LOGOS, separated and made distinct
from its host, in exoteric dogma, just as the three divine hypostases of the
ancient Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct personae.
"The MIGHTY ONES perform their great works, and leave behind them
everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time they penetrate
within our mayavic veil (atmosphere)," says a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 31415, or [[pi]]. The synthesis, or
the Host unified in the Logos and the Point called in Roman Catholicism the
"Angel of the Face," and in Hebrew [[hebrew]] "who is (like
unto, or the same) as God" -- the manifested representation.
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Commentary.* Thus we are taught that
the great Pyramids were built under their direct supervision, "when Dhruva
(the then Pole-star) was at his lowest culmination, and the Krittika (Pleiades)
looked over his head (were on the same meridian but above) to watch the work of
the giants." Thus, as the first Pyramids were built at the beginning of a
Sidereal year, under Dhruva (Alpha Polaris), it must have been over 31,000
years (31,105) ago. Bunsen was right in admitting for Egypt an antiquity of
over 21,000 years, but this concession hardly exhausts truth and fact in this
question. "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," writes the author of "The Natural
Genesis." "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 inquirer 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," (vol. ii, p. 318. But
see in our Book II., "CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS.")
Mor Isaac (See Kircher's OEdipus,
vol. ii., p. 425) shows the ancient Syrians defining their world of the
"Rulers" and "active gods" in the same way as the
Chaldeans. The lowest world was the SUBLUNARY -- our own -- watched by the
"Angels" of the first or lower order; the one that came next in rank,
was Mercury, ruled by the "ARCHANGELS"; then came Venus, whose gods
were the PRINCIPALITIES; the fourth was that of the SUN, the domain and region
of the highest and mightiest gods of our system, the solar gods of all nations;
the fifth was Mars, ruled by the "VIRTUES"; the sixth -- that of Bel
or Jupiter -- was governed by the DOMINIONS; the seventh -- the world of Saturn
-- by the THRONES. These are the worlds of form. Above come the four higher
ones, making seven again, since the three highest are "unmentionable and
unpronounceable." The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of
the Cherubs; the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on
account of their distance, has the seraphs; as to the tenth -- Kircher, quoting
Mor Isaac, says that it is composed "of invisible stars that could be
taken, they said, for clouds -- so massed are they in the zone that we call Via
Straminis, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Appearing at the beginning of
Cycles, as also of every sidereal year (of 25,868 years) therefore the Kabeiri
or Kabarim received their name in Chaldea, as it means the measures of Heaven
from Kob -- measure of, and Urim -- heavens.
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Milky Way"; and he hastens to
explain that "these are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed with him in his
terrible shipwreck." That which comes after and beyond the tenth world
(our Quaternary, or the Arupa world), the Syrians could not tell. "All
they knew was that it is there that begins the vast and incomprehensible ocean
of the infinite, the abode of the true divinity without boundary or end."
Champollion shows the same belief
among the Egyptians. Hermes having spoken of the Father-Mother and Son, whose
spirit (collectively the DIVINE FIAT) shapes the Universe, says:-- "Seven
Agents (mediums) were also formed, to contain the material (or manifested)
worlds, within their respective circles and the action of these agents was
named DESTINY." He further enumerates seven and ten and twelve orders,
which would take too long to detail here.
As the "Rig Vidhana"
together with the "Brahmanda Purana" and all such works, whether
describing the magic efficacy of the Rig-Vedic Mantras or the future Kalpas,
are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern compilations "belonging
probably only to the time of the Puranas," it is useless to refer the
reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as well quote simply from the
archaic books utterly unknown to the Orientalists. These works explain that
which so puzzles the scholars, namely that the Saptarshi, the "mind-born
sons" of Brahma, are referred to in the Satapatha Brahmana under one set
of names; in the Mahabharata under another set; and that the Vayu Purana makes
even nine instead of seven Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu and Daksha to
the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The secret doctrine
gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many classes. Like
the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and even twelve,
classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The first three groups
are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sub-lunary. Then come the Solar Gods of
our system, the Planetary, the Sub-Mundane, and the purely human -- the heroes
and the Manoushi.
At present, however, we are only
concerned with the pre-cosmic, divine gods, the Prajapati or the "Seven
Builders." This group is found unmistakably in every Cosmogony. Owing to
the loss of Egyptian archaic documents -- since, according to M. Maspero,
"the materials and historical data on hand to study the history of the
religious evolution in Egypt are neither complete nor very often intelligible"
-- in order to have the statements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine
corroborated partially and indirectly, the ancient hymns and inscriptions on
the tombs must be appealed to. One such, at any rate, shows that Osiris was,
like Brahma-Prajapati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other Logoi, the chief
and synthesis of the
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group of "Creators" or
Builders. Before Osiris became the "One" and the highest god of Egypt
he was worshipped at Abydos as the head or leader of the Heavenly Host of the
Builders belonging to the higher of the three orders. The hymn engraved on the
votive stela of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus:
"Salutations to thee, Osiris, elder son of Sib; 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 Uraeus (serpent or naja)* 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
uraeus, which is the serpent emblem of Cosmic fire, and himself the seventh
over the six primary gods issued from Father-Mother, Nou and Nout (the sky),
who can Osiris be, but the chief Prajapati, the chief Sephiroth, the chief
Amshaspend-Ormazd! That this latter solar and cosmic god stood, in the
beginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the archangel
"whose name was secret," is certain. This Archangel was the representative
on earth of the Hidden Jewish God, Michael, 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." (Comment on the Yacna, p. 174.) And these archangels, therefore,
are as "certainly" the Saptarishi of the Hindus, though it is next to
impossible to class each with its pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the
case of Osiris, they have all so "many names in towns and provinces."
Some of the most important, however, will be shown in their order.
One thing is thus undeniably proven.
The more one studies their Hierarchies and finds out their identity, the more
proofs one acquires that there is not one of the past and present personal
gods, known to us from the earliest days of History, that does not belong to
the third stage of Cosmic manifestation. In every religion we find the
concealed deity forming the ground work; then the ray therefrom, that falls
into primordial Cosmic matter (first manifestation); then the androgyne result,
the dual Male and Female abstract Force, personified (second stage); this
separates itself finally, in the third, into seven Forces, called the creative
Powers by all the ancient Religions, and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* This Egyptian word Naja reminds one
a good deal of the Indian Naga, the Serpent-God. Brahma and Siva and Vishnu are
all crowned with, and connected with Nagas -- a sign of their cyclic and cosmic
character.
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"Virtues of God" by the
Christians. The later explanation and metaphysical abstract qualifications have
never prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from worshipping these
"Virtues" under the personifications and distinct names of the seven
Archangels. In the Book of Druschim (p. 59, 1st Treatise) in the Talmud, a
distinction between these groups is given which is the correct Kabalistical
explanation. It says:
"There are three groups (or
orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The Sephiroth called "the divine
attributes" (abstract). 2nd. The physical or sidereal Sephiroth (personal)
-- one group of seven, the other of ten. 3rd. The metaphysical Sephiroth, or
periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chochma and
Binah), the rest of the seven being the (personal) seven spirits of the
Presence" (also of the planets).
The same division has to be applied
to the primary, secondary and tertiary evolution of gods in every theogony, if
one wishes to translate the meaning esoterically. We must not confuse the
purely metaphysical personifications of the abstract attributes of Deity, with
their reflection -- the sidereal gods. This reflection, however, is in reality
the objective expression of the abstraction: living Entities and the models
formed on that divine prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical Sephiroth or
"the periphrasis of Jehovah" are not Jehovah; it is the latter
himself with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth, and the
numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the Shaddai,
[[hebrew]], the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too
abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the
Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient screen, unified by the folding of its
many flaps, and adopted as a substitute: one name of an individual Sephiroth
being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The
Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the sidereal "Sum Total," was invented
for no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and
generation.* The real secret and unpronounceable name -- "the word that is
no word" -- has to be sought in the seven names of the first seven
emanations, or the "Sons of the Fire,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the translator of Avicebron's
"Qabbalah" (Mr. Isaac Myer, LL.B., of Philadelphia) of this "Sum
Total": "The letter of Kether is [[hebrew]] (Yod), of Binah
[[hebrew]](Heh), together YaH, the feminine Name; the third letter, that of
Hokhmah, is [[hebrew]] (Vau), making together, [[hebrew]] YHV of [[hebrew]]
YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, and really the complete symbols of its
efficaciousness. The last [[hebrew]](Heh) of this Ineffable Name being always
applied to the Six Lower and the last, together the Seven remaining
Sephiroth." . . . Thus the Tetragrammaton is holy only in its abstract
synthesis. As a quaternary containing the lower Seven Sephiroth, it is phallic.
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in the secret Scriptures of all the
great nations, and even in the Zohar, the Kabalistic lore of that smallest of
all, the Jewish. This word, composed of seven letters in each tongue, is found
embodied in the architectural remains of every grand building in the world;
from the Cyclopean remains on Easter Island (part of a continent buried under
the seas nearer four million years ago* than 20,000) down to the earliest
Egyptian pyramids.
We shall have to enter more fully
upon this subject, and bring practical illustrations to prove the statements
made in the text.
For the present it is sufficient to show,
by a few instances, the truth of what was asserted at the beginning of this
Monograph, namely, that no Cosmogony, the world over, with the sole exception
of the Christian, has ever attributed to the One Highest cause, the UNIVERSAL
Deific Principle, the immediate creation of our Earth, man, or anything
connected with these. This statement holds as good for the Hebrew or Chaldean
Kabala as it does for Genesis, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood,
and -- what is still more important -- correctly translated.** Everywhere there
is either a LOGOS -- a "Light shining
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 to accept the statement for the so-called Lemuria, the continent of the
Third Root Race, first nearly destroyed by combustion, and then submerged. This
is what the Commentary says: "The first earth having been purified by the
forty-nine fires, her people, born of Fire and Water, could not die . . . etc.;
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, or 25,868 years each, and this is equal,
therefore, in all to 4,242,352 years. More details will be found in the text of
Book II. Meanwhile, this doctrine is embodied in the "Kings of Edom."
** The same reserve is found in the
Talmud and in every national system of religion whether monotheistic or
exoterically polytheistical. From the superb religious poem by the Kabalist
Rabbi Solomon Ben Gabirol in "the Kether Malchuth," we select a few
definitions given in the prayers of Kippur. . . . "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," etc., etc. There is [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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in DARKNESS," truly -- or the
Architect of the Worlds is esoterically a plural number. The Latin Church,
paradoxical as ever, while applying the epithet of Creator to Jehovah alone,
adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the working FORCES of the latter, those
names betraying the secret. For if the said Forces had nought to do with
"Creation" so-called, why call them Elohim (Alhim) in plural;
"divine workmen" and Energies ([['Energeia]]), incandescent celestial
stones (lapides igniti coelorum), and especially, "supporters of the
World" ([[Kosmokratores]]), governors or RULERS of the World (rectores
mundi), the "Wheels" of the World (Rotae), Ophanim, Flames and
POWERS, "Sons of God" (B'ne Alhim), "Vigilant COUNSELLORS,"
etc., etc.
It was often premised (and as
unjustly as usual) that China, nearly as old a country as India, had no
cosmogony. "It was unknown to Confucius, and the Buddhists extended their
Cosmogony without introducing a personal God,"* it is complained. The
Yi-King, "the very essence of ancient thought and the combined work of the
most venerated sages, fails to show a distinct cosmogony." Nevertheless,
there is one, and a very distinct one. Only as Confucius did not admit of a
future life** and the Chinese Buddhists reject the idea of One Creator,
accepting one cause and its numberless effects, they are misunderstood by the
believers in a personal God. The "great Extreme" as the commencement
"of changes" (transmigrations) is the shortest and perhaps the most
suggestive of all Cosmogonies, for those who, like the Confucianists, love
virtue for its own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually
looking to reward and profit. The "great Extreme" of Confucius
produces "two figures." These "two" produce in their turn
"the four images"; these again "the eight symbols." It is
complained that though the Confucianists see in them "Heaven, Earth and
man in miniature," . . . we can see in them anything we like. No doubt,
and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially in those of the latest
religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals, see in these "figures"
the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos and
its beings, both the Heavenly and the Terrestrial. And any one who has studied
the numerical evolution in the primeval cosmogony of Pythagoras (a contemporary
of Confucius) can never fail to find in his Triad, Tetractis and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] a distance between this Kabalistical Deity and the Biblical Jehovah, the
spiteful and revengeful God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, who tempted the former
and wrestled with the last. No Vedantin but would repudiate such a Parabrahm.
* Rev. Joseph Edkins "On
Cosmogony," p. 320. And very wisely they have acted.
** 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.
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Decade emerging from the ONE and
solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his Christian
biographer for "talking of divination" before and after this passage,
and is represented as saying: "The eight symbols determine good and ill
fortune, and these lead to great deeds. There are no imitable images greater
than heaven and earth. There are no changes greater than the four seasons
(meaning North, South, East and West, et seq.). 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."*
Therefore, the "divining
straws" and the "tortoise," the "symbolic sets of
lines," and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two,
and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets "three and
six," are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are
misunderstood.
So the author and his colleagues will
scoff no doubt at the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent precisely
the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the
Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the
most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe.
At all events it may answer, perhaps, better to the requirements and the
scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St. Augustine
and the "Venerable Bede," though these were published over a
millennium later than the Confucian.
Confucius, one of the greatest sages
of the ancient world, believed in ancient magic, and practised it himself
"if we take for granted the statements of Kin-yu" . . . . and
"he praised it to the skies in Yi-kin," we are told by his reverend
critic. Nevertheless, even in his age -- i.e., 600 B.C., Confucius and his
school taught the sphericity of the Earth and even the heliocentric system;
while, at about thrice 600 years after the Chinese philosopher, the Popes of
Rome threatened and even burnt "heretics" for asserting the same. He
is laughed at for speaking of the "Sacred Tortoise." No unprejudiced
person can see any great difference between a tortoise and a lamb as candidates
for sacredness, as both are symbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,** the Lion,
and occasionally
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** The animals regarded as sacred in
the Bible are not few: the goat for one, 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; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the Dove, are "the sacred
animals" of the Western Bible, the first three being found grouped round
the Evangelists; and the fourth (the human face) is a Seraph, i.e., a fiery
serpent, the Gnostic Agathodaemon probably.* As explained, the "sacred
animals" and the Flames or "Sparks" within the "Holy
Four" refer to the prototypes of all that is found in the Universe in the
Divine Thought, in the ROOT, which is the perfect cube, or the foundation of
the Kosmos collectively and individually. They have all an occult reference to
primordial Cosmic forms and its first concretions, work, and evolution.
In the earliest Hindu exoteric
cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge who creates. For it is said in one of
the Puranas that: "The great Architect of the World gives the first
impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in turn over
each planet and body." It is this action "that causes each sphere to
turn around itself, and all around the Sun." After which action, "it
is the Brahmandica, the Solar and Lunar Pitris (the Dhyani-Chohans)" who
take charge of their respective spheres (earths and planets), to the end of the
Kalpa." The Creators are the Rishis; most of whom are credited with the
authorship of the mantras or Hymns of the Rig Veda. They are sometimes seven,
sometimes ten, when they become prajapati, the "Lord of Beings"; then
they rebecome the seven and the fourteen Manus, as the representatives of the seven
and fourteen cycles of Existence ("Days of Brahma"); thus answering
to the seven AEons, when at the end of the first stage of Evolution they are
transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarishis; while their human
doubles appear as heroes, Kings and Sages on this earth.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 with the name of Jehovah, "incandescent
stones," "sacred animals," etc., and quoting from the Bible de
Vence (Vol. XIX. p. 318) a French pious 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."
(Pneumatologie, Vol. II., p. 294). No one ever doubted that the NAME must have
been assumed, when under the guise of the Infinite, One Incognizable, the
Malachim (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?
* The choice is curious, and shows
how paradoxical were the first Christians in their selections. For why should
they have chosen these symbols of Egyptian paganism, when the eagle is never
mentioned in the New Testament save once, when Jesus refers to it as a carrion
eater? (Matt. xxiv. 28); and in the Old Testament it is called unclean; that
the Lion is made a point of comparison with Satan, both roaring for men to
devour; and the oxen are driven out of the Temple. On the other hand the
Serpent, brought as an exemplar of wisdom to follow, is now regarded as the
symbol of the Devil. The esoteric pearl of Christ's religion degraded into
Christian theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting
shell to be born in and evolved from.
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The Esoteric doctrine of the East
having thus furnished and struck the key-note -- which is as scientific as it
is philosophical and poetical, as may be seen, under its allegorical garb --
every nation has followed its lead. It is from the exoteric religions that we
have to dig out the root-idea before we turn to esoteric truths, lest the latter
should be rejected. Furthermore, every symbol -- in every national religion --
may be read esoterically, and the proof furnished for its being correctly read
by transliterating it into its corresponding numerals and geometrical forms --
by the extraordinary agreement of all -- however much the glyphs and symbols
may vary among themselves. For in the origin those symbols were all identical.
Take, for instance, the opening sentences in various cosmogonies: in every case
it is either a circle, an egg, or a head. DARKNESS is always associated with
this first symbol and surrounds it, -- as shown in the Hindu, the Egyptian, the
Chaldeo-Hebrew and even the Scandinavian systems -- hence black ravens, black
doves, black waters and even black flames; the seventh tongue of Agni, the
fire-god being called "Kali," "the black," as it was a
black flickering flame. Two black doves flew from Egypt and settling on the
oaks of Dodona, gave their names to the Grecian gods. Noah lets out a black
raven after the deluge, which is a symbol for the Cosmic pralaya, after which
began the real creation or evolution of our earth and humanity. Odin's black
ravens fluttered around the Goddess Saga and "whispered to her of the past
and of the future." What is the real meaning of all those black birds?
They are all connected with the primeval wisdom, which flows out of the
pre-cosmic Source of all, symbolised by the Head, the Circle, the Egg; and they
all have an identical meaning and relate to the primordial Archetypal man (Adam
Kadmon) the creative origin of all things, which is composed of the Host of
Cosmic Powers -- the Creative Dhyan-Chohans, beyond which all is darkness.
Let us inquire of the wisdom of the
Kabala -- even veiled and distorted as it now is, -- to explain in its numerical
language an approximate meaning, at least of the word "raven." This
is its number value as given in the "Source of Measures."
"The term Raven is used but
once, and taken as eth-h'orebv [[diagram]], = 678, or 113 x 6; while the Dove
is mentioned five times. Its value is 71, and 71 x 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'rash, [[diagram]], or the first word of Genesis, with
its prepositional prefix, signifying the same concreted general form
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astronomically, with the one here
intended." Now the secret reading of the first verse of Genesis being:
"In Rash (B'rash) or head, developed gods, the Heavens and the Earth"
-- it is easy to comprehend the esoteric meaning of the raven, once that the
like meaning of the Flood (or Noah's Deluge) is ascertained. Whatever the many
other meanings of this emblematical allegory may be, its chief meaning is that
of a new cycle and a new Round (our Fourth Round.)* The "Raven," or
the Eth-H'Orebv, yields the same numerical value as the "Head," and
returned not to the ark, while the dove returned, carrying the olive-branch,
when Noah, the new man of the new Race (whose prototype is Vaivasvata Manu),
prepared to leave the ark, the womb (or Argha) of terrestrial nature, is the
symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three
Races, who vanished from earth for ever. Numerically Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are
one in the Kabala: at best, then, it is Deity descending on to Ararat (later on
Sinai), to incarnate in man his image, through the natural process, henceforth:
the mother's womb, whose symbols are the ark, the mount (Sinai), etc., in
Genesis. The Jewish allegory is at once astronomical, and purely physiological
rather than anthropomorphic.
And here lies the abyss between the
two systems (Aryan and Semitic), though built on the same foundation. As shown
by an expounder of the Kabala, "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 and the facts shown, and perfected the mode
used." It is argued that, the primal cause being absolutely incognizable,
"the symbol of its first comprehensible manifestation was the conception
of a circle with its diameter line, so as at once to carry the idea of
geometry, phallicism, and astronomy;" and this was finally applied to the
"signification of simply human generative organs."** Hence the whole
cycle of events
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bryant is right in saying
"Druid Bardesin 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 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.
** Unpubl. MSS. (But see "Source
of Measures.")
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from Adam and the Patriarchs down to
Noah is made to apply to phallic and astronomical uses, the one regulating the
other, as the lunar periods, for instance. Hence, too, their genesis begins
after their coming out of the Ark, and the close of the flood -- at the Fourth
Race. With the Aryan people it is different.
Eastern Esotericism has never
degraded the One Infinite Deity, the container of all things, to such uses; and
this is shown by the absence of Brahma from the Rig Veda and the modest
positions occupied therein by Rudra and Vishnu, who became the powerful and
great Gods, the "Infinites" of the exoteric creeds, ages later. But
even they, "Creators" as the three may be, are not the direct
creators and "forefathers of men." The latter are shown occupying a
still lower scale, and are called Prajapatis, the Pitris (our lunar ancestors),
etc., etc. -- never the "One Infinite God." Esoteric philosophy shows
only physical man as created in the image of the Deity: but the latter is but
"the minor gods." It is the HIGHER-SELF, the real EGO who alone is
divine and GOD.
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§ 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, unapprehensible by intellect, or THAT which is Brahma and Pumis (Spirit)
and Pradhana (crude matter)" (Veda: "Vishnu Purana Commentary");
or literally: "One Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT was." The
"Pradhanika Brahma Spirit" is Mulaprakriti and Parabrahmam.
In Vishnu Purana, Parasara says to
Maitreya, his pupil:-- "I have thus explained to you, excellent Muni, six
creations. . . . the creation of the Arvaksrotas beings was the seventh, and
was that of man." Then he proceeds to speak of two additional and very
mysterious creations, variously interpreted by the commentators.
Origen, commenting upon the books
written by Celsus, his opponent -- books which were all destroyed by the
prudent Church Fathers -- evidently answers the objections of his contradictor
and reveals his system at the same time. This was evidently septenary. But his
theogony, the genesis of the stars or planets, that of sound and colour, all
found as an answer satire, and no better. Celsus, you see, "desiring to
exhibit his learning," speaks of a ladder of creation with seven gates,
and on the top
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of it the eighth -- ever closed. The
mysteries of the Persian Mithras are explained and "musical reasons,
moreover, are added." . . . . And to these again he strives "to add a
second explanation connected also with musical considerations,"* -- i.e.,
with the seven notes of the scale, the Seven Spirits of the Stars, &c.,
&c.
Valentinus expatiates upon the power
of the great Seven, who were called to bring forth this universe after
Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose name is composed of seven letters, had
represented the first hebdomad. This name (Ar(r)hetos) is one to indicate the
Sevenfold nature of the One (the logos). "The goddess Rhea," says
Proclus in Timaeus (p. 121), "is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad,"
comprehending in herself all the Titanidae, "who are seven."
The Seven Creations are found in
almost every Purana. They are all preceded by what Wilson translates --
"the indiscrete Principle," absolute Spirit independent of any
relation with objects of sense. They are -- (1) Mahattattwa, the Universal Soul,
Infinite Intellect, or Divine Mind; (2) Bhuta or Bhutasarga, elemental
creation, the first differentiation of Universal indiscrete Substance; (3)
Indriya or Aindriyaka, organic evolution. "These three were the Prakrita
creations, the developments of indiscrete nature preceded by indiscrete
principle"; (4) Mukhya, the fundamental creation of perceptible things,
was that of inanimate bodies**; (5) Tairyagyonya, or Tiryaksrotas, was that of
animals; (6) Urdhwasrotas, or that of divinities*** (?); (7) Arvaksrotas, was that
of man. (See Vishnu Purana.)
This is the order given in the
exoteric texts. According to esoteric teaching there are seven primary, and
seven secondary "creations;" the former being the Forces
self-evolving from the one causeless FORCE; the latter, showing the manifested
Universe emanating from the already differentiated divine elements.
Esoterically, as well as
exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations stand for the (7) periods of
Evolution, whether after an "Age" or a "Day" of Brahma.
This is the teaching par excellence of Occult Philosophy, which, however, never
uses the term "creation," nor even that of evolution, "with
regard to primary 'Creation':" but calls all such forces "the aspects
of the Causeless Force." In the Bible
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Origen contra Celsum, b. vi., chap.
xxii.
** The text says: "And the
fourth creation is here the primary, for things immovable are emphatically
known as primary." (See Fitzedward Hall's Corrections.)
*** 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, and an animal that is the only one among animal
creation who sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the "sacred
animals," the 12 signs of the zodiac are often meant in the sacred texts,
as already stated.
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the seven periods are dwarfed into
the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest, and the Westerns adhere
to the letter. In the Hindu philosophy, when the active Creator has produced
the world of gods, the germs of all the undifferentiated elements and the
rudiments of future senses (the world of noumena, in short), the Universe
remains unaltered for a "Day of Brahma," a period of 4,320,000,000
years. This is the seventh passive period or the "Sabbath day" of
Eastern philosophy, that follows six periods of active evolution. In the
Satapatha Brahmana "Brahma" (neuter), the absolute Cause of all
Causes, radiates the gods. Having radiated the gods (through its inherent
nature) the work is interrupted. In the 1st 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, which in its essence is, and yet is not."
In the Sepher Jezirah, the Kabalistic
Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it
the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity,
boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit. "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." (Sepher Jezireh, chap.
1, Mishna IX.) And this is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously
anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole
Kosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air, the creative element; and
then number THREE, Water, proceeded from the air; Ether or Fire complete the
mystic four, the Arba-il. (Ibid.) In the Eastern doctrine Fire is the first
Element -- Ether, synthesizing the whole (since it contains all of them).
In the Vishnu Purana, the whole seven
periods are given, and the progressive Evolution of "Spirit-Soul," and
of the seven forms of matter (or principles) are shown. It is impossible to
enumerate them in this work. The reader is asked to peruse one of the Puranas.
"R. Yehudah began, it is
written: 'Elohim said: Let there be a firmament, in the midst of waters. . . .
. At the time that the Holy . . . created the world, He (they) created seven
heavens Above. He created seven earths Below, seven seas, seven days, seven
rivers, seven weeks, seven years, seven times, and 7,000 years that the world
has been. . . . . the seventh of all the millennium. So here are seven earths
Below, they are all inhabited except those which are above, and those . . . .
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 from each other . . . . but if you object and say that all the
children of the world came out from Adam,
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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 below," etc., etc.*
Irenaeus is our witness (and a very
unwilling one, too) that the Gnostics taught the same system, veiling very
carefully the true esoteric meaning. This "veiling," however, is
identical with that of the Vishnu Purana and others. Thus Irenaeus 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, dryness
and moisture, an exact likeness of the ogdoad is presented." (B. i. ch.
xvii.)
Only this "likeness" and
the ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the seven creations of the Vishnu
Puranas, to which two more are added of which the eighth, termed Anugraha,
"possesses both the qualities of goodness and darkness," a Sankhyan
more than a Puranic idea. For Irenaeus says again (b. I. xxx. 6) 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."
They were so
"distinguished," but not as Irenaeus gives it. The Gnostics had a
superior Hebdomad, and an inferior one, in Heaven; and a third terrestrial
Hebdomad, on the plane of matter. IAO, the mystery god and the Regent of the
Moon, as given in Origen's chart, was the chief of these superior "Seven Heavens,"**
hence identical with the chief of the lunar Pitris, that name being given by
them to the lunar Dhyan-Chohans. "They affirm that these seven heavens are
intelligent, and speak of them as being angels," writes the same Irenaeus;
and adds that on this account they termed Iao Hebdomas, while his mother was
called "Ogdoas," because, as he explains, "she preserved the
number of the first begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma." (Ibid. b.
I, v. 2).
This "first begotten
Ogdoad" was (a) in theogony the second Logos (the manifested) because he
was born of the Seven-fold first Logos, hence he is the eighth on this
manifested plane; and (b) in astrolatry, it was the Sun, Martanda -- the eighth
son of Aditi, whom she rejects while preserving her Seven Sons, the planets.
For the ancients have never regarded the Sun as a planet, but as a central and
fixed Star. This, then, is the second Hebdomad born of the Seven-rayed one,
Agni, the Sun
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Qabbalah, p. 415-16, by T. Myer,
Philadelphia.
** Superior to the Spirits or
"Heavens" of the Earth only.
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and what not, only not the seven
planets, which are Surya's brothers, not his Sons. These Astral gods, whose
chief with the Gnostics was Ildabaoth* (from Ilda "child," and Baoth
"the egg"), the son of Sophia Achamoth, the daughter of Sophia
(Wisdom), whose region is the Pleroma, were his (Ildabaoth's) sons. He produces
from himself these six stellar spirits: Jove (Jehovah), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi,
Osraios, Astaphaios,** and it is they who are the second, or inferior Hebdomad.
As to the third, it is composed of the seven primeval men, the shadows of the
lunar gods, projected by the first Hebdomad. In this the Gnostics did not, as
seen, differ much from the esoteric doctrine except that they veiled it. As to
the charge made by Irenaeus, who was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of
the "Heretics," with regard to man being created on the sixth day,
and man being created on the eighth, this relates to the mysteries of the inner
man. It will become comprehensible to the reader only after he has read Book
II., and understood well the Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric doctrine.
Ildabaoth is a copy of Manu. The
latter boasts, "Oh, best of twice-born men! Know that I (Manu) am he, the
creator of all this world, whom that male Viraj . . . spontaneously
produced" (I., 33). He first creates the ten lords of Being, the
Prajapatis, who, as verse 36 says . . . "produce seven other Manus."
(The Ordinances of Manu.) Ildabaoth does 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, Ildabaoth, for the father of all,
the first man (Anthropos) is above thee, and so is Anthropos, the Son of
Anthropos" (Irenaeus, b. I, ch. xxx., 6). This is a good proof that there were
three Logoi (besides the Seven born of the First), one of these being the Solar
Logos. And, again, who was that "Anthropos" himself, so much higher
than Ildabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle. In Pistis
Sophia the four-vowelled name IEOV is in each case accompanied by the epithet
of "the Primal, or First man." This shows again that the gnosis was
but an echo of our archaic doctrine. The names answering to Parabrahm, to
Brahm, and Manu (the first thinking man) are composed of one-vowelled,
three-vowelled and seven-vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose philosophy was
certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a revelation to him of
the seven heavens sounding each one vowel as they pronounced the seven names of
the seven (angelic) hierarchies.
When spirit has permeated every
minutest atom of the seven principles of Kosmos, then the secondary creation,
after the above-mentioned period of rest, begins.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Isis Unveiled," Vol.
II., p. 183.
** See also King's Gnostics. Other
sects regarded Jehovah as Ildabaoth himself King identifies him with Saturn.
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"The creators (Elohim) outline
in the second 'hour' the shape of man," says Rabbi Simeon (The Nuctameron
of the Hebrews). "There are twelve hours in the day," says the
Mishna, "and it is during these that creation is accomplished." The
"twelve hours of the day" are again the dwarfed copy, the faint, yet
faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like the 12,000 divine years of
the gods, a cyclic blind. Every "Day of Brahma" has 14 Manus, which
the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in this the Chaldeans, have disguised
into 12 "Hours."* The Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana is the same
thing. "The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfect Cube," say the
Kabalists. The mystic meaning of this is, that the twelve great transformations
of Spirit into matter (the 12,000 divine years) take place during the four
great ages, or the first Mahayuga. Beginning with the metaphysical and the
supra-human, it ends in the physical and purely human natures of Kosmos and
man. Eastern philosophy can give the number of mortal years that run along the
line of spiritual and physical evolutions of the seen and the unseen, if
Western science fails to do so.
Primary Creation is called the
Creation of Light (Spirit); and the Secondary -- that of Darkness (matter).**
Both are found in Genesis, chap. i., v. 2, and at the beginning of chapter ii.
The first is the emanation of self-born gods (Elohim); the second of physical
nature.
This is why it is said in the
Zohar:-- "Oh, companions, companions, man as emanation was both man and
woman; as well on the side of the FATHER as on the side of the MOTHER. And this
is the sense of the words:-- And Elohim spoke: 'Let there be Light and it was
Light!' . . . And this is the 'two-fold man'" Light, moreover, on our
plane, is darkness in the higher spheres.
"Man and woman on the side of
the FATHER" (Spirit) refers to Primary Creation; and on the side of the
Mother (matter) to the secondary. The two-fold man is Adam Kadmon, the male and
female abstract prototype and the differentiated Elohim. Man proceeds from the
Dhyan Chohan, and is a "Fallen Angel," a god in exile, as will be
shown.
In India these creations were
described as follows:--
(I.) Mahat-tattwa creation --
so-called because it was the primordial self-evolution of that which had to
become Mahat -- the "divine MIND, conscious and intelligent";
esoterically, "the spirit of the Universal soul." . . .
"Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency (the potency of that cause);
every produced cause comes by its proper nature." (Vishnu Purana.)
"Seeing that the potencies of all beings are under-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Elsewhere, however, the identity is
revealed. See supra, the quotation from Ibn-Gabirol and his 7 heavens, 7
earths, etc.
** This must not be confused with
precosmic "DARKNESS," the Divine ALL.
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stood 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 Purana; 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 Brahma was then created (?), being identified with Mahat, active
intelligence or the operating will of the Supreme. Esoteric philosophy renders
it "the operating LAW."
It is on the right comprehension of
this tenet in the Brahmanas and Puranas that hangs, we believe, the apple of
discord between the three Vedantin Sects: the Advaita, Dwaita, and the
Visishtadvaitas. The first arguing rightly that Parabrahman, having no
relation, as the absolute all, to the manifested world -- the Infinite having
no connection with the finite -- can neither will nor create; that, therefore,
Brahma, Mahat, Iswara, or whatever name the creative power may be known by,
creative gods and all, are simply an illusive aspect of Parabrahmam in the
conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify the impersonal
Cause with the Creator, or Iswara.
Mahat (or Maha-Buddhi) is, with the
Vaishnavas, however, divine mind in active operation, or, as Anaxagoras has it,
"an ordering and disposing mind, which was the cause of all things,"
-- [[Nous o diakosmonte kai panton aitios]].
Wilson saw at a glance the suggestive
connection between Mahat and the Phoenician Mot, or Mut, who was female with
the Egyptians -- the Goddess Mout, the "Mother" -- "which, like
Mahat," he says, "was the first product of the mixture (?) of Spirit
and matter, and the first rudiment of Creation": "Ex connexione autem
ejus spiritus prodidit Mot . . . . . From whose seed were created all living
things" -- repeats Brucker (I., 240) -- giving it a still more
materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.
Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of
the doctrine is seen through every exoteric sentence on the very face of the
old Sanscrit texts that treat of primordial Creation. "The Supreme Soul,
the all permeant (Sarvaga) Substance of the World, having entered (been drawn)
into matter (prakriti) and Spirit (purusha), agitated the mutable and the
immutable principles the season of Creation (manvantara) having arrived."*
. . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Phoenician Cosmogony,
"Spirit mixing with its own principles gives rise to [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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Esoteric doctrine teaches that the
Dhyan Chohans are the collective aggregate of divine Intelligence or primordial
mind, and that the first Manus -- the seven "mind-born" Spiritual
Intelligences -- are identical with the former. Hence the
"Kwan-shi-yin" -- "the golden Dragon in whom are the
seven," of Stanza III. -- is the primordial Logos, or Brahma, the first
manifested creative Power; and the Dhyani-Energies are the Manus, or
Manu-Swayambhuva collectively. The direct connection, moreover, between the
"Manus" and "Mahat" is easy to see. Manu is from the root
man, "to think"; and thinking proceeds from the mind. It is, in
Cosmogony, the pre-nebular period.
(II.) "The second
Creation," "Bhuta," was of the rudimental principles
(Tanmatras), thence termed the elemental creation (Bhuta-sarga).* It is the
period of the first breath of the differentiation of the pre-Cosmic Elements or
matter. Bhutadi means literally "the origin of the Elements," and
precedes Bhuta-sarga -- the "creation" or differentiation of those
Elements in primordial "Akasa" (Chaos or Vacuity).** In the
"Vishnu Purana" it is said to proceed along, and belong to, the
triple aspect of Ahankara, translated Egotism, but meaning rather that
untranslateable term the "I-AM-NESS," that which first issues from
"Mahat," or divine mind; the first shadowy outline of Self-hood, for
"pure" Ahankara becomes "passionate" and finally
"rudimental"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] creation" also; (Brucker, I., 240); the Orphic triad shows an
identical doctrine: for there Phanes (or Eros), Chaos, containing crude
undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Chronos (time), are the three co-operating
principles, emanating from the Unknowable and concealed point, which produce
the work of "Creation." And they are the Hindu Purusha (phanes),
Pradhana (chaos), and Kala (Chronos) or time. The good Professor Wilson does
not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal, would. He
remarks that "as presently explained,. the mixture (of the Supreme Spirit
or Soul) is not mechanical; it is an influence or effect exerted upon
intermediate agents which produce effects." The sentence in Vishnu Purana:
"As fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any
immediate operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influenced the elements of
creation," the reverend and erudite Sanscritist correctly explains . . . :
"As perfumes do not delight the mind by actual contact, but by the
impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which communicates it to the
mind," adding: "The entrance of the Supreme into spirit, as well as
matter, is less intelligible than the view elsewhere taken of it, as the
infusion of spirit, identified with the supreme, into Prakriti or matter
alone." He prefers the verse in Padma Purana: "He who is called the
male (spirit) of Prakriti . . . that same divine Vishnu entered into
Prakriti." This "view" is certainly more akin to the plastic
character of certain verses in the Bible concerning the Patriarchs, such as Lot
(Gen. xix., 34-38) and even Adam (iv., v. 1), and others of a still more
anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to Phallicism,
Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the first chapter of Genesis
down to the Revelation.
* All these sentences are quoted from
"Vishnu Purana," Book I., ch. v.
** Vishnu is both Bhutesa, "Lord
of the Elements, and all things," and Viswarupa, "Universal Substance
or Soul."
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(initial); it is "the origin of
conscious as of all unconscious being," though the Esoteric school rejects
the idea of anything being "unconscious" -- save on this (our) plane
of illusion and ignorance. At this stage of the Second Creation, the second
hierarchy of the Manus appear, the Dhyan Chohans or Devas, who are the origin
of Form (rupa): the Chitrasikhandina (bright-crested) or the Riksha -- those
Rishis who have become the informing souls of the seven stars (of the Great
Bear).* In astronomical and Cosmogonical language this Creation relates to the
first stage of Cosmic-life, the Fire-Mist Period after its Chaotic stage,**
when atoms issue from Laya.
(III.) The third (the Indriya) was
the modified form of Ahankara, the conception of "I," (from
"Aham," "I") termed the organic Creation, or creation of
the senses (Aindriyaka). "These three were the Prakrita creation, the
(discrete) developments of indiscrete nature preceded by the indiscrete
principle." "Preceded by," ought to be replaced here with
"beginning by," Buddhi; for the latter is neither a discrete nor an
indiscrete quantity, but partakes of the nature of both, in man as in Kosmos: a
unit -- a human MONAD on the plane of illusion -- when once freed from the
three forms of Ahankara and liberated from its terrestrial manas, Buddhi
becomes truly a continued quantity, both in duration and extension, because
eternal and immortal. Earlier it is stated, that the third Creation "abounding
with the quality of goodness, is termed Urdhvasrotas"; and a page or two
further the Urdhvasrotas creation is referred to as "the sixth creation .
. . that of the divinities" (p. 75). This shows plainly that earlier as
well as later manvantaras have been purposely confused, to prevent the pro-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See concerning their post-types,
the Treatise written by Trithemius (Agrippa's master, 16th cent.).
"Concerning the seven secondaries, or Spiritual Intelligences, who, after
God, actuate the Universe;" giving out, besides secret cycles and several
prophecies, certain facts and beliefs about the Genii, or the Elohim, which
preside over and guide the septenary stages of the World's Course.
** From the first, the Orientalists
have found themselves beset by great difficulties with regard to any possible
order in the Puranic Creations. Brahma is very often confused with Brahm, by
Wilson, for which he is criticised by his successors. The "Original Sanscrit
Texts" are preferred by Mr. Fitzedward Hall for the translation of Vishnu
Purana and texts, to those 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,"
as said by the editor of his works. This reminds one of the answer given by one
of Thomas Taylor's admirers to those scholars who criticised his translations
of Plato. "Thomas Taylor may have had less knowledge of the Greek than his
critics have, but he understood Plato far better than they do," he said.
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.
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fane from perceiving the truth. This
is called "incongruity" and "contradictions" by the
Orientalists.*
This "creation" of the
immortals, the "Deva-Sarga," is the last of the first series, and has
a universal reference; namely, to Evolutions in general, not specifically to
our Manvantara; but the latter begins with the same over and over again,
showing that it refers to several distinct Kalpas. For it is said "at the
close of the past (Padma) Kalpa the divine Brahma awoke from his night of sleep
and beheld the universe void." Then Brahma is shown going once more over
the "seven creations" in the secondary stage of evolution, repeating
the first three on the objective plane.
(IV.) The Mukhya, the Primary as it
begins the series of four. Neither the word "inanimate" bodies nor
yet immovable things, as translated by Wilson, gives a correct idea of the
Sanskrit terms used. Esoteric philosophy is not the only one to reject the idea
of any atom being inorganic, for it is found also in orthodox Hinduism.
Moreover, Wilson himself says (in his collected Works, vol. iii., p. 381):
"All the Hindu systems consider vegetable bodies as endowed with life . .
. " Charachara, or the synonymous sthavara and jangama, is, therefore,
inaccurately rendered by "animate and inanimate," "sentient
beings," and "unconscious," or "conscious and unconscious
beings," etc., etc. "Locomotive and fixed" would be better,
since trees are considered to possess souls." Mukhya is the
"creation" or organic evolution of the vegetable kingdom. In this
secondary Period, the three degrees of Elemental or Rudimental Kingdoms are evolved
in this world, corresponding inversely in order to the three Prakritic
creations during the Primary period of Brahma's activity. As in that period, in
the words of "Vishnu Purana": "The first creation was that of
Mahat (Intellect), the second, of Tanmatras (rudimental principles), and the
third, that of the senses (Aindriyaka)"; in this one, the order of the
Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) The nascent centres of Force (intellectual
and physical); (2) the rudimental principles -- nerve force, so to say; and (3)
nascent apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially
developed in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The three Creations beginning
with Intelligence are elemental, but the six creations which proceed from the
series of which Intellect is the first are the work of Brahma"
(Vayu-Purana). Here "creations" mean everywhere stages of Evolution.
Mahat, "Intellect" or mind (which corresponds with Manas, the former
being on the Cosmic, and the latter on the human plane) stands here, too, lower
than Buddhi or Supra-divine Intelligence. Therefore, when we read in Linga
Purana 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 Puranas, but only occasionally hinted at.
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objective kingdom of minerals, in
which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-develop only in the
plants). The mukhya "Creation," then, is the middle point between the
three lower and the three higher kingdoms, which represent the seven esoteric
kingdoms of Kosmos, as of Earth.
(V.) The Tiryaksrotas (or
Tairyagyonya) creation,* that of the "(sacred) animals," corresponding
only on Earth, to the dumb animal creation. That which is meant by
"animals," in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening
consciousness or of apperception, that which is faintly traceable in some
sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic monera.** On our
globe, during the first round, animal "creation" precedes that of
man, while the former (or mammal) evolves from the latter in our fourth round
-- on the physical plane: in Round I. the animal atoms are drawn into a
cohesion of human physical form; while in Round IV. the reverse occurs
according to magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is
metempsychosis (See "Mineral Monad" in "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 276). This fifth stage of evolution, called exoterically
"Creation," may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary periods,
one as the Spiritual and Cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial. It
is Archibiosis, or life-origination -- "origination," so far, of
course, as the manifestation of life on all the seven planes is concerned. It
is at this period of Evolution that the absolutely eternal universal motion, or
vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language "the GREAT
BREATH," differentiates in the primordial, first manifested ATOM. More and
more, as chemical and physical sciences progress, does this occult axiom find
its corroboration in the world of knowledge: the scientific hypothesis, that
even the simplest elements of matter are identical in nature and differ from
each other only owing to the variety of the distributions of atoms in the
molecule or speck of substance, or by the modes of its atomic vibration, gains
every day more ground.
Thus, as the differentiation of the
primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of the Dhyan Chohan of the
third group or hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation, before those
"gods" can become rupa (embodied in their first ethereal form), so
animal creation has to precede,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor Wilson translates it, as
though animals were higher on 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
(Prakrita) and secondary (Vaikrita). It is the latter, as regards the origin of
the gods from Brahma (the personal anthropomorphic creator of our material
universe); it is the former (primary) as affecting Rudra, who is the immediate
production of the first principle. Rudra is not alone a title of Siva, but
embraces agents of creation, angels and men, as will be shown further on.
** Neither plant nor animal, but an
existence between the two.
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for that same reason, divine MAN on
earth. And this is why we find in the Puranas: "The fifth, the
Tairyagyonya creation, was that of animals, and --
(VI). The Urdhvasrotas creation, or
that of divinities (Vishnu Purana Book I. chap. i.). But these (divinities) are
simply the prototypes of the First Race, the fathers of their
"mind-born" progeny with the soft bones.* It is these who became the
Evolvers of the "Sweat-born" -- an expression explained in Book II.
Finally, the sixth "Creation" is followed, and "Creation in
general, closed by --
(VII.) The evolution of the
"Arvaksrotas beings, which was the seventh, and was that of man"
(Vishnu Purana, Book I.).
The "eighth creation"
mentioned is no Creation at all; it is a blind again, for it refers to a purely
mental process: the cognition of the "ninth" creation, which, in its
turn, is an effect, manifesting in the secondary of that which was a
"Creation" in the Primary (Prakrita) Creation.** The Eighth, then,
called Anugraha (the Pratyayasarga or the intellectual creation of the
Sankhyas, explained in Karika, v. 46, p. 146), is "that creation of which
we have a perception" -- in its esoteric aspect -- and "to which we
give intellectual assent (Anugraha) in contradistinction to organic
creation." It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole
range of "gods" and especially of those we bear to the Kumaras -- the
so-called "Ninth Creation" -- which is in reality an aspect of or
reflection of the sixth in our manvantara (the Vaivasvata). "There is a
ninth, the Kumara Creation, which is both primary and secondary," says
Vishnu Purana, the oldest of such texts.*** "The Kumaras," explains an
esoteric text,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Created beings" --
explains Vishnu Purana -- "although they are destroyed (in their
individual forms) at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by the good
or evil acts of former existences, are never exempted from their consequences.
And when Brahma produces the world anew, they are the progeny of his will . .
." "Collecting his mind into itself (Yoga willing), Brahma creates
the four orders of beings, termed gods, demons, progenitors, and MEN" . .
. "progenitors" meaning the prototypes and Evolvers of the first Root
Race of men. The progenitors are the Pitris, and are of seven classes. They are
said in exoteric mythology to be born of Brahma's side, like Eve from the rib
of Adam.
** "These notions," remarks
Dr. Wilson, "the birth of Rudra and the saints, seem to have been borrowed
from the Saivas, and to have been awkwardly engrafted upon the Vaishnava
system." The esoteric meaning ought to have been consulted before
venturing such a hypothesis.
*** Parasara, the Vedic Rishi, who
received the Vishnu Purana from Pulastya and taught it to Maitreya, is placed
by the Orientalists at various epochs. As correctly observed, in the Hindu
Class. Dict:-- "Speculations as to his era differ widely from 575 B.C. to
1391 B.C., and cannot be trusted." Quite so; but no less, however, than
any other date as assigned by the Sanskritists, so famous in this department of
arbitrary fancy.
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"are the Dhyanis, derived
immediately from the supreme Principle, who reappear in the Vaivasvata Manu
period, for the progress of mankind."* The commentator of the Vishnu
Purana corroborates it, by remarking that "these sages live as long as
Brahma; and they are only created by him in the first Kalpa, although their
generation is very commonly and inconsistently introduced in the Varaha, or Padma
Kalpa" (the secondary). Thus, the Kumaras are, exoterically, "the
creation of Rudra or Nilalohita, a form of Siva, by Brahma, and of certain
other mind-born sons of Brahma. But, in the esoteric teaching, they are the
progenitors of the true spiritual SELF in the physical man -- the higher
Prajapati, while the Pitris, or lower Prajapati, are no more than the fathers
of the model, or type of his physical form, made "in their image."
Four (and occasionally five) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three Kumaras
being secret.** (Compare what is said of "The Fallen Angels" in Book
II.).
The Exoteric four are: Sanat-Kumara,
Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana; and the esoteric three are: Sana, Kapila, and
Sanat-sujata. Special attention is once more drawn to this class of Dhyan
Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of generation and heredity hinted at in
Book I. (See the four Orders of Angelic Beings; Comment on Stanza VII.). Book
II. explains their position in the divine Hierarchy. Meanwhile, let us see what
the exoteric texts say about them.
They do not say much; nothing to him
who fails to read between the lines. "We must have recourse, here, to
other Puranas for the elucidation of this term," remarks Wilson, who does
not suspect for one moment that he is in the presence of the "Angels of
Darkness," the mythical "great enemy" of his Church. Therefore,
he contrives to elucidate no more than that these (divinities) DECLINING TO
CREATE PROGENY*** (and thus rebelling against Brahma), remained, as the name
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** "The four Kumaras (are) the
mind-born Sons of Brahma. Some specify seven" (H. Class. Dict.). All these
seven Vaidhatra, the patronymic of the Kumaras, "the Maker's Sons,"
are mentioned and described in Iswara Krishna's "Sankhya Karika" with
the Commentary of Gaudapadacharya (Sankaracharya's Paraguru) attached to it. It
discusses the nature of the Kumaras, though it refrains from mentioning by name
all the seven Kumaras, but calls them instead "the seven sons of
Brahma," which they are, as they are created by Brahma in Rudra. The list
of names it gives us is: Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatana, Kapila, Ribhu, and
Panchasikha. But these are again all aliases.
*** So untrustworthy are some
translations of the Orientalists that in the French Translation of Hari-Vamsa,
it is said "The seven Prajapati, Rudra, Skanda (his son) [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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of the first implies, ever boys,
Kumaras: that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their creation is also called
the "Kumara." (Book I. chap. v., Vishnu Purana.) The Puranas,
however, may afford a little more light. "Being ever as he was born, he is
here called a youth; and hence his name is well known as Sanat-Kumara"
(Linga purana, prior section LXX. 174.) In the Saiva Purana, the Kumaras are
always described as Yogins. The Kurma Purana, after enumerating them, says:
"These five, O Brahmans, were Yogins, who acquired entire exemption from
passion." They are five, because two of the Kumaras fell.
Of all the seven great divisions of
Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas, there is none with which humanity is more concerned
than with the Kumaras. Imprudent are the Christian Theologians who have
degraded them into fallen Angels, and now call them "Satan" and
Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who refuse to create, the Archangel
Michael -- the greatest patron Saint of Western and Eastern Churches, under his
double name of St. Michael and his supposed copy on earth, St. George
conquering the DRAGON -- has to be allowed one of the most prominent places. (See
Book II., "The Sacred Dragons and their Slayers.")
The Kumaras, the "mind-born
Sons" of Brahma-Rudra (or Siva)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] and Sanat-Kumara proceeded to create beings." Whereas, as Wilson
shows, the original is: "These seven . . . created progeny; and so did
Rudra, but Skanda and Sanat Kumara, restraining their power, abstained from
creation." The "four orders of beings" are referred to sometimes
as "Ambhamsi," which Wilson renders: "literally Waters,"
and believes it "a mystic term." It is one, no doubt; but he
evidently failed to catch the real esoteric meaning. "Waters" and
"water" stand as the symbol for Akasa, the "primordial Ocean of
Space," on which Narayana, the self-born Spirit, moves: reclining on that
which is its progeny (See Manu). "Water is the body of Nara; thus we have
heard the name of water explained. Since Brahma rests on the water, therefore
he is termed Narayana" (Linga, Vayu, and Markandeya Puranas) ". . .
Pure, Purusha created the Waters pure . . ." at the same time Water is the
third principle in material Kosmos, and the third in the realm of the
Spiritual: Spirit of Fire, Flame, Akasa, Ether, Water, Air, Earth, are the
cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic principles, pre-eminently
occult, in every plane of being. "Gods, Demons, Pitris and men," are
the four orders of beings to whom the term Ambhamsi is applied (in the Vedas it
is a synonym of gods): because they are all the product of WATERS (mystically),
of the Akasic Ocean, and of the Third Principle in nature. Pitris and men on
earth are the transformations (rebirths) of gods and demons (Spirits) on a
higher plane. Water is, in another sense, the feminine principle. Venus Aphrodite
is the personified Sea, and the mother of the god of love, the generator of all
the gods as much as the Christian Virgin Mary is Mare (the sea), the mother of
the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If the student of Esoteric
philosophy thinks deeply over the subject he is sure to find out all the
suggestiveness of the term Ambhamsi, in its manifold relations to the Virgin in
Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the Alchemists, and even to the "Waters
of Grace" of the modern Baptist.
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the howling and terrific destroyer of
human passions and physical senses, which are ever in the way of the
development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of the inner
eternal man -- mystically,* are the progeny of Siva, the Mahayogi, the great
patron of all the Yogis and mystics of India. They themselves, being the "Virgin-Ascetics,"
refuse to create the material being MAN. Well may they be suspected of a direct
connection with the Christian Archangel Michael, the "Virgin
Combatant" of the Dragon Apophis, whose victim is every soul united too
loosely to its immortal Spirit, the Angel who, as shown by the Gnostics,
refused to create just as the Kumaras did. (See Book II., "The Mystic
Dragons and their Slayers.") . . . Does not that patron-Angel of the Jews
preside over Saturn (Siva or Rudra), and the Sabbath, the day of Saturn? Is he
not shown of the same essence with his father (Saturn), and called the
"Son of Time," Kronos, or Kala (time), a form of Brahma (Vishnu and
Siva)?" And is not "Old Time" of the Greeks, with its scythe and
sand-glass, identical with the "Ancient of Days" of the Kabalists,
the latter "Ancient" being one with the Hindu "Ancient of
Days," Brahma (in his triune form), whose name is also "Sanat,"
the Ancient? Every Kumara bears the prefix of Sanat and Sana; and Sanaischara
is Saturn, the planet (Sani and Sarra), the King Saturn whose Secretary in
Egypt was Thot-Hermes the first. They are thus identified both with the planet
and the god (Siva), who are, in their turn, shown the prototypes of Saturn, who
is the same as Bel, Baal, Siva, and Jehovah Sabbaoth, The angel of whose face
is MIKAEL ([[diagram]] "who is as God"). He is the patron, and
guardian Angel of the Jews, as Daniel tells us (v. 21); and, before the Kumaras
were degraded, by those who were ignorant of their very name, into demons and fallen
angels, the Greek Ophites, the occultly inclined predecessors and precursors of
the Roman Catholic Church after its secession and separation from the primitive
Greek Church, had identified Michael with their Ophiomorphos, the rebellious
and opposing spirit. This means nothing more than the reverse aspect
(symbolically) of Ophis -- divine Wisdom or Christos. In the Talmud, Mikael
(Michael) is "Prince of Water" and the chief of the seven Spirits,
for the same reason that his prototype (among many others) Sanat-Sujata,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as
Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of spiritual as well as
of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a
conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first DIE
before his body does. "To live is to die and to die is to live," has
been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and
the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. He weeds
out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to
call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.
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-- the chief of the Kumaras -- is
called Ambhamsi, "Waters," -- according to the commentary on Vishnu
Purana. Why? Because the "Waters" is another name of the "Great
Deep," the primordial Waters of space or Chaos, and also means
"Mother," Amba, meaning Aditi and Akasa, the Celestial Virgin-Mother
of the visible universe. Furthermore, the "Waters of the flood" are
also called "the GREAT DRAGON," or Ophis, Ophio-Morphos.
The Rudras will be noticed in their
Septenary character of "Fire-Spirits" in the "Symbolism"
attached to the Stanzas in Book II. There we shall also consider the Cross (3 +
4) under its primeval and later forms, and shall use for purposes of comparison
the Pythagorean numbers side by side with Hebrew Metrology. The immense
importance of the number seven will thus become evident, as the root number of
nature. We shall examine it from the standpoints of the Vedas and the Chaldean
Scriptures, as it existed in Egypt thousands of years B.C., and as treated in
the Gnostic records; we shall show how its importance as a basic number has
gained recognition in physical Science; and we shall endeavour to prove that
the importance attached to the number seven throughout all antiquity was due to
no fanciful imaginings of uneducated priests, but to a profound knowledge of
natural law.
--------------
§ XIV.
THE FOUR ELEMENTS.
METAPHYSICALLY and esoterically there
is but One ELEMENT in nature, and at the root of it is the Deity; and the
so-called seven elements, of which five have already manifested and asserted
their existence, are the garment, the veil, of that deity; direct from the
essence whereof comes MAN, whether physically, psychically, mentally or
spiritually considered. Four elements only are generally spoken of in later
antiquity, five admitted only in philosophy. For the body of ether is not fully
manifested yet, and its noumenon is still "the Omnipotent Father --
AEther, the synthesis of the rest." But what are these
"ELEMENTS" whose compound bodies have now been discovered by
Chemistry and Physics to contain numberless sub-elements, even the sixty or
seventy of which no longer embrace the whole number suspected. (Vide Addenda,
§§ XI. and XII., quotations from Mr. Crookes' Lectures.) Let us follow their
evolution from the historical beginnings, at any rate.
The four Elements were fully
characterized by Plato when he said that they were that "which composes
and decomposes the compound bodies."
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Hence Cosmolatry was never, even in
its worst aspect, the fetishism which adores or worships the passive external
form and matter of any object, but looked ever to the noumenon therein. Fire,
Air, Water, Earth, were but the visible garb, the symbols of the informing,
invisible Souls or Spirits -- the Cosmic gods to whom worship was offered by
the ignorant, and simple, respectful recognition by the wiser. In their turn
the phenomenal subdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed by the
Elementals, so called, the "Nature Spirits" of lower grades.
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find Ether
first, and then the air; the two principles from which Ulom the intelligible
([[noetos]]) God (the visible universe of matter) is born.*
In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes
evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which the AEthereal winds impregnate, Wind being
"the Spirit of God," who is said to move in AEther, "brooding
over the chaos" -- the Divine "Idea." In the Hindu
Katakopanisad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before the original
matter, from whose union springs the great Soul of the World, "Maha =
Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life;"** these latter appellations being again
identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, the Astral Light of the
Theurgists and Kabalists, being its last and lowest division."
The [[stoicheia]], (Elements) of
Plato and Aristotle, were thus the incorporeal principles attached to the four
great divisions of our Cosmic World, and it is with justice that Creuzer
defines those primitive beliefs . . . as a species of magism, a psychic
paganism, and a deification of potencies; a spiritualization which placed the
believers in a close community with these potencies," (Book IX, p. 850).
So close, indeed, that the hierarchies of those potencies or Forces have been
classified on a graduated scale of seven from the ponderable to the
imponderable. They are Septenary, -- not as an artificial aid to facilitate
their comprehension -- but in their real Cosmic gradation, from their chemical
(or physical) to their purely spiritual composition. Gods -- with the ignorant
masses -- gods independent and supreme; daemons with the fanatics, who,
intellectual as they often may be, are unable to understand the Spirit of the
philosophical sentence, in pluribus unum. With the hermetic philosopher they
are FORCES relatively "blind," or "intelligent," according
to which of the principles in them he deals with. It required long millenniums
before they found themselves, in our cultured age, finally degraded into simple
chemical elements.
At any rate, good Christians, and
especially the Biblical Protestants,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Movers: "Phoinizer," 282.
** Weber: "Akad. Vorles,"
213, 214, etc.
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ought to show more reverence for the
four Elements, if they would show any for Moses. For the Bible manifests the
consideration and mystic significance in which they were held by the Hebrew
Lawgiver, on every page of the Pentateuch. The tent which contained the Holy of
Holies " was a Cosmic Symbol, sacred, in one of its meanings, to the
Elements, the four cardinal points, and ETHER. Josephus shows it built in
white, the colour of Ether. And this explains also why, in the Egyptian and the
Hebrew temples -- according to Clemens Alexandrinus -- a gigantic curtain,
supported by five pillars, separated the sanctum sanctorum (now represented by
the altar in Christian churches) wherein the priests alone were permitted to
enter, from the part accessible to the profane. By its four colours the curtain
symbolized the four principal Elements, and signified the knowledge of the
divine that the five senses of men can enable man to acquire with the help of
the four Elements. (See Stromata I., v. § 6).
In Cory's Ancient Fragments, one of
the "Chaldean Oracles" expresses ideas about the elements and Ether
in language singularly like that of the Unseen Universe, written by two eminent
scientists of our day.
It states that "from ether have
come all things, and to it all will return; that the images of all things are
indelibly impressed upon it; and that it is the store-house of the germs or of
the remains of all visible forms, and even ideas. It appears as if this case
strangely corroborates our assertion that whatever discoveries may be made in
our days will be found to have been anticipated by many thousand years by our
'simple-minded ancestors.' " -- (Isis Unveiled.)
Whence came the four elements and the
malachim of the Hebrews? They have been made to merge, by a theological
sleight-of-hand on the part of the Rabbins and the later Fathers of the Church
into Jehovah, but their origin is identical with that of the Cosmic gods of all
other nations. Their symbols, whether born on the shores of the Oxus, on the
burning sands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests, weird and glacial, which
cover the slopes and peaks of the sacred snowy mountains of Thessaly, or again,
in the pampas of America, their symbols, we repeat, when traced to their
source, are ever one and the same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian, Aryan or
Semitic, the genius loci, the local god, embraced in its unity all nature; but
not especially the four elements any more than one of their creations, such as
trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The genius loci -- a very late after-thought of
the last sub-races of the Fifth Root-race, when the primitive and grandiose
meaning had become nearly lost -- was ever the representative in his
accumulated titles of all his colleagues. It was the god of fire, symbolised by
thunder, as Jove or Agni; the god of water, symbolised by the fluvial bull or
some sacred river or fountain, as Varuna, Neptune, etc.; the god of air,
manifesting in the hurricane and tempest, as Vayu and Indra; and the god or
spirit
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of the earth, who appeared in
earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others.
These were the Cosmic gods, ever
synthesizing all in one, as found in every cosmogony or mythology. Thus, the
Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter, who included in himself the four elements
and the four cardinal points, and who was recognized, therefore, in old Rome
under the pantheistic title of Jupiter Mundus; and who now, in modern Rome, has
become the Deus Mundus, the one mundane god, who is made to swallow all others
in the latest theology -- by the arbitrary decision of his special ministers.
As gods of Fire, Air, Water, they
were celestial gods; as gods of the lower region, they were infernal deities:
the latter adjective applying simply to the Earth. They were "Spirits of
the Earth" under their respective names of Yama, Pluto, Osiris, the
"Lord of the lower kingdom, etc., etc.," and their tellurial
character proves it sufficiently.* The ancients knew of no worse abode after
death than the Kamaloka, the limbus on this Earth. If it is argued that the
Dodonean Jupiter was identified with Aidoneus, the king of the subterranean
world, and Dis, or the Roman Pluto and the Dionysius Chthonios, the
subterranean, wherein, according to Creuzer (I, vi., ch. 1), oracles were
rendered, then it will become the pleasure of the Occultists to prove that both
Aidoneus and Dionysius are the bases of Adonai, or "Jurbo Adonai," as
Jehovah is called in Codex Nazaraeus. "Thou shalt not worship the Sun, who
is named Adonai, whose name is also Kadush and El-El" (Cod. Naz., I, 47;
see also Psalm lxxxix., 18), and also "Lord Bacchus." Baal-Adonis of
the Sods or Mysteries of the pre-Babylonian Jews became the Adonai by the
Massorah, the later-vowelled Jehovah. Hence the Roman Catholics are right. All
these Jupiters are of the same family; but Jehovah has to be included therein
to make it complete. Jupiter-Aerios or Pan, the Jupiter Ammon, and the
Jupiter-Bel-Moloch, are all correlations and one with Yurbo-Adonai, because
they are all one cosmic nature. It is that nature and power which create the specific
terrestrial symbol, and the physical and material fabric of the latter, which
proves the Energy manifesting through it as extrinsic.
For primitive religion was something
better than simple pre-occupation about physical phenomena, as remarked by
Schilling; and principles, more elevated than we modern Sadducees know of,
"were hidden under the transparent veil of such merely natural divinities
as thunder,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Gehenna of the Bible was a
valley near Jerusalem, where the monotheistic Jews immolated their children to
Moloch, if the prophet Jeremiah is to be believed on his word. The Scandinavian
Hel or Hela was a frigid region -- again Kamaloka -- and the Egyptian Amenti a
place of purification. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 11.)
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the winds, and rain." The
ancients knew and could distinguish the corporeal from the spiritual elements,
in the forces of nature.
The four-fold Jupiter, as the
four-faced Brahma -- the aerial, the fulgurant, the terrestrial, and the marine
god -- the lord and master of the four elements, may stand as a representative
for the great Cosmic gods of every nation. While passing power over the fire to
Hephaistos-Vulcan, over the sea, to Poseidon-Neptune, and over the Earth, to
Pluto-Aidoneus -- the AERIAL Jove was all these; for AETHER, from the first,
had pre-eminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the elements.
Tradition points to a grotto, a vast
cave in the deserts of Central Asia, whereinto light pours through its four
seemingly natural apertures or clefts placed crossways at the four cardinal
points of the place. From noon till an hour before sunset that light streams
in, of four different colours, as averred -- red, blue, orange-gold, and white
-- owing to some either natural or artificially prepared conditions of vegetation
and soil. The light converges in the centre around a pillar of white marble
with a globe upon it, which represents our earth. It is named the "grotto
of Zaratushta."
When included under the arts and
sciences of the fourth race, the Atlanteans, the phenomenal manifestation of
the four elements, justly attributed by the believers in Cosmic gods to the
intelligent interference of the latter, assumed a scientific character. The
magic of the ancient priests consisted, in those days, in addressing their gods
in their own language. "The speech of the men of the earth cannot reach
the Lords. Each must be addressed in the language of his respective
element" -- is a sentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning.
"The Book of Rules" cited adds as an explanation of the nature of
that Element-language: "It is composed of sounds, not words; of sounds,
numbers and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the
response of the superintending Power" (the regent-god of the specific element
needed).
Thus this "language" is
that of incantations or of MANTRAS, as they are called in India, sound being
the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which
opens the door of communication between Mortals and the Immortals. He who believes
in the words and teachings of St. Paul, has no right to pick out from the
latter those sentences only that he chooses to accept, to the rejection of
others; and St. Paul teaches most undeniably the existence of cosmic gods and
their presence among us. Paganism preached a dual and simultaneous evolution:
"creation" -- "spiritualem ac mundanum," as the Roman
Church has it -- ages before the advent of that Roman Church. Exoteric
phraseology has changed little with respect to divine hierarchies since the
most palmy days of Paganism, or "Idolatry." Names alone have changed,
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along with claims which have now
become false pretences. For when Plato put in the mouth of the Highest
Principle -- "Father AEther" or Jupiter -- these words, for instance:
"The gods of the gods of whom I am the maker (opifex) as I am the father
of all their works (operumque parens)"; he knew the spirit of this
sentence as fully, we suspect, as St. Paul did, when saying: "For though
there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be gods
many and lords many," . . . . etc. (1 Cor. viii. 5.)* Both knew the sense
and the meaning of what they put forward in such guarded terms.
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 [[pneuma]], 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 . . . . .
." (P. 89.) This, the great man of science (in his preface to the fifth
edition of "Correlation of Physical Forces") considers as the only
concern of exact science, which has no business to meddle with the CAUSES.
"Cause and effect," he explains, "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 norma 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" (p. xiv.).
This policy once accepted, and the
system virtually admitted in the above-quoted words, namely, the spirituality
of the "ultimate generating power," it would be more than illogical
to refuse to recognise this quality which is inherent in the material elements,
or rather, in their com-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* We cannot be taken to task by the
Protestants for interpreting the verse from the Corinthians as we do; for, if
the translation in the English Bible is made ambiguous, it is not so in the
original texts, and the Roman Catholic Church accepts the words of the Apostle
in their true sense. For a proof see the Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles,
by St. John Chrysostom "directly inspired by the Apostle," and
"who wrote under his dictation," as we are assured by the Marquis de
Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome. And St. Chrysostom says, commenting
on that special verse, "And, though there are (in fact) they who are
called gods . . . . -- for it seems, there are really several gods -- withal,
and for all that, the God-principle and the Superior God ceasing to remain
essentially one and indivisible." . . . Thus spoke the old Initiates also,
knowing that the worship of minor gods could never affect the "God
Principle" (See de Mirville, "Des Esprits," vol. ii., 322).
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pounds -- as present in the fire,
air, water or earth. The ancients knew these powers so well, that, while
concealing their true nature under various allegories, for the benefit (or to
the detriment) of the uneducated rabble, they never departed from the multiple
object in view, while inverting them. They contrived to throw a thick veil over
the nucleus of truth concealed by the symbol, but they ever tried to preserve
the latter as a record for future generations, sufficiently transparent to
allow their wise men to discern that truth behind the fabulous form of the
glyph or allegory. They are accused of superstition and credulity, those
ancient sages; and this by those very nations, which, learned in all the modern
arts and sciences, cultured and wise in their generation, accept to this day as
their one living and infinite God, the anthropomorphic "Jehovah" of
the Jews.
What were some of the alleged
"superstitions"? Hesiod believed, for instance, that "the winds
were the sons of the giant Typhoeus," who were chained and unchained at
will by AEolus, and the polytheistic Greeks accepted it along with Hesiod. Why
should not they, since the monotheistic Jews had the same beliefs, with other
names for their dramatis personae, and since Christians believe in the same to
this day? The Hesiodic AEolus, Boreas, etc., etc., were named Kadim, Tzaphon,
Daren, and Ruach Hajan by the "chosen people" of Israel. What is,
then, the fundamental difference? While the Hellenes were taught that AEolus
tied and untied the winds, the Jews believed as fervently that their Lord God,
"with smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth, rode
upon a cherub and did fly; and was seen upon the wings of the wind" (II.
Sam., xxii. 9 and 11). The expressions of the two nations are either both
figures of speech, or both superstitions. We think they are neither; but only
arise from a keen sense of oneness with nature, and a perception of the
mysterious and the intelligent behind every natural phenomenon, which the
moderns no longer possess. Nor was it "superstitious" in the Greek
pagans to listen to the oracle of Delphi, when, at the approach of the fleet of
Xerxes, that oracle advised them to "sacrifice to the Winds," if the
same has to be regarded as Divine Worship in the Israelites, who sacrificed as
often to the wind and fire -- especially to the latter element. Do they not say
that their "God is a consuming fire" (Deut. iv., 24), who appeared
generally as Fire and "encompassed by fire"? and did not Elijah seek
for him (the Lord) in the "great strong wind, and in the earthquake"?
Do not the Christians repeat the same after them? Do not they, moreover,
sacrifice to this day, to the same "God of Wind and Water?" They do;
because special prayers for rain, dry weather, trade-winds and the calming of
storms on the seas exist to this hour in the prayer-books of the three
Christian churches; and the several hundred sects of the Protestant religion
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offer them to their God upon every
threat of calamity? The fact that they are no more answered by Jehovah, than
they were, probably, by Jupiter Pluvius, does not alter the fact of these
prayers being addressed to the Power or Powers supposed to rule over the
Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and Christianity; or
have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry and absurd
"superstition" only when addressed by a Pagan to his idol, and that
the same superstition is suddenly transformed into praiseworthy piety and
religion whenever the name of the celestial addressee is changed? But the tree
is known by its fruit. And the fruit of the Christian tree being no better than
that of the tree of Paganism, why should the former command more reverence than
the latter.
Thus, when we are told by the
Chevalier Drach, a converted Jew, and the Marquis de Mirville, a Roman Catholic
fanatic of the French aristocracy, that in Hebrew lightning is a synonym of
fury, and is always handled by an evil Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur or Fulgurans
is also called by the Christians oelicius, and denounced as the soul of
lightning, its daemon*; we have either to apply the same explanation and
definitions to the "Lord God of Israel," under the same
circumstances, or renounce our right of abusing the gods and creeds of other
nations.
The foregoing statements emanating as
they do from two ardent and learned Roman Catholics, are, to say the least,
dangerous, in the presence of the Bible and its prophets. Indeed, if Jupiter,
the "chief Daemon of the Pagan Greeks," hurled his deadly
thunder-bolts and lightnings at those who excited his wrath, so did the Lord
God of Abraham and Jacob. We find in I. Samuel, that "the Lord thundered
from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice, and he sent out arrows
(thunder bolts) and scattered them (Saul's armies) with lightning, and
discomforted them." (Chap. xxii. 14, 15.)
The Athenians are accused of having
sacrificed to Boreas; and this "Demon" is charged with having
submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian fleet on the rocks of Mount
Pelion, and of having become so furious "that all the Magi of Xerxes could
hardly counteract it by offering contra-sacrifices to Tethys" [Herodotus
"Polym." cxc]. Very fortunately, no authenticated instance is on the
records of Christian wars showing a like catastrophe on the same scale
happening to one Christian fleet owing to the "prayers" of its enemy
-- another Christian nation. But this is from no fault of theirs, for each
prays as ardently to Jehovah for the destruction of the other, as the Athenians
prayed to Boreas. Both resorted to a neat little piece of black magic con
amore. Such abstinence from divine interference being hardly due to lack of
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Cosmolatry, p. 415.
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prayers, sent to a common Almighty
God for mutual destruction, where, then, shall we draw the line between Pagan
and Christian? And who can doubt that all Protestant England would rejoice and
offer thanks to the Lord, if, during some future war, 400 ships of the hostile
fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers. What is, then, the
difference, we ask again, between a Jupiter, a Boreas, and a Jehovah? No more
than this: The crime of one's own next-of-kin -- say of one's
"father" -- is always excused and often exalted, whereas the crime of
our neighbour's parent is ever gladly punished by hanging. Yet the crime is the
same.
So far the "blessings of
Christianity" do not seem to have made any appreciable advance on the
morals of the converted Pagans.
The above is not a defence of Pagan
gods, nor is it an attack on the Christian deity, nor does it mean belief in
either. The writer is quite impartial, and rejects the testimony in favour of
either, neither praying to, believing in, nor dreading any such "personal"
and anthropomorphic God. The parallels are brought forward simply as one more
curious exhibition of the illogical and blind fanaticism of the civilized
theologian. For, so far, there is not a very great difference between the two
beliefs, and there is none in their respective effects upon morality, or
spiritual nature. The "light of Christ" shines upon as hideous
features of the animal-man now, as the "light of Lucifer" did in days
of old.
"Those unfortunate heathens in
their superstition regard even the Elements as something that has
comprehension! . . . . They still have faith in their idol Vayu -- 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 Brahmins over the winds and storms. .
. . ." (The Missionary Lavoisier, of Cochin, in the Journal des Colonies.)
In reply to this, we may quote from Luke viii., 24: "And he (Jesus) arose
and rebuked the Wind and the raging of the Water, and they ceased and there was
a calm." And here is another quotation from a prayer book: . . . "Oh,
Virgin of the Sea, blessed Mother and Lady of the Waters, stay thy waves . .
." etc., etc. (prayer of the Neapolitan and Provencal sailors, copied
textually from that of the Phoenician mariners to their Virgingoddess Astarte.)
The logical and irrepressible conclusion arising from the parallels brought
forward, and the denunciation of the Missionary is this: The commands of the
Brahmins to their element-gods not remaining "ineffectual," the power
of the Brahmins is thus placed on a par with that of Jesus. Moreover, Astarte
is shown not a whit weaker in potency than the "Virgin of the Sea" of
Christian sailors. It is not enough to give a dog a bad name, and then hang
him; the dog has to be proven guilty. Boreas and Astarte may be devils in
theological
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fancy, but, as just remarked, the
tree has to be judged by its fruit. And once the Christians are shown as
immoral and wicked as the pagans ever were, what benefit has humanity derived
from its change of gods and idols?
That, however, which God and the
Christian Saints are justified in doing, becomes a crime, if successful, in
simple mortals. Sorcery and incantations are regarded as fables now; yet from
the day of the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws against witchcraft of
England and America -- obsolete but not repealed to this day -- such
incantations, even when only suspected, were punished as criminal. Why punish a
chimera? And still we read of Constantine, the Emperor, sentencing to death the
philosopher Sopatrus for unchaining the winds, and thus preventing ships loaded
with grain from arriving in time to put an end to famine. Pausanias, when
affirming that he saw with his own eyes "men who by simple prayers and
incantations" stopped a strong hail-storm, is derided. This does not
prevent modern Christian writers from advising prayer during storm and danger,
and believing in its efficacy. Hoppo and Stadlein two magicians and sorcerers
-- were sentenced to death for throwing charms on fruit and transferring a
harvest by magic arts from one field to another, hardly a century ago, if we
can believe Sprenger, the famous writer, who vouches for it: "Qui fruges
excantassent segetem pellicentes incantando."
Let us close by reminding the reader
that, without the smallest shadow of superstition, one may believe in the dual
nature of every object on Earth -- in the spiritual and the material, the
visible and the invisible nature, and that science virtually proves this, while
denying its own demonstration. For if, as Sir William Grove has it, the
electricity we handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected by
something invisible, the "ultimate generating power" of every Force,
the "one omnipresent influence," then it only becomes natural that
one should believe as the ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual in
its nature. "ETHEREAL fire is the emanation of the KABIR proper; the
aerial is but the union (correlation) of the former with terrestrial fire, and
its guidance and application on our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a
lesser dignity" -- an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it;
and the same may be said of every Cosmic Element.
No one will deny that the human being
is possessed of various forces: magnetic, sympathetic, antipathetic, nervous,
dynamical, occult, mechanical, mental -- every kind of force; and that the
physical forces are all biological in their essence, seeing that they
intermingle with, and often merge into, those forces that we have named
intellectual and moral -- the first being the vehicles, so to say, the upadhi,
of the second. No one, who does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in
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saying that their presence and commingling
are the very essence of our being; that they constitute the Ego in man, in
fact. These potencies have their physiological, physical, mechanical, as well
as their nervous, ecstatic, clairaudient, and clairvoyant phenomena, which are
now regarded and recognised as perfectly natural, even by science. Why should
man be the only exception in nature, and why cannot even the ELEMENTS have
their vehicles, their "Vahans" in what we call the PHYSICAL FORCES?
And why, above all, should such beliefs be called "superstition"
along with the religions of old?
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§ XV.
ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN.
LIKE Avalokiteshwara, Kwan-shi-yin
has passed through several transformations, but it is an error to say of him
that he is a modern invention of the Northern Buddhists, for under another
appellation he has been known from the earliest times. The Secret Doctrine
teaches that "He who is the first to appear at Renovation will be the last
to come before Re-absorption (pralaya)." Thus the logoi of all nations,
from the Vedic Visvakarma of the Mysteries down to the Saviour of the present
civilised nations, are the "Word" who was "in the
beginning" (or the reawakening of the energising powers of Nature) with
the One ABSOLUTE. Born of Fire and Water, before these became distinct
elements, IT was the "Maker" (fashioner or modeller) of all things;
"without him was not anything made that was made"; "in whom was
life, and the life was the light of men"; and who finally may be called,
as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of manifested Nature. "The
great Dragon of Wisdom is born of Fire and Water, and into Fire and Water will
all be re-absorbed with him" (Fa-Hwa-King). As this Bodhisatva is said "to
assume any form he pleases" from the beginning of a Manvantara to its end,
though his special birthday (memorial day) is celebrated according to the
Kin-kwang-ming-King ("Luminous Sutra 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 Avatars and Buddhas, in the seventh Race. This belief
and expectation are universal throughout the East. Only it is not in the Kali
yug, our present terrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the "Black
Age," that a new Saviour of Humanity can ever appear. The Kali yug is
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"l'Age d'Or" (!) only in
the mystic writings of some French pseudo-Occultists. (See "La Mission des
Juifs.")
Hence the ritual in the exoteric
worship of this deity was founded on magic. The Mantras are all taken from
special books kept secret by the priests, and each is said to work a magical
effect; as the reciter or reader produces, by simply chanting them, a secret
causation which results in immediate effects. Kwan-Shi-Yin is Avalokiteshwara,
and both are forms of the seventh Universal Principle; while in its highest
metaphysical character this deity is the synthetic aggregation of all the
planetary Spirits, Dhyani Chohans. He is the "Self-manifested;" in
short, the "Son of the Father." Crowned with seven dragons, above his
statue there appears the inscription Pu-Tsi-K'iun-ling, "the universal
Saviour of all living beings."
Of course the name given in the
archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite different, but Kwan-Yin is a perfect equivalent.
In a temple of Pu'to, the sacred island of the Buddhists in China, Kwan-Shi-Yin
is represented floating on a black aquatic bird (Kala-Hansa), and pouring on
the heads of mortals the elixir of life, which, as it flows, is transformed
into one of the chief Dhyani-Buddhas -- the Regent of a star called the
"Star of Salvation." In his third transformation Kwan-Yin is the
informing spirit or genius of Water. In China the Dalai-Lama is believed to be
an incarnation of Kwan-Shi-Yin, who in his third terrestrial appearance was a
Bodhisattva, while the Teshu Lama is an incarnation of Amitabha Buddha, or
Gautama.
It may be remarked en passant that a
writer must indeed have a diseased imagination to discover phallic worship
everywhere, as do the authors of "China Revealed" (McClatchey) and
"Phallicism." The first discovers "the old phallic gods,
represented under two evident symbols -- the Khan or Yang, which is the membrum
virile, and the Kwan or Yin, the pudendum muliebre." (See
"Phallicism," p. 273.) Such a rendering seems the more strange as
Kwan-Shi-Yin (Avalokiteswara) and Kwan-Yin, besides being now the patron
deities of the Buddhist ascetics, the Yogis of Thibet, are the gods of
chastity, and are, in their esoteric meaning, not even that which is implied in
the rendering of Mr. Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," (p. 202): "The
name Avalokiteshwara . . . means 'the Lord who looks down from on high.'
"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) -- the Atman or seventh principle merged in the Universal,
perceived by, or the object of perception to, Buddhi, the sixth principle or
divine Soul in man. In a still higher sense, Avalokiteshwara = Kwan-Shi-Yin,
referred to as the seventh Universal principle, is the Logos
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perceived by the Universal Buddhi --
or Soul, as the synthetic aggregate of the Dhyani-Buddhas: and is not the
"Spirit of Buddha present in the Church," but the omnipresent
universal Spirit manifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This
Orientalistic etymology of Kwan and Yin is on a par with that of
"Yogini," which, we are told by Mr. Hargrave Jennings, "is a
Sanskrit word, in the dialects pronounced Yogi or Zogee (!), and is equivalent
to Sena, and exactly the same as Duti or Duti-Ca' -- i.e., a sacred prostitute
of the temple, worshipped as Yoni or Sakti" (p. 60). "The books of
morality," in India, "direct a faithful wife to shun the society of
Yogini or females who have been adored as Sakti . . . amongst the votaries of a
most licentious description." Nothing should surprise us after this. And
it is, therefore, with hardly a smile that we find another preposterous
absurdity quoted about "Budh," as being a name "which signifies
not only the sun as the source of generation but also the male organ (Round
Towers of Ireland; quoted by Mr. Hargrave Jennings in "Phallicism,"
p. 264). Max Muller, in his "False Analogies," says that "the
most celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Remusat," maintains
"that the three syllables I Hi Wei (in the fourteenth chapter of the
Tao-te-king) were meant for Je-ho-vah (Science of Religion, p. 332); and again,
Father Amyot, who "feels certain that the three persons of the Trinity
could be recognised" in the same work. And if Abel Remusat, why not
Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar will recognise the absurdity of ever seeing in
Budh, "the enlightened" and "the awakened," a "phallic
symbol."
Kwan-shi-yin, then, is "the Son
identical with his Father" mystically, or the Logos -- the word. He is
called the "Dragon of Wisdom" in Stanza III., as all the Logoi of all
the ancient religious systems are connected with, and symbolised by, serpents.
In old Egypt, the God Nahbkoon, "he who unites the doubles," (astral
light re-uniting by its dual physiological and spiritual potency the divine
human to its purely divine Monad, the prototype "in heaven" or
Nature) was represented as a serpent on human legs, either with or without
arms. It was the emblem of the resurrection of Nature, as also of Christ with
the Ophites, and of Jehovah as the brazen serpent healing those who looked at
him; the serpent being an emblem of Christ with the Templars also, (see the
Templar degree in Masonry). The symbol of Knouph (Khoum also), or the soul of
the world, says Champollion (Pantheon, text 3), "is represented among
other forms under that of a huge serpent on human legs; this reptile, being the
emblem of the good genius and the veritable Agathodaemon, is sometimes
bearded." The sacred animal is thus identical with the serpent of the
Ophites, and is figured on a great number of engraved stones, called Gnostic or
Basilidean gems. This serpent appears with various heads (human and animal),
but its gems
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are always found inscribed with the
name [[CHNOUBIS]] (Chnoubis). This symbol is identical with one which,
according to Jamblichus and Champollion, was called "the first of the
celestial gods"; the god Hermes, or Mercury with the Greeks, to which god
Hermes Trismegistos attributes the invention of, and the first initiation of
men into, magic; and Mercury is Budh, Wisdom, Enlightenment, or
"Re-awakening" into the divine Science.
To close, Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin
are the two aspects (male and female) of the same principle in Kosmos, Nature
and Man, of divine wisdom and intelligence. They are the
"Christos-Sophia" of the mystic Gnostics -- the Logos and its Sakti.
In their longing for the expression of some mysteries never to be wholly
comprehended by the profane, the Ancients, knowing that nothing could be
preserved in human memory without some outward symbol, have chosen the (to us)
often ridiculous images of the Kwan-Yins to remind man of his origin and inner
nature. To the impartial, however, the Madonnas in crinolines and the Christs
in white kid gloves must appear far more absurd than the Kwan-Shi-Yin and
Kwan-Yin in their dragon garb. The subjective can hardly be expressed by the
objective. Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterise that
which is above scientific reasoning, and as often far beyond our intellects, it
must needs go beyond that intellect in some shape or other, or else it will fade
out from human remembrance.
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BOOK I. -- 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?"
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CONTENTS.
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PAGE
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
II.MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT
BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
III. "AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC
NON" ... 483
IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN
SCIENCE ... 500
VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC
THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ...
529
IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
XI. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS
... 579
XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ...
588
XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR
INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ...
634
XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY
... 647
XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION
... 668
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ADDENDA TO BOOK I.
--------------
I.
REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA.
MANY of the doctrines contained in
the foregoing Seven Stanzas and Commentaries having been studied and critically
examined by some Western Theosophists, certain of the occult teachings have
been found wanting from the ordinary stand-point of modern scientific
knowledge. They seemed to encounter insuperable difficulties in the way of
their acceptance, and to require reconsideration in view of scientific
criticism. Some friends have already been tempted to regret the necessity of so
often calling in question the assertions of modern Science. It appeared to them
-- and I here repeat only their arguments -- that "to run counter to the
teachings of its most eminent exponents, was to court a premature discomfiture
in the eyes of the Western World."
It is, therefore, desirable to define
once and for all the position which the writer, who does not agree in this with
her friends, intends to maintain. So far as Science remains what in the words
of Prof. Huxley it is, viz., "organized common sense"; so far as its
inferences are drawn from accurate premises -- its generalizations resting on a
purely inductive basis -- every Theosophist and Occultist welcomes respectfully
and with due admiration its contributions to the domain of cosmological law.
There can be no possible conflict between the teachings of occult and so-called
exact Science, where the conclusions of the latter are grounded on a substratum
of unassailable fact. It is only when its more ardent exponents, over-stepping
the limits of observed phenomena in order to penetrate into the arcana of
Being, attempt to wrench the formation of Kosmos and its living Forces from
Spirit, and attribute all to blind matter, that the Occultists claim the right
to dispute and call in question their theories. Science cannot, owing to the
very nature of things, unveil the mystery of the universe around us. Science
can, it is true, collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the
occultist, arguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring
explorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the
narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the region of
noumena and the sphere of primal causes. To effect this, he must develop
faculties which are absolutely
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dormant -- save in a few rare and
exceptional cases -- in the constitution of the off-shoots of our present Fifth
Root-race in Europe and America. He can in no other conceivable manner collect
the facts on which to base his speculations. Is this not apparent on the principles
of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike?
On the other hand, whatever the
writer may do, she will never be able to satisfy both Truth and Science. To
offer the reader a systematic and uninterrupted version of the Archaic Stanzas
is impossible. A gap of 43 verses or Slokas 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 from 1 et seq. for easier reading and reference. The
appearance of man on Earth alone occupies as many stanzas, which describe
minutely his primal evolution from the human Dhyan Chohans; the state of the
globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of names referring to chemical
substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to combine together, and
are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth Race, occupy a
considerable space. As they are simply untranslateable, and would remain in
every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with those which cannot be
made public. Nevertheless, even the little that is given will irritate any
follower and defender of dogmatic materialistic Science who happens to read
this.
Before proceeding to other Stanzas,
it is proposed, therefore, to defend those already given. They are not in
perfect accord or harmony with modern Science -- this we all know. Had they
been, however, as much in agreement with the views of modern knowledge as a
lecture by Sir W. Thomson, they would have been rejected all the same. For they
teach belief in conscious Powers and Spiritual Entities; in terrestrial,
semi-intelligent, and highly intellectual Forces on other planes*; and in
Beings that dwell around us in spheres imperceptible, whether through telescope
or microscope. Hence the necessity of examining the beliefs of materialistic
Science: of comparing its views about the "Elements" with the
opinions of the ancients, and of analysing the physical Forces as they exist in
modern perception before the Occultists admit themselves to be in the wrong. We
shall touch upon the constitution of the Sun and planets, and the occult
characteristics of what are called Devas and Genii, and are now termed by
Science, Force, or "modes of motion," and see whether esoteric belief
is defensible or not (Vide infra, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms)".
Notwithstanding the efforts made to the contrary, an unprejudiced mind will
discover
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Their intellection, of course,
being of quite a different nature to any we can conceive of on Earth.
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under Newton's "agent, material
or immaterial" (of his third letter to Bentley), the agent which causes
gravity, and, in his personal working God, one finds just as much of the
metaphysical devas and genii, as in Kepler's angelus rector conducting each
planet, and the species immateriata by which the celestial bodies were carried
along in their courses, according to that astronomer.
We shall have, in Book II., to openly
approach dangerous subjects. We must bravely face Science and declare, in the
teeth of materialistic learning, of Idealism, Hylo-Idealism, Positivism and
all-denying modern Psychology, that the true Occultist believes in "Lords
of Light;" that he believes in a Sun, which, far from being simply "a
lamp of day" moving in accordance with physical law, and far from being
merely one of those Suns, which according to Richter -- ". . . . are
Sun-flowers of a higher light" -- is, like milliards of other Suns, the
dwelling or the vehicle of a god, and a host of gods.
In this question, of course, it is
the Occultists who will be worsted. They will be considered on the prima facie
aspect of the dispute to be ignoramuses, and labelled with more than one of the
usual epithets given to those whom the superficially judging public, itself
ignorant of the great underlying truths in nature, accuses of believing in
mediaeval superstitions. Let it be so. Submitting beforehand to every criticism
in order to go on with their task, they only claim the privilege of showing
that the physicists are as much at loggerheads among themselves in their
speculations, as the latter are with the teachings of Occultism.
The Sun is matter, and the Sun is
Spirit. Our ancestors -- the "heathen," -- along with their modern
successors, the Parsis -- were, and are, wise enough in their generation to see
in it the symbol of Divinity, and at the same time to sense within, concealed
by the physical Symbol, the bright God of Spiritual and terrestrial Light. Such
belief is now regarded as a superstition only by rank materialism, which denies
Deity, Spirit, Soul, and admits no intelligence outside the mind of man. But if
too much of wrong superstition bred by "Churchianity" -- as Lawrence
Oliphant calls it -- "renders a man a fool," too much scepticism
makes him mad. We prefer the charge of folly in believing too much, to that of
a madness which denies everything, as do Materialism and Idealism. Hence, the
Occultists are fully prepared to receive their dues from Materialism, and to
meet the adverse criticism which will be poured on this work, not for writing
it, but for believing in that which it contains.
Therefore the discoveries,
hypotheses, and unavoidable objections which will be brought forward by the
scientific critics must be anticipated and disposed of. It has also to be shown
how far the
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occult teachings depart from real
science, and whether the ancient or the modern theories are the most logically
and philosophically correct. The unity and mutual relations of all parts of
Kosmos were known to the ancients, before they became evident to modern
astronomers and philosophers. And if even the external and visible portions of
the Universe and their mutual relations cannot be explained in any other terms
than those used by the adherents of the mechanical theory of the Universe in
physical science, it follows that no materialist, who denies that the Soul of
Kosmos (which appertains to metaphysical philosophy) exists, has the right to
trespass upon that metaphysical domain. That physical science is trying to, and
actually does, encroach upon it, is only one more proof that "might is
right," and no more.
Another good reason for these Addenda
is this. Since only a certain portion of the Secret teachings can be given out
in the present age, if they were published without any explanations or
commentary, the doctrines would never be understood even by theosophists.
Therefore they must be contrasted with the speculations of modern science.
Archaic axioms must be placed side by side with modern hypotheses and
comparison left to the sagacious reader.
On the question of the "Seven
Governors," as Hermes calls the "Seven Builders," the Spirits
which guide the operations of nature, the animated atoms of which are the
shadows, in their world, of their Primaries in the astral realms -- this work
will, of course, besides the men of Science, have every materialist against it.
But this opposition can, at most, be only temporary. People have laughed at
everything and scouted every unpopular idea at first, and then ended by
accepting it. Materialism and scepticism are evils that must remain in the
world as long as man has not quitted his present gross form to don the one he
had during the first and second races of this Round. Unless scepticism and our
present natural ignorance are equilibrated by intuition and a natural
spirituality, every being afflicted with such feelings will see in himself no
better than a bundle of flesh, bones, and muscles, with an empty garret inside
him which serves the purpose of storing his sensations and feelings. Sir
Humphry Davy was a great scientist, as deeply versed in physics as any theorist
of our day, yet he loathed materialism. "I heard with disgust," he
says, "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 the most to be blamed for speaking of that
only which they can see and estimate on the evidence of their physical senses.
Astronomers
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and physicists are, we consider, far
more illogical in their materialistic views than even physiologists, and this
has to be proved. Milton's --
. . . . . . . . . . . . "Light
Ethereal, first of things,
quintessence pure,"
has become with the materialists only
--
. . . . . . Prime cheerer, light,
Of all material beings, first and
best.
For the occultists it is both Spirit
and Matter. Behind the "mode of motion," now regarded as "the
property of matter" and nothing more, they perceive the radiant noumenon.
It is the "Spirit of Light," the first born of the Eternal pure
Element, whose energy (or emanation) is stored in the Sun, the great Life-Giver
of the physical world, as the hidden Concealed Spiritual Sun is the Light- and
Life-Giver of the Spiritual and Psychic Realms. Bacon was one of the first to
strike the key-note of materialism, not only by his inductive method (renovated
from ill-digested Aristotle), but by the general tenor of his writings. He
inverts the order of mental Evolution when saying that "the first Creation
of God was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and
his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of the Spirit." It is just
the reverse. The light of Spirit is the eternal Sabbath of the mystic or
occultist, and he pays little attention to that of mere sense. That which is
meant by the allegorical sentence, "Fiat Lux" is,-- when esoterically
rendered -- "Let there be the 'Sons of Light,' " or the noumena of
all phenomena. Thus the Roman Catholics rightly interpret the passage as
referring to Angels, and wrongly as meaning Powers created by an
anthropomorphic God, whom they personify in the ever thundering and punishing
Jehovah.
These beings are the "Sons of
Light," because they emanate from, and are self-generated in, that
infinite Ocean of Light, whose one pole is pure Spirit lost in the absoluteness
of Non-Being, and the other, the matter in which it condenses, crystallizing
into a more and more gross type as it descends into manifestation. Therefore
matter, though it is, in one sense, but the illusive dregs of that Light whose
limbs are the Creative Forces, yet has in it the full presence of the Soul
thereof, of that Principle, which none -- not even the "Sons of
Light," evolved from its ABSOLUTE DARKNESS -- will ever know. The idea is
as beautifully, as it is truthfully, expressed by Milton, who hails the holy
Light, which is the --
". . . . . Offspring of Heaven,
first-born,
And of th' Eternal co-eternal beam;
. . . . . Since God is light,
And never but in unapproached Light
Dwelt from Eternity,. dwelt then in
thee
Bright effluence, of bright essence
increate."
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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 not?" Whatever the answer of the
latter, the former is prepared to show that, to this day, the most eminent
physicists know neither one way nor the other. To know what is light, and
whether it is an actual substance or a mere undulation of the "ethereal
medium," Science has first to learn what are in reality Matter, Atom,
Ether, Force. Now, the truth is, that it knows nothing of any of these, and
admits it. It has not even agreed what to believe in, as dozens of hypotheses
emanating from various and very eminent Scientists on the same subject, are
antagonistic to each other and often self-contradictory. Thus their learned
speculations may, with a stretch of good-will, be accepted as "working
hypotheses" in a secondary sense, as Stallo puts it. But being radically
inconsistent with each other, they must finally end by mutually destroying
themselves. As declared by the author of "Concepts of Modern
Physics":--
"It must not be forgotten that
the several departments of Science are simply arbitrary divisions of labour. 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 Ether 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."*
The eminent physicist, G. A. Hirn,
may likewise be quoted saying the same in the 43rd Volume of the Memoires de
l'Academie Royale de Belgique, which we translate from the French, as cited:
"When one sees the assurance with which are to-day 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
on the qualities described to this unique being, the foundation of all that
exists. Now, from the first examination of the particular systems proposed, one
feels 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Concepts of Modern
Physics," p. xi-xii., Introd. to the 2nd Edit.
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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."*
The above is the photographically correct
image of modern Science and physics. The "pre-requisite of that incessant
play of the 'scientific imagination,' " which is so often found in
Professor Tyndall's eloquent discourses, is vivid indeed, as shown by Stallo,
and for contradictory variety leaves far behind it any "phantasies"
of occultism. However it may be, if physical theories are confessedly
"mere formal, explanatory, didactic devices," and if "atomism is
only a symbolical graphic system,"** then the occultist can hardly be
regarded as assuming too much, when he places alongside of these devices and
"symbolical systems" of modern Science, the symbols and devices of
Archaic teachings.
--------------
III.
"AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC
NON?"
MOST decidedly Light is not a body,
we are told. Physical Sciences say Light is a Force, a vibration, the
undulation of ether. It is the property or quality of matter, or even an
affection thereof -- never a body!
Just so. For this discovery, the
knowledge -- whatever it may be worth -- that light or caloric is not a motion
of material particles, Science is chiefly indebted, if not solely, to Sir W.
Grove. It was he who was the first in a lecture at the London Institution, in
1842, to show that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Recherches experimentales sur
la relation qui existe entre la resistance de Pair et sa temperature," p.
68.
** From the criticism of
"Concepts of Modern Physics" in Nature. See Stallo's work, p. xvi. of
Introduction.
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"light, heat, etc., etc.* are
affections of matter itself, and not a distinct ethereal, 'imponderable,' fluid,
(a state of matter now) permeating it." (See "Correlation of the
Physical Forces," Preface). Yet, perhaps, for some physicists -- as for
Oersted, a very eminent Scientist -- FORCE and FORCES were tacitly "Spirit
(and hence Spirits) in Nature." What several rather mystical Scientists
taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., were not
the final causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary motion, but
themselves the Secondary effects of other Causes, for which Science in our day
cares very little, but in which Occultism believes, for the Occultists have
exhibited proofs of the validity of their 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 inclined to admit its
consequences; which made the Count de Maistre hope, at one time, that Newton
would ultimately lead Science back to the recognition of the fact that Forces
and the Celestial bodies were propelled and guided by Intelligences (Soirees,
vol. ii.). But de Maistre counted without his host. The innermost thoughts and
ideas of Newton were perverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the
mere physical husk was turned to account. Had poor Sir Isaac foreseen to what
use his successors and followers would apply his " gravity,"** that
pious and religious man would surely have quietly eaten his apple, and never
breathed a word about any mechanical ideas connected with its fall.
Great contempt is shown for metaphysics
generally and for onto-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 deg.; Pouillet, 1,461 deg.; Tollner, 102,200
deg.; Secchi, 5,344,840 deg.; Ericsson, 2,726,700 deg.; Fizeau, 7,500 deg.;
Waterston, 9,000,000 deg.; Spoeren, 27,000 deg.; Deville, 9,500 deg.; Soret,
5,801,846 deg.; Vicaire, 1,500 deg.; Rosetti, 20,000 deg. The difference is as
1,400 deg. against 9,000,000 deg., or no less than 8,998,600 deg.!! 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." (From the
Theosophist.)
** 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."
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logical metaphysics especially. But
we see, whenever the Occultists are bold enough to raise their diminished
heads, that materialistic, physical science is honey-combed with metaphysics;*
that its most fundamental principles, while inseparably wedded to
transcendentalism, are nevertheless, in order to show modern science divorced
from such "dreams," tortured and often ignored in the maze of
contradictory theories and hypotheses. 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-mechanical laws. This attempt has led directly to the most
fatal discrepancies and radical inconsistencies between the assumed nature of
Ether and its physical actions. A second proof is found in the many
contradictory statements about the atom -- the most metaphysical object in
creation.
Now, what does the modern science of
physics know of AEther, the first concept of which belongs undeniably to
ancient philosophers, the Greeks having borrowed it from the Aryans, and the
origin of modern AEther being found in, and disfigured from, AKASA? This
disfigurement
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 metaphysics,"
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 these) . . . . in the light of these laws as an
impertinent intrusion of 'a 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 W. 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 to be
relieved." (Pref. xliii.)
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is claimed to be a modification and
refinement of the idea of Lucretius. Let us then examine the modern concept
from several scientific volumes containing the admissions of the physicists
themselves.
The existence of Ether is accepted by
physical astronomy, in ordinary physics, and in chemistry. Astronomers, who
first began by regarding it as a fluid of extreme tenuity and mobility,
offering no sensible resistance to the motions of celestial bodies, never gave
a thought to its continuity or discontinuity. "Its main function in modern
astronomy has been to serve as a basis for hydrodynamical theories of
gravitation. In physics this fluid appeared for some time in several roles in
connection with the 'imponderables'" -- so cruelly put to death by Sir W.
Grove. Some physicists have even identified the ether of space with those
"imponderables." Then came their Kinetic theories; and from the date
of the dynamical theory of heat, it was chosen in optics as a substratum for
luminous undulations. Then, in order to explain the dispersion and polarization
of light, physicists had to resort once more to their "scientific
imagination" and forthwith endowed the Ether with (a) atomic or molecular
structure, and (b) with an enormous elasticity, "so that its resistance to
deformation far exceeded that of the most rigid elastic bodies" (Stallo).
This necessitated the theory of the essential discontinuity of matter, hence of
Ether. After having accepted this discontinuity, in order to account for
dispersion and polarization, theoretical impossibilities were discovered with
regard to such dispersions. Cauchy's "scientific imagination" saw in
atoms "material points without extension," and he proposed, in order
to obviate the most formidable obstacles to the undulatory theory (namely, some
well-known mechanical theorems which stood in the way), to assume that the
ethereal medium of propagation, instead of being continuous, should consist of
particles separated by sensible distances. Fresnel rendered the same service to
the phenomena of polarization. E. B. Hunt upset the theories of both
(Silliman's Journal, vol. viii., p. 364 et seq.) There are now men of Science
who proclaim them "materially fallacious," while others -- the
"atomo-mechanicalists" -- cling to to them with desperate tenacity.
The supposition of an atomic or molecular constitution of ether is upset,
moreover, by thermodynamics, for Clerk Maxwell showed that such a medium would
be simply gas.* The hypothesis of "finite intervals" is thus proven
of no avail as a supplement to the undulatory theory. Besides, eclipses fail to
reveal any such variation of colour as supposed by Cauchy (on the assumption
that the chromatic rays are propagated with different velocities).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Clerk Maxwell's "Treatise
on Electricity of Magnetism" and compare with Cauchy's "Memoire sur
la Dispersion de la lumiere."
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Astronomy has pointed out more than
one phenomenon absolutely at variance with this doctrine.
Thus, while in one department of
physics the atomo-molecular constitution of the ether is accepted in order to
account for one set of special phenomena, in another department such a
constitution is found quite subversive of a number of well-ascertained facts,
Hirn's charges being thus justified (vide supra). Chemistry deemed it
impossible to concede enormous elasticity to the ether without depriving it of
other properties, upon the assumption of which the construction of its modern
theories depended. This ended in a final transformation of ether. The
exigencies of the atomo-mechanical theory have led distinguished mathematicians
and physicists to attempt to substitute for the traditional atoms of matter,
peculiar forms of vortical motion in a "universal homogeneous,
incompressible, and continuous material medium," or AEther. (See Stallo.)
The present writer, claiming no great
scientific education, but only a tolerable acquaintance with modern theories,
and a better one with Occult Sciences, picks up weapons against the detractors
of the esoteric teaching in the very arsenal of modern Science. The glaring
contradictions, the mutually-destructive hypotheses of world-renowned
Scientists, their mutual accusations, denunciations and disputes, show plainly
that, whether accepted or not, the Occult theories have as much right to a
hearing as any of the so-called learned and academical hypotheses. Thus whether
the followers of the Royal Society choose to accept ether as a continuous or a
discontinuous fluid matters little, and is indifferent to 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 akasa nor as the one sacred AEther of the Greeks, is it to be found
in any of the states of matter known to modern physics. It is MATTER on quite
another plane of perception and being, and it can neither be analyzed by
scientific apparatus, appreciated, nor even conceived by "scientific
imagination," 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 modern physics (as was done by De
Quatrefages and several others in those of anthropology, biology, etc., etc.)
that, in their efforts to support their individual hypotheses and systems, the
majority of the eminent and learned materialists very often utter the greatest
fallacies. Let us take the following case. Most of them reject actio in distans
(one of the fundamental principles in the question of AEther or Akasa in
Occultism), while, as Stallo justly observes, there is no physical action,
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"which, on close examination,
does not resolve itself into actio in distans"; and he proves it.
Now, metaphysical arguments,
according to Professor Lodge (Nature, vol. xxvii., p. 304), are
"unconscious appeals to experience." And he adds that if such an
experience is not conceivable, then it does not exist, etc. 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,
etc."
And thereupon, toward the end of his
lecture, Professor Lodge indicates that the explanation of cohesion, as well as
of gravity, "is to be looked for in the vortex-atom theory of Sir William
Thomson" (Stallo).
It is needless to stop to inquire
whether it is to this vortex-theory, also, that we have to look for the
dropping down on earth of the first life-germ by a passing meteor or comet (Sir
W. Thomson's hypothesis). But Mr. Lodge might be reminded of the wise criticism
on his lecture in the same "Concepts of Modern Physics." Noticing the
above-quoted declaration by the London Professor, the author asks "whether
. . . the elements of the vortex-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" (p. xxiv). And then the able critic shows clearly what the Ether
is not, nor can ever be, notwithstanding all scientific claims to the contrary.
And thus he opens 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 aether 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*
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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" aether 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 aether 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 AEther, or Akasa.
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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 lead us, it certainly does
not lead us anywhere in the region of physics, or in the domain of verae
causae.* And I may add that, inasmuch as the hypothetical undifferentiated**
and undifferentiable medium is clearly an involuntary re-ification of the old
ontological concept pure being, the theory under discussion has all the
attributes of an inapprehensible metaphysical phantom."
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 is consistent with its penetrability, need
not go far out of their way to be able to account for the greatest phenomena of
Occultism, now so derided by physical scientists and materialists. Cauchy's
"material points without extension" are Leibnitz's monads, and at the
same time the materials out of which the "Gods" and other invisible
powers clothe themselves in bodies (vide infra, "Gods, Monads and
Atoms"). The disintegration and reintegration of "material"
particles without extension as a chief factor in phenomenal manifestations
ought to suggest themselves very easily as a clear possibility, at any rate to
those few scientific minds which accept M. Cauchy's views. For, disposing of
that property of matter which they call impenetrability by simply regarding the
atoms as "material points exerting on each other attractions and
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."
(Sept lecons de physique Generale, p. 38 et seq., ed. Moigno.)
And that "point," invisible
on our plane of perception and matter, is quite visible to the eye of the adept
who can follow and see it present on other planes.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Verae causae for physical science
are mayavic or illusionary causes to the Occultist, and vice versa.
** Very much
"differentiated," on the contrary, since the day it left its laya
condition.
*** For the Occultists who say that
the author of nature is nature itself, something indistinct and inseparable
from the Deity, it follows that those who are conversant with the occult laws
of nature, and know how to change and provoke new conditions in ether, may --
not modify the laws, but work and do the same in accordance with those
immutable laws.
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IV.
IS GRAVITATION A LAW?
THE corpuscular theory has been
unceremoniously put aside; but gravitation -- the principle that all bodies
attract each other with a force proportional directly to their masses, and
inversely to the squares of the distances between them -- survives to this day
and reigns, supreme as ever, in the alleged ethereal waves of Space. As a
hypothesis, it had been threatened with death for its inadequacy to embrace all
the facts presented to it; as a physical law, it is the King of the late and
once all-potent "Imponderables." "It is little short of
blasphemy . . . . an insult to Newton's grand memory to doubt it, . . . ."
is the exclamation of an American reviewer of "Isis Unveiled." Well;
what is finally that invisible and intangible God in whom we should believe on
blind faith? Astronomers who see in gravitation an easy-going solution for many
things, and an universal force which allows them to calculate thereby planetary
motions, care little about the Cause of Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a
cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that name effects, and very
secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis
does not answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of
light and be consigned to rest for many scientific aeons in the archives of all
exploded speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave doubts about the
Nature of Force and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were
then called? So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in the night of
research. He warns his readers, in the Revolution du Globe, about the doubtful
nature of the so-called Forces, saying that "it is not so sure whether
those agents were not Spiritual Powers after all (des agents spirituels). At
the outset of his "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton took the greatest
care to impress upon his school that he did not use the word
"attraction" with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a physical
sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception involving no
consideration of real and primary physical causes. In one of the passages of
his "Principia" (Defin. 8, B. I. Prop. 69, "Scholium"), he
tells us plainly that, physically considered, attractions are rather impulses.
In section XI. (Introduction) he expresses the opinion that "there is some
subtle spirit by the force and action of which all movements of matter are
determined" (see Mod. Mater., by Rev. W. F. Wilkinson); and in his 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
gravi-
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tation, 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 return of occult causes into the domain of
physics. Leibnitz called his principle of attraction "an incorporeal and
inexplicable power." The supposition of an attractive faculty and a perfect
void was characterized by Bernoulli as "revolting," the principle of
actio in distans finding thus no more favour then than it does now. Euler, on
the other hand, thought the 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 so-called attraction. The above-quoted words of the great man
have produced poor results. The "absurdity" has now become a dogma in
the case of pure materialism, which repeats, "No matter without force, no
force without matter; matter and force are inseparable, eternal and indestructible
(true); there can be no independent force, since all force is an inherent and
necessary property of matter (false); consequently, there is no immaterial
creative power." Oh, poor Sir Isaac!
If, leaving aside all the other
eminent men of Science who shared in the same opinion as Euler and Leibnitz,
the Occultists claim as their authorities and supporters only Sir Isaac Newton
and Cuvier, as above cited, they need fear little from modern Science, and may
loudly and proudly proclaim their beliefs. But, the hesitation and doubts of
the two before cited authorities, and of many others, too, whom we could name,
did not in the least prevent scientific speculation from wool-gathering on the
fields of brute matter just as before. First it was matter and an imponderable
fluid distinct from it; then came the imponderable fluid so much criticised by
Grove; and AEther, which was at first discontinuous and then became continuous;
after which came the "mechanical" Forces. These have now settled in
life as "modes of motion" and the aether has become more mysterious
and problematical than ever. More than one man of Science objects to such crude
materialistic views. But then since the days of Plato, who repeatedly asks his
readers not to confuse incorporeal Elements with
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their PRINCIPLES -- transcendental or
spiritual Elements; from those of the great Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus,
made a great difference between phenomenon and its cause, or the Noumenon; and
Grove, who, though he sees "no reason to divest universally diffused
matter of the functions common to all matter," yet uses the term Forces where
his critics, "who do not attach to the word any idea of a specific
action," say Force -- from those days to this nothing has proved competent
to stem the tide of brutal 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 spiritual-minded and religious men of his day, any
better now than they did then? It is certainly to be doubted. Newton is
credited with having given the death-blow to the Elemental Vortices of
Descartes (the idea of Anaxagoras, resurrected, by-the-bye), though the last modern
"vortical atoms" of Sir W. Thomson do not, in truth, differ much from
the former. Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes wrote in the Preface to the
chief work of his Master a sentence declaring that "attraction was the
cause of the System," Newton was the first to solemnly protest. That which
in the mind of the great mathematician assumed the shadowy, but firmly rooted
image of God, as the noumenon of all,* was called more philosophically by the
ancient (and modern) philosophers and Occultists -- "Gods," or the
creative fashioning Powers. The modes of expression may have been different,
and the ideas more or less philosophically enunciated by all sacred and profane
Antiquity; but the fundamental thought was the same.** For Pythagoras the
Forces were Spiritual Entities, Gods inde-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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." (Musee des Sciences, August, 1856.)
** 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 recognise 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, he shall be utterly
destroyed." Now in the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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pendent of planets and Matter as we
see and know them on Earth, who are the rulers of the Sidereal Heaven. Plato
represented the planets as moved by an intrinsic Rector, one with his dwelling,
like "A boatman in his boat." As for Aristotle, he called those
rulers "immaterial substances;"* though as one who had never been
initiated, he rejected the gods as Entities (See Vossius, Vol. II., p. 528).
But this did not prevent him from recognising the fact that the stars and
planets "were not inanimate masses but acting and living bodies indeed. .
. . . . ." As if "sidereal spirits were the divine portion of their
phenomena, [[ta theoitera pon phaneron]]" (De Caelo. I. 9).
If we look for corroboration in more
modern and Scientific times, we find Tycho Brahe recognising in the stars a
triple force, divine, spiritual and vital. Kepler, putting together the
Pythagorean sentence, "The Sun, guardian of Jupiter," and the verses
of David, "He placed his throne in the Sun," and "The Lord is
the Sun," etc., said that he understood perfectly how the Pythagoreans
could believe that all the globes disseminated through Space were rational
Intelligences, facultates ratiocinativae, circulating around the Sun, "in
which resides a pure Spirit of fire; the source of the general harmony"
(De Motibus planetarum harmonicis, p. 248).
When an Occultist speaks of Fohat --
the energising and guiding intelligence in the Universal Electric or Vital
Fluid, -- he is laughed at. Withal, as now shown, neither the nature of
electricity, nor of Life nor even of Light, are to this day understood. The
Occultist sees in the manifestation of every force in Nature, the action of the
quality, or the special characteristic of its noumenon; which noumenon is a
distinct and intelligent Individuality on the other side of the manifested mechanical
Universe. Now the Occultist does not deny -- on the contrary he will support
the claim -- that light, heat, electricity and so on are affections (not
properties or qualities) of matter. To put it more clearly: matter is the
condition -- the necessary basis or vehicle, a sine qua non -- for the
manifestation of these forces, or agents, on this plane.
But in order to gain the point the
Occultists have to examine the credentials of the law of gravity, first of all,
of "Gravitation, the King
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 has become as
one of us," etc. Hence both those who worship and sacrifice to the Elohim,
the angels, and to Jehovah, those who revile the gods of their fellow-men, are
far greater transgressors than the Occultists or any Theosophist. Meanwhile
many of the latter prefer believing in some one "Lord" or other, and
are quite welcome to do as they like.
* To liken the "immateriate
species to wooden iron," and laugh at Spiller referring to them as
"incorporeal matter" does not solve the mystery (See "Concepts
of Modern Physics," p. 165 et infra).
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and Ruler of Matter," under
every form. To do so effectually, the hypothesis in its earliest appearance has
to be recalled to mind. To begin with, is it Newton who was the first to
discover it? The Athenaeum of Jan. 26, 1867, has some curious information upon
this subject. It says that "positive evidence can be adduced that Newton
derived all his knowledge of gravitation and its laws from Boehme, with whom
gravitation or ATTRACTION is the first property of Nature." . . . For with
him "his (Boehme'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
(Boehme) wrote, is there anticipated (in his writings); and not only does
Boehme describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us
the origin, generation, and birth of electricity, itself, etc."
Thus Newton, whose profound mind read
easily between the lines, and fathomed the spiritual thought of the great Seer
in its mystic rendering, owes his great discovery to Jacob Boehme, the nursling
of the genii (Nirmanakayas) who watched over and guided him, of whom the author
of the article in question so truly remarks, that "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 action of attraction in space, had, so to speak, to
annihilate every physical obstacle capable of impeding its free action; ether
among others, though he had more than a presentiment of its existence.
Advocating the corpuscular theory, he made an absolute vacuum between the
heavenly bodies. . . . Whatever may have been his suspicions and inner
convictions about Ether; however many friends he may have unbosomed himself to
-- as in the case of his correspondence with Bentley -- his teachings never
showed that he had any such belief. If he was "persuaded that the power of
attraction could not be exerted by matter across a vacuum,"* how is it
that so late as 1860, French astronomers (Le Couturier, for instance), combated
"the disastrous results of the theory of vacuum established by the great
man?"** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* World-Life. Prof. Winchell, LL.D
(pp. 49 and 50).
** "Il n'est plus possible
aujourd'hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que les corps celestes se mouvent au
milieu du VIDE immense des espaces. . . . Parmi les consequences de la theorie
du vide etablie par ce grand homme, il ne reste plus debout que le mot
'attraction,' et nous verrons le jour ou ce dernier mot disparaitra du
vocabulaire scientifique." ("Panorama des mondes," pp. 47 and
53.)
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some very thin vapours, streams, 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." (Newton, Optics, III., query 28, 1704; quoted in
"World-Life.")
This only shows that even such great
men as Newton have not always the courage 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." (Ibid.) 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." "Till then the
idea was universal, even among the men of Science, that Newton had, while
advocating the corpuscular theory, preached a void," as Le Couturier says.
The passages had been "long neglected," no doubt because they
contradicted and clashed with the preconceived pet theories of the day, till
finally the undulatory theory imperiously required the presence of an
"ethereal medium" to explain it. This is the whole secret.
Anyhow, it is from that theory of
Newton's of a universal void -- taught, if not believed in by himself, -- that
dates the immense scorn now shown by modern for ancient physics. The old sages
had maintained that "Nature abhorred vacuum," and the greatest mathematicians
of the world (read of the Western races) had discovered the antiquated
"fallacy" and exposed it. And now modern science vindicates, however
ungracefully, archaic knowledge, having, moreover, to vindicate Newton's
character and powers of observation at this late hour, after having neglected
for one century and a half to pay any attention to such very important passages
-- perchance, because it was wiser not to attract any notice to them. Better
late than never.
And now Father AEther is re-welcomed with
open arms; and wedded to gravitation; linked to it for weal or woe, until the
day when it, or both, shall be replaced by something else. Three hundred years
ago it was plenum everywhere, then it became one dismal vacuity; later still
the sidereal ocean-beds, dried up by science, rolled onward once more their
ethereal waves. Recede ut procedes 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 earliest "Gods of Pythagoras and old
Kanada" for the very backbone and marrow of their correlations and
"newest" discoveries, and this may well afford 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 when an absolute reform will
be demanded in the present modes of Science by the scientists themselves -- as
was done by Sir W. Grove, F.R.S. Till that day there is nothing to be done. For
if gravitation
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were dethroned to-morrow, the day
after the Scientists would discover some other new mode of mechanical motion.*
Rough and up-hill is the path of true Science, and its days are full of
vexation of Spirit. But in the face of its "thousand" contradictory
hypotheses to explain physical phenomena, there never was yet a better one than
that of "motion" -- however paradoxically interpreted by materialism.
As may be found on the first pages of Book I., Occultists have nothing surely
against motion** the GREAT BREATH of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "UNKNOWN."
But, believing that everything on Earth is the shadow of something in space --
they believe in smaller "Breaths," which, living, intelligent and
independent of all but Law, blow in every direction during Manvantaric periods.
These Science will reject. But whatever replaces attraction, alias gravitation,
the result will be the same. Science will be as far from the solution of its
difficulties as it is now, unless it comes to some compromise with Occultism
and even with Alchemy -- which supposition will be regarded as an impertinence,
but remains a fact, nevertheless. As Faye says: "Il manque quelque chose
aux geologues pour faire la geologie de la Lune, c'est d'etre astronomes. A la
verite il manque aussi quelquechose aux astronomes pour aborder avec fruit
cette etude, c'est d'etre geologues." But he might have added, with still
more pointedness, "Ce qui manque a tous les deux, c'est l'intuition du
mystique."
Let us remember Sir William Grove's
wise "concluding remarks," on the ultimate structure of matter, or
the minutiae of molecular actions, which, he 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 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 abused the privilege of
building its newest theories upon the law of gravitation, may be realised when
one remembers how profoundly religious was that great man.
** 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 words as "pure
space," "pure Being," "the Absolute," etc., of Eastern
metaphysics have never been understood in the West.
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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."*
Thus, supposing attraction or
gravitation should be given up in favour of the Sun being a huge magnet --
which is a theory already accepted by some physicists -- a magnet that acts on
the planets as attraction is now supposed to do, whereto, or how much farther
would it lead the astronomers from where they are now? Not an inch farther.
Kepler came to this "curious hypothesis" nearly 300 years ago. He had
not discovered the theory of attraction and repulsion in Kosmos, for it was
known from the days of Empedocles, the two opposite forces being called by him
"hate" and "love" -- which comes to the same thing. But
Kepler gave a pretty fair description of cosmic magnetism. That such magnetism
exists in nature, is as certain as that gravitation does not; not at any rate,
in the way in which it is taught by Science, which never took into
consideration the different modes in which the dual Force -- that Occultism
calls attraction and repulsion -- may act within our solar system, the earth's
atmosphere, and beyond in the Kosmos.** This was proven by Newton himself; for
there are many phenomena in our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Correl. Phys. Forces,"
p. 173. This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on the same principle
that "where force is made to oppose force, and produce static equilibrium,
the balance of pre-existing 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 as
the "Breath," even when the manifested Kosmos rests.
** "Trans-solar space,"
writes the great Humboldt, "does not hitherto show 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." (See Revue Germanique of the 31st
Dec. 1860, art. "Lettres et conversations d'Alexandre Humboldt.")
True, that since 1860 the nebular theory has sprung up, and being better known,
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 can be found -- except
in appearance -- beyond, or of the same order of matter as found in our system.
Such is the Occult teaching.
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Solar system, which he confessed his
inability to explain by the law of gravitation. "Such were the uniformity
in the directions of planetary movements, the nearly circular forms of the
orbits, and their remarkable conformity to one plane" (Prof. Winchell).
And if there is one single exception, then the law of gravitation has no right to
be referred to as an universal law. "These adjustments," we are told,
"Newton, in his general Scholium, pronounces to be 'the work of an
intelligent and all-powerful Being.' " Intelligent that "Being"
may be; as to "all-powerful" there would be every reason to doubt the
claim. A poor "God" he, who would work upon minor details and leave
the most important to secondary forces! The poverty of the argument and logic
in this case, is surpassed only by that of Laplace, who, seeking very correctly
to substitute motion for Newton's "all-powerful Being," and ignorant
of the true nature of that eternal motion, saw in it a blind physical law.
"Might not those arrangements be an effect of the laws of motion?" he
asks, forgetting, as all our modern Scientists do, that this law and this
motion are a vicious circle, so long as the nature of both remains unexplained.
His famous answer to Napoleon: "Dieu est devenu une hypothese
inutile," would be correctly stated only by one who adhered to the
philosophy of the Vedantins. It becomes a pure fallacy, if we exclude the
interference of operating, intelligent, powerful (never
"all-powerful") Beings, who are called "gods."
But we would ask the critics of the
mediaeval astronomers why should Kepler be denounced as most unscientific, for
offering just the same solution as Newton did -- only showing himself more
sincere, more consistent and even more logical. Where may be the difference
between Newton's "all-powerful Being" and Kepler's Rectores, his
sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or Angels? Kepler is again criticised for his
"curious hypothesis which made use of a vortical movement within the solar
system;" for his theories in general, for his favouring Empedocles' idea
of attraction and repulsion, and "Solar magnetism" in particular. Yet
several modern men of Science, as will be shown -- Hunt (if Metcalfe is to be
excluded), Dr. Richardson, etc. -- favour the idea very seriously. He is half
excused, however, on the plea that "to the time of Kepler no interaction
between masses of matter had been distinctly recognized which was generically
different from magnetism" (World-Life). Is it distinctly recognised now?
Does Prof. Winchell claim for Science any serious knowledge whatever of the
natures of either electricity or magnetism -- except that both seem to be the
effects of some result arising from an undetermined cause.
The ideas of Kepler, weeded from
their theological tendencies, are purely occult. He saw that:
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(I.) The Sun is a great Magnet.* This
is what some eminent modern scientists and also the Occultists believe in.
(II.) The Solar substance is
immaterial.** (See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I. pp. 270 to 271.)
(III.) He provided, for the constant
motion and restoration of the Sun's energy and planetary motion, the perpetual
care of a spirit, or spirits. The whole of Antiquity believed in this idea. The
Occultists do not use the word Spirit, but say Creative Forces, which they
endow with intelligence. But we may call them spirits also.
This theory is tabooed a great deal
more on account of the "Spirit" that is given room in it, than of
anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed in it likewise, and so do several
modern scientists also. Nevertheless Professor Winchell declares that "a
hypothesis more fanciful, and less in accord with the requirements of physical
principles, has not been offered in ancient or modern times." (World-Life,
p. 554.)
The same was said, once upon a time,
of the universal Ether, and now it is not only accepted perforce but advocated
as the only possible theory to explain away certain mysteries.
Grove's ideas, when he first
enunciated them in London about 1840, were called as unscientific as the above;
nevertheless, his views on the correlation of forces are now universally
accepted. It would, very likely, require one more conversant with science than
is the writer, to combat with any success some of the now prevailing ideas
about gravitation and other similar "solutions" of Cosmic Mysteries.
But, let us recall a few objections that came from recognized men of Science;
from astronomers and physicists of eminence, who rejected the theory of rotation,
as well as that of gravitation. Thus one reads in the French Encyclopaedia that
"Science agrees, in the face of all its representatives, that it is
impossible to explain the physical origin of the rotatory motion of the solar
system."
If the question is asked, "what
causes rotation?" we are answered: "It is the centrifugal
Force." "And this force, what is it that produces it?" "The
force of rotation," is the grave answer. (Godefroy, Cosmogonie de la Revelation.***)
It will be well, perhaps, to examine both these theories as being directly or
indirectly connected.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* But see Astronomie du Moyen Age, by
Delambre.
** In the sense, of course, of matter
existing in states unknown to Science.
*** We shall be taken to task for
contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we admit Souls and
operative Spirits, and quote from Roman Catholic bigoted writers in support of
our argument. To this we reply: "We deny the anthropomorphic god of the
Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in nature. We combat Protestants
and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of human and
sectarian origin. We agree with them in their belief in Spirits and intelligent
operative powers, though we do not worship "Angels" as the Roman
Latinists do."
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V.
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 justly complains, the number of
hypotheses put forward, a nebula in itself, is most remarkable. The profane
student is perplexed, and does not know in which of the theories of exact
science he has to believe. Here we have hypotheses enough for every taste and
power of brain. They are all extracted from a number of scientific volumes.
CURRENT HYPOTHESES EXPLAINING THE
ORIGIN OF ROTATION.
Rotation has originated either --
(a) By the collision of nebular
masses wandering aimlessly in space; or by attraction, "in cases where no
actual impact takes place."
(b) "By the tangential action of
currents of nebulous matter (in the case of an amorphous nebula) descending
from higher to lower levels,* or simply by the action of the central gravity of
the mass."**
"It is a fundamental principle
in physics that no rotation could be generated in such a mass by the action of
its own parts. As well attempt to change the course of a steamer by pulling at
the deck railing," remarks to this Prof. Winchell in
"World-Life."
HYPOTHESES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE SEVEN
PLANETS AND COMETS.
(a) We owe the birth of the Planets
(1) to an explosion of the Sun -- a parturition of its central mass;*** or (2)
to some kind of disruption of the nebular rings.
(b) "The Comets are strangers to
our planetary system" (La Place). "The Comets are undeniably
generated in our Solar system" (Faye).
(c) The "fixed stars are
motionless" says one authority. . . . "All the stars are actually in
motion" answers another authority. . . "Undoubtedly every star is in
motion" (Wolf).
(d) "For over 350,000,000 years,
the slow and majestic movement of the Sun around its axis has never for a
moment ceased" (Panorama des Mondes, Le Couturier.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Jacob Ennis, "The Origin of
the Stars," p. 221 et seq.
*** 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.
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(e) And "the Sun having Alcyone
in the Pleiades for the centre of its orbit, consumes 180,000,000 of years in
completing its revolution" (Maedler). And also,
(f) That, "the Sun has existed
no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit heat for no longer than 10,000,000
years more" (Sir W. Thomson's lecture on "the latent dynamical theory
regarding the probable origin, total amount of heat, and duration of the
Sun," 1887).
A few years ago this eminent
Scientist was telling the world that the time required for the earth to cool
from incipient incrustation to its present state, could not exceed 80,000,000
years*; (Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy.) If the encrusted age of the
world is only 40 millions, or the half of the duration once allowed, and the
Sun's age only 15 millions, have we to understand that the earth was at one
time independent of the Sun?
Since the ages of the Sun, planets,
and the Earth, as stated in the many scientific hypotheses of the astronomers
and physicists, are given elsewhere (infra), we have said enough to show the
disagreement between the ministers of modern Science. Whether we accept the
fifteen million years of Sir W. Thomson or the thousand millions of Mr. Huxley,
for the rotational evolution of our solar system, it will always come to this;
by accepting self-generated rotation for the heavenly bodies composed of inert
matter and yet moved by their own internal motion, for millions of years, this
teaching of Science amounts to --
(a) An evident denial of that
fundamental physical law, which states that "a body in motion tends
constantly to inertia, (i.e., to continue in the same state of motion or rest),
unless it is stimulated into further action by a superior active force."
(b.) To an original impulse, which
culminates in an unalterable motion, within a resisting ether that NEWTON had
declared incompatible with that motion.
(c.) Universal gravity, which, we are
taught, always tends to a centre in rectilinear descent -- alone the cause of
the revolution of the whole solar system, which is performing an eternal double
gyration, each body around its axis and orbit. Another occasional version is:--
(d.) A magnet in the Sun; or, the
said revolution due to a magnetic force, which acts, just as gravitation does,
in a straight line -- varying inversely as the square of the distance.
(Coulomb's Law.)
(e.) The whole acting under
invariable and changeless laws, which are, nevertheless, often shown variable,
as during some well-known freaks
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And even on these figures Bischof
disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350 million years would be required
for the earth to cool from a temperature of 20,000 degrees to 200 degrees
centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz.
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of planets and other bodies, as also
when the Comets approach to or recede from the Sun.
(f.) A MOTOR FORCE always
proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; but independent of the specific
nature of that mass, to which it is proportionate; 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" (Musee des
Sciences, 15 August, 1857). A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from
the body on which it weighs.
Thus neither Laplace's perceptions of
a solar atmospheric fluid, which would extend beyond the orbits of the planets,
nor Le Couturier's electricity, nor Foucault's heat (Panorama des Mondes, p.
55), nor this, nor the other, can ever help any of the numerous hypotheses
about the origin and permanency of rotation to escape from this squirrel's
wheel, any more than the theory of gravity itself. This mystery is the
Procrustean bed of physical Science. If matter is, as now taught, passive, the
simplest movement cannot be said to be an essential property of matter -- if
the latter is simply an inert mass. How, then, can such a complicated movement,
compound and multiple, harmonious and equilibrated, lasting in the eternities
for millions and millions of years, be attributed simply to its own inherent
Force, unless the latter is an intelligence? A physical will is something new
-- a conception that the ancients would have never entertained, indeed!*
"We talk of the weight of the
heavenly bodies," says an astronomer; "but since it is recognised
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." (Cosmographie.)
Methinks the Count de Maistre was
right in solving the question in his own theological way. He cuts the Gordian
knot by saying:-- "The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For over a century all distinction
between body and force is made away with. "Force is but the property of a
body in motion," say the physicists; and "life -- the property of our
animal organs -- is but the result of their molecular arrangement," answer
the physiologists. "In the bosom of that aggregate which is named
planet," teaches Littre, "are developed all the forces immanent to
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" . . . (Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1860.)
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planets rotate because they are made
to rotate . . . . . and the modern physical system of the universe is a
physical impossibility." (Soirees.) For did not Herschell say the same
thing when he remarked that there is a will needed to impart a circular motion,
and another will to restrain it? (Discours, 165.) This shows and explains how a
retarded planet is cunning enough to calculate so well its time as to hit off
its arrival at the fixed minute. For, if Science sometimes succeeds with its
great ingenuity in explaining some of such stoppages, retrograde motions,
angles outside the orbits, &c., &c., by appearances resulting from the
inequality of their progress and ours in the course of our mutual and
respective orbits, we still know that there are others, and "very real and
considerable deviations," according to Herschell, "which cannot be
explained except by the mutual and irregular action of those planets and by the
perturbing influence of the Sun."
We understand, however, that there
are, besides those little and accidental perturbations, continuous
perturbations called "secular" -- because of the extreme slowness
with which the irregularity increases and affects the relations of the elliptic
movement -- and that these perturbations can be corrected. From Newton, who
found that this world needed repairing very often, down to Reynaud, all say the
same. In his Ciel et Terre (p. 28), the latter speaks of --
". . . . . The orbits described
by the planets as being very far from immutable; on the contrary, subject to a
perpetual mutation in their position and form," -- all prove gravitation
and the peripatetic laws to be as negligent as they are quick to repair their
mistakes. The charge as it stands seems to be that "they (the 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" ruling invisibly the solar system -- as we do
-- observes very wittily* . . . . . "Voila certes, a voyage which has
little in it of mechanical rigour; 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 intelligences of a pilot and engineers to catch up the time lost,
and to repair the damages. . . . ."
The law of gravity, however, seems to
be becoming an obsolete law in starry heaven. At any rate those long-haired
sidereal radicals, called comets, appear to be very poor respecters of the
majesty of that law,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Deuxieme memoire, "Manifestations
Historiques," p. 272.
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and to beard it quite impudently.
Nevertheless, and though presenting in nearly every respect "phenomena not
yet fully understood," comets and meteors are credited by the believers in
modern Science with obeying the same laws and consisting of the same matter,
"as the Suns, stars and nebulae," and even "the earth and its
inhabitants." (Laing's "Modern Science and Modern Thought.")
This is what one might call taking
things on trust, aye, even to blind faith. But exact Science is not to be
questioned, and he who rejects the hypotheses imagined by her students --
gravitation, for instance -- would be regarded as an ignorant fool for it; yet
we are told by the just cited 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, "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." (Ibid, p. 17.)
Science is like Caesar's wife, and
must not be suspected -- this is evident. But it can be respectfully
criticised, nevertheless. At all events, it may be reminded that "the
apple" is a dangerous fruit. For the second time in the history of
mankind, it may become the cause of the FALL -- this time, of "exact"
Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right in the Sun's face
can hardly be credited with obeying that law.
In a series of scientific works on
Astronomy and the nebular theory, written between 1865 and 1866, the present
writer, a poor tyro in Science, has counted in a few hours, no less than
thirty-nine contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations for the
self-generated, primitive rotatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The writer is
no astronomer, no mathematician, no scientist; but was obliged to examine these
errors in defence of Occultism, in general, and what is still more
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important, in order to support the
occult teachings concerning astronomy and Cosmology. Occultists were threatened
with terrible penalties for questioning scientific truths. But now they feel
braver -- Science is less secure in its "impregnable" position than
they were led to expect, and many of its strongholds are built on very shifting
sands.
Thus, even this poor and unscientific
examination of it was useful, and it was certainly very instructive. We have
learned a good many things, in fact, having studied with particular care
especially those astronomical data that would be the most likely to clash with
our heterodox and "superstitious" beliefs.
So, for instance, we have found
there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital motions, that synchronous
movement having been once overcome, in the early stage -- it was enough to
originate a rotatory motion till the end of Manvantara. We have also come to
know in all the aforesaid combinations of possibilities with regard to
incipient rotation -- most complicated in every case, -- some of the causes to
which it may have been due, as well as some others to which it ought and should
have been due, but, in some way or other, was not. Among other things, we were
informed that incipient rotation may be provoked with equal ease in a mass in
igneous fusion, and in one that is characterised by glacial opacity
("Heaven and Earth"). That gravitation is a law which nothing can
overcome, but which, nevertheless, is overcome in and out of season by the most
ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies -- the tails of impudent comets, for
instance. That we owe the universe to the holy creative Trinity, called Inert
Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real essence and nature of any
of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a trifling detail. Ergo, we
are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular matter -- whose nature is
unknown (entirely so), and which may be in a state of fusion (Laplace), or dark
and cold (Thomson), for "this intervention of heat is itself a pure hypothesis"
(Faye) -- decides to exhibit its mechanical energy under the form of rotation,
it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either bursts into spontaneous
conflagration, or it remains inert, tenebrous, and frigid, both states being
equally capable of sending it, without any adequate cause, spinning through
space for millions of years. Its movements may be retrograde and they may be
direct, about a hundred various reasons being offered for both motions, in
about as many hypotheses. Anyhow, joining the maze of stars, whose origin
belongs to the 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" (Winchell: World-Life) -- those millions of suns, planets,
and satellites, composed of inert matter, will whirl on in most impressive and
majestic symmetry around the firmament, moved
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and guided only, their inertia
notwithstanding, "by their own internal motion."
Shall we wonder after this if learned
mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such learned astronomers as were
Chaubard and Godefroy,* have preferred the Kabala and the ancient systems to
the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the Universe? The Zohar makes
a distinction, at any rate, between "the hajaschar ("the light
Forces"), the hachoser ("Reflected Lights"), and the simple
phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual types." (See Kabala Denudata,
II, 67.)
The question of "gravity"
may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That physical Science
knows nothing of "Forces" is clear. We may close 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." ("Sur la distinction des Forces," published in the
Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de Montpellier, Vol. II., fasc. I., 1854.)
--------------
VI.
THE MASKS OF SCIENCE.
PHYSICS OR METAPHYSICS?
IF there is anything on earth like
progress, Science will some day have to give up, nolens volens, such monstrous
ideas as her physical, self-guiding laws -- void of soul and Spirit, -- and
then turn to the occult teachings.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* L'Univers explique par la
Revelation, and Cosmogonie de la Revelation. But see De Mirville's Deuxieme
Memoire. The author, a terrible enemy of Occultism, was yet one who wrote great
truths.
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It has done so already, however
altered are the title-page and revised editions of the Scientific Catechism. It
is now over half a century since, in comparing modern with ancient thought, it
has been found that, however different our philosophy may appear from that of
our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and subtractions
taken from the old philosophy and transmitted drop by drop through the filter
of antecedents.
This fact was well known to Faraday,
and other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether, evolution itself -- all comes
to modern Science from ancient notions, all is based on the conceptions of the
archaic nations. "Conceptions" for the profane, under the shape of
allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations to the elect, which
truths have been partially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to
us. This does not mean that Occultism has ever had the same views on matter,
atoms and ether as found in the exotericism of the classical Greek writers.
Yet, if we believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday was an Aristotelean, and an
Agnostic more than a materialist. In his "Faraday, as a Discoverer"
(p. 123) the author shows the great physicist using "old reflections of
Aristotle" which are "concisely found in some of his 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 those,
who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the "old corpuscular
Pythagorean theory" (one, by the way, which has never passed to posterity
as the great philosopher really taught it), on the ground of its "delusion
that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real
entities."
The chief and most fatal mistake and
fallacy made by Science, in the view of the Occultists, lies in the idea of the
possibility of such a thing as inorganic, or dead matter, in nature. Is
anything dead or inorganic capable of transformation or change? Occultism asks.
And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless?
This fallacy is nowhere better
illustrated than in the scientific work of a German savant, Professor Philip
Spiller (Der Weltaether als Kosmische Kraft). In this cosmological treatise,
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 power to act at a distance" (p. 4).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Something dead implies that it had
been at some time living. When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says
that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is the most active. A wooden or
a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes.
Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration
which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of
motion; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This statement, however, does not
prevent Spiller from enunciating an occult doctrine and principle. He asserts
the independent substantiality of force, and shows it as an "incorporeal
stuff" (unkoerperlicher stoff) or substance. Now substance is not matter
in metaphysics, and for argument'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
that of scientific terms. Then this "stuff" is identified and
connected by Spiller with the aether. Expressed in occult language it might be
said with more correctness that this "force-substance" is the
ever-active phenomenal positive aether -- prakriti; while the omnipresent all
pervading ether is the noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or Akasa.
Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the materialists. He
is accused of "utter disregard of the fundamental correlation of force and
matter" (of neither of which Science knows anything certain). For this
"hypostasized half-concept" is, in the view of all other physicists,
not only imponderable, but destitute of cohesive, chemical, thermal, electric,
and magnetic forces -- of all of which forces -- according to occultism --
aether is the source and cause.
Therefore Spiller, with all his
mistakes, exhibits more intuition than any other modern Scientist, with the
exception of Dr. Richardson, perhaps, the theorist on the "nerve
force," or Nervous Ether, also on "Sun Force and Earth Force."*
For AETHER, in Esotericism, is the very quintessence of all possible energy,
and it is certainly to this universal agent (composed of many agents) that all
the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds are
due.
What are Electricity and Light, in
fact? How can Science know that one is a fluid and the other a "mode of
motion"? Why is it not made clear why a difference should be made between
them, since both are considered force-correlations. Electricity is a fluid, we
are told, immaterial and non-molecular (though Helmholtz thinks otherwise), and
the proof of it is that we can bottle it up, accumulate and store it away.
Then, it must be simply matter, and no peculiar "fluid." Nor is it
only "a mode of motion," for motion could hardly be stored in a
Leyden jar. As for light, it is a still more extraordinary "mode of
motion;" since, "marvellous as it may appear, light (also) can
actually be stored up for use," as demonstrated by Professor 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] and the spacial distance between those particles in their vibratory
motion is -- considered from another plane of being and perception -- as great
as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to physical science
this will be an absurdity.
* See "Popular Science
Review," Vol. V., pp. 329-34.
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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, etc., etc. . . . ."
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 residue of which remains on the paper?
Our learned men will get out of this
through some scientific technicality; but what is it that is intercepted, so as
to imprison a certain quantity of it on glass, paper, or wood? Is it
"Motion" or is it "Force"? Or shall we be told that what
remains behind is the effect only of the force or Motion? Then what is this
Force? Force or energy is a quality; but every quality must belong to a
something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as "that which
changes or tends to change any physical relation between bodies, whether
mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc." But it is not
that "Force" or that "Motion" which remains behind on the
paper, when the Force or Motion has ceased to act; and yet something, which our
physical senses cannot perceive, has been left there to become a cause in its
turn and produce effects. What is it? It is not matter, as defined by Science
-- i.e., matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would say it was a
spiritual secretion -- and would be laughed at. But yet, when the physicist
said that Electricity, stored up, was a fluid, or that light fixed on paper is
still Sunlight -- this is Science.* In the opinion of an experienced Occultist,
one who has verified the whole series of Nidanas, of causes and effects that
finally project their last effect on to this our plane of manifestations; one
who has traced matter back to its noumenon, the explanation of the physicist is
like calling anger, or its effects -- the exclamation provoked by it -- a
secretion or a fluid, and man, the cause of it -- its material conductor. But,
as Grove prophetically remarked, that day is fast approaching when it will be
confessed that the "forces" we know of are but the phenomenal
manifestations of realities we know nothing about, -- but which were known to
the ancients and -- by them worshipped.
He made one still more suggestive
remark, however, which ought to have become the motto of Science, but has not.
Sir W. Grove said that "SCIENCE SHOULD HAVE NEITHER DESIRES NOR
PREJUDICES. TRUTH SHOULD BE HER SOLE AIM."
Meanwhile, in our days, Scientists
are more self-opinionated and bigoted than even the clergy. For they minister
to, if they do not actually worship,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The newest Authorities have
rejected these explanations as "exploded theories," and have now
deified "Motion" as their sole Idol. But, surely, they and their idol
will one day share the fate of their predecessors.
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"Force-Matter," which is
their Unknown God. And how unknown it is may be inferred from the many
confessions of the most eminent physicists and biologists, with Faraday at
their head. Not only, he said, could he never presume to pronounce whether
Force was a property or function of Matter, but he actually did not know what
was meant by the word 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 became convinced of his utter ignorance of
the nature of matter.* (See Buckwell's "Electric Science.")
The Occultists are often
misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the essence of
Force under certain aspects the descriptive 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 religions and only one fish-sauce -- has but one name
for all, namely, "Substance." Moreover, neither the orthodox
physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premises, and are
as apt to confuse the effects as they do the causes. It is incorrect, for
instance, to say, as Stallo does, that "matter can no more be realized or
conceived as mere spacial presence than as a concretion of forces," or
that "force is 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"** -- could 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 may be 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?"
** Schelling, "Ideen,"
etc., p. 18.
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real presence; it is impossible,
therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces" (p. 161).
This may be true in the phenomenal
world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the one reality of the
supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a materialist.
It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things, in what the
Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so called, "is
force" according to Newton (Princ. Def. iii.), and for the student of
Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the occult forces. A body may be considered
divorced from its relations with other bodies -- which, according to physical
and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes -- only conceptually, only
on this plane of illusion. In fact, it can never be so detached: death itself
being unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal forces, of which
the one FORCE or LIFE is the synthesis: but simply continues such
inter-relation on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James Croll
mean when, in speaking "On the Transformation of Gravity"
(Philosophical Magazine, Vol. II., p. 252), he brings forward the views
advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says very 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. . . . ."
No one will deny that a force (whether
gravity, electricity, or any other force) which exists outside of the bodies
and in open space -- be it ether or vacuum -- must be something, and not a pure
nothing, when conceived apart from a mass? Otherwise it could hardly exist in
one place with a greater and in another with reduced "intensity." G.
A. Hirn declares the same in his Theorie Mecanique 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 in 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 kind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one day Science will be the
first to re-adopt the derided name of phlogiston. Whatever may be the future
name given to it, to maintain that force does not reside in the atoms, but only
in "space between them," may be scientific enough; nevertheless it is
not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying
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that water does not reside in the
drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space between those
drops!
The objection made that there are two
distinct schools of physicists, by one of which "the force is assumed to
be an independent substantial entity, which is NOT a property of matter nor is
it essentially related to matter,"* is hardly likely to help the profane
to any clearer understanding. It is, on the contrary, still more calculated to
throw the question into greater confusion than ever. For Force is, then,
neither this nor the other. By viewing it as "an independent substantial
entity," the theory extends the right hand of fellowship to Occultism,
while the strange contradictory idea that it is not related to matter
"otherwise than by its power to act upon it,"** leads physical
science to the most absurd contradictory hypotheses. Whether "force"
or "motion," (Occultism, seeing no difference between the two, never
attempts to separate them) it cannot act for the adherents of the
atomo-mechanical theory one way, and for those of the rival school in another
way. Nor can the atoms be, in one case, absolutely uniform 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.'*** This principle is known as the law of
Avogadro or Ampere."****
This shows that either modern
chemistry or modern physics is entirely wrong in its respective fundamental
principles. For if the assumption of atoms of different specific gravities on
the basis of the atomic theory in physics is deemed absurd, and chemistry
meets, nevertheless, on its opposite basis (in the question of the formation
and transformation of chemical compounds) with "unfailing experimental
verification,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Concepts of Modern
Physics," xxxi., Introductory to the 2nd edition.
** Loc. cit.
*** J. P. Cooke, The New Chemistry,
p. 13.
**** "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 molecules 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.
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then it becomes apparent that it is
the atomo-mechanical theory which is untenable. The explanations of the latter,
that "the differences of weight are only differences of density, and
differences of density are differences of distance between the particles
contained in a given space," are not really valid, because, before a
physicist can argue in his defence that, "as in the atom there is no multiplicity
of particles and no void space: hence differences of density or weight are
impossible in the case of atoms," he must first know what an atom is, in
reality, and that he cannot know. He must bring it under the observation of at
least one of his physical senses -- and that he cannot do: for the simple
reason that no one has ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or tasted an
"atom." The atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is
an entified abstraction -- at any rate for physical Science -- and has nought
to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test
of retort or balance. The mechanical conception, therefore, becomes a jumble of
the most conflicting theories and dilemmas, in the minds of the many Scientists
who disagree on this, as on other subjects; the evolution of which the Eastern
Occultist, who follows this scientific strife, beholds in the greatest
bewilderment.
To conclude on the question of
gravity. How can Science presume to know anything certain of it? How can it maintain
its position and its hypotheses against those of the Occultists, who see in
gravity only sympathy and antipathy, or attraction and repulsion, caused by
physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes outside of
its influence? How can they disagree with the Occultists before they agree
among themselves? Indeed one hears of the conservation of energy, and in the
same breath of the perfect hardness and inelasticity of the atoms; of the
Kinetic theory of gases being identical with "potential energy," so
called; and, at the same time, of the elementary units of mass being absolutely
hard and inelastic! An Occultist opens a scientific work and reads 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 property." (Wundt,
"Die Theorie der Materie," p. 381.)
And further:
"Chemistry in its ultimate form
must be atomic mechanics." (Nazesmann, "Thermochemie," p. 150.)
And a moment after he is told that:
"Gases consist of atoms which
behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres." (Kroenig, Clausius,
Maxwell, etc., Philosophical Magazine, Vol. XIX., p. 18.)
Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson
is found declaring that:
"We are forbidden by the modern
theory of the conservation of
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energy to assume inelasticity, or
anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate molecules whether of ultra
mundane or mundane matter." (!!!) ("Philosophical Magazine," p.
321, loc. cit.)
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 their personal vanity to dogmatise on
anything, as the majority do. There are several among them -- perhaps more than
dare publish openly their secret conclusions for fear of the cry "Stone
him to death!" -- men, whose intuitions have made them span the abyss that
lies between the terrestrial aspect of matter, and the -- to us, on our plane of
illusion -- subjective, i.e., TRANSCENDENTALLY OBJECTIVE SUBSTANCE, and led
them to proclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must
be remembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within
any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well aware that 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 defenders, to say that
they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat; and urge as a proof the fact
that Mr. Crookes' radiometer has unsettled no views. If they would fathom the
ultimate nature of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial
nature, however supersensuous. Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness
of the vibratory theory.* Only they limit its functions to our Earth --
declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since "Masters"
in the Occult Sciences perceive the CAUSES that produce ethereal vibrations.
Were all these only the fictions of the alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics,
such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so many others, would
have to be regarded as worse than visionaries: they would become impostors and
deliberate mystificators.
The Occultists are taken to task for
calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion, magnetism, etc., etc., a
substance.** Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the pressure of strong sunlight
on a square mile is about 3 1/4 lbs. It is, they are told, "the energy of
the myriad ether waves;" and when they call it a "substance"
impinging on that area, their explanation is proclaimed unscientific.
There is no justification for such an
accusation. In no way -- as stated
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, yet was many times
explained by the Alchemists.
** 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.
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more than once before now -- do the
Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the
immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that,
because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these
phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed ALL that lies beyond the threshold of
Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects,
illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated.
And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors, are not, as asserted by
Science, set up by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies -- the
matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, -- but that we must seek for
the ultimate causes of light, heat, etc., etc., in MATTER existing in
super-sensuous states -- states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual
eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are
the ghost or shadow of matter in motion. Such states can be perceived by the
SEER or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumna ray -- the
first of the Seven Mystic rays of the Sun.*
Thus, we put forward the Occult
teaching which maintains the reality of a supersubstantial and supersensible
essence of that Akasa (not ether, which is only an aspect of the latter), the
nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter manifestations -- its
merely phenomenal phalanx of effects -- on this terrene plane. Science, on the
contrary, informs us that heat can never be regarded as matter in any
conceivable state.** We are also told that the two great obstacles to the fluid
(?) theory of heat undoubtedly are:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The names of the Seven Rays --
which are, Sushumna, Harikesa, Viswakarman, Viswatryarchas, Sannaddha,
Sarvavasu and Swaraj -- are all mystical, and each has its distinct application
in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes. The Sushumna, which,
as said in the Nirukta (11, 6), is only to light up the moon, is the ray
nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogis. The totality of the Seven Rays
spread through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical Upadhi
(basis) of the Ether of Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat, electricity,
etc., 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 Upadhi, in the ether of the Occultist --
or Akasa.
** To cite a most impartial critic,
one whose authority no one can call in question, as a reminder to Western
Dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way considered 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." (Leslie's Fluid Theory of Light and Heat.) "Whether this is
true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many generations, will
have to elapse before we shall be able to tell." (Buckle's History of
Civilization, Vol. III., p. 384.)
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(1.) The production of heat by
friction -- excitation of molecular motions.
(2.) The conversion of heat into
mechanical motion.
The answer given is: There are fluids
of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so was heat quite
recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some imponderable
substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of matter. When the
latter was dethroned, and MOTION was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the
Universe, heat became "a mode of motion." We need not despair: it may
become something else to-morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever becoming,
and can never say, "I am that I am." On the other hand, Occult
Science has its changeless traditions from prehistoric times. It may err in
particulars; it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal
laws, simply because that Science, justly referred to by philosophy as the
"divine," was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by
beings who were wiser than man will be, even in the seventh Race of his Seventh
Round. And that Science maintains that Forces are not what modern learning would
have them; e.g., Magnetism is not a "mode of motion"; and, in this
particular case, at least, exact "modern Science" is sure to come to
grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more ridiculous, more
outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: "the Hindu initiated Yogi
knows really ten times more than the greatest European physicist of the
ultimate nature and constitution of light -- both solar and lunar." Yet
why is the Sushumna ray believed to be that ray which furnishes the moon with its
borrowed light? Why is it "the ray cherished by the initiated Yogi?"
Why is the moon held as the deity of the mind, by those Yogis? We say, because
light, or rather all its occult properties, every combination and correlation
of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, were perfectly known
to the old adepts.
Therefore, although, in its knowledge
of the ultimate constitution of matter, or in the so-called ultimate analysis
as opposed to the proximate in chemistry, occult science may be less
well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of
physical correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the
ultimate occult states of matter, and of the true nature of matter, than 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 ancient Initiates had a far wider knowledge
of physics -- as a Science of Nature -- than our Academies of Science, all
taken together, possess, the statement will be characterized as an impertinence
and an absurdity; for physical sciences are considered to have been carried in
our age to the apex of perfection. Hence, the twitting query -- "Can
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the Occultists meet successfully the
two points, namely (a) the production of heat by friction -- excitation of
molecular motions; and (b) the conversion of heat into mechanical force, if
they hold to the old "exploded" theory of heat being a substance or a
fluid?"
To answer the question, it must first
be observed that the Occult Sciences do not regard either electricity or any of
the forces supposed to be generated by it, as matter, in any of the states
known to physical Science; to put it more clearly, none of these
"forces," so-called, are either solids, gases, or fluids. If it did
not look pedantic, an Occultist would even object to electricity being called a
fluid -- as it is an effect and not a cause. But its 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, the
chemist, had to say about these two abstractions.
--------------
"What is Force?" argues
this great man of Science, "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.* 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 laya state,** 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."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* On the plane of manifestation and
illusionary matter it may be so; not that it is nothing more, for it is vastly
more.
** Neutral, or zero.
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"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." ("Scientific
Letters," Professor Butlerof.)
We are assured that real science is
not materialistic; and our own conviction tells us that it cannot be so, when its
learning is real. There is a good reason for it, well defined by some
physicists and chemists themselves. Natural sciences cannot go hand in hand
with materialism. To be at the height of their calling, men of science have to
reject the very possibility of materialistic doctrines having aught to do with
the atomic theory; and we find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois Reymond, -- the
latter probably unconsciously -- and several others, have proved it. And it is,
furthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that Kanada in India, and Leucippus,
Democritus, and after them Epicurus -- the earliest atomists in Europe -- while
propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed in Gods or
supersensuous entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon matter thus differed
from those now prevalent. We must be allowed to make our statement clearer in a
short synopsis of the ancient and modern views of 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
fullness, of atoms and vacuity. Even leaving aside the axiom -- now absolutely
demonstrated by telescope and microscope -- taught by the ancients, that nature
abhors
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vacuum, what is an atom? "It is,
we are answered by Science," writes Professor Butlerof, "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, a
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." Buchner, 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.
"See now what a curious
contradiction this fundamental principle of the materialists is leading them
into," writes Butlerof. "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."
This is sufficient to show how absurd
are the simultaneous admissions of the non-divisibility and elasticity of the
atom. The atom is elastic, ergo, the atom is divisible, and must consist of
particles, or of sub-atoms. And these sub-atoms? They are either non-elastic,
and in such case they represent no dynamic importance, or, they are elastic
also; and in that case, they, too, are subject to divisibility. And thus ad
infinitum. But infinite divisibility of atoms resolves matter into simple centres
of force, i.e., precludes the possibility of conceiving matter as an objective
substance.
This vicious circle is fatal to
materialism. It finds itself caught in its own nets, and no issue is possible
for it out of the dilemma. If it says that the atom is indivisible, then it
will have mechanics asking it the awkward 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."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Scientific Letters,"
Butlerof.
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Accept the explanations and teachings
of Occultism, and, the blind inertia of physical Science being replaced by the
intelligent active Powers behind the 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 divisibility of the atom, that the whole science of
Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the
divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still
undreamt of by the most spiritually disposed chemists and physicists.
The above views were enunciated by an
Academician, the greatest chemist in Russia, and a recognised authority even in
Europe -- the late Professor Butlerof. True, he was defending the phenomena of
the Spiritualists, the materializations, so called, in which he believed as
Professors Zollner, and Hare did, as Mr. A. Russell Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes,
and many another Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or
secretly. But his argument with regard to the nature of the essence that acts
behind the physical phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less
scientific and authoritative for all that, and apply admirably to the case in
hand. Science has no right to deny to the Occultists their claim to a more
profound knowledge of the so-called Forces; which, they say, are only the
effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet supersensuous, and
beyond any kind of matter with which they (the Scientists) have hitherto become
acquainted. The most science can do is to assume the attitude of agnosticism
and to maintain it. Then it can say: "Your case is no more proven than is
ours; but we confess to knowing nothing in reality either about Force or matter,
or that which lies at the bottom of the so-called correlations of Forces.
Therefore, time alone can prove who is right and who is wrong. Let us wait
patiently, and meanwhile show courtesy instead of scoffing at each other."
But to do this requires a boundless
love of truth and the surrender of that prestige -- however false -- of
infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the ignorant and
flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. To blend the two sciences,
the archaic and the modern, requires 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 explained. Just as in old alchemical works the real meaning of the
substances and elements meant are concealed under the most ridiculous
metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of the Elements
(say of fire) concealed in the Vedas, and especially in the Puranas, under
allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no meaning, then
indeed all those long legends and allegories about the sacredness of the three
types of fire, and the forty-nine original fires --
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personified by the Sons of Daksha's
daughters and the Rishis, their husbands, "who with the first son of
Brahma and his three descendants constitute 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 worlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has,
moreover, in its essential nature a corresponding relation to one of the human
psychic faculties, besides its well determined chemical and physical potencies
when coming in contact with the terrestrially differentiated matter. Science
has no speculations to offer upon fire per se; Occultism and ancient religious
science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely veiled phraseology
of the Puranas, where (as in the Vayu Purana) many of the qualities of the
personified fires are explained. Thus, Pavaka is electric, or Vaidyuta, fire;
Pavamana, the fire produced by friction, (or Nirmathya): and Suchi is solar (or
Saura) fire* -- all these three being the sons of Abhimanin, the Agni (fire),
eldest son of Brahma and of Swaha. Pavaka, moreover, is made parent to
Kavyavahana, the fire of the Pitris: Suchi to Havyavahana -- the fire of the
gods; and Pavamana, to Saharaksha, the fire of the Asuras. Now all this shows
that the writers of the Puranas were perfectly conversant with the
"Forces" of Science and their correlations; moreover, with the various
qualities of the latter in their bearing upon those psychic and physical
phenomena which receive no credit and are unknown to physical science now. Very
naturally, when an Orientalist, -- especially one with materialistic tendencies
-- reads that these are only appellations of fire employed in the invocations
and rituals, he calls this "Tantrika superstition and mystification";
and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling, than to give attention
to the secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their
explanation in the physical correlations of forces, so far as known. So little
credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Aryans for knowledge, that even such
glaring passages as in Book I. chap. ii, Vishnu Purana, are left without any
notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean? -- "Then Ether, air,
light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of sound and
other qualities, existed as distinguishable according to their properties, . .
. . 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 . . . they assumed through mutual association, the
character of one mass of entire unity; and directed by Spirit . . ." etc.
This means, of course, that the writers were perfectly acquainted with
correlation and were well posted about the origin of Kosmos from the
"undiscrete Principle" -- Avyaktanugrahena, as applied
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Called the "drinker of
waters," solar heat causing water to evaporate.
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to Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti
conjointly, and not to "Avyakta, either First Cause, or matter," as
Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no "miraculous creation,"
but taught the evolution of atoms (on our physical plane), and their first
differentiation from laya into the protyle, as Mr. Crookes has suggestively
named matter, or primordial substance beyond the zero-line:-- there where we
place Mulaprakriti, the "root-Principle" of the world stuff and of
all in the world.
This can be easily demonstrated.
Take, for instance, the newly-published catechism of the Visishtadwaita
Vedantins, an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated and taught in
the XIth century (its founder, Ramanujacharya, being born in A.D. 1017), at a
time when European "Science" still believed in the squareness and
flatness of the Earth, of Cosmas-Indicopleustes of the VIth century. It teaches
that before evolution began, Prakriti (Nature) was in a condition of laya or
absolute homogeneity, as "matter exists in two conditions, the sukshma, or
latent and undifferentiated, and the sthula or differentiated condition."
Then it became anu, atomic. It teaches of Sudda-satwa -- "a substance not
subject to the qualities of matter, from which it is quite different," and
adds that out of that substance the bodies of the inhabitants of Vaikuntaloka
(the heaven of Vishnu), the gods, are formed. That every particle or atom of
Prakriti contains Jiva (divine life), and is the sarira (body) of that Jiva
which it contains, while every Jiva is in its turn the sarira of the supreme
spirit, as "Parabrahm pervades every Jiva, as well as every particle of
matter." Dualistic and anthropomorphic as may be the philosophy of the
Visishtadwaita, when compared with that of the Adwaita -- the non-dualists, --
it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the cosmogony accepted
by either Christianity, or its great opponent, modern Science. The followers of
one of the greatest minds that ever appeared on Earth, the Adwaita Vedantins
are called Atheists, because they regard all save Parabrahm, the secondless, or
Absolute Reality -- as an illusion. Yet the wisest Initiates came from their
ranks, as also the greatest Yogis. The Upanishads show that they most assuredly
knew not only what is the causal substance in the effects of friction, and that
their forefathers were acquainted with the conversion of heat into mechanical
force, but that they were acquainted with the noumena of every spiritual as
well as of every cosmic phenomenon.
Truly the young Brahmin 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 contempt for his national gods proportioned to the
honours received in his education in physical sciences; truly he has but to
read in the light of the latter, and with an eye to the correlation of
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physical Forces, certain passages in
his Puranas, if he would learn how much more his ancestors knew than he will
ever know -- unless he becomes an occultist. Let him turn to the allegory of
Pururavas and the celestial Gandharva,* who furnished the former with a vessel
full of heavenly fire. The primeval mode 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 Tretagni (sacred triad of fires) obtained by the
attrition of sticks made of the wood of the Aswattha tree (the Bo-tree, of
Wisdom and Knowledge) -- sticks "as many finger-breaths long as there are
syllables in the gayatri" must have a secret meaning, or else the writers
of the Vedas and Puranas were no sacred writers but mystificators. That it has
such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are a proof, and they alone are able to
enlighten Science, as to why and how, "the fire, that was primevally one,
was made threefold (treta) in our present Manvantara, by the Son of Ila (Vach),
the primeval woman after the Deluge, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu.
The allegory is suggestive, in whatever Purana it may be read and studied.
--------------
VII.
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 our favour. Ostracised for
"principle's sake" by the few, they are tacitly approved of by the
many. That one of them preaches almost Occult doctrines, in some things
identical with, and often amounting to a public recognition of our "Fohat
and his seven Sons" --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
Sushumna, 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 latter 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 the
Earth the secrets of Heaven.
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the Occult Gandharva of the Vedas --
will be recognised by every Occultist, and even by some profane readers.
If the latter open Volume V. of the
Popular Science Review (pp. 329-334), they will find in it an article on
"Sun Force and Earth Force," by Dr. B. 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 re-open 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,*
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** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 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.
** What need, then, of etheric waves
for the transmission of light, heat, etc., if this substance can pass through
vacuum?
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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,'* 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.**
"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."***
. . . "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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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, prana -- 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.
** 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 victims of Maya,
ceaselessly.
*** An honest admission, that.
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is such that we have no word, except
ether,* by which to express it. It pervades and fills space, but alone it too
is quiescent -- dead.** 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. -- H.P.B.] . . . "through the particles of the ponderable
substance the ether [Ether's second principle. -- H.P.B.] 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 [Say astral light. -- H.P.B.]; 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 need only a little
alteration of terms here and there, the same eminent scientist -- an original
and liberal thinker, undeniably -- proceeds to sum up those views, and
continues:--
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Yet it is not Ether, but only one
of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of the principles of
Akasa.
** And so does prana (Jiva) 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 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-Siva, the
Destroyer -- a correlation seemingly unknown to Science.
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"I shall not dwell at great
length on this unity of sun-force and earth, 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* we may still call,
as the ancients did, Aith-ur -- Solar fire, AETHER. This fluid, unchangeable in
composition, indestructible, invisible,** pervades everything and all
[ponderable. -- H. P. B.] matter,*** the pebble in the running brook, the tree
overhanging, the man looking on, is charged with the ether in various degree;
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**** the suns are the generators of
it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.*****
"(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 flint, 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 conception of the Universe, the Spirit and
Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory -- put it any way and under whatever
disguise -- always leaves a more widely opened issue for men of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verily, unless the occult terms of
the Kabalists are adopted!
** "Unchangeable" only
during Manvantaric periods, after which it merges once more into Mulaprakriti;
"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.
*** One has to add (ponderable), to
distinguish it from that Ether which is matter still, though a substratum.
**** 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.
***** Here, we decidedly beg to
differ with the learned gentleman. Let us remember that this AEther, whether
Akasa is meant by the term, or its lower principle, Ether -- is septenary.
Akasa is Aditi in the allegory, and the mother of Martanda (the sun), the
Deva-matri -- "Mother of the gods." In the solar system, the sun is
her Buddhi and Vahan, the Vehicle, hence the 6th principle; in Kosmos all the
suns are the Kama rupa of Akasa and so is ours. It is only when regarded as an
individual Entity in his own Kingdom that Surya (the sun) is the 7th principle
of the great body of matter.
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Science to speculate beyond the line
drawn by modern materialism -- or call it agnosticism rather, to be more
correct* -- than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, or both, modern
speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and the latter was
soaked through with archaic occultism. Undulatory or corpuscular theory -- it
is all one. It is speculation from the aspects of phenomena, not from the
knowledge of the essential nature of the cause and causes. When modern Science
has explained to its audience the late achievements of Bunsen and Kirchoff, and
shown the seven colours, the "primary" of a ray which is decomposed
in a fixed order on a screen; and described the respective lengths of luminous
waves, what has it proved? It has justified its reputation for exactness in
mathematical achievement by measuring even the length of a luminous wave --
"varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a millimetre at
the red end of the spectrum to about three hundred and ninety-three millionths
of a millimetre at the violet end." But when the exactness of the
calculation with regard to the effect on the light-wave is thus vindicated,
Science is forced to admit that the force (which is the supposed cause) is
believed to produce "inconceivably minute undulations" in some medium
-- "generally regarded as identical with the ethereal medium"** --
and that medium itself is still only -- a "hypothetical agent!"
Auguste Comte's pessimism with
respect to the impossibility of knowing some day the chemical composition of
the sun, has not been belied thirty years later by Kirchoff, as claimed. The
spectroscope has helped us to see that the elements, with which the modern
chemist is familiar, must in all probability be present in the sun's outward
robes -- not in the sun itself; and, taking these "robes," the solar
cosmic veil, for the sun itself, the physicists have declared its luminosity to
be due to combustion and flame, and have mistaken the vital principle of that
luminary for a purely material thing, and called it
"chromosphere."*** We have hypotheses and theories only so far, not
law -- by any means.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brutal but frank materialism is
more honest than Janus-faced agnosticism in our days. Monism 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. The Monists are worse than the Materialists; because, while
looking at the Universe and psycho-spiritual man from the same negative
stand-point, the latter put their case far less plausibly than sceptics of Mr.
Tyndall's or even Mr. Huxley's stamp. Herbert Spencer, Bain and Lewes are more
dangerous to universal truths than Buchner.
** "Geology," by Professor
A. Winchell.
*** See Five Years of Theosophy --
Articles: "Do the Adepts deny the nebular theory?" and "Is the
Sun merely a cooling mass?" -- for the true Occult teaching.
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VIII.
LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY.
THE imponderable fluids have had
their day; "mechanical Forces" are less talked about; Science has put
on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has remained,
owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It
may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it
answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself
is not sufficient to explain merely planetary motion; how can it presume to
explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will
never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for every
sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites is shown to
be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, says an
astronomer ("Philosophie Naturelle," art. 142), Science would have to
name that cause.
Occultism has named it for ages, and
so have all the ancient philosophers; but then all such beliefs are now
proclaimed exploded superstitions. The "extra cosmic" God has killed
every possibility of belief in intra cosmic intelligent Forces, yet who, or
what is the original pusher in that motion? "When we have learned the
cause, unique et speciale, that pushes, we will be ready to combine it with the
one which attracts," says Francoeur ("Astronomie," p. 342). 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 earth and motion in heaven is accepted,
and if that other far bolder one of Herschell -- about certain organisms in the
Sun -- is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our teachings be
vindicated, and esoteric allegory shown to have anticipated Modern Science by
millions of years, probably, for these are the Archaic teachings. Martanda (the
Sun) watches and threatens -- without abandoning the central position to which
his Mother, Aditi, relegated him -- his seven brothers, the planets; "he
pursues them, turning slowly around himself . . . and follows them from afar,
moving in the same direction that they do, on the path that encircles their
houses" -- or the orbit. (See Comment to Stanza IV., Book I.) It is the
Sun-fluids or Emanations that impart all motion and awaken all into life, in
the Solar System. It is attraction and repulsion, but not as understood by
modern physics and according to the law of gravity; but in harmony with the
laws of Manvantaric motion de-
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signed from the early Sandhya, 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 diverse and alters
with every minor Kalpa -- is regulated by the Movers, the Intelligences within
the Cosmic Soul. Are we so very wrong in believing all this? Well, here is a
modern and a great man of Science who, speaking of vital 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., (in "Popular Science Review," Vol.
IV., p. 148), who, speaking of the luminous envelope of the Sun and its
"peculiar curdy appearance," says:--
"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* 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 see what Occultists have to say
to this in Book I.
"Whatever they may be (those
sheets of flame), it is evident they are the immediate sources of solar heat
and light. Here we have a surrounding envelope of photogenic matter,** 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?],*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And the central mass, too, as will
be found, or rather the centre of the reflection.
** That "matter" is just
like the reflection in a mirror of the flame from a "photogenic"
lamp-wick.
*** See "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 258 -- answer to this speculation of Herschell's.
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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 this to be the case, one day.
Again, on p. 156, 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."
Thus, we have an important scientific
corroboration for one of our fundamental 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 mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those
life currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every
living thing on Earth. For see what another eminent physician says, who calls
this (our life-fluid) "nervous Ether." Change a few sentences in the
article, extracts from which now follow, and you have another quasi-Occult
treatise on Life Force. This once, it is again Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S.,
who gives his views in the "Popular Science Review," Vol. X., p.
380-3, 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 rearrangement 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.
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. . . 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* The precise chemical (?)** 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*** 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 ." .
. . .
A new flood of light is certainly
thrown on the wisdom of ancient and mediaeval Occultism and its votaries. For
Paracelsus wrote the same thing more than three hundred years ago, namely, in
the sixteenth century, as follows:--
"The whole of the Microcosm is
potentially contained in the Liquor Vitae, a nerve fluid . . . in which is
contained the nature, quality, character, and essence of beings." . . .
(De Generatione Hominis). . . . "The Archaeus or Liquor Vitae is an
essence that is equally distributed in all parts of the human body. . . . The
Spiritus Vitae 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 lingasharira) may be explained." (De Viribus
Membrorum. See "Life of Paracelsus" by Franz Hartmann, M.D., F.T.S.)
Had Dr. Richardson studied all the
secret works of Paracelsus, he would not have been obliged to confess so often
-- "we do not know" . . . . "it is not known to us" . . . .
etc., etc. Nor would he have ever pronounced the following sentence, recanting
the best portions of his independent rediscovery, in which he says (p. 384):--
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Paracelsus for one, who called it
liquor vitae, and Archaeus.
** Rather alchemical --
"composition."
*** "This vital force . . .
radiates around man like a luminous sphere" . . . says Paracelsus in
Paragranum.
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"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. . . . ."
We fail to see it, and we know it is
not so. Pantheism may be "physically rediscovered." It was known,
seen, and felt by the whole of antiquity. Pantheism manifests itself in the
vast expanse of the starry heavens, in the breathing of the seas and oceans and
the quiver of life of the smallest blade of grass. Philosophy rejects one
finite and imperfect God in the universe, as the anthropomorphic deity of the
monotheist is represented by his followers. It repudiates in its name of
Philo-Theo-Sophia the grotesque idea that Infinite, Absolute Deity should, or
rather could, have any, whether direct or indirect, relation to finite illusive
evolutions of matter, and therefore cannot imagine a universe outside that
Deity, or the latter absent from the smallest speck of animate or inanimate
substance.* Why either the Ether of Space, or "nervous Ether" should
"destroy the individuality of every sense" seems incomprehensible for
one acquainted with 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 as 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 would destroy the individuality of
every individual sense" shows that all the conclusions of the learned
doctor are based on the modern physical theories, though he would fain reform
them. But he will find it impossible to do this unless he allows the existence
of spiritual senses to replace the gradual atrophy of the physical. "We
see and hear," in accordance (of course in Dr. Richardson's mind) with the
explanations of the phenomena of sight and hearing, by that same materialistic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This does not mean that every bush,
tree or stone is God or a god; but only that every speck of the manifested
material of Kosmos belongs to and is the substance of "God," however
low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through the Eternities of the
ever becoming,; and also that every such speck individually, and Kosmos
collectively, is an aspect and a reminder of that universal One Soul -- which
philosophy refuses to call God, thus limiting the eternal and ever-present root
and essence.
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science which postulates that we
cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and mystics know better. The
Vedic Aryans were as familiar with the mysteries of sound and colour as our
physiologists are on the physical plane, but they had 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 become the more developed: e.g., the blind man will recover his
sight through the senses of touch, of hearing, etc., and he who is deaf will be
able to hear through sight, by seeing audibly the words uttered by the lips and
mouth of the speaker. But these are cases that belong to the world of matter
still. The spiritual senses, those that act on a higher plane of consciousness
are rejected a priori by physiology because the latter is ignorant of the
sacred science. It limits the action of ether to vibrations, and, dividing it
from air -- though air is simply differentiated and compound ether -- makes it
assume functions to fit in with the special theories of the physiologist. But
there is more real science in the teachings of the Upanishads when these are
correctly understood, than the Orientalists, who do not understand them at all,
are ready to admit. Mental as well as physical correlations of the seven senses
(seven on the physical and seven on the mental planes) are clearly explained
and defined in the Vedas, and especially in the Upanishad called Anugita:
"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
(or entity) is called the destructible." Thus speaks the ASCETIC in
Anugita; and also: "Every one who is twice-born (initiated) knows such is
the teaching of the ancients. . . . . Space is the first entity. . . . . Now
Space (Akasa, or the noumenon of Ether) has one quality . . . and that is sound
only . . . and the qualities of sound are Shadga, Rishabha, Gandhara, Madhyama,
Panchama, and beyond these five Nishada and Dhaivata"; (the Hindu gamut).
These seven notes of the scale are the principles of sound. (Vide ch. xxxvi. of
Anugita.) The qualities of every Element, as of every sense, are septenary, and
to judge and dogmatize on them from their manifestation (likewise sevenfold in
itself) on the material or objective plane above is quite arbitrary. For it is
only by the SELF emancipating itself from these (seven) causes of illusion that
one acquires the knowledge (secret wisdom) of the qualities of objects of sense
on their dual plane of manifestation -- the visible and the invisible. Thus it
is said:--
"State this wonderful mystery .
. . . . Hear the assignment of causes exhaustively. The nose, and the tongue,
and the eye, and the
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skin, and the ear as the fifth (organ
of sense) Mind and Understanding,* these seven (senses) should be understood to
be the causes of (the knowledge of their) 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 regarded as the causes of the agents.** These (the
agents) being possessed of qualities (sattwa, rajas, tamas), enjoy their own
qualities, agreeable and disagreeable" (Anugita).
Then one reads in the Bhagavadgita
(chap. vii.) the Deity (or Krishna) saying:--
". . . . Only some know me
truly. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space (or Akasa, AEther), 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 (Mundakopanishad, p. 298). . . . I am the taste in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The division of the physical senses
into five, comes to us from 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 was the sixth sense,
mental perception to register and record them; and (this for the Metaphysicians
and Occultists) the SEVENTH to preserve the spiritual fruition 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 the
hearing, as being that sense which developed in the physical plane (got dwarfed
rather, limited to this plane) only at the beginning of the Fifth Race. (The
Fourth Race already had begun to lose the spiritual condition, so pre-eminently
developed in the Third Race.)
** The modern commentators, failing
to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ancient Scholiasts, take this sentence,
"causes of the agents," to mean "that the powers of smelling,
etc., when attributed to the Self, make him appear as an agent, as an active
principle" (!), which is entirely fanciful. These "seven" are
understood to be the causes of the Agents, because "the objects are
causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression." It means esoterically
that they, these seven senses, are caused by the AGENTS, which are the
"deities," for what does, or can, the sentence which follows this one
mean? "Thus," it is said, "these seven (senses) are the causes
of emancipation" (i.e., when these causes are made ineffectual). "And
among the learned (the wise Initiates) who understand the qualities which are
in the position (in the nature, rather) of the deities, each in its
place," means simply that the "learned" understand the nature of
the noumenoi of the various phenomena; and that "qualities," in this
instance, mean the qualities of the high planetary or Elementary gods or
Intelligences, which rule the elements and their products, and not at all
"the senses," as the modern commentator thinks. For the "learned
do not suppose their senses to have aught to do with them, any more than with
their SELF." (Vide pp. 278 and 279 of the VIII. Vol. of "The Sacred
Books of the East." Anugita.)
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water, O son of Kunti! 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., etc."
Truly, then, one should study Occult
philosophy before one begins to verify and seek the mysteries of nature on its
surface alone, as he alone "who knows the truth about the qualities of
nature, who understands the creation 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 (Parabrahmam) which consists of the understanding (Mahat,
or the universal intelligent Soul) as its trunk, the branches of which are the
great egoism,* in the holes of which are the sprouts, namely, the senses, of
which the great (Occult, or invisible) elements are the flower-bunches,** 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."
This is the Tree of Life, the
Asvattha tree, only after the cutting of which the slave of life and death,
MAN, 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 the most liberal among them, based on
and flowing from undue importance given to the arbitrary divisions and
classification of physical science. Occultism heeds them very little, and
nature still less. The whole range of physical phenomena proceed from the
Primary of Ether -- Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa proceeds from undifferentiated
Chaos, so-called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the
root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahmam. Modern
Science may divide its hypothetically conceived ether in as many ways as it
likes; the real AEther of Space will remain as it is throughout. It has its
seven principles, as all the rest of nature has, and where there was no Ether
there would be no sound, as it is the vibrating sound-board in nature in all of
its seven differentiations. This is the first mystery the Initiates of old have
learned. Our present normal physical senses were (from our present point of
view) abnormal in those days of slow and progressive downward evolution and
fall into matter. And there was a day when all that which in our modern times
is regarded as phenomena, so puzzling to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ahamkara, I suppose, that Egoship
(or Ahamship) which leads to every error.
** The elements are the five
tanmatras of earth, water, fire, air and ether, the producers of the grosser
elements.
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physiologists now compelled to
believe in them -- such as thought transference, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
etc.; in short, all that which is called now "wonderful and abnormal"
-- all that and much more belonged to the senses and faculties common to all
humanity. We are, however, cycling back and cycling forward; i.e., having lost
in spirituality that which we acquired in physical development until almost the
end of the Fourth Race, we (mankind) are as gradually and imperceptibly losing
now in the physical all that we regain once more in the spiritual re-evolution.
This process must go on until the period which will bring the Sixth Root-Race
on a parallel line with the spirituality of the Second, 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" (Akasa), it has just been shown in the ancient
Hindu system as the "first born" of the One, having but one quality,
SOUND (which is septenary). In esoteric language this "One" is the
"Father" Deity, and "Sound" is synonymous with Logos
(Verbum, or the Son). Whether consciously or otherwise, it must be the latter;
and Dr. Richardson, while preaching an Occult doctrine -- chooses the lowest
form of the septenary nature of that "SOUND" and speculates upon it,
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 views. This "Nervous Ether" is
the lowest principle of the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is animal
vitality diffused in all nature and acting according to the conditions it finds
for its activity. It is not an "animal product," but the living
animal, the living flower or plant are its products. The animal tissues only
absorb it according to their more or less morbid or healthy state -- as do
physical materials and structures (in their primogenial State -- nota bene) --
and henceforward, from the moment of the birth of the Entity, are regulated,
strengthened, and fed by it. It descends in a larger supply to vegetation in
the Sushumna sun-ray which lights and feeds the moon, and it is through her
beams that it pours its light upon, and penetrates man and animal, more during
their sleep and rest, than when they are in full activity. Therefore Dr.
Richardson errs again in stating that:--
"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
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friction.* 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.** 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
as 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 is a clear proof of its grand mistake.
But this "physical something," that we call life-fluid -- the Liquor
Vitae of Paracelsus -- has not deserted the body, as Dr. Richardson thinks. It
has only changed its state from activity to passivity, and become latent owing
to the too morbid state of the tissues, on which it has no more hold. Once the
rigor mortis absolute, the "Liquor Vitae" will re-awaken into action,
and begin its work on the atoms chemically. Brahma-Vishnu -- the creator and
the Preserver of Life -- will have transformed himself into Siva the Destroyer.
Lastly he writes on p. 387:--
"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."
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 his auric
emanations. But see what Paracelsus said of 'Nervous Ether'":--
"The Archaeus is of a magnetic
nature, and attracts or repels 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The conductor in the sense of
Upadhi -- 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.
** 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 connection with
the Sun-Force, as Metcalfe and Professor Hunt explain it.
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it has been made impure, and restore
the health" (Paragranum; "Life of Paracelsus," by Dr. F.
Hartmann.)
That the two, Archaeus and
"nervous Ether," are identical, is shown by the English Scientist,
who says that the tension of it generally may be too 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 Occultists, knows the reason of such nervous perturbation or
explains the primary causes of it. The "principle of Life" may kill
when too exuberant, as also when there is too little of it. But this principle
on the manifested (or our) plane is but the effect and the result of the
intelligent action of the "Host" -- collectively, Principle -- the
manifesting LIFE and LIGHT. It is itself subordinate to, and emanates from the
ever-invisible, eternal and Absolute ONE LIFE in a descending and a
re-ascending scale of hierarchic degrees -- a true septenary ladder, with SOUND
(or the Logos) at the upper end and the Vidyadharas* (the inferior Pitris) at
the lower.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In a recent work on the 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 sorely confused Lamaism 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 Vidyadharas,
"the seven great legions of dead men made wise." Now, these
"Vidyadharas," 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 expressed his opinion on their beliefs likewise. 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 "Budhaism,"
or Budhism, i.e., of connecting the system with Gautama's religion instead of
with the Secret Wisdom taught by Krishna, Sankaracharya, and by many others, as
much as by Buddha; and (b) of the impossibility of Mr. Rhys Davids knowing
anything of true esoteric teachings. But he is, at all events, the greatest
Pali and Buddhist scholar of the day, and 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 and -- heartily laugh at
him.
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Of course, the Occultists are fully
aware of the fact that the Vitalist "fallacy," so derided by Vogt and
Huxley, is, nevertheless, still countenanced in very high scientific quarters,
and, therefore, they are happy to feel that they do not stand alone. Thus,
Professor de Quatrefages writes:--
"It is very true 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."*
--------------
IX.
THE SOLAR THEORY.
A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND AND
SINGLE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE AS AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS. HOW FAR SCIENTIFIC
IS THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY ACCEPTED.
IN his reply to Dr. Gull's attack on
the theory of vitality (connected inseparably with the Elements of the ancients
in the Occult philosophy), Professor Beale, the great physiologist, has a few
words as suggestive 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 the same centre as the nucleus
of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Human Species," p.
11.
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"The Sun is the heart of the
Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From
thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great body, and
the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets
are its limbs and pulses. . . ." (Commentary.)
It was stated elsewhere (in the
Theosophist) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in
combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun
being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its shell. The
Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for "Solar
inhabitants," are the reservoirs of solar vital energy, "the vital
electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in abscondito being
thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and
ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window
cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however,
faithfully the interior work.
Thus, there is a regular circulation
of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart -- the
same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during the
manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun contracting as rhythmically at every
return of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead of performing the round in
a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to
pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes the lungs and passes
thence to the great veins and arteries of the system.
This, Science will not deny, since
Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar
spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The
universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living
creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself
breathes every twenty-four hours. The dark region is not due "to the absorption
exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between
the observer and the photosphere," as Father Secchi would have it
("Le Soleil" II., 184), nor are the spots formed "by the matter
(heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc"
(ibid). It is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the
life fluid passes through its hollow muscles. Could the human heart be made
luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible, so as to have it
reflected upon a screen, such as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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used by the astronomers in their
lectures -- say for the moon -- then every one would see the Sun-spot
phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing of
the blood.
It is said 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."
("World-Life," p. 48.)
Occult philosophy has taught this
since the existence of human speech and languages, adding only, on the
principle of the immutable law of analogy -- "as it is above, so it is
below" -- that other axiom, that there is neither Spirit nor matter, in reality,
but only numberless aspects of the One ever-hidden IS (or Sat). The homogeneous
primordial Element is simple and single only on the terrestrial plane of
consciousness and sensation, since matter, after all, is nothing else than the
sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit an idea of psychic
intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that single element which is defined
on our earth by current science, as the ultimate undecomposable constituent of
some kind of matter, would be pronounced in the world of a higher spiritual
perception as something very complex indeed. Our purest water would be found to
yield, instead of its two declared simple elements of oxygen and hydrogen, many
other constituents, undreamt of by our terrestrial modern chemistry. As in the
realm of matter, so in the realm of Spirit, the shadow of that which is
cognized on the plane of objectivity exists on that of pure subjectivity. The
speck of the perfectly homogeneous substance, the sarcode of the Haeckelian
monera, is now viewed as the archebiosis of terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley's
"protoplasm")*; and Bathybius Haeckelii has to be traced to its
pre-terrestrial archebiosis. This is first perceived by the astronomers at its
third stage of evolution, and in the "secondary creation," so-called.
But the students of Esoteric philosophy understand too well the secret meaning
of the stanza: "Brahma has essentially the aspect of prakriti, both
evolved and unevolved . . . . Spirit, O twice-born, (Initiate) is the leading
aspect of Brahma. The next is a two-fold aspect -- of Prakriti and Purusha,
both evolved and unevolved; and time is the last! Anu is one of the names of
Brahma (as distinct from Brahma neuter), and it means "atom":
Aniyamsam aniyasam, "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 may -- as they are understood and defined
at present, are not,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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!
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nor can they be, the primordial
elements. Those were formed from "the curds of the cold radiant
mother" and "the fire-seed of the hot Father" who "are
one," 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 masses of
incandescent vapour of the irresolvable nebulae; for as Professor Newcomb shows
(in his "Popular Astronomy," on page 444), resolvable nebulae are not
a class of proper nebulae.
More than half of those which were at
first mistaken for nebulae -- he thinks -- are what he calls "starry
clusters." The elements now known, have arrived at their state of
permanency in this 4th Round and 5th Race. They have a short period of rest before
they are propelled once more on their upward spiritual evolution; when the
"living fire of Orcus" will dissociate the most irresolvable and
scatter them into the primordial ONE -- again.
Meanwhile the Occultist goes further,
as has been shown in the Commentaries on the Seven Stanzas. Hence he can hardly
hope for any help or recognition from science, which will reject both his
"aniyamsam aniyasam" (the absolutely spiritual atom) and his
Manasaputras -- "mind-born men." By resolving the "single
material element" into one absolute irresolvable element -- Spirit, or
"Root-matter," thus placing it at once outside the reach and province
of physical philosophy -- he has, of course but little in common with the
orthodox men of science. He maintains that Spirit and Matter are two FACETS of
the unknowable UNITY, their apparently contrasted aspects depending, (a) on the
various degrees of differentiation of the latter, and (b) on the grades of
consciousness attained by man himself. This is, however, metaphysics, and has
little to do with physics -- however great in its own terrestrial limitation
that physical philosophy may now be.
Nevertheless, once that Science
admits, if not the actual existence, at any rate, the possibility of the
existence, of a Universe with its numberless forms, conditions, and aspects
built out of a "single Substance,"* it has
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In his "World-Life" --
page 48 -- in the appended foot notes, 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
would appeal, to prove the unity of matter, 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 nebulae 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's "radiant matter," though his
experiments may seem [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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to go further. Unless it also admits
the possibility of One Element, or the ONE LIFE of the Occultists. It will have
to hang up that "single substance," especially if limited to only the
solar nebulae, like the coffin of Mahomet, in mid air, though minus the
attractive magnet that sustains that coffin. Fortunately for the speculative
physicists, if unable to state with any degree of precision what the nebular
theory does imply, we have, thanks to Professor Winchell, and several
disagreeing astronomers, been able to learn what it does not imply.* (Vide
Supra.)
Unfortunately, this is far from
clearing even the most simple of the problems that have vexed, and still do
vex, the men of learning in their research after truth. We have to proceed with
our inquiries, starting with the earliest hypotheses of modern science, if we
would discover where and why it sins. Perchance it may be found that Stallo is
right, after all. That the blunders, contradictions, and fallacies made by the
most eminent men of learning are simply due to their abnormal attitude. They
are, and want to remain materialistic quand meme, and yet "the general
principles of the atomo-mechanical theory -- the basis of modern physics -- are
substantially identical with the cardinal doctrines of ontological
metaphysics." Thus, "the fundamental errors of ontology become
apparent in proportion to the advance of physical Science." (Int. p. VI.,
"Concepts of Modern Physics.") Science is honeycombed with
metaphysical conceptions, but the Scientists will not admit the charge and
fight desperately to put atomo-mechanical masks on purely incorporeal and
spiritual laws in nature, on our plane -- refusing to admit their
substantiality even on other planes, the bare existence of which they reject a
priori.
It is easy to show, however, how
Scientists, wedded to their materialistic views, have endeavoured, ever since
the day of Newton, to put false masks on fact and truth. But their task is
becoming with every year more difficult; and with every year also, Chemistry,
above all the other sciences, approaches nearer and nearer the realm of the Occult
in nature. It is assimilating the very truths taught by the Occult Sciences
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] "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 Siva" of physical experiments. It
is of this matter only, 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 medieval alchemist did.
* "World-Life," Ibid.
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for ages, but hitherto bitterly
derided. "Matter is eternal," says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the
matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter
of modern science; not even in its most rarefied gaseous state. Mr. Crookes'
"radiant matter" would appear matter of the grossest kind in the
realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure spirit before it has returned back
even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore, when the adept or
alchemist adds that, though matter is eternal, for it is PRADHANA, yet atoms
are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe, it is no
such contradiction as a materialist, who believes in nothing beyond the atom,
might think. There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested matter,
between pradhana, the beginningless and endless cause, and prakriti, or the manifested
effect. Says the sloka; --
"That which is the unevolved
cause is emphatically called by the most eminent sages, pradhana, original
base, which is subtile prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at once
is, and is not, a mere process."*
That which in modern phraseology is
respectively 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 TAD ("that"), -- all that is, was, or will be, all that the imagination
of man is capable of conceiving. Even the exoteric Pantheism of Hinduism
renders it as no monotheistic philosophy ever did, for in superb phraseology
its cosmogony begins with the well-known words:--
"There was neither day nor
night, neither heaven nor earth, neither darkness nor light. And there was not
ought else apprehensible by the senses or by the mental faculties. There was
then 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, and Brahman. 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, the essence of which is eternally ONE, that we
call eternal matter or Substance (Vide in Part II., "Primordial Substance
and Divine Thought"), formless, sexless, inconceivable, even to our sixth
sense or mind,** in which, therefore, we refuse to see that which Monotheists
call a personal, anthropomorphic God.
How are these two propositions --
"that matter is eternal," and "the atom periodical, and not
eternal" -- viewed by modern exact Science? The materialistic physicist
will criticize and laugh them to scorn. The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Book I. ch. II. Vishnu Purana,
Fitzedward Hall's Translation.
** Vide preceding Section IX.,
"Life, Force, and Gravity," quotation from Anugita.
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liberal and progressive man of
Science, however, the true and earnest scientific searcher after truth -- e.g.,
the eminent chemist, Mr. Crookes, will corroborate the probability of the two
statements. For, hardly has the echo of his lecture on the "Genesis of the
Elements" died away --the lecture which, delivered by him before the
Chemical Section of the British Association, at the last Birmingham meeting, so
startled every evolutionist who heard or read it -- than there came another one
in March last, 1888. Once more the President of the Chemical Society brings
before the world of Science and the public the fruits of some new discoveries
in the realm of atoms, and these discoveries justify the occult teachings in
every way. They are more startling even than the statements made by him in the
first lecture (quoted later) and deserve well 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
fearlessness of a scientific mind which loves science for truth's sake,
regardless of any consequences to his own glory and reputation. We quote his
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, &c., 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 recognised? 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
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how in justice are we to exclude the
series of elemental bodies or meta-elements made known to us by Kruss 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 bodies into which it is probable that yttrium, erbium, samarium, and
other "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.
And here the great chemist gives
several cases of the very extraordinary behaviour of molecules and earths,
apparently the same, and which yet, when examined very closely, were found to
exhibit differences which, however imperceptible, still show that none of them
are simple bodies, and that the 60 or 70 elements accepted in chemistry, can no
longer cover the ground. Their name, apparently, is legion, but as the
so-called "periodic theory" stands in the way of an unlimited
multiplication of elements, Mr. Crookes is obliged to find some means of
reconciling the new discovery with 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
reinforced by a vast number of bodies slightly differing from each other in
their properties, and forming, if I may use the expression,
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aggregations of nebulae 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 compelled it to enlarge its
views and change its terms which, masking the multitude, reduced them to one
body -- like the Septenary Elohim and their hosts transformed by the
materialistic religionists into one Jehovah. Replace the chemical terms
"Molecule," "atom," "particle," etc., by the
words "Hosts," "Monads," "Devas," etc., and one
might think the genesis of gods, the primeval evolution of manvantaric
intelligent Forces, was being described. But the learned lecturer adds
something still more suggestive to his descriptive remarks; whether consciously
or unconsciously, who knoweth? For he says the following:--
"Until lately such bodies passed
muster as elements. They had definite properties, chemical and physical; they
had recognised 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
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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 himself, "What power is it that
directs each atom," and what is it that its character should be selective?
Theists would solve the question by answering "God"; and would solve
nothing philosophically. Occultism answers on its own pantheistic grounds, and
refers the reader to a subsequent section, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms."
The learned lecturer sees in it that which is his chief concern: the
finger-posts and the traces of a path which may lead to the discovery, and the
full and complete demonstration of an homogeneous 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 mocking reader, Science is slowly but as
surely approaching our domains of the Occult. It is forced by its own
discoveries to adopt nolens volens our phraseology and symbols. Chemical
Science is now compelled, by the very force of things, to accept even our
illustration of the evolution of the gods and atoms, so suggestively and
undeniably figured in the caduceus of 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 two Serpents, the ever-living and its illusion (Spirit and
matter) whose two heads grow from the one head between the wings, descend along
the trunk, interlaced in close embrace. The two tails join on earth (the
manifested Universe) into one, and this is the great illusion, O Lanoo!"
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Every one knows what the caduceus is,
already modified by the Greeks. The original symbol -- with the triple head of
the serpent -- became altered into a rod with a knob, and the two lower heads
were separated, thus disfiguring somewhat the original meaning. Yet it is as
good an illustration as can be for our purpose, this laya rod entwined by two
serpents. Verily the wonderful powers of the magic caduceus were sung by all
the ancient poets, with a very good reason for those who understood the secret
meaning.
[[diagram]]
Now what says the learned President
of the Chemical Society of Great Britain, in that same lecture, which has any
reference to, or bearing upon, our above-mentioned doctrine. Very little; only
this -- and nothing more:--
"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;
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another form of a spiral, perhaps, in
its reinvolutionary path onward, from matter into Spirit, and the necessary
gradual and final reabsorption into the laya state, that which Science calls in
her own way "the point neutral as to electricity" etc., or the zero
point. Such are the Occult facts and statement. They may be left with the
greatest security and confidence to Science, to be justified some day. Let us
hear some more, however, about this 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 Hindu philos-
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ophy, that, 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 forms and
Spirit -- "no longer subsist but are (absolutely) dissolved," we
learn the conclusive scientific opinion of the great English chemist, who caps
his 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 of further proof or any extraneous physical
evidence. Nevertheless, it repeats with as much assurance as ever: "MATTER
IS ETERNAL, becoming atomic (its aspect) only periodically." This is as
sure as that the other proposition, which is almost unanimously accepted by
astronomers and physicists -- namely, that the wear and tear of the body of the
Universe is steadily 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 lines traced by Men of Science. There will be, as there ever were in time
and eternity, periodical dissolutions of the manifested Universe, but (a) a
partial pralaya after every "Day of Brahma;" and (b) an Universal
pralaya -- the MAHA-PRALAYA -- only after the lapse of every Brahma's age. But
the scientific 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
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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 strong and curious coincidence
even our "septenary" doctrine seems to force the hand of Science. If
we understand rightly, Chemistry speaks of fourteen groupings of primitive
atoms -- lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium,
magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, 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 caesium; 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 of
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 links . . . named 'meta-elements or
elementoids and those whom occult science names their noumenoi,' the
intelligent minds and rulers of those groupings of Monads and Atoms. But this
would lead us too far. Let us be content 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 order to make
itself clearer to the profane, adopts the phraseology of such old adepts as
Roger Bacon, and returns to the "protyle." All this is hopeful and
suggestive of the "signs of the times."
Indeed these "signs" are
many and multiply daily; but none are more important than those just quoted.
For now the chasm between the occult "superstitious and unscientific"
teachings and "exact" science is completely bridged, and one, at least,
of the few eminent chemists of the day is in the realm of the infinite
possibilities of occultism. Every new
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step he will take will bring him
nearer and nearer to that mysterious centre, from which radiate the innumerable
paths that lead down Spirit into matter, and which transform the gods and the
living monads into man and sentient nature.
But we have something more to say on
this subject in the following section.
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X.
THE COMING FORCE.
ITS POSSIBILITIES AND
IMPOSSIBILITIES.
Shall we say that Force is
"moving matter," or "matter in motion," and a manifestation
of energy; or that matter and force are the phenomenal differentiated aspects
of the one primary, undifferentiated Cosmic Substance?
This query is made with regard to
that Stanza which treats of FOHAT and his "Seven brothers or Sons,"
in other words, of the cause and the effects of Cosmic Electricity, the latter
called, in Occult parlance, the seven primary forces of Electricity, whose
purely phenomenal, and hence grossest effects are alone cognizable by
physicists on the cosmic and especially on the terrestrial plane. These
include, among other things, Sound, Light, Colour, etc., etc. Now what does
physical Science tell us of these "Forces"? SOUND, it says, is a
sensation produced by the impact of atmospheric molecules on the tympanum,
which, by setting up delicate tremors in the auditory apparatus, thus
communicate themselves to the brain. LIGHT is the sensation caused by the
impact of inconceivably minute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye.
So, too, we say. But this is simply
the effect produced in our atmosphere and its immediate surroundings, all, in
fact, which falls within the range of our terrestrial consciousness. Jupiter
Pluvius sent his symbol in drops of rain, of water composed, as is believed, of
two "elements," which chemistry dissociates and recombines. The
compound molecules are in its power, but their atoms still elude its grasp.
Occultism sees in all these Forces and manifestations a ladder, the lower rungs
of which belong to exoteric physics, and the higher are traced to a living, intelligent,
invisible Power, which is, as a rule, the unconcerned, and exceptionally, the
conscious cause of the sense-born phenomenon designated as this or another
natural law.
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We say and maintain that SOUND, for
one thing, is a tremendous Occult power; that it is a stupendous force, of
which the electricity generated by a million of Niagaras could never counteract
the smallest potentiality when directed with occult knowledge. Sound may be
produced of such a nature that the pyramid of Cheops would be raised in the
air, or that a dying man, nay, one at his last breath, would be revived and
filled with new energy and vigour.
For Sound generates, or rather
attracts together, the elements that produce an ozone, the fabrication of which
is beyond chemistry, but within the limits of Alchemy. It may even resurrect a
man or an animal whose astral "vital body" has not been irreparably
separated from the physical body by the severance of the magnetic or odic
chord. As one saved thrice from death by that power, the writer ought to be
credited with knowing personally something about it.
And if all this appears too
unscientific to be even noticed, let Science explain to what mechanical and
physical laws known to it, is due the recently produced phenomena of the
so-called "Keely motor?" What is it that acts as the formidable generator
of invisible but tremendous force, of that power which is not only capable of
driving an engine of 25 horse-power, but has even been employed to lift the
machinery bodily? Yet this is done simply by drawing a fiddle-bow across a
tuning fork, as has been repeatedly proven. For the etheric Force, discovered
by the well-known (in America and now in Europe) John Worrell Keely, of
Philadelphia, is no hallucination. Notwithstanding his failure to utilize it, a
failure prognosticated and maintained by some Occultists from the first, the
phenomena exhibited by the discoverer during the last few years have been
wonderful, almost miraculous, not in the sense of the supernatural* but of the
superhuman. Had Keely been permitted to succeed, he might have reduced a whole
army to atoms in the space of a few seconds as easily as he reduced a dead ox
to the same condition.
The reader is now asked to give a
serious attention to that newly-discovered potency which the discoverer has
named "Inter-Etheric Force and Forces."
In the humble opinion of the
Occultists, as of his immediate friends,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The word "supernatural"
implies above or outside of nature. Nature and Space are one. Now Space for the
metaphysician exists outside of any act of sensation, and is a purely
subjective representation; materialism, which would connect it forcibly with
one or the other datum of sensation, notwithstanding. For our senses, it is
fairly subjective when independent of anything within it. How then can any
phenomenon, or anything else, step outside of or be performed beyond that which
has no limits? But when spacial 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.
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Mr. Keely, of Philadelphia, was, and
still is, at the threshold of some of the greatest secrets of the Universe; of
that chiefly on which is built the whole mystery of physical Forces, and the
esoteric significance of the "Mundane Egg" symbolism. 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 the manifested world
of matter, while the negative is lost in the unknowable absoluteness of SAT --
"Be-ness."* Whether this agrees with the philosophy of Mr. Keely, we
cannot tell, nor does it really much matter. Nevertheless, his ideas about the
ethero-material construction of the Universe look strangely like our own, being
in this respect nearly identical. This is what we find him saying in an able
pamphlet compiled by Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, an American lady of wealth and
position, whose incessant efforts in the pursuit of truth can never be too
highly appreciated:-- "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),** 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 . . . ."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Independent, in a certain sense,
but not disconnected with it.
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This, as easily seen, is precisely
the Eastern doctrine. His inter-etheric point is the laya-point of the
Occultists, which, however, does not require "an infinite mind to
understand it," but only a specific intuition and ability to trace its
hiding-place in this world of matter. Of course, the laya centre cannot be
produced, but an inter-etheric vacuum can -- as proved in the production of
bell-sounds in space. Mr. Keely speaks as an unconscious Occultist,
nevertheless, when he remarks 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 disorganising the harmonious action that
has always characterised 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* 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
characterises 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 what Occultists understand by a
"laya centre."
The above is pronounced
"unscientific" by many. But so is everything that is not sanctioned
and kept on strictly orthodox lines by physical science. Unless the explanation
given by the inventor himself is accepted -- and his explanations, being, as
observed, quite orthodox from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "By Fohat, more likely,"
would be an Occultist's reply.
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the spiritual and the Occult stand-points,
if not from that of materialistic speculative (called exact) Science, are
therefore ours in this particular -- what can science answer to facts already
seen which it is no longer possible for anyone to deny? Occult philosophy
divulges few of its most important vital mysteries. It drops them like precious
pearls, one by one, far and wide apart, and only when forced to do so by the
evolutionary tidal wave that carries on humanity slowly, silently, but steadily
toward the dawn of the Sixth-Race mankind. For once out of the safe custody of
their legitimate heirs and keepers, those mysteries cease to be occult: they
fall into the public domain and have to run the risk of becoming in the hands
of the selfish -- of the Cains of the human race -- curses more often than
blessings. Nevertheless, whenever such individuals as the discoverer of Etheric
Force -- John Worrell Keely -- men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities*
are born, they are generally and more frequently helped than allowed to go
unassisted; groping on their way, though, if left to their own resources,
falling very soon victims to martyrdom and unscrupulous speculators. Only they
are helped on the condition that they should not become, whether consciously or
unconsciously, an additional peril to their age: a danger to the poor, now
offered in daily holocaust by the less wealthy to the very wealthy.** This
necessitates a short digression and an explanation.
Some twelve years back, during the
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the writer, in answering the earnest
queries of a theosophist, one of the earliest admirers of Mr. Keely, repeated
to him what she had heard in quarters, information from which she could never
doubt.
It had been stated that the inventor
of the "Self-Motor" was what is called, in the jargon of the
Kabalists, a "natural-born magician." That he was and would remain
unconscious of the full range of his powers, and would work out merely those
which he had found out and ascertained in his own nature -- firstly, because,
attributing them to a wrong source, he could never give them full sway; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reason for such psychic
capacities is given farther on.
** The above was written two years
ago, at a time when hopes of success for the "Keely Motor" were at
their highest. What was then said by the writer proved true, in every word, and
now only a few remarks are added to it with regard to the failure of his
expectations, so far, which has now been 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.
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secondly, because it was beyond his
power to pass to others that which was a capacity inherent in his special
nature. Hence the whole secret could not be made over permanently to anyone for
practical purposes or use.*
Individuals born with such a capacity
are not very rare. That they are not heard of more frequently is due to the fact
that they live and die, in almost every case, in utter ignorance of being
possessed of abnormal powers at all. Mr. Keely possesses powers which are
called "abnormal" just because they happen in our day to be as little
known as blood circulation was before Harvey's time. Blood existed, and it
behaved as it does at present in the first man born from woman; and so does
that principle in man which can control and guide etheric vibratory force. At
any rate it exists in all those mortals whose inner selves are primordially
connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group of Dhyan-Chohans
who are called "the first-born of Ether." Mankind, psychically
considered, is divided into various groups, each of which is connected with one
of the Dhyanic 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 moreover, besides his psychic temperament, being intellectually a
genius in mechanics, may thus achieve most wonderful results. He has achieved
some already -- more than any mortal man, not initiated into the final
mysteries, has achieved in this age up to the present day. What he has done is
certainly quite sufficient "to demolish with the hammer of Science the
idols of Science" -- the idols of matter with the feet of clay -- as his
friends justly predict and say of him. Nor would the writer for a moment think
of contradicting Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, when 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We learn that these remarks are not
applicable to Mr. Keely's latest discovery; time alone can show the exact limit
of his achievements.
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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."
Writing in the T. P. S.
("Theosophical Publication Society") series (No. 9), the same lady,
in her pamphlet, "Keely's Secrets," brings forward a passage from an
article, written a few years ago by the writer of the present volume, in her
journal, the Theosophist, in these words:--
"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 the most occult secrets, a secret which can
never be allowed to fall into the hands of the masses, that his failure to push
his discoveries to their logical end seems certain to Occultists. But of this
more presently. Even in 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 aerial
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
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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 research," and the discoveries made by
him will prove wonderful -- yet only in his hands and through himself. The
world so far will get but that with which it can be safely entrusted. The truth
of this assertion has, perhaps, not yet quite dawned upon the discoverer
himself, since he writes that he is absolutely certain that he will accomplish
all that he has promised, and will then give it out to the world; but it must
dawn upon him, and at no very far distant date. And what he says in reference to
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 side of the application of the
vibratory force, or what Mr. Keely calls "sympathetic vibration." The
"wire" is already a step below, or downward from the pure etheric
plane into the terrestrial. The discoverer has produced marvels -- the word
"miracle" is not too strong -- when acting through the inter-etheric
Force alone, the fifth and sixth principles of Akasa. From a
"generator" six feet long, he has come down to one "no larger
than an old-fashioned silver watch;" and this by itself is a miracle of
mechanical (but not spiritual) genius. But, as well expressed by his great
patroness 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
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through himself. No one, who should
have repeated the thing done by himself, could have produced the same results.
It was "Keely's ether" that acted truly, while "Smith's or
Brown's" ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely's
difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and
regulate the "force" without the intervention of any "will
power" or personal influence, whether conscious or unconscious of the
operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no one
but himself could operate on his "machines." Occultly this was a far
more advanced achievement than the "success" which he anticipates
from his "wire," but the results obtained from the fifth and sixth
planes of the etheric (or Astral) Force, will never be permitted to serve for
purposes of commerce and traffic. That Keely's organism is directly connected
with the production of the marvellous results is proven by the following
statement 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 atomic vibration." In this he is
quite right; but this is electricity on the 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
AEtheric vibrations at 8,100,000,000
per second
Inter-AEtheric vibrations at
24,300,000,000 per second
This proves our point. There are no
vibrations that could be counted or even estimated at an approximate rate
beyond "the realm of the fourth son of Fohat," using an occult
phraseology, or that motion which corresponds to the formation of Mr. Crookes'
radiant matter, or lightly called some years ago the "fourth state of
matter" -- on this our plane.
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If the question is asked why Mr.
Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer is easy; because that
which he has unconsciously discovered, is the terrible sidereal Force, known
to, and named by the Atlanteans MASH-MAK, and by the Aryan Rishis in their
Ashtar Vidya by a name 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 be a fiction; the Force itself is a fact doubted as little in
India as the existence itself of their Rishis, since it is mentioned in all the
secret works.
It is this vibratory Force, which,
when aimed at an army from an Agni Rath fixed on a flying vessel, a balloon,
according to the instructions found in Ashtar Vidya, reduced to ashes 100,000
men and elephants, as easily as it would a dead rat. It is allegorised in the
Vishnu Purana, in the Ramayana and other works, in the fable about the sage
Kapila whose glance made a mountain of ashes of King Sagara's 60,000 sons, and
which is explained in the esoteric works, and referred to as the Kapilaksha --
"Kapila's Eye."
And is it this Satanic Force that our
generations were to be allowed to add to their stock of Anarchist's baby-toys,
known as melenite, dynamite clock-works, explosive oranges, "flower
baskets," and such other innocent names? Is it this destructive agency,
which, once in the hands of some modern Attila, e.g., a blood-thirsty
anarchist, would reduce Europe in a few days to its primitive chaotic state
with no man left alive to tell the tale -- is this force to become the common
property of all men alike?
What Mr. Keely has already done is
grand and wonderful in the extreme; there is enough work before him in the
demonstration of his new system to "humble the pride of those scientists
who are materialistic, by revealing those mysteries which lie behind the world
of matter," without revealing it nolens volens to all. For surely
Psychists and Spiritualists -- of whom there are a good number in the European
armies -- would be the first to experience personally the fruits of such
mysteries revealed. Thousands of them would find themselves (and perhaps with
the populations of whole countries to keep them company) in blue Ether very
soon, were such a Force to be even entirely discovered, let alone made publicly
known. The discovery in its completeness is by several thousand -- or shall we
say hundred thousand? -- years too premature. It will be at its appointed place
and time only when the great roaring flood of starvation, misery, and underpaid
labour ebbs back again -- as it will when happily at last the just demands of
the many are attended to; when the proletariat exists but in name, and the
pitiful cry for bread, that rings throughout the world unheeded, has died away.
This may be hastened by the spread of learning,
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and by new openings for work and
emigration, with better prospects than exist now, and on some new continent
that may appear. Then only will "Keely's Motor and Force," as
originally contemplated by himself and friends, be in demand, because it will
be more needed by the poor than by the wealthy.
Meanwhile the force discovered by him
will work through wires, and this, if he succeeds, will be quite sufficient in
the present generation to make of him the greatest discoverer of this age.
What Mr. Keely says of Sound and
Colour is also correct from the Occult stand-point. Hear him talk as though he
were the nursling of the "Gods-revealers," and had gazed all his life
into the depths of Father-Mother AEther.
In comparing the tenuity of the
atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, obtained by him from his invention
for breaking up the molecules of air by vibration, Keely says that:--
. . . "It is as platina 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.* 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This also is the division, made by
the Occultists, under other names.
** Quite so, since there is the
seventh beyond, which begins the same enumeration, from the first to the last,
on another and higher plane.
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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." -- (From Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore's paper, "The New
Philosophy.")
It may be remarked that, save a few
small divergencies, no Adept nor Alchemist could have explained the above any
better, in the light of modern Science, however much the latter may protest
against the novel views. This is, in all its fundamental principles, if not
details, Occultism pure and simple, yet withal, modern natural philosophy as
well.
This "New Force," or
whatever Science may call it, the effects of which are undeniable -- admitted
by more than one naturalist and physicist who has visited Mr. Keely's
laboratory and witnessed personally its tremendous effects -- what is it? Is it
a "mode of motion," also, "in Vacuo," since there is no
matter to generate it except Sound -- another "mode of motion," no
doubt, a sensation caused like
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colour by vibrations? Fully as we
believe in these vibrations as the proximate -- the immediate -- cause of such
sensations, we as absolutely reject the one-sided scientific theory that there
is no factor to be considered as external to us, other than etheric or
atmospheric vibrations.*
There is a transcendental set of
causes put in motion -- so to speak -- in the occurrence of these phenomena,
which, not being in relation to our narrow range of cognition, can only be
traced to their source and their nature, and understood by the Spiritual
faculties of the Adept. They are, as Asclepios puts it to the King,
"incorporeal corporealities" -- such as "appear in the
mirror," and "abstract forms" that we see, hear, and smell, in
our dreams, and visions. What have the "modes of motion," light, and
ether to do with these? Yet we see, hear, and smell, and touch them, ergo they
are as much realities to us in our dreams, as any other thing on this plane of
Maya.
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XI.
ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS.
FROM THE STAND-POINT OF SCIENCE AND
THAT OF OCCULTISM.
WHEN the Occultist speaks of
"Elements," and of human Beings who lived during those geological
ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to determine, according
to the opinion of one of the best
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In this case the American
"Substantialists" are not wrong (though too anthropomorphic and
material in their views to be accepted by the Occultists) when arguing 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 MAYA, of course; not so 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. . . ."
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English geologists*, as the nature of
matter, it is because he knows what he is talking about. When he says
"Man" and Elements, he neither means "man" in his present
physiological and anthropological form, nor the elemental atoms, those
hypothetical conceptions, the entitative abstractions of matter in its highly
attenuated state, as existing at present in scientific minds; nor, again, the
compound Elements of antiquity. In Occultism the word Element means
"rudiment" in every case. When we say "Elementary Man," we
mean either the proemial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and undeveloped
condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in physical man during his
life-time, and takes shape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or
that form which for a time survives the material body, and which is better
known as an "Elementary."** With regard to "Element," when
the term is used metaphysically, it means, in distinction to the mortal, the
incipient divine man; and, in its physical usage, inchoate matter in its first
undifferentiated condition, or in the laya state, which is the eternal and the
normal condition of substance, differentiating only periodically, and is during
that differentiation in an abnormal state -- in other words, a transitory
illusion of the senses.
As to the "elemental
atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a
meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindu to Brahma when he calls
him ANU, the "Atom." Every elemental atom, in search of which more
than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in
their firm belief (when not knowledge), a SOUL; not necessarily a disembodied
soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL VITALITY, with
latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls -- an intelligent
active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more
or less differentiations. It requires a metaphysician -- and an Eastern
metaphysician -- to understand our meaning. All those atom-Souls are
differentiations from the ONE, and in the same relation to it as the divine Soul
-- the Buddhi -- to its informing and inseparable Spirit, or Atman.
Modern physics, while borrowing from
the ancients their atomic theory, forgot one point, the most important of the
doctrine; hence they got only the husks and will never be able to get at the
kernel. They left behind, in the adoption of physical atoms, the suggestive
fact that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.)
** Plato speaking of the irrational,
turbulent Elements "composed of fire, air, water, and earth," means
Elementary Daemons. (See Timaeus.)
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from Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the
Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all those Philosophers believed
more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks of so-called
"brute" matter. Rotatory motion was generated in their views, by
larger (read, more divine and pure) atoms forcing downwards other atoms; the
lighter ones being thrust simultaneously upward. The esoteric meaning of this
is the ever cyclic curve downward and upward of differentiated elements through
intercyclic phases of existence, until each reaches again its starting point or
birthplace. The idea was metaphysical as well as physical; the hidden
interpretation embracing "gods" or souls, in the shape of atoms, as
the causes of all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions from the
divine bodies.* No ancient philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever
dissociated Spirit from matter or vice versa. 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;"** Atoms and Souls having been
synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The "whirling Souls,"
Gilgoolem, a doctrine in which so many learned Jews have believed (See
Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia), had no other meaning esoterically. The
learned Jewish Initiates never meant by the "Promised land" Palestine
alone, but the same Nirvana as the learned Buddhist and Brahmin do -- the bosom
of the ETERNAL ONE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its
substitute on Earth.*** The passage of the SOUL-ATOM "through the Seven
Planetary Chambers" had the same metaphysical and also physical meaning.
It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether (See Isis Unveiled,
Vol. I., p. 297.) Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and
believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plato uses the words
"secretions" of turbulent Elements (Timaeus).
** Valentinus' Esoteric Treatise on
the Doctrine of Gilgul.
*** Surely no educated Jew ever
believed the literal sense of this allegory -- namely, that "the bodies of
Jews deposited in foreign lands contain within them a principle of Soul which
cannot rest, until by a process called the "whirling of the Soul" the
immortal particle reaches once more the sacred Soil of the "Promised
land." The meaning is evident to an occultist. The process was supposed to
be accomplished by a kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed
through bird, beast, fish, and the most minute insect. (See Royal Masonic
Cyclo. Mackenzie.) The Allegory relates to the atoms of the body, which have
each to pass through every form before all reach the final state, which is the
first starting point of the departure of every atom -- its primitive Laya
State. But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem, or "Revolution of Souls,"
was the idea of the re-incarnating Souls or Egos. "All the Souls go into
the gilgoolah," into a cyclic or revolving process; i.e., they all proceed
on the cyclic path of re-births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean
only a kind of purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.
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Soul (entirely distinct from immortal
Spirit when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it is in every atomic
speck), was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest,
roundest, and finest atoms.
And this shows that the ancient
Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all profane antiquity,
meant by the term "ATOM," a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first-born
of the ever-concealed CAUSE of all causes; and in this sense their teachings
become comprehensible. They claimed, as do their successors, the existence of
Gods and Genii, angels or "demons," not outside, or independent of,
the Universal Plenum, but within it. Only this Plenum, during the life-cycles,
is infinite. They admitted and taught a good deal of that which modern Science
teaches now --namely, the existence of a primordial "World-stuff or Cosmic
Substance," from which worlds are formed, ever and eternally homogeneous,
except during its periodic existence, when it differentiates its universal
diffusion throughout infinite space; and the gradual formation of sidereal
bodies from it. They taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth's
rotation, the Heliocentric System, and the Atomic Vortices -- Atoms -- in
reality Souls and intelligences. But those "Atomists" were spiritual,
most transcendental, and philosophical Pantheists. It is not they who would
have ever conceived, or dreamt that monstrous contrasted progeny, the nightmare
of our modern civilized Race; namely -- inanimate material, self-guiding atoms,
on the one hand, and an extra-Cosmic God on the other.
It may be useful to show what, in the
teachings of the old Initiates, the Monad was, and what its origin.
Modern exact Science, as soon as it
began to grow out of its teens, perceived the great, and, to it, hitherto
esoteric axiom, that nothing -- whether in the spiritual, psychic, or physical
realm of being -- could come into existence out of nothing. There is no cause
in the manifested universe without its adequate effects, whether in space or
time; nor can there be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes
its existence to a still higher one -- the final and absolute cause having to
remain to man for ever an incomprehensible CAUSELESS CAUSE. But even this is no
solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest philosophical and
metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had better be left
unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which human reason --
however trained to metaphysical subtleties -- trembles, threatening to
collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European who would undertake to solve
the problem of existence by the articles of faith of the true Vedantin, for
instance. Let him read and study the sublime teachings on the subject of Soul
and Spirit, of
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Sankaracharya (Viveka Chudamani)*,
and the reader will realize what is now said.
While the Christian is taught that
the human soul is a breath of God -- being created by him for sempiternal
existence, i.e., having a beginning, but no end (and therefore never to be
called eternal) -- the Occult teaching says, "Nothing is created, but is
only transformed. Nothing can manifest itself in this universe -- from a globe
down to a vague, rapid thought -- that was not in the universe already;
everything on the subjective plane is an eternal IS; as everything on the
objective plane is an ever becoming -- because transitory."
The monad -- a truly
"indivisible thing," as defined by Good, who did not give it the
sense we now do -- is here rendered as the Atma in conjunction with Buddhi and
the higher Manas. This trinity is one and eternal, the latter being absorbed in
the former at the termination of all conditioned and illusive life. The monad,
then, can be traced through the course of its pilgrimage and its changes of
transitory vehicles only from the incipient stage of the manifested Universe.
In Pralaya, or the intermediate period between two manvantaras, it loses its
name, as it loses it when the real ONE self of man merges into Brahm in cases
of high Samadhi (the Turiya state) or final Nirvana; "when the
disciple" in the words of Sankara, "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 atma
just as an actor (abandons) the dress (put on)." For Buddhi (the
Anandamaya sheath) is but a mirror which reflects absolute bliss; and,
moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from ignorance, and is not the
Supreme Spirit, being subject to conditions, being a spiritual modification of
Prakriti, and an effect; Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of
all -- the essence and absolute knowledge -- the Kshetragna.** It is called in
the Esoteric philosophy "the One Witness,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated for the Theosophist, by
Mohini M. Chatterji as "Crest Jewel of Wisdom," 1886. (See
Theosophist, July and August numbers).
** Now that the revised version of
the gospels has been published and the most glaring mistranslations of the old
versions are corrected, one will understand better the words in St. John v.,
vi., and vii.: "It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit
is the truth." The words that follow in the mistranslated version about
the "three witnesses," -- hitherto supposed to stand for "the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost" -- show the real meaning of the
writer (St. John) very clearly, thus still more forcibly identifying his
teaching in this respect with that of Sankaracharya. For what can the sentence,
"there are three who bear witness: the Spirit and the Water and the
Blood" -- mean, if they bear no relation to, or connection with, the more
philosophical statement of the great Vedanta teacher, who, speaking of the
sheaths (the principles in man) Jiva, Vignanamaya, etc., which are, in their
physical manifestation, "water and blood" or life, adds that atma
(spirit) alone is what remains after the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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and, while it rests in Devachan, is
referred to as "the Three Witnesses to Karma."
Atma (our seventh principle) being
identical with the universal Spirit, and 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 primeval "Seven;" -- of which seven further
on. It is the EMANATING spark from the UNCREATED Ray -- a mystery. In the
esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Adi Buddha (Chogi dangpoi
sangye), the One unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahm
and Ain-Soph, emits a bright ray from its darkness.
This is the Logos (the first), or
Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha (also called Dorjechang). As the Lord of all
Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his
heart -- the "diamond heart," Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa). This is the
second logos of creation, from whom emanate the seven (in the exoteric blind
the five) Dhyani Buddhas, called the Anupadaka, "the parentless."
These Buddhas are the primeval monads from the world of incorporeal being, the
Arupa world, wherein the Intelligences (on that plane only) have neither shape
nor name, in the exoteric system, but have their distinct seven names in
esoteric philosophy. These Dhyani Buddhas emanate, or create from themselves,
by virtue of Dhyana, celestial Selves -- the super-human Bodhisattvas. These
incarnating at the beginning of every human cycle on earth as mortal men,
become occasionally, owing to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons
of Humanity, after which they may re-appear as Manushi (human) Buddhas. The
Anupadaka (or Dhyani-Buddhas) are thus identical with the Brahminical
Manasaputra, "mind-born sons" -- whether of Brahma or either of the
other two Trimurtian Hypostases, hence identical also with the Rishis and
Prajapatis. Thus, a passage is found in Anugita, which, read esoterically,
shows plainly, though under another imagery, the same idea and 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
upperward gradation among entities. Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pisachas, Asuras,
Rakshasas, all have been created by Svabhava (Prakriti, or plastic nature), not
by actions, nor by a cause" -- i.e., not by any physical cause.
"These Brahmanas (the Rishi
Prajapati?), the creators of the world, are born here (on earth) again and
again. Whatever is produced from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] subtraction of the sheaths and that it is the ONLY witness, or
synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely with an
eye to a trinity made three witnesses out of "one," thus connecting
it more with earth than with heaven.
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them is dissolved in due time in
those very five great elements (the five, or rather seven, Dhyani 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
tanmatras)* goes to the highest goal." "The Lord Prajapati (Brahma)
created all this by the mind only," i.e., by Dhyana, or abstract
meditation and mystic powers like the Dhyani Buddhas (vide supra). Evidently
then, these "Brahmanas" are identical with the Bodhisattvas (the
terrestrial) of the heavenly Dhyani Buddhas. Both, as primordial, intelligent
"Elements," become the creators or the emanators of the monads destined
to become human in that cycle; after which they evolve themselves, or, so to
say, expand into their own selves as Bodhisattvas or Brahmanas, in heaven and
earth, to become at last simple men --"the creators of the world are born
here, on earth again and again" -- truly. In the Northern Buddhist system,
or the popular exoteric religion, it is taught that every Buddha, while
preaching the good law on earth, manifests himself simultaneously in three
worlds: in the formless, as Dhyani 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 differs: The divine, purely Adi-Buddhic monad manifests as the
universal Buddhi (the Maha-buddhi or Mahat in Hindu philosophies) the
spiritual, omniscient 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" of the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the Mundane
Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery tongues,
the Sons of Light (the logoi of Life); then the Dhyani-Buddhas of
contemplation: the concrete forms of their formless Fathers -- the Seven Sons
of Light, still themselves, to whom may be applied the Brahmanical mystic
phrase: "Thou art 'THAT' -- Brahm." It is from these Dhyani-Buddhas
that emanate their chhayas (Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms,
the prototypes of the super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial
Buddhas, and finally of men. The "Seven Sons of Light" are also
called "Stars."
The star under which a human Entity
is born, says the Occult teaching, will remain for ever its star, throughout
the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara. But this is not his
astrological star. The latter is concerned and connected with the personality,
the former with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Tanmatras are literally the
type or rudiment of an element devoid of qualities; but esoterically, they are
the primeval noumenoi 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.
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the INDIVIDUALITY. The
"Angel" of that Star, or the Dhyani-Buddha 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 own essence, though his vehicle, man, may
remain for ever ignorant of this fact. The adepts have each their Dhyani-Buddha,
their elder "twin Soul," and they know it, calling it
"Father-Soul," and "Father-Fire." It is only at the last
and supreme initiation, however, that they learn it when placed face to face
with the bright "Image." How much has Bulwer Lytton known of this
mystic fact when describing, in one of his highest inspirational moods, Zanoni
face to face with his Augoeides?
The Logos, or both the unmanifested
and the manifested WORD, is called by the Hindus, Iswara, "the Lord,"
though the Occultists give it another name. Iswara, say the Vedantins, is the
highest consciousness in nature. "This highest consciousness," answer
the Occultists, "is only a synthetic unit in the world of the manifested
Logos -- or on the plane of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyan-Chohanic
consciousnesses." "Oh, wise man, remove the conception that
not-Spirit is Spirit," says Sankaracharya. Atma is not-Spirit in its final
Parabrahmic state, Iswara or Logos is Spirit; or, as 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 into, the Logos, each in the culmination of its time.
There are seven chief groups of such Dhyan Chohans, which groups will be found
and recognised in every religion, for they are the primeval SEVEN Rays.
Humanity, occultism teaches us, is divided into seven distinct groups and their
sub-divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical.* The monad, then, viewed as
ONE, is above the seventh principle (in Kosmos and man), and as a triad, it is
the direct radiant progeny of the said compound UNIT, not the breath (and
special creation out of nihil) of "God," as that unit is called; for
such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and degrades Deity, dragging it down to
a finite, attributive condition. As well expressed by the translator of the
"Crest-Jewel of Wisdom" -- though Iswara is "God"
"unchanged in the profoundest depths of pralayas and in the intensest
activity of the manvantaras" . . ., still "beyond (him) is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence the seven chief planets, the
spheres of the indwelling seven spirits, under each of which is born one of the
human groups which is guided and influenced thereby. There are only seven
planets (specially connected with earth), and twelve houses, but the possible
combinations of their aspects are countless. As each planet can stand to each
of the others in twelve different aspects, their combinations must, therefore,
be almost infinite; as infinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental,
and physical capacities in the numberless varieties of the genus homo, each of
which varieties is born under one of the seven planets and one of the said
countless planetary combinations. See Theosophist, for August, 1886.
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'ATMA,' round whose pavilion is the
darkness of eternal MAYA."* The "triads" born under the same
Parent-planet, or rather the radiations of one and the same Planetary Spirit
(Dhyani Buddha) are, in all their after lives and rebirths, sister, or
"twin-souls," on this Earth.**
This was known to every high Initiate
in every age and in every country: "I and my Father are one," said
Jesus (John x. 30).*** When He is made to say, elsewhere (xx. 17): "I
ascend to my Father and your Father," it meant that which has just been
stated. It was simply to show that the group of his disciples and followers
attracted to Him belonged to the same Dhyani Buddha, "Star," or
"Father," again of 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 Mr. 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 Dhyan 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."
("Theosophist," Aug., 1886.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 have
still connected with their religious worship only the seven, because these
seven are directly and specially connected with our earth, or, using esoteric
phraseology, with our septenary ring of spheres. (See supra.)
** It is the same, only still more
metaphysical idea, as that of the Christian Trinity -- "Three in One"
-- i.e., the Universal "over-Spirit," manifesting on the two higher
planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat; and these are the three hypostases,
metaphysical, but never personal.
*** The identity, and at the same
time the illusive differentiation of the Angel-Monad and the Human-Monad is
shown by the following sentences: "My Father is greater than I" (John
xiv. 26); "Glorify your Father who is in Heaven" (Matt. v. 16);
"The righteous will shine in the kingdom of their Father" (not our
Father) (Matt. xiii. 43) "Know ye not ye are a temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (I Cor. iii. 16); "I ascend to my
Father," etc., etc.
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It is then the "Seven Sons of
Light" -- called after their planets and (by the rabble) often identified
with them -- namely Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and -- presumably
for the modern critic, who goes no deeper than the surface of old religions* --
the Sun and Moon, which are, according to the Occult teachings, our heavenly
Parents, or "Father," synthetically. Hence, as already remarked,
polytheism is really more philosophical and correct, as to fact and nature,
than anthropomorphic monotheism. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four
exoteric planets, and the three others, which must remain unnamed, were the
heavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic communication with the Earth, its
Guides, and Watchers -- morally and physically; the visible orbs furnishing our
Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and their
"Regents" or Rectors with our Monads and spiritual faculties. In
order to avoid creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the
three secret orbs (or star-angels) neither Uranus nor Neptune entered; not only
because they were unknown under these names to the ancient Sages, but because
they, as all other planets, however many there may be, are the gods and
guardians of other septenary chains of globes within our systems.
Nor do the two last discovered great
planets depend entirely on the Sun like the rest of the planets. Otherwise, how
explain the fact that Neptune receives 900 times less light than our Earth, and
Uranus 390 times less, and that their satellites show a peculiarity of inverse
rotation found in no other planets of the Solar System. At any rate, what we
say applies to Uranus, though recently the fact begins again to be disputed.
This subject will, of course, be
considered mere vagary by all those who confuse the universal order of being
with their own systems of classification. Here, however, simple facts from
Occult teachings are stated, to be either accepted or rejected, as the case may
be. There are details which, on account of their great metaphysical
abstractions, cannot be entered upon. Hence, we merely state that only seven of
our planets are as intimately related to our globe, as the Sun is to all
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These are planets accepted for
purposes of judicial astrology only. The astrotheogonical division differed
from this one. The Sun, being a central star and no planet, stands in more
occult and mysterious relations with its seven planets of our globe than is
generally known. The Sun was, therefore, considered the great Father of all the
Seven "Fathers," which accounts for the variations found between
seven and eight great gods of the Chaldean and other countries. Neither the
earth nor the moon -- its satellite -- nor yet stars, for another reason --
were anything else than substitutes for esoteric purposes. Yet, even with the
Sun and the Moon thrown out of 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.
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the bodies subject to him in his
system. Of these bodies the poor little number of primary and secondary planets
known to astronomy, looks wretched enough, in truth.* Therefore, it stands to
reason that there are a great number of planets, small and large, that have not
been discovered yet, but of the existence of which ancient astronomers -- all
of them initiated adepts -- must have certainly been aware. But, as their
relation to the gods was sacred, it had to remain arcane, as also the names of
various other planets and stars.
Besides which, even the Roman
Catholic theology speaks of "seventy planets that preside over the
destinies of the nations of this globe"; and, save the erroneous
application, there is more truth in this tradition than in exact modern
astronomy. The seventy planets are connected with the seventy elders of the
people of Israel (Numb. 11, 16) because the regents of these planets are meant,
not the orbs themselves; and the word seventy is a play and a blind upon the 7
x 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as said already, 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, and the Bible has never made a secret of it. Only
the text of the English (Protestant) Bible is, in disagreement, as usual, with
those of the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Thus, while in the former one reads
(in Deuter. xxxii., 8 and 9) "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," in the Septuagint the text reads
"according to the number of the Angels" (Planet-Angels), which is
more concordant with truth and fact. Moreover, all the texts agree that
"the Lord's (Jehovah) portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his
inheritance" (Deut. xxxii. 9); and this settles the question. The
"Lord" Jehovah took for his portion Israel -- what have other 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* When one remembers that under the
powerful telescope of Sir W. 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 pass in one quarter of an hour, 16,000 stars;
and applying this calculation to the totality of the "Milky Way" he
found in it no less than 18 (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.
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should have selected a god against
whose commandments Jesus was the first one to rise in rebellion.
The Planetary origin of the Monad
(Soul) and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics. On its way to the
Earth, as on its way back from the Earth, each soul born in, and from, the
"Boundless Light,"* had to pass through the seven planetary regions
both ways. The pure Dhyani 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 his planet" (see Origen's Copy of the
Chart); with the Brahmins, the Asuras and some of its Rishis -- good, bad and
indifferent; and 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; Sabao, of Mars; Orai, of Venus;
Astaphai, of Mercury; and Ildabaoth (Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the
Pistis-Sophia, which the greatest modern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs,
the late Mr. C. W. King, refers to as "that precious monument of
Gnosticism," -- this old document echoes, while distorting it to sectarian
purposes, the archaic belief of the ages. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres (the
planets) create the monads (the Souls) from their own substance out of the
"tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments," endowing the
monads with a spark of the Divine Light, which is their substance. It will be
shown in Book II. why these "Lords of the Zodiac and Spheres" have
been transformed by sectarian theology into the rebellious angels of the
Christians, who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without
understanding the significance of the allegory. (Vide Part II., "On the
Seven Souls," and Section xv. in this Part, "GODS, MONADS AND
ATOMS").
As usual, that which is and was from
its beginning divine, pure, and spiritual in its earliest unity, became, by
reason of its differentiation by the distorted prism of man's conceptions,
human and impure, as reflecting man's own sinful nature. Thus, in time, the
planet Saturn became reviled by the worshippers of other "gods." The
nations born under Saturn -- the Jewish, for instance -- with whom he had
become Jehovah, after having been held 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 prophecies notwithstanding, Jesus the initiate (or Jehoshua) --
the type from whom the "historical" Jesus was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* C. W. King, identifies it with
"that summum bonum of Oriental aspiration, the Buddhist Nirvana,"
perfect repose, the Epicurean Indolentia, which looks flippant enough in its
expression, though not quite untrue.
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copied -- was not of pure Jewish
blood, and thus recognised no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary god
beside his own "Father," whom he knew, and with whom he communed as
every high initiate does, "Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul." This
can hardly be taken exception to, unless the critic explains to every one's
satisfaction the strange sentences put in the mouth of Jesus by the author of
the Fourth Gospel (chapter viii.) during his disputes with the Pharisees.
"I know ye are Abraham's seed* .
. . I speak the things which I have seen with my Father; and ye do the things
which ye heard from your Father. . . . . Ye do the works of your Father. . . .
. Ye are of your Father, the Devil. . . . . He was a murderer from the
beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When
one speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own; for his father also is a liar and
the father thereof," etc., etc.
That "Father" of the
Pharisees was Jehovah, because 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 in these words and admonitions, however
mistranslated, since they are pronounced by one who threatened with hell-fire
anyone who says simply raca (fool) to his brother (Matthew v., 22). And
evidently, again, the planets are not merely spheres, twinkling in Space, and
made to shine for no purpose, but the domains of various beings with whom the
profane are so far unacquainted; nevertheless, having a mysterious, unbroken,
and powerful connection with men and globes. Every heavenly body is the temple
of 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 consecrated place, as Young says:--
"Each of these Stars is a
religious house." . . . .
Thus can all exoteric religions be
shown the falsified copies of the esoteric teaching. It is the priesthood which
has to be held responsible for the reaction in favour of materialism of our
day. It is by worshiping and enforcing on the masses the worship of the shells
-- personified for purposes of allegory -- of pagan ideals, that the latest
exoteric religion has made of Western lands a Pandemonium, in which the higher
classes worship the golden calf, and the lower and ignorant masses are made to
worship an idol with feet of clay.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Abraham and Saturn are identical in
astro-symbology, and he is the forefather of the Jehovistic Jews.
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XII.
ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS.
MODERN SCIENCE IS ANCIENT THOUGHT
DISTORTED, and no more. We have seen, however, WHAT INTUITIONAL SCIENTISTS
THINK, and are busy about; and now the reader may 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 undeniably ancient thought, improved by
contradictory theories of recent origin. But the whole foundation belongs to
Grecian and Indian Archaic astronomy and physics, in those days always called
philosophy. In all the Aryan and Greek speculations, one meets with the
conception of an all-pervading, unorganized, and homogeneous matter, or Chaos,
re-named by modern scientists "Nebular condition of the world-stuff."
What Anaxagoras called "Chaos" in his Homoiomeria is now called
"primitive fluid" by Sir W. Thomson. The Hindu and Greek Atomists --
Kanada, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc., etc., are now
reflected as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the atomic theory of our
modern days, beginning with Leibnitz's Monads, and ending with the
"Vortical Atoms" of Sir W. Thomson.* True, the corpuscular theory of
old is rejected, and the undulatory theory has taken its place. But the
question is, whether the latter is so firmly established as not to be liable to
be dethroned as was its predecessor? Light from its metaphysical aspect was
fully treated of 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,** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Elemental Vortices inaugurated
by the Mind have not been improved by their modern transformation.
** I have been often 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 Dhyan Chohanic
Minds.
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Plato, lighted a fire which we now
call the sun,"* 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 materialised, are concentrate upon our Solar System,
and produce all the correlations of forces."
This is the Ether, as just explained
in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson, save the submission of
the former to some details of the modern undulatory theory. We do not say that
we deny the theory, but assert only that it needs completion and
re-arrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics in this
respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his Researches on Light in
its Chemical Relations, that:--
. . . . "the undulatory theory
does not account for the results of his experiments. 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.'** 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." ("Isis Unveiled.")
To this remark of Sir W. Brewster --
"forced to reason as if light was material" -- there is a good deal
to reply. Light, in one sense, is certainly as material as electricity itself
is. And if electricity is not material, if 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 matter; and Mr. W.
Crookes, F.R.S., supported the view in his address to the Chemical Section of
the British Association, of which he was President (at Birmingham, 1886). This
is what Helmholtz says (in his Faraday Lectures, 1881):--
"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."
Here we have to repeat that which was
already said in Section IX: there is but one science that can henceforth direct
modern research into the one path which will lead to the discovery of the
whole, hitherto
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Timaeus."
** Modern Chemistry.
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occult, truth, and it is the youngest
of all -- chemistry, as it now stands reformed. There is no other, not excluding
astronomy, that can so unerringly guide scientific intuition, as chemistry can.
Two proofs of it are to be found in the world of Science -- two great chemists,
each among the greatest in his own country, and these are Mr. Crookes and the
late Professor Butlerof: one, a thorough believer in abnormal phenomena; the
other, as fervid a Spiritualist as he was great in natural Sciences. It becomes
evident that while pondering over the ultimate divisibility of matter, and in
the hitherto fruitless chase after the element of negative atomic weight, the
scientifically trained mind of the chemist must feel irresistibly drawn towards
those ever-shrouded worlds, to the mysterious beyond, whose measureless depths
seem to close against the approach of the too materialistic hand that would
fain draw aside its veil. "It is the unknown and the ever
unknowable," warns the Monist-Agnostic. Not so; answers the persevering
chemist:-- "We are on the track and are not daunted, and fain would we
enter the mysterious region which ignorance tickets unknown."*
A few lines at the very close of his
lecture on the Genesis of the Elements -- two or three sentences -- showed the
eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the greatest discoveries. He has
been overshadowing for some time "the original protyle," and came to
the conclusion that "he who grasps the Key will be permitted to unlock
some of the deepest mysteries of creation." The protyle, as that 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 [[pro]] (earlier than) and [[hyle]] (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
[[hyle]] and every element is converted into the nature of another
element."
The Knowledge of Roger Bacon did not
come to this wonderful old magician** by inspiration, but because he studied
ancient works on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Crookes' "Presidential
Address" at Birmingham. "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." -- (Practical Lessons on the Occult.)
** Thus, what the writer of the
present work said ten years ago in "Isis Unveiled" (Vol. I.) was
prophetic, it seems. 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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magic and alchemy, having a key to
the real meaning of words. But see what Mr. Crookes says of protyle, next
neighbour to the unconscious Mulaprakriti 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* -- 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." (Presidential Address, p. 16.)
With every respect due to the great
knowledge of the lecturer, the Occultist would put it otherwise. They 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 causative womb of the world. Pradhana
(unmodified matter), that which is the first form of Prakriti, or material
visible, as well as invisible nature, and Purusha, spirit, are eternally one;
and they are Nirupadhi, (without adventitious qualities or attributes) only
during Pralaya, and when beyond any of the planes of consciousness of
existence. The atom, as known to modern science, is inseparable from Purusha,
which is spirit, but is now called "Energy" in Science. The protyle
atom has not been comminuted or subtilized: it has simply passed into that
plane, which is no plane, but the eternal state of everything beyond the planes
of illusion. Both Purusha and Pradhana are immutable and unconsumable, or
Aparinamin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both during the Mayavic periods may be
referred to as Vyaya and Parinamin, or that which can expand, pass away and
disappear, and is "modifiable." In this sense Purusha, must of course,
be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahmam. Nevertheless that, which
is called "energy" or "force" in Science and has been
explained as a dual Force by Metcalfe, is never, in fact, and cannot be energy
alone; for it is the substance of the world, its soul, the all-permeant
"Sarvaga," in conjunction with Kala "time." The three are
the trinity in one, during Manvantara, the all-potential Unity, which acts on
the plane of illusion (Maya) as three distinct things. In Orphic
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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."
* 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 known to the adepts.
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philosophy in Greece they were called
Phanes, Chaos, and Chronos -- the triad of the Occult philosophers of that
period.
But see how closely Mr. Crookes
brushes by the "Unknowable," and what "potentialities"
there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his discoveries. 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* . . . 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 stars nor
the sun can be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with which
the chemist is familiar, though they are all present in the sun's outward robes
-- and a host more of elements so far unknown to science."
Secondly, that our globe has its own
special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which,
every atom and molecule change and differentiate from their primordial nature.
And Thirdly, that though no element
present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun, there are
many others which have 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."** Mr. Crookes speaks of an element of still lower atomic weight
than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as far as our earth is concerned
. . . though existing in abundance in the chromosphere of the Sun -- the
helium. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded by chemistry
as such 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is just the existence of such
worlds in other planes of consciousness that is claimed by the Occultist. The
secret science teaches that the primitive race was boneless. (See Book II.);
and that there are (to us) invisible worlds, peopled as our own, besides the
populations of Dhyan Chohans.
** "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 258 et seq.
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alchemy alone succeeded within the
historical periods, and in the so-called civilized countries, in obtaining a
real element, or a particle of homogeneous matter, the Mysterium Magnum of
Paracelsus. But then it was before Lord Bacon's day.*
". . . 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.** But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines
with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?"***
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
** 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."
*** The Vedantic philosophy conceives
of such; but then it is not physics, but metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall
"poetry" and "fiction."
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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 a strictly scientific,
but beautiful language, the description of the evolution of the differentiated
Universe in the secret teachings. The learned gentleman closes his address in
words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light from beyond the dark
veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and a step
forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. (Vide § XV., "Gods,
Monads, and Atoms.") 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,* 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.** In the general array of the elements, as known
to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of the organic world.*** 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 Reynold's method of illustrating the periodic classification**** .
. . Summing up all the above considerations we cannot,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the form they are now, we
conceive?
** And to Kapila and Manu --
especially and originally.
*** Here is a scientific
corroboration of the eternal law of correspondences and analogy.
**** 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 recognise 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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 secrets in her final effects on our terrestrial plane,
recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of (a)
the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of formation of the
bodies that compose the universe. And having to turn back for their
cosmogonical hypotheses to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the
systems of the latter -- systems that were all based on the teachings of a
universal secret doctrine with regard to the primeval matter with its
properties, functions, and laws, -- have we not the right to hope that the day
is not far off 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 learning in more than one way, and chiefly in
Cosmogony. For
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a fundamental law in
Occultism. Hence she ventures 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 Dhyan 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 shown in that periodic law of atoms. Nature never proceeds
per saltum. Therefore, when Mr. Crookes remarks to 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 to success, one
who follows it.
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instance, the mystical signification,
alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable substances that fill
interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause,
at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting through
vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not the hypothetical) nature
of Ether, or rather of the Akasa, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead
to the knowledge of Forces. It is that substance against which the
materialistic school of the physicists rebels with such fury, especially in
France,* and which exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding. They cannot
make away with it without incurring the risk, like a modern Samson, of pulling
down the pillars of the Temple of Science, and getting buried under its roof.
The theories built upon the rejection
of Force outside and independent of Matter pure and simple, have been all shown
fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of the
scientific data are thus proved unscientific. "Ether produced Sound"
is said in the Puranas, and the statement is laughed at. It is the vibrations
in the air, we are corrected. And what is air? Could it exist if there were no
etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The case stands simply thus.
Materialism cannot admit the existence of anything 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 admitted
virtually, and that would lead Science very far. For it would have to accept as
a sequel the presence in Man of a still more spiritual power -- entirely
independent, for once, of any kind of matter physicists know anything about.
Hence, apart from an hypothetical ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the
whole Sidereal and unseen Space is, in the sight of the materialists, one
boundless void in nature -- blind, unintelligent, useless.
And now the next question is: What is
that Cosmic Substance, and how far can one go to suspect its nature or to
wrench from it its secrets, and thus feel justified in giving it a NAME? How
far, especially, has modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, and
what it is doing to solve them. The latest hobby of Science, the "Nebular
Theory," may afford us some answer to this question. Let us then examine
the credentials of the NEBULAR THEORY.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 A bas l'Ether" -- down with ether, even;
they want Universal Void, you see!
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XIII.
SCIENTIFIC AND ESOTERIC EVIDENCE FOR,
AND OBJECTIONS TO, THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY.
OF late Esoteric Cosmogony has been
frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory and its ensuing hypotheses.
"Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your adepts?" it is
asked. "Not entirely," is the reply, "but the admissions of the
men of Science themselves kill it; and there remains nothing for the adepts to
deny."
To make of Science an integral whole
necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as physical
Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by
the profane from the point of view of his shell-side and in ignorance of the
interior work. Even Plato, the greatest philosopher of his country, became
guilty, before his initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the
stomach through the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real
science is inadmissible.
The nebulae exist; yet the nebular
theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation.
It is gaseous and -- something else besides, which can hardly be connected with
gases, as known to physical science; and it is self-luminous. But that is all.
The sixty-two "coincidences" enumerated by Professor Stephen
Alexander,* confirming the nebular theory, may all be explained by esoteric
science; though, as this is not an astronomical work, the refutations are not
attempted at present. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct theory than
any; but of the speculations of Laplace there remains little in the present
theory except its general features. Nevertheless, "there is in Laplace's theory,"
says John Stuart Mill, "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." (System of Logic, p.
229).
This from such an eminent logician as
Mill was, would be valuable, if it could only be proved that "terrestrial
objects resembling . . ." celestial objects at such a distance as the
nebulae are -- resemble those objects in reality, not alone in appearance.
Another of the fallacies from the
Occult stand-point, which are embodied in the modern theory as it now stands,
is the hypothesis that the planets were all detached from the Sun; that they
are bone of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Smithsonian
Contributions," xxi., Art. 1, pp. 79-97.
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his bone, and flesh of his flesh;
whereas, the Sun and planets are only co-uterine brothers, having had the same
nebular origin, only in a different mode from that postulated by modern
astronomy.
The many objections raised against
the homogeneity of original diffuse matter, on the ground of the uniformity in
the composition of the fixed stars, by some opponents of the modern nebular
theory, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the
said theory. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it
may fail to reveal itself as such to the astronomers, and yet be de facto
homogeneous. The stars do differ in their constituent materials and even
exhibit elements quite unknown on earth; nevertheless, this does not affect the
point that primeval matter -- i.e., as it appeared even in its first
differentiation from its laya condition* -- is yet to this day homogeneous, at
immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far
removed from the outskirts of our solar system.
Finally, there does not exist one
single fact brought forward by the learned objectors against the "nebular
theory," (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough, fatal to the
hypothesis of the homogeneity of matter,) that can withstand criticism. One
error leads into another. A false premise will naturally lead to a false
conclusion, although an inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the
validity of the major proposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every
side-issue and inference from the evidence of spectra, and lines, as simply
provisional for 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 official
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 of such men of learning as Kepler, Kant,
Oersted, and Sir W. Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual world, that Occult
Cosmogony might treat, 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 final
destiny, as well as the present aspect, of the Universe, from a far more
philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy
now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of being. The result is
what might be expected: complete failure and inextricable 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Beyond the zero-line of action.
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primeval matter, diffused in a
nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as everyone knows. Anaximenes,
of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal bodies were formed
through the progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic matter, which
had almost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an extremely
sublimated condition.
Tycho Brahe, who viewed the Milky Way
as an ethereal substance, thought the new star that appeared in Cassiopoeia, in
1572, had been formed out of that matter. ("Progymnasmata" p. 795.)
Kepler believed the star of 1606 had been likewise formed out of the ethereal
substance that fills the universe ("De stella nova in pede
Serpentarii," p. 115). He attributed to that same ether the apparition of
a luminous ring around the moon, during the total eclipse of the sun observed
at Naples in 1605. ("Hypotheses Cosmogoniques," C. Wolf.) Still
later, in 1714, -- the existence of a self-luminous matter was recognised by
Halley ("Philosophical Transactions"). Finally, the journal of this
name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis on the transformation of the
nebulae into stars, by the eminent astronomer, Sir W. Herschell (See
"Philosophical Transactions," of 1811, p. 269, et seq.), after which
the nebular theory was accepted by the Royal Academies.
In "Five years of
Theosophy," on p. 245, an article headed "Do the Adepts deny the
Nebular Theory?" may be read. The answer there given is "No; they do
not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the
scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well
as the entire error of the many so-called "exploded" old theories,
which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid
succession."
This was proclaimed at the time
"an evasive answer." Such disrespect to official science, it was
argued, must be justified by the presentation, to replace the orthodox
speculation, of another theory more complete than theirs, and having a firmer
ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply; it is useless to give out
isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a whole and consecutive
system, which, when separated from the main body of the teaching, would
necessarily lose their vital coherence and thus do no good when studied
independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the occult views on the
nebular theory, one has to 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 undeniably correct surmises of Sir W. Herschell],
that had nothing "supernatural" in them, about the sun being called
"globe of fire" (perhaps) metaphorically, and his early speculations
about the nature of that which is now called the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory --
caused that most eminent of all astro-
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nomers to be smiled at by other, far
less eminent colleagues, who saw and now see in his ideas only "imaginative
and fanciful theories." Before the whole esoteric system could be given
out and appreciated by the astronomers, they would have to return to some of
those "antiquated ideas," not only to those of Herschell, but to the
dreams of the oldest Hindu astronomers, and to abandon their own theories, none
the less "fanciful" because they have appeared in one case nearly 80
years and in the other many thousands of years later. Foremost of all they
would have to repudiate the ideas on the Sun's solidity and incandescence; the
sun "glowing" most undeniably, but not "burning." Then it
is stated, with regard to Sir W. Herschell's view that those
"objects," as he called the "willow leaves," are the
immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though the esoteric teaching
does not regard these as he did -- namely, organisms as partaking of the nature
of life," for the Solar "Beings" will hardly place themselves
within telescopic focus -- yet it asserts that the whole Universe is full of
such "organisms," conscious and active according to the proximity or
distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of consciousness; and that
finally the great astronomer was right in saying that "we do not know that
vital action is competent to develop at once heat, light, and electricity"
while speculating on those supposed "organisms." 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 collectively of our Solar system -- that "life" being a
portion, or rather one of the aspects of the One Universal LIFE.
We may, therefore, as in the article
under consideration, wherein, on the authority of the Adepts, it was maintained
that it is "sufficient to make a resume of what the solar physicists do
not know," -- we may, we maintain, define our position with regard to the
modern nebular theory and its evident incorrectness, by simply pointing out
facts diametrically opposed to it in its present form. And to begin with, what
does it teach?
Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses,
it becomes plain that Laplace's theory -- now made quite unrecognisable,
moreover -- was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first place Cosmic
matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity "so fine that its
presence could hardly have been suspected." 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 upon the immediate cosmological problems
presented for solution, he can only be said to have thrown back the mystery a
little further. To the eternal query -- "Whence matter itself; whence the
evolutionary impetus
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determining its cyclic aggregations
and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and order into which the
primeval atoms arrange and group themselves?" -- no answer is attempted by
Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the probable broad
principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based. Well, and what
is this now celebrated note on the said process? What has he given so
wonderfully new and original, that its ground-work, at any rate, should have
served as a basis for the modern nebular theory? This is what one gathers from
various astronomical works.
Laplace thought that, consequent on
the condensation of the atoms of the primeval nebula, according to the
"Law" of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps, partially liquid mass,
acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this rotation increased, it
assumed the form of a thin disc; finally, the centrifugal force overpowering
that of cohesion, huge rings were detached from the edge of the whirling
incandescent masses, contracting necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into
spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily still continue to preserve the same
orbit occupied previously by the outer zone from which they were separated.
("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.")* The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent
planet, he said, 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
preliminary state of their formation, the newly-segregated orbs in their turn
throw off one or more satellites . . . In formulating the history of the
rupture 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 nearer to 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "World-Life." Prof.
Winchell points to a good many mistakes of Laplace in his work; but as a
geologist he is not infallible himself in his "astronomical speculations."
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hypothesis," it is impossible
not to recognise the insurmountable difficulties with which it is attended.
Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus display
a retrograde motion; that, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, Venus
is less dense than the Earth? Similarly, the more distant Uranus is more dense
than Saturn? How is it that so many variations in the inclination of their axes
and orbits are present in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such
startling variations in the size of the planets is noticeable; that the Satellites
of Jupiter are more dense by .288 than their primary -- that the phenomena of
meteoric and cometic systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote the words
of a Master: "They (the Occultists) find that the centrifugal theory of
Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither
account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties
as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any
calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury,
whose rotation is, we are told, only about one-third that of the Earth, and its
density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth, should have a polar
compression more than ten times as great as the latter? And again, why Jupiter,
whose equatorial rotation is said to be 'twenty-seven times greater, and its
density only about one-fifth that of the earth' should have its polar
compression seventeen times greater than that of the earth? Or why Saturn, with
an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centripetal
force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times
greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to
believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that
the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal
velocity of the Earth's equatorial surface, and only about one-fourth part of
the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to
bulge at the Solar equator, nor shown the least flattening of the poles of the
Solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one fourth of our
Earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar
compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer,
yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the 'Adepts' are aware."
"Therefore, do they (the Adepts)
say, that the great men of science of the West, knowing . . . . . next to
nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the
nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or
even the Moon, are imprudent to speak as confidently as they do about the
'central mass of the Sun' whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not
. . . ." "We maintain that it (the Sun) evolves out only the
life-principle, the
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Soul of those bodies, giving and
receiving it back, in our solar system, as the 'Universal Life-Giver' . . . .
in 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."*
The essential faculty possessed by
all the cosmic and terrestrial elements, of generating within themselves a
regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes and
effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an extra or
intra INTELLIGENCE, or conceal such within or behind the manifested veil.
Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe;
it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind those
Elements (or within) -- a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of
the atoms of Lucretius, who himself knew better, that built the Kosmos and all
in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial space, containing
matter so attenuated as is Ether, cannot be called on, with or without
attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the
perfect accord of their mutual revolution indicates clearly the presence of a
mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had best right to trust to
his deductions and views, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever
explaining, by the laws of known Nature and its Material forces, the original
impulse given to the millions of orbs. He recognised fully the limits that
separate the action of natural Forces from that of the INTELLIGENCES that set
the immutable laws into order and action. And if a NEWTON had to renounce such
hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of saying:
"I know better"?
To become complete and
comprehensible, a cosmogonical theory has to start with a primordial Substance
diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine Nature. That
substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of
the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upadhi to this, there must
be the sixth, its vehicle -- primordial physical matter, so to speak, though
its nature must escape for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an
astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the
emergence of the universe out of chaos, by simply applying to it the principles
of mechanics. But such a universe will always prove, with respect to its scientific
human creator, a Frankenstein's monster; it will lead him into endless
perplexities. The application of the mechanical laws only can never carry the
speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and
final destiny of Kosmos. This is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Five Years of
Theosophy," pp. 249-50. Art. "Do the Adepts deny the Nebular
Theory?"
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whither the nebular theory has led
Science. In sober fact and truth this theory is twin sister to that of Ether,
and both are the offsprings of necessity; one as indispensable to account for
the transmission of light, as the other to explain the problem of the origin of
the solar systems. The question with them is, how the same homogeneous matter*
could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies -- sun, planets, and
their satellites -- subject to conditions of identity of motion and formed of
such heterogeneous elements.
Has the nebular theory helped to
solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered as inanimate and
material? We say most decidedly not. What progress has it made since 1811, when
Sir W. Herschell's paper, first presenting facts based on observation and
showing the existence of nebular matter, made the "Sons" of the Royal
Society "shout for joy"? Since then a still greater discovery has permitted,
through spectrum analysis, the verification and corroboration of Sir W.
Herschell's conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive "world
stuff " to prove the idea of progressive world-evolution and growth. Here
it is, as offered two millenniums ago.
The "world stuff," now
nebulae, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, having
differentiated, the subsequent commixture of heterogeneous substances remained
motionless and unorganized, until finally "the Mind" -- the collective
body of Dhyan Chohans, we say -- began to work upon and communicated to it
motion and order (Aristotle's "Physica," viii, 1.) The theory is now
taken up in its first portion, that of any "Mind" interfering with it
being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulae formed
entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular matter?
The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the matter which
emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulae
are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing their
physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one
nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen in it, and of other material substances
known and unknown. The same in the atmospheres of the Sun and stars. This leads
to the direct inference that a star is formed by the condensation of a nebula;
hence that even the metals themselves on earth are
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Had astronomers held simply, in
their present state of knowledge, 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 around 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.
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formed owing to the condensation of
hydrogen or some other primitive matter, some ancestral cousin to
"helium," perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff? This does not clash
with the occult teachings. And this is the problem that chemistry is trying to
solve; and it must succeed sooner or later 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 now stands.
Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in
any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact science, the present theory of the
filiation of stars -- even if occultism does so in its own way, as it explains
this filiation differently -- because astronomy has not one single physical
datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the
existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a
spectrum of three 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 nebula, 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." (Cosmogonical Hypotheses of Wolf.)
Since the discovery of the
spectroscope, its magic power has revealed to its adepts only one single
transformation of a star of this kind; and even that one showed directly the
reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the nebular theory; namely -- a
star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As told in The Observatory
(Vol. I., p. 185), the temporary star which appeared in the constellation
Cygnus, in November, 1876, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt, exhibited a spectrum
broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of
the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single brilliant line, which
appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula.
Though this metamorphosis is not
irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin of the stars,
nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, least
of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due to several other
causes. Since astronomers are inclined to think our planets are tending toward
precipitation on the Sun, why should not that star have blazed out owing to a
collision of such precipitated planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a
comet? Anyhow, the only known instance of a star transformation since 1811 is
not favourable to the nebular theory. Moreover, on the question of this theory,
as in all others, astronomers disagree.
In our own age, it was Buffon, before
Laplace ever thought of it, who, very much struck by the identity of motion in
the planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis of the planets and their
satellites originating in
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the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith, and
for the purpose, he invented a special comet, supposed to have torn out, by a
powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary to their formation.
Laplace gave its dues to the "comet" in his "Exposition du Systeme
du Monde." (Note VII.) But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a
conception of the alternate evolution from the Sun's central mass of planets
apparently without weight or influence on the motion of the visible planets --
and as evidently without 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 that matter which now enters into the composition
of the planetary bodies was spread over all the space comprised in the solar
system -- and even beyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, whose
condensation gradually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been
explained, to the various bodies of our systems. This is the original nebular
theory, an incomplete yet faithful repetition -- a short chapter out of the
large volume of universal esoteric cosmogony -- of the teachings in the Secret
Doctrine. And both systems, Kant's and Laplace's, differ greatly from the
modern theory, redundant with conflicting sub-theories and fanciful hypotheses.
"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 Western Science is now
acquainted. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity (owing to
the chemical action of terrestrial light upon the intercepted rays) of earthly
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" -- say the Teachers (op. cit.). Mr.
Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted from his lecture,
"Elements and Meta-Elements."
"At the utmost," observes
C. Wolf,* "could the nebular hypothesis show in its favour, with W.
Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulae in various degrees of
condensation, and of spiral nebulae, with nuclei of condensation on the branches
and centre.** But, in fact, the knowledge of the bond that unites the nebulae
to the stars is yet denied to us; and lacking as we do direct observation, we
are even debarred from establishing it even on the analogy of chemical
composition."
It is evident that, even if the men
of science, leaving aside the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Member of the Institute, Astronomer
of the Observatory, Paris, "Cosmogonical Hypotheses."
** But the spectra of these nebulae
have never yet been ascertained. When they are found with bright lines, then
only may they be cited.
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difficulty arising for them out of
such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in the constitution of
nebulae, did admit, with the ancients, that the origin of all the visible and
invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial homogeneous
world-stuff, in a kind of PRE-protyle,* -- it is evident that this would not
put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit also that our actual
visible Universe is merely the Sthula-Sharira, the gross body, of the sevenfold
Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; especially if they risk
maintaining that its now visible bodies are the result of the condensation of
that one and single primordial matter. For mere observation shows them that the
actions which produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever
be embraced in that theory.
First of all, there are two distinct
classes of irresolvable nebulae, -- as Science itself teaches.
The telescope is unable to
distinguish between the two, but the spectroscope can, and notices, therefore,
an essential difference between their physical constitutions.**
"Some of these," 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Crookes' "Protyle"
must not be regarded as the primary stuff, out of which the Dhyan Chohans, in
accordance with the immutable laws of nature, wove our solar system. This
protyle cannot even be the first 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. It is a MEDIATE phase in the progressive differentiation of
cosmic substance from its normal undifferentiated state. Protyle is then the
aspect assumed by matter in its middle passage into full objectivity.
** "The question of the
resolvability of the nebulae 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 Canis 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 but will be irresolvable." (C. Wolf,
Cosmogonical Hypotheses.)
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internal weight: such are the nebulae
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 nebulae. If the primitive chaos were a cold luminous gas,* 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 nebulae 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 to the acceptance of the nebular theory brought
forward by the French savant, who concludes his interesting chapter 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."**
If this is the last word of Science
upon that subject, whither then should one 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 a certainty. What it is not -- we learn from the erudite
author of the "World-Life." He tells us that:--
(I.) It "is not a theory of the
evolution of the Universe . . . but only and primarily a genetic explanation of
the phenomena of the solar system, and accessorily a co-ordination of the
principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament, as far as human vision
has been able to penetrate."
(II.) "That it does not regard
the Comets as involved in that particular evolution which has produced the
solar system." (Esoteric doctrine does.)
(It does, because it, too, recognises
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.) "That 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Stanza III. about "Light,
or the cold Flame," and Commentary Number 8, where it is explained that
the "mother" (Chaos) is a cold Fire, a cool Radiance, colourless,
formless, devoid of every quality. "Motion is the One Eternal is, and
contains the potentialities of every quality in the Manvantaric Worlds,"
it is said.
** Hypotheses Cosmogoniques, C. Wolf,
1886.
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it allows that this "fire mist
may have previously existed in a cold, nonluminous 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 theologian as free as
they ever were to seek for the origin of the modes of being."*
But this is not all. Even the
greatest philosopher of England -- Mr. Herbert Spencer -- arrayed himself
against the fantastic theory by saying that (a) "The problem of existence
is not resolved" by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis "throws no light
upon the origin of diffused matter," and (c) that "the nebular
hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First Cause."**
The latter, we are afraid, is more
than our modern physicists have bargained for. Thus, it seems that the poor
"hypothesis" can hardly expect to 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 ostracised it may be at present. And they maintain that this failure of the
scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their materialism and
contempt for transcendental sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our
century are as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever,
there may be still some hope left for the future, as we find another great
scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.
In an article in Popular Science
Review (Vol. XIV., p. 252) 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."
This is a happy forecast indeed. The
day may come, then, when the "Natural Selection," as taught by Mr.
Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will form only a part, in its ultimate
modification, of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and
Kapila esoterically explained.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "World-Life," p. 196.
** Westminster Review, XX., July 27,
1868.
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XIV.
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 there will remain no other issue -- as in the case of
Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the
physical boundaries of our solar system, beyond which everything, every
particle of matter, is different from the matter it knows: which matter exists
in states of which Science can form no idea. That matter, which is truly
homogeneous, is beyond human perceptions, if perception is tied down merely to
the five senses. We feel its effects through those INTELLIGENCES which are the
results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyan-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." That matter -- the real primordial
substance, the noumenon of all the "matter" we know of, -- even some
of the astronomers have been led to believe in, and to despair of the
possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin of any
mechanical physical laws -- unless these Intelligences be admitted by Science.
In the abovequoted work upon astronomy, by Wolf,* the author endorses fully the
theory of Kant, and the latter, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in
some of its features, reminds one strongly of certain esoteric teachings. Here
we have the world's system reborn from its ashes, through a nebula; the
emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space -- resultant of the
incandescence of the solar centre reanimated by the combustible matter of the
planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the brain of a young man
hardly twenty-five years of age, who had never left his native place, a small
town of Northern Prussia (Konigsberg) one can hardly fail to recognise either
an inspiring external power, or the reincarnation 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, Akasa, that Kant had in view, when proposing
to solve Newton's difficulty and his failure to explain, by the natural forces,
the primitive impulse imparted to the planets, by the postulation of a
universally pervading primordial substance. For, as he remarks in chapter
viii., if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the stars and planets
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "LES HYPOTHESES COSMOGONIQUES.
Examen des Theories Scientifiques modernes sur l'Origine des Mondes, suivi de
la Traduction de la Theorie du Ciel de Kant."
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the coincidence of their orbital
planes prove the existence of a natural cause, which would thus be the primal
cause, "that cause cannot really be the matter which fills to-day the
heavenly spaces." It must be that which filled space -- was space --
originally, whose motion in differentiated matter was the origin of the actual
movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, "in condensing itself in
those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is found void to-day." In
other words, it is that same matter of which are now composed the planets,
comets, and the Sun himself, which, having in the origin formed itself into
those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now
centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words
is needed, and a few additions, to make of this our Esoteric Doctrine.
The latter teaches that it is this
original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, the direct
emanation of the Universal Mind -- the Daiviprakriti (the divine light
emanating from the Logos*) -- which formed the nuclei of all the
"self-moving" orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present
moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets,
and even of our Earth. The former latent: the last one active -- the invisible
Ruler and guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul,
which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective planetary
Spirits.
Another quite occult doctrine is the
theory of Kant, that the matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of
other planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more
perfect conformation in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter
is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life-giving principle. Therefore,
the men on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those of Venus are more
gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.
The last doctrine is not quite ours
-- yet those Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and as transcendental as any
occult doctrines; and more than one 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 Puranas, there is but a step.
After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a
natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such
metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the MIND, is a "God," and
physiology admits "mind" only as a temporary function of the material
brain, and no more.
The Satan of Materialism now laughs
at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the invisible. Seeing in light,
heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only properties inherent
in matter, it
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Which "Light" we call
Fohat.
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laughs whenever life is called VITAL
PRINCIPLE, and derides the idea of its being independent of and distinct from
the organism.
But here again scientific opinions
differ as in everything else, and there are several men of science who accept
views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S.
(elsewhere quoted at length) says of that "Vital principle," which he
calls "nervous ether" ("Popular Science Review," Vol.
10):--
"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,* obeying other influences, an agent possessing no
initiative power, no vis or energia naturae,** 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" (p. 379).
As Biology and Physiology now deny,
in toto, the existence of a "vital principle," this extract, together
with de Quatrefages' admission, is a clear confirmation that there are men of
science who take the same views about "things occult" as theosophists
and occultists do. These recognise a distinct vital principle independent of
the organism -- material, of course, as physical force cannot be divorced from
matter, but of a substance existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for
them is something more than the mere interaction of molecules and atoms. There
is a vital principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have
resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called
"inorganic" matter of our plane of consciousness.
By "molecular combinations"
is meant, of course, those of the matter of our present illusive perceptions,
which matter energises only on this, our plane. And this is the chief point at
issue.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
** The same error.
*** "Is the Jiva 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 Vedantic
and even Kantian Idealism.
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Thus the Occultists are not alone in
their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in rejecting even the
"gravity" of modern Science along with other physical laws, and in
accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two
opposite Forces only the two aspects of the universal unit, called
"MANIFESTING MIND"; in which aspects, Occultism, through its great
Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: Cosmic Dhyan-Chohans,
Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial
phenomena. For that essence is co-substantial with the universal Electric
Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said -- positive and negative -- it is
the emanations of that duality 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 someone, even in thought, to separate it from
matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which
have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, negative and positive
poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc., etc.
And it is maintained that even the
Greek and Roman Catholic Christians, are wiser in believing, as they do -- even
if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an anthropomorphic god -- in
Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars: in all those theological
Deliciae humani generis, in short, that rule the cosmic elements, than Science
is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and advocating its mechanical Forces.
For these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency.
Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But,
as De Maistre was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which
replaced "the thing unknown" (Soirees), so are we right in applying
the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that
the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le Couturier, as
ardent a materialist, who said the same thing, as also did Herschell and many
others. (Vide Musee des Sciences, August, 1856.)
From Gods to men, from Worlds to
atoms, from a star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the
meanest organic being -- the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain,
whose links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the first key to the
world-problem, and these links have to be studied coordinately in their occult
relations to each other.
When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine
-- postulating that conditioned or limited space (location) has no real being
except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive
faculties -- teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is
interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings
are, in point of
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localization, around and in us, as we
are around, with, and in them; it is no metaphysical figure of speech, but a
sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.
But one has to understand the
phraseology of Occultism before criticising what it asserts. For example, the
Doctrine refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words
"above" and "below," "higher" and "lower,"
in reference to invisible spheres, as being without meaning. Even the terms
"East" and "West" are merely conventional, necessary only
to aid our human perceptions. For, though the Earth has its two fixed points in
the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to
our own position on the Earth's surface, and in consequence of its rotation
from West to East. Hence, when " other worlds" are mentioned --
whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, though both
invisible -- the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or
inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is
nowhere in the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They are, as it
were, blended with our world interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it.
There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us; there
still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescopes, and many of the
latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as
invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are
yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their
respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these
worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes enclosed one within
the other, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own
special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The
inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel,
passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations
and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision,
because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by
their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are
always able to discern, whether in a greater or smaller degree, the presence
and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining to other spheres of life. Those
of the (spiritually) higher worlds, communicate only with those terrestrial
mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher plane
they are occupying. . . .
"THE SONS OF Bhumi (EARTH)
REGARD THE SONS OF Deva-lokas (ANGEL-SPHERES) AS THEIR GODS; AND THE SONS OF
LOWER KINGDOMS LOOK UP TO THE MEN OF Bhumi, AS TO THEIR devas (GODS); MEN
REMAINING UNAWARE OF IT IN THEIR BLINDNESS. . . . THEY (men) TREMBLE
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BEFORE THEM WHILE USING THEM (for
magical purposes). . . . THE FIRST RACE OF MEN WERE THE "Mind-born
sons" OF THE FORMER. THEY (the pitris and devas) ARE OUR PROGENITORS. . .
. (Book II. of Commentary on the Book of DZYAN.)
"Educated people,"
so-called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; the men
of science regard as an insult any mention of such superstitions; and with a
contempt of logic and common good sense, that is often the prerogative of
"accepted authority," they allow those, whom it is their duty to
instruct, to labour under the absurd impression that in the whole Kosmos, or at
any rate in our own atmosphere, there are no other conscious, intelligent
beings, save ourselves.* Any other humanity (composed of distinct human beings)
than a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head with man's features on it,
would not be called human; though the etvmology of the word would seem to have
little to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while Science
sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, generally)
invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all secretly, is made to
deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such works as the Count de Gabalis,
and fails to understand that open satire is the securest mask.
Nevertheless, such invisible worlds
do exist. Inhabited as thickly as our own is, they are scattered throughout
apparent Space in immense number; some far more material than our own world,
others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as
"Breaths." That our physical eye does not see them, is no reason to
disbelieve in them; physicists can see neither their ether, atoms, nor
"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 affording a partial analogy in the
difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems little difficulty in
recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail of a comet, which,
though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not
disturb or impede our vision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond
it, affords the first stepping-stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a
comet passes rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel it, nor be
cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often perceived only
by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else remains ignorant of
its presence and passage through, or across, a portion of our globe. This tail
may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of the comet, but its
tenuity sub-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Even the question of the plurality
of worlds inhabited by sentient creatures is rejected or approached with the
greatest caution! And yet see what the great astronomer, Camille Flammarion,
says in his "Pluralite des Mondes."
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serves our purpose as an
illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a result of
transcendental science, and of logic still more, to admit the existence of
worlds formed of even far more attenuated matter than the tail of a comet. By
denying such a possibility, Science has played for the last century into the
hands of neither philosophy nor true religion, but simply into those of
theology. To be able to dispute the better the plurality of even material
worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with the teachings and
doctrines of the Bible,* Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of Newton, and
try to convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian
philosophy are those "which lie at the foundation of all atheistical
systems." (Vide Vol. II., "Plurality of Worlds.")
"Dr. Whewell disputed the
plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence," writes Professor
Winchell.** And if even the habitability of physical worlds, of planets, and
distant stars which shine in myriads over our heads is so disputed, how little
chance is there for the acceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently
transparent space of our own!
But, if we can conceive of a world
composed (for our senses) of matter still more attenuated than the tail of a
comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in proportion to their
globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted earth, no wonder if
we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in
what is the idea contrary to science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks,
be supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those we
possess? Cannot their organisms be born, developed, and exist, under other laws
of being than those that rule our little world? Is it absolutely necessary that
every corporeal being should be clothed in "coats of skin" like those
that Adam and Eve were provided with in the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we
are told, however, by more than one man of science, "may exist under very
divergent conditions."*** Do not we know through the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nevertheless, it will 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.
** See "The Plurality of the
Worlds," wherein the list of many men of Science, who wrote to prove the
theory, is given.
*** Professor A. Winchell -- arguing
upon the plurality of the 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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discoveries of that very all-denying
science that we are surrounded by myriads of invisible lives? If these
microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally small, are
invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the other
pole of it, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or matter
-- to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary matter,
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 myriads of tiny
beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and heedless of
whether they are perceived or not by our grosser materiality. And so again, of
the microbes and bacteria and such-like unseen beings in other elements. We
passed them by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp
of knowledge in the heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to
throw its bright light on the ages of intolerance and bigotry during early Christianity;
and we would fain pass them by again now.
And yet these lives surrounded us
then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their own laws, and it is
only as they were gradually revealed by Science that we have begun to take
cognisance of them, as of the effects produced by them.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 Kosmos, 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 intelligences be embodied in frames as
indifferent to external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the
lichens of Labrador, the rotifers that remain dried for years, or the spores of
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." (World-Life, or Comparative Geology, pp. 496-498 et seq.)
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How long has it taken the world, as
it is now, to become what it is? If it can be said of cosmic dust that some of
it comes to the present day "which had never belonged to the earth
before" ("World-Life"), how much more logical to believe -- as
the Occultists do -- that through the countless ages and millions of years that
have rolled away, since that dust aggregated and formed the globe we live in
around its nucleus of intelligent primeval substance -- many humanities,
differing from our present mankind, as greatly as the one which will evolve
millions of years hence will differ from our races, appeared but to disappear
from the face of the earth, as our own will. Those primitive and far-distant
humanities, having, as geologists think, left no tangible relics of themselves,
are denied. All trace of them is swept away, and therefore they have never
existed. Yet their relics -- a very few of them, truly -- are to be found, and
they have to be discovered by geological research. Though, even if they were
never to be met with, there is no reason to say that no men could have ever
lived in those geological times, to which the period of their presence on earth
is assigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no
feeding; the author of "World-Life" is right, and it is no such great
extreme to believe even as we do, that as there may be, on scientific
hypotheses, "psychic natures enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum"
to this day, so there were psychic natures enshrined in forms of equal
indestructible primeval matter the real forefathers of our fifth race.
When we speak, therefore, as in Book
II., of men who inhabited this globe 18,000,000 years back, we have in the mind
neither the men of our present races, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal
conditions, etc. The Earth and mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and planets, have
all their growth, changes, developments, and gradual evolution in their
life-periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescents,
grown-up bodies, grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also
under this universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch: "Behold, I have showed thee
all things. Thou seest the Sun, 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" . . . etc.
(Ch. lxxix.)
The "days of Sinners" meant
the days when matter would be in its full sway on Earth, and man would have
reached the apex of physical development in stature and animality. That came to
pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race
(the 4th), which was drowned as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man began
decreasing in physical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in
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Book II. But as we are in the
mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race -- the acme of materiality in
each -- therefore the animal propensities, though more refined, are not the
less developed for that: and they are so chiefly in civilized countries.
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§ XV.
GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS.
SOME years ago we remarked* that
"the Esoteric Doctrine may well be called the 'thread-doctrine,' since,
like Sutratman, in the Vedanta philosophy,** it passes through and strings
together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and reconciles and
explains them all." We say now it does more. It not only reconciles the
various and apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of
modern exact science, and shows some of them to be necessarily correct, since
they are found corroborated in the ancient records. All this will, no doubt, be
regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of
lese-Science; nevertheless, it is a fact.
Science is, undeniably,
ultra-materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its justification.
Nature behaving in actu ever esoterically, and being, as the Kabalists say, in
abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that
appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the
naturalists refuse to blend physics with metaphysics, the body with its
informing soul and spirit, which they prefer ignoring. This is a matter of
choice with some, while the minority strive very sensibly to enlarge the domain
of physical science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of metaphysics, so
distasteful to some materialists. These scientists are wise in their
generation. For all their wonderful discoveries would go for nothing, and
remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of matter and strain
their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied nature in the length,
breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton
to the second plane and search within the unknown depths for the living and
real entity, for its SUB-stance -- the noumenon of evanescent matter.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Septenary
Principle," art. in "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 197.
** The Atman or Spirit (the Spiritual
SELF) passing like a thread through the five subtle bodies (or principles,
Koshas) is called "thread-soul," or Sutratman in Vedantic philosophy.
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It is only by acting on such lines
that some of the truths, now called "exploded superstitions," will be
discovered to be facts and the relics of ancient knowledge and wisdom.
One of such "degrading"
beliefs -- in the opinion of the all-denying sceptic -- is found in the idea
that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in
other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The
so-called Arch-Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their
prototypes, the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are no real
Beings but fictions. On this point Materialistic Science is inexorable. To
support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity in the laws
of nature, that of continuity, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the
evolution of being. The masses of the profane are asked, and made, to believe
that the accumulated testimony of History, which shows even the Atheists of old
-- such as Epicurus and Democritus -- believing in gods, was false; and that philosophers
like Socrates and Plato, asserting their existence, were mistaken enthusiasts
and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the
authority of legions of the most eminent Sages, Neo-Platonists, Mystics of all
the ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the
present century, who, if they reject "gods," believe in
"spirits," shall we consider such authorities as weak-minded and
foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and prays to his once
human Saint, or the Archangel, St. Michael? But is there no difference between
the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs to 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 all
blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of modern
sceptics -- the "leaders of thought" -- who are struck with the
cecity of negation? The latter, we opine. It would be a miracle indeed, quite
an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful of
negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million-strong hosts of
believers in gods, angels, and spirits -- in Europe and America alone -- namely,
Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., etc.,
should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and often
no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in their
external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible
Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error
are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries
of Nature are to be found only in Eastern esoteric sciences. So vast and so
profound are these that hardly a few, a very few of the highest Initiates --
those whose very existence is known but to a small number of
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Adepts -- are capable of assimilating
the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and processes in
Nature's workshops are permitted to find their way into the exact Sciences,
while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana.
It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that
such events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000
years of the present Aryan Kaliyuga; and between this time and 1897 there will
be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and materialistic science will
receive a death-blow.
Without throwing any discredit upon
time-honoured beliefs, in whatever direction, we are forced to draw a marked
line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the
independent researches of long generations of adepts; between, in short, faith
and philosophy. There have been -- in all ages -- undeniably learned and good
men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized
convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of
departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of
Calvary, the prelude to the hoped-for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is
at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex.
For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of
their respective theologies: one self-created personal God and an Empyrean
ringing with the Hallelujas of created angels; the rest, false gods, Satan and
fiends.
Theophilosophy proceeds on broader
lines. From the very beginning of AEons -- in time and space in our Round and
Globe -- the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our
races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same now invisible
"heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto
passed from one generation of "wise men" to the other. Some of the
symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were brought therefrom by
Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous "Triangle." The
latter figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and
scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe,
spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive
Cosmogonies and revealed "Geneses." The ten points inscribed within
that "Pythagorean triangle" are worth all the theogonies and
angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets
them -- on their very face, and in the order given -- will find in these
seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the uninterrupted
series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial man. And, as
they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved
the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by
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which the latter was generated.
Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the same
"Mother" as its fellow-globes -- he who will master the mysteries of
our Earth, will have mastered those of all others.
Whatever ignorance, pride or
fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown
inseparably connected with both philosophy and modern science. The gods of the
ancients, the monads -- from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz -- and the atoms of
the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the
old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the
human frame, which begins with body and ends with spirit. In the occult
sciences they can be studied separately, but never mastered unless viewed in
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 capacities when declaring his personal views
on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. "A point," he says, "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? A 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, universal, and absolute Deity if it had no
Mathematical Point within the Circle to base its speculations upon. It is only
the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the
infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that made a reconciliation
between philosophy and theology possible -- on condition that the latter should
abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because it has so unwisely
rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that Christian theology
has evolved its self-created human and personal God, the monstrous Head from
whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so
true that even those clergymen who would be philosophers and who were masons,
have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered 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." A curious explanation
this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.
Nor did the "hierogram within a
Circle, or equilateral Triangle,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Science of Numbers," by
the Rev. G. Oliver (p. 36).
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ever mean "the exemplification
of the unity of the divine Essence"; for this was exemplified by the plane
of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune co-equal Nature of
the first differentiated Substance, or the con-substantiality of the
(manifested) Spirit, matter and the Universe -- their "Son," who
proceeds from the Point (the real, esoteric LOGOS) or the Pythagorean MONAD.
For the Greek Monas signifies "Unity" in its primary sense. Those
unable to seize the difference between the monad -- the Universal Unit -- and
the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever-hidden and the
revealed LOGOS or the Word, ought never to meddle in philosophy, let alone the
Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant's
Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.* Those who have read and understood
it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely Ideal Universe and
the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the
Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible reality which is
the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither esoteric philosophy, nor Kant, nor
Leibnitz would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or
unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle
and the Point, which latter retires into and merges with the former, after
having emanated the first three points and connected them with lines, thus
forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested
World, have ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into
dogmatic Empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal
god, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-rate emanation, the
Sephiroth standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of En-Soph (see the
Kabalistic Tree of Life). Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle -- a
"throne"!
The Monad -- only the emanation and
reflection of the Point (Logos) in the phenomenal World -- becomes, as the apex
of the manifested equilateral triangle, the "Father." The left side
or line is the Duad, the "Mother," regarded as the evil,
counteracting principle (Plutarch, De Placitis Placitorum); the right side
represents the Son ("his Mother's husband" in every Cosmogony, as one
with the apex); at the basic line is the Universal plane of productive Nature,
unifying on the phenomenal plane Father-Mother-Son, as these were unified in
the apex, in the supersensuous World.** By mystic transmutation they became the
Quaternary -- the triangle became the TETRAKTIS.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Kant's Critique de la Raison
pure (Barni's transl., Vol. II., p. 54).
** 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 one, while the horizontal line is
symbolised by the row of witness, the bridesmaids and best-men. But behind
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This transcendental application of geometry
to Cosmic and divine theogony -- the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception
-- became dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the
Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of
the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple TRIAD -- the
line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have
interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter --
"the potencies of an interacting Unity."* Materialistic Science,
perceiving but the basic line of the manifested "triangle" -- the
plane of matter -- translates it practically as (Father)-MATTER,
(Mother)-MATTER, and (Son)-MATTER, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.
But to the average physicist, as
remarked by a Kabalist, "Space, Force, 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." As symbols representing
abstractions, "the physicist bases reasoned hypotheses of the origin of
things . . . . and sees three needs in what he terms creation: (a) a place
wherein to create; (b) a medium by which to create; (c) 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."**
The physicist who regards Space
merely as a representation of our mind, or extension unrelated to things in it,
which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; the
paradoxical materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no
matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that "Space
is a substantial though (apparently) an absolutely unknowable living
Entity." (New Aspects, p. 9.) Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic
teaching, and it is that of Archaic philosophy. Space is the real world, while
our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude:
in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with
countless phenomenal Universes, systems and mirage-like worlds. Nevertheless,
to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at the bottom, in the
real world, which is a Unity of Forces, there is "a connection of all
matter in the plenum," as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the
Pythagorean Triangle.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] the priest there is the altar with its mysterious containments and
symbolic meaning, inside of which no one but the consecrated priests ought to
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.
* See Von Hartmann's and Herbert
Spencer's works.
** "New Aspects of Life,"
by Henry Pratt, M.D.
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It consists of ten points inscribed
pyramid-like (from one to the last four) within its three lines, and it
symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single dot
is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity from whence all
proceeds, and all is of the same essence with it. While the ten dots within the
triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides of the equilateral
triangle which enclose the pyramid of dots are the barriers of noumenal Matter,
or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought. "Pythagoras
considered a point to correspond in proportion to unity; a line to 2; a
superficies 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 superficies 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
creator 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." (Pythag. Triangle, p. 19.)
It is argued that "the human
mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the annihilation of the idea
with its subject." This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and
a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training for it, and
although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as
metamathematics and metageometry. Even mathematics pure and simple proceed from
the Universal to the particular, from the mathematical, hence indivisible
Point, to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in
Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point --
which no living man can define except as incomprehensible abstractions -- laid
the origin of the differentiated Cosmic matter in the basic or horizontal line
of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical figures.
The author of "New Aspects of Life" and of the Kabalistic Mysteries
-- objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception
and use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a misnomer. His argument that
a solid equilateral body -- "one whose base, and each of its sides, form
equal triangles -- must have four co-equal sides or surfaces, while a
triangular plane will as necessarily possess five," demonstrates on the
contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its esoteric application to the
idea of
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the pregenesis, and the genesis of
Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal triangle, depicted by mathematical, imaginary
lines "can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the mind (if
sides be imputed to which, they must be the sides of the object it
constructively represents)." But in such case most of the scientific
hypotheses are no better than "phantoms of the mind"; they are
unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer
scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal triangle -- "as the
abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract
idea" -- accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism
intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle
became a solid. When repeated in stone on the four cardinal points, it assumed
the shape of the Pyramid -- the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the
noumenal Universe of thought -- at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an
"imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines," it
symbolized the subjective spheres -- those lines "enclosing a mathematical
space -- which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing." Because, to the
senses and the untrained consciousness of profane and scientist, everything
beyond the line of differentiated matter -- i.e., outside of, and beyond the
realm of even the most spiritual substance -- has to remain for ever equal to nothing.
It is the AIN-SOPH -- the No-THING.
Yet these "phantoms of the
mind" are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract ideas in
general upon evolution and physical development -- e.g., Gravity, Matter,
Force, etc. -- on which the exact sciences are based. Our most eminent chemists
and physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally
tracing to its hiding-place the protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean
triangle. The latter is, as said, the grandest conception imaginable, as it
symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.* 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,** it is so only in the
realm of exact sciences in a world as deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm
of the Esoteric sciences the unit divided ad infinitum, instead of losing its
unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal REALITY.
The eye of the SEER can follow and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This
same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective
universes, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic teachings --
limited to the Elect alone; for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the world of Form, having found
its expression in the Pyramids, Symbolism has in them both a triangle and a
square, with their four co-equal triangles or surfaces, the four basic points,
and the fifth -- the apex.
** "New Aspects of Life."
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Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and
the Duad, says that the 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 -- thence 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, . . . or Numbers which proceeded from
THAT, "which was before all Numbers," as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel.
And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of the three upper and the four
lower worlds or planes -- which are in constant interaction and correspondence.
This is a teaching which the Kabala has in common with Eastern Occultism. For
in the occult philosophy there are the "ONE Cause" and the
"Primal Cause," which latter thus becomes, paradoxically, the second,
as clearly expressed by the author of the "Qabbalah, from the
philosophical writings of Ibn Gabirol," -- "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." Thus he shows the early Hebrews following in the steps of the
Oriental philosophy -- Chaldean, Persian, Hindu, Arabic, etc. Their Primal
Cause was designated at first "by the triadic Shaddai, the (triune)
Almighty, subsequently by the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, symbol of the Past,
Present, and Future," and, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM.
Moreover, in the Kabala the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She,
male and female, two in one, or Hokhmah and Binah, and his, or rather their
Shekinah or synthesizing spirit (grace), which makes again 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 Hu (He), and His Shekinah,
the Hidden and Concealed Hu, blessed be YHVH (the Quaternary) for ever."
"Ha is said to be masculine and YAH feminine, together they make the
[[hebrew]] i.e., one YHVH. One, but of a male-female nature. The Shekinah is
always considered in the Qabbalah as feminine" (p. 175). And so it is
considered in the exoteric Puranas, for Shekinah is no more than Sakti -- the
female double or lining of any god, in such case. And so it was with the early
Christians whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But
in the transcendental Chaldean Kabala or "Book of Numbers,"
"Shekinah" is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a State, like
Nirvana, not subject or object or anything except an absolute PRESENCE.
Thus it is only in the
anthropomorphised systems (such as the Kabala has now greatly become) that
Shekinah-Sakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two
straight lines of the symbol that can never meet, which therefore form no
geometrical figure and are
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the symbol of matter. Out of this
Duad, when united in one 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 the Bible
"God" (see the same work and page).* Out of these issue the
Scintillas.
The Scintillas are the
"Souls," and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of Monads
(units), atoms and gods -- according to our teaching. "Every atom becomes
a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere of
terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral,
vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esot. Catechism.) Again,
"God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body
(Atma, Manas and Sthula Sarira) in man." In their septenary aggregation
they are the "Heavenly Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); thus,
terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . .
"The Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the fabric in
which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) cloth themselves when a form is needed."
(Esot. Cat.)
This relates to Cosmic and
sub-planetary Monads, not to the Super-Cosmic Monas (the Pythagorean Monad) as
called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The
Monads of the present dissertation are treated from the standpoint of their
individuality, as atomic Souls, before these atoms descend into pure terrestrial
form. For this descent into concrete matter marks the medial point of their own
individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality,
they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that
point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva
(divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their
terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour
in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional chemist and
physicist cannot reach them -- unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly
clairvoyant faculties.
It is well known that Leibnitz came
several times very near the truth, but defined monadic evolution incorrectly,
which is not to be wondered at, since he was not an INITIATE, nor even a
Mystic, only a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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-Soph-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.
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very intuitional philosopher. Yet no
psycho-physicist ever came nearer than he has to the esoteric general outline
of evolution. This evolution -- viewed from its several standpoints -- i.e., as
the universal and the individualized Monad; and the chief aspects of the
Evolving Energy, after differentiation -- the purely Spiritual, the
Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical -- may be thus formulated as an
invariable law; a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in
physical evolution; a re-ascent from the depths of materiality towards its
status quo ante, with 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 absolutely 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 (or molecule) -- cannot well reject the same as a
general law. And once it is forced by its enemies -- Metaphysics and
Psychology* -- out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more
difficult than it now 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 succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still
greater Scientists will follow in that "intellectual FALL." They will
be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other
physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms
that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows
the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of
simple common sense.
Here is an example: Prof. W. Crookes'
latest discovery of what he has named protyle. In the "Notes on the
Bhagavat Gita," by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedantic scholars in
India,** the lecturer, referring cautiously to "things occult" in
that great Indian esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly
correct. ". . . Into the details of the evolution of the solar system
itself," he says, "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 MULAPRAKRITI is differentiated
(the Pythagorean triangle), by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Let not the word
"psychology" cause the reader to carry his thought by an association
of ideas 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.
** T. Subba Row, see Theosophist for
Feb., 1887.
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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
Elements spring from Vishwanara,* 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 Vishwanara, and is, so far as I
know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators TO THE REAL OCCULT
THEORY on the subject."
These words will be re-echoed and
approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Prof. Crookes
has already been quoted in § XII. of these Addenda. Since then, there has been
another lecture delivered, as remarkable as the first one, on the "Genesis
of the Elements,"** and also a third one. Here we have almost a
corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric philosophy concerning the mode of
primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar
and specialist in chemistry,*** 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 connection 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 when materialism regarded its
sub-elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous 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 be any fear of a new disguise. And after years
of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of elements, behind
and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of chemistry
asks once more: "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." (Gen. of Elem., p. 1.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Vishwanara 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. Beyond only, is the
true Protyle.
** By W. Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S.,
delivered at the Royal Institution, London, on Friday, February 18th, 1887.
*** How true it is will be fully
demonstrated only on that day when his discovery of radiant matter will have
resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true source of light, and
revolutionized all the present speculations. Further familiarity with the
northern streamers of the aurora borealis may help the recognition of this
truth.
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Those who are heirs to primeval
revelations have taught these "possibilities" in every century, but
have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired to Kepler, Leibnitz,
Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in
one or another predetermined direction --hence distorted. But now one of the
great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of modern exact science, and
he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself
acquainted, so far, with real simple elements. For Prof. Crookes tells his
audience:
"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 never have
descended into the thick atmosphere of materialism and profane mortals for
years to come, perhaps, had not Professor Crookes bravely and fearlessly
reduced it to its simple elements, and thus publicly forced it on Scientific
notice. "An idea," says Plutarch, "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." (De Placit. Philos.) The
revolution produced in old chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the
Volume of New Chemistry. Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is
boldly pointing to what may be the last. For once protyle accepted and
recognized -- as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific
necessities -- Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reappear
in its reincarnation as New Alchemy, or METACHEMISTRY. The discoverer of
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radiant matter will have vindicated
in time the Archaic Aryan works on Occultism and even the Vedas and Puranas.
For what are the manifested "Mother," the
"Father-Son-Husband" (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahma, as
Creators) and the "Son," -- the three "First-born" -- but
simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is
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 that which was known in the highest
antiquity!
Yet all the ancient, mediaeval, and
modern poets and philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindu
books. Descartes' plenum of matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz's
Ethereal Fluid and Kant's "primitive fluid" dissolved into its
elements; Kepler's Solar Vortex and Systemic Vortices; in short, from the
Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the universal mind -- through Anaxagoras,
down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest
speculations by European mystics -- all this is found in the Hindu hymns and
Mantras to the "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in their fulness, for they
are inseparable. In esoteric teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of
the universe and its mysteries, as the most (seemingly) materialistic
speculations are found reconciled, because those sciences embrace the whole
scope of evolution 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." ("Path," No. 10, p. 297.)
Let the reader remember these
"Monads" of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the
universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and
definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by 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, Professor 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, . . ." the answer is ready. The theoretical
knowledge is contained in the esoteric meaning of every Hindu cosmogony in the
Puranas; the practical demonstration thereof -- is in the hands of those who
will not be recognised in this century, save by the very few. The scientific
possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science
into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite
material for the filling of those "gaps," are, so far, at the mercy
of modern materialism. It is only by working in the direction
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taken by Professor Crookes that there
is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto Occult, truths.
Meanwhile, one thirsting to have a
glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of primordial matter, which,
separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself
into a septenary gradation of SUBSTANCE (from a general view), can do no better
than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes' lecture: "Genesis of the
Elements," and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place
(p. 11) 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; then sub-molecules differ one from the other,
according to the position they occupied 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."
. . .
This will be the case with all the
atoms and molecules when they have separated 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, which will generate "Divine Essences" whose
"principles"* are the primary elements, the sub-elements, the
physical energies and subjective and objective matter; or, as these are
epitomised -- GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS. If leaving for one moment the
metaphysical or transcendental side of the question, -- dropping out of the
present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent beings and entities
believed in by the Kabalists and Christians -- we turn to the atomical theory
of evolution, the occult teachings are still found corroborated by exact Science
and its confessions, as far, at least, as regards the supposed
"simple" elements, now suddenly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Corresponding on the cosmic scale
with the Spirit, Soul-mind, Life, and the three Vehicles -- the astral, the
Mayavic and the physical bodies (of mankind) whatever division is made.
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degraded into poor and distant
relatives -- not even second cousins to the latter. For we are told by Prof.
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. . ." (p.
16).
On page 429 of Isis Unveiled, Vol.
I., we said that "the mystery of first creation, which was ever the
despair of Science, is unfathomable unless they (the Scientists) accept the
doctrine of Hermes. They will have to follow in the footsteps of the
Hermetists." Our prophecy begins to assert itself.
But between Hermes and Huxley there
is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science only throw a bridge
half-way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. We have shown our
theories with regard to atomic evolution -- their last formation into compound
chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the
earth's atmosphere and not elsewhere -- as strangely agreeing with the
evolution of atoms shown on Mr. Crookes' plates. Several times already it was
stated in this volume that Martanda (the Sun) had evolved and aggregated,
together with his smaller seven Brothers, from his Mother's (Aditi's) bosom,
that bosom being 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" (p. 21) -- and behold
a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of the
postulates. We have shown the "Mother," fiery and hot, becoming
gradually cool and radiant, and that same Scientist claims as his second
postulate, a scientific necessity, it would seem -- "an internal action
akin to cooling, operating slowly in the protyle." Occult Science teaches
that "Mother" lies stretched in infinity (during Pralaya) as the
great Deep, the "dry Waters of Space," according to the quaint
expression in the Catechism, and becomes wet
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only after the separation and the
moving over its face of Narayana, the "Spirit which is invisible Flame,
which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and
generation."* And now Science tells us that "the first-born element .
. . most nearly allied to protyle" . . . would be "hydrogen . . .
which for some time would be the only existing form of matter" in the
Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: just so; but we would call
hydrogen and oxygen (which instils the fire of life into the "Mother"
by incubation) in the pregenetic and even pre-geological ages -- the Spirit,
the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and
nitrogen on Earth -- nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an
earth-born cement to unite other gases and fluids, and serve as a sponge to
carry in itself the breath of LIFE -- pure air.** Before these gases and fluids
become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier
and on a deeper plane -- something else, and so on in infinitum. The eminent
and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for quoting 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 psychological and metaphysical side of the
question. We would only remark that to the "two very reasonable
postulates" required by the eminent lecturer, "to get a glimpse of
some few of the secrets so darkly hidden" behind "the door of the
Unknown" -- a third should be added*** -- lest no battering at it should
avail; the postulate that Leibnitz, in his speculations, stood on a firm
groundwork of fact and truth. The admirable and thoughtful synopsis of these
speculations -- as given by John Theodore Merz in his "Leibnitz" --
shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of esoteric Theogony in his
Monadologie. And yet that philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations
above the first planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His
theory soars to no loftier heights than those of the manifested life,
self-consciousness and intelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier
post-genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post-planetary.
But this third postulate will hardly
be accepted by the modern men
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Lord is a consuming
fire." . . . "In him was life, and the life was the light of
men."
** Which if separated ALCHEMICALLY
would yield the Spirit of Life, and its Elixir.
*** 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.
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of Science; and, like Descartes, they
will prefer keeping to the properties of external things, which, like
extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion, rather than
accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become
anti-Cartesian in this generation; nor will they 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 bearers of form, a purely
esoteric claim, since force was with Leibnitz an active principle, the division
between mind and matter disappearing by this conclusion. But --
"The mathematical and dynamical
inquiries of Leibnitz would not have led to the same result in the mind of a
purely scientific inquirer. 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 inquiry was made into the definition
of mind, the thinking substance. . ."
The divisions made by Leibnitz,
however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism, show a spirit
of metaphysical intuition to which no man of science, not Descartes -- not even
Kant -- has ever reached. With him there existed ever an infinite gradation of
thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises
into the clearness of apperception, "into the light of perfect
consciousness." Many remain in a confused or obscure state, in the state
of "perceptions;" but they are there; . . . Descartes denied soul to
the animal, Leibnitz endowed, as the Occultists do, "the whole creation
with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite
gradations." And
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this, as Mertz justly observes,
"at once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the contrast of
animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more -- it reacted 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 . . . " (p. 144).
This is the spirit, the very root of
occult doctrine and thought. The "Spirit-Matter" and
"Matter-Spirit" extend infinitely in depth, and like "the
essence of things" of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the
seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external
world, is at the lowest end 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 system of Leibnitz* and that of occult
philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadology
before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz' and Spinoza's systems
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The real spelling of the name -- as
spelt by himself -- is Leibniz. He was of Slavonian descent though a German by
birth.
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reconciled, the 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 truths of the Archaic doctrine.
Both opposed the metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of two
substances -- Extension and Thought -- radically differing from each other and
mutually irreducible, was too arbitrary and too unphilosophical for them. Thus
Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian substances two attributes of one universal
unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognised but one universal indivisible
substance and absolute ALL, like Parabrahmam. Leibnitz, on the contrary
perceived the existence of a plurality of substances. There was but ONE for
Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, and in, the One. Hence,
though both admitted but one real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and
indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and
semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an objective Pantheist,
yet both were great philosophers in their intuitive perceptions.
Now, if these two teachings were
blended together and each corrected by the other, -- and foremost of all the
One Reality weeded of its personality -- 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 in your thought between that ever-incognizable essence, and the, as
invisible, yet comprehensible Presence (Mulaprakriti), or Schekinah, from
beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum, and from which
evolve the numberless hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of conscious as of
semi-conscious, perceptive and apperceptive 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 every body and object was thus not the
material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as those of
Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical atoms,
'mathematical points'; or real souls, -- as explained by Henri Lachelier
(Professeur agrege de Philosophie), his French biographer. "That which
exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose essence is
force," (Monadologie, Introd.).
Thus, reality in the manifested world
is composed of a unity of units, so to say, immaterial (from our stand-point)
and infinite. This Leibnitz calls "Monads," Eastern philosophy
"Jivas" -- and Occultism gives it, with the Kabalists and all the
Christians, a variety of names.
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They are with us, as with Leibnitz --
"the expression of the universe,"* and every physical point is but
the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical 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 are Monads" -- is the chaotic
representation of our Septenary System with its divisions and sub-divisions.
As to the relation his Monads bear to
our Dhyan-Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas and Elementals, we may reproduce
briefly the opinion of a learned and thoughtful theosophist, Mr. H. A.
Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper "On the Elementals, the
Elementary Spirits, and the relationship between them and Human Beings,"
read by him before the "Aryan Theosophical Society of New York" (see
PATH, Nos. 10 and 11, of Jan. and Feb. 1887), Mr. Bjerregaard formulates
distinctly his opinion. . . . . "To Spinoza, substance is dead and inactive,
but to Leibnitz's penetrating 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."
And the lecturer proceeds to show
that to Leibnitz atoms and elements are centres of force, or rather
"spiritual beings whose very nature is to act," for the elementary
particles are not acting mechanically, but from an internal principle. They are
incorporeal spiritual units ("substantial," however, but not
immaterial in our sense) inaccessible to all changes from without, and
indestructible by any external force. Leibnitz's monads, adds the lecturer,
"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 atoms; they are absolutely alike quantitatively and
qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own.** Again, the atoms
(molecules,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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!
** Leibnitz was an absolute Idealist
in maintaining that "material atoms are contrary to reason" (Systeme
nouveau, Erdmann, p. 126. col. 2). For him matter was a simple representation
of the monad, whether human or atomic. Monads, he thought (as we do), are
everywhere. Thus the human soul is a monad, and every cell in the human body
has its monad, as 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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rather) of materialistic philosophy
can be considered as extended and divisible, while the monads are mere
mathematical 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 this 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 provision 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." (Examen des Principes du P. Malebranche.)
He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,* because, as he repeatedly
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" (Letter to Father Desbosses,
Correspondence, letter xviii.) -- but soon after he finds a provision for this
in a substantial correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the monads
-- vinculum substantiale. Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism
-- though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Maya, temporary
illusion -- draws a practical distinction between collective illusion,
Mahamaya, from the purely metaphysical stand-point, and the objective 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 for
this object a great number of them, as each monad represents only a portion of
the Kingdom it belongs to. "It is not in the object, but in the modification
of the cognition of the object that the Monads are limited. They all go
confusedly to the infinite, to the all, but they are all limited and
distinguished by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 again endows them with objectivity and aggregates and
positions in their co-relations.
* 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 modern Science. He calls them formal atoms, and
compares them to the substantial forms of Aristotle. (See Systeme Nouveau, §
3.)
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degrees of distinct
perceptions." (§ 60, Monadologie.)* 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;" but a number of monads could
represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two millions of 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 viewed, and leaving every
subdivision out of calculation, for the present** -- may be separated into
three distinct Hosts, which, counted from 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 unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything
connected with their respective realms. Lastly, the atoms, or material
molecules, which are informed in their turn by their apperceptive monads, just
as every cell in a human body is so informed. (See the closing pages of Book
I.) There are shoals of such informed atoms which, in their turn, inform the
molecules; an infinitude of monads, or Elementals proper, and countless
spiritual Forces -- Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,*** except
under certain laws, when they assume a form -- not necessarily human. Whence
the substance that clothes them -- the apparent organism they evolve around
their centres? The Formless ("Arupa") Radiations, existing in the
harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the
aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite
together an infinitude of monads -- each the mirror of its own Universe -- and
thus individualize
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Leibnitz, like Aristotle, calls the
created or emanated monads (the Elementals issued from Cosmic Spirits or Gods)
-- Entelechies, [[Entelecheia]] -- and "incorporeal automata." (§ 18,
Monadologie.)
** These three "rough
divisions" correspond to spirit, mind (or soul), and body, in the human
constitution.
*** Brother C. H. A. Bjerregaard, in
his 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 those 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" (No. 10, Path) . . . . "There are several designations for
'angels' in the Bible which clearly show that beings like the Elementals of the
Kabala 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." (Path, No. 11, p. 322.)
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for the time being an independent
mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation
they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar
atoms. For atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are,
from the moment of the first differentiation, but the principles, corporeal,
psychic and Spiritual, of the "Gods," -- themselves the Radiations of
primordial nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers
appear under two aspects: the subjective -- as influences, and the objective --
as mystic FORMS, which, under Karmic law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter
being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; matter
is Spirit -- on the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both -- are MAYA.
Atoms are called
"Vibrations" in Occultism; also "Sound" -- collectively.
This does not interfere with Mr. Tyndall's scientific discovery. He traced, on
the lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the
atmospheric vibrations -- and this constitutes the objective part of the
process in nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion and
transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations in the
tympanum and their transmission of these to the stolithes, etc., etc., till the
vibration of the auditory nerve commences -- and a new phenomenon now takes
place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of Sound. Does he
perceive or see it? No; for his speciality is to discover the behaviour of
matter. But why should not a psychic see it, a spiritual seer, whose inner Eye
is opened, and who can see through the veil of matter? The waves and
undulations of Science are all produced by atoms propelling their molecules into
activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their
continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually
going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomena called the
correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such "force,"
there stands the conscious guiding noumenon thereof -- Angel or God, Spirit or
Demon -- ruling powers, yet the same.
As described by Seers -- those who
can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow them in their
evolution clairvoyantly -- they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in
radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any
mortal physical eye could follow, and, as well as can be judged from the
tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular. . . . . Standing
on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing into the vast
vault above and the spacial infinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems
ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At
times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes
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like the Northern lights during the
Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this
inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled
with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, 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 feel that there may be indeed a close
relation between materialistic Science, and Occultism, which is the complement
and missing soul of the former.
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XVI.
CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA.
IT is the Spiritual evolution of the
inner, immortal man that forms the fundamental tenet in the Occult Sciences. To
realize even distantly such a process, the student has to believe (a) in the
ONE Universal Life, independent of matter (or what Science regards as matter);
and (b) in the individual intelligences that animate the various manifestations
of this Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in "Vital Force,"
others do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Sterling's work "Concerning
Protoplasm" has made no small havoc of this dogmatic negation. Professor
Beale's decision is also in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W.
Richardson's lectures on the "Nervous Ether," have been sufficiently
quoted from. 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 rather an "effect-producing
cause." Esoterically it is quite a different thing in its far-fetching
moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant
of the real significance, characteristics and awful importance of this eternal
immutable law, that no theological definition of a personal deity can give an
idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in
vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with the Theists (the
Christian Protestants, at any rate), rejoices in a personal male gender, while
with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency, "Divine Providence
tempers 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
was shown that, at the first flutter
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of renascent life, Svabhavat,
"the mutable radiance of the Immutable Darkness unconscious in
Eternity," passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state
into one of intense activity; that it differentiates, 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 is transformed into a centre of energy;
that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven
creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . . follow, one
the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet
are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA." The atoms emanated from
the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the
potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply
other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in
their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and
"man-bearing" globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all
the seven kingdoms* (of which we know only four). For "the blessed workers
have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity" (Book of "The Aphorisms
of Tson-ka-pa").
"Thyan-kam" is the power or
knowledge of guiding the impulses of cosmic energy in the right direction.
The true Buddhist, recognising 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 there are
Planetary Spirits, the "Dhyan Chohans." But though he admits of
"spiritual lives," yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they,
according to his philosophy, are "the maya of the day," the illusion
of a "day of Brahma," a short manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The
"Yin-Sin" is not for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has
strongly prohibited all such inquiry. If the Dhyan 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 from these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of
"self-produced beings, the creatures of Karma." Thus regarding a
personal God "as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by
the imagination of ignorant men,"** they teach that only "two things
are (objectively) eternal, namely Akasa and Nirvana"; and that these are
ONE in reality, and but a maya when divided. "Buddhists deny creation and
cannot conceive of a Creator." "Everything has come out of Akasa (or
Svabhavat
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide Stanza VI. (Book I.) and
Commentary.
** Buddhist Catechism, by H. S.
Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society.
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on our earth) in obedience to a law
of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence passes away. Nothing
ever came out of nothing." (Buddhist Catechism.)
If a Vedantic Brahmin of the Adwaita
Sect, when asked whether he believes in the existence of God, is always likely
to answer, as Jacolliot was answered -- "I am myself 'God';" a
Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply,
"There is no God; no Creation." Yet the root philosophy of both Adwaita
and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal
life, for both believe that every creature on earth, however small and humble,
"is an immortal portion of the immortal matter" -- for matter with
them has quite another significance than it has with either Christian or
materialist -- and that every creature is subject to Karma.
The answer of the Brahmin is one
which would suggest itself to every ancient philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic
of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic
commandments, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man
was, is, and will be; of man's origin, life-cycle -- interminable in its
duration of successive incarnations or rebirths -- and finally of his
absorption into the source from which he started.
But it is not physical Science that
we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the Past, or that of the
Future; since no philosopher is able to tell us even what man is, as he is
known both to physiology and psychology. In doubt whether man was "a god
or beast," he is now connected with the latter and derived from an animal.
No doubt that the care of analyzing and classifying 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 done by it, the progress achieved in physiology, and even -- to a degree
-- in biology. But man's inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature
cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained materialism; for not even
the higher psychological philosophy of the West is able, in its present
incompleteness and tendency towards a decided agnosticism, to do justice to the
inner; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and those states of
consciousness, across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw a strong
line, saying "So far, and no farther shalt thou go."
No Occultist would deny that man --
no less than the elephant and the microbe, the crocodile and the lizard, the
blade of grass or the crystal -- is, in his physical formation, the simple
product of the evolutionary forces of nature through a numberless series of
transformations; but he puts the case differently.
It is not against zoological and
anthropological discoveries, based on
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the fossils of man and animal, that
every mystic and believer in a divine soul inwardly revolts, but only against
the uncalled-for conclusions built on preconceived theories and made to fit in
with certain prejudices. Their premises may or may not be always true; and as
some of these theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must
ever be one-sided with materialistic evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength
of such very ephemeral authority, that most of the men of science frequently
receive undue honours where they deserve them the least.*
To make the working of Karma, in the
periodical renovations of the Universe, more evident and intelligible to the
student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of man, he has now to
examine with us the esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal
Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas
and Kalpas by the Hindus, and so very graphically -- [[Kuklos]] --
"cycle," ring or circle, 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 ever returning on themselves, periodically,
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We refer those who would regard the
statement as an impertinence or irreverence against accepted Science, to Mr.
James Hutchinson Stirling's work concerning "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
the scientific premises may not be always correct, but that they are accepted,
nevertheless, 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 lacunae 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., etc. (p. 33 and 34, 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!
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intelligently in Space and Eternity.
There are "Cycles of matter"* and there are "Cycles of Spiritual
evolution." Racial, national, and individual cycles. May not esoteric
speculation allow us a still deeper insight into the workings of these?
This idea is beautifully expressed in
a very clever scientific work:--
"The possibility of rising to a
comprehension of a system of co-ordination so far outreaching in time and space
all reach 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 unstable and perishable forms of being. There
is a method in the succession of events, and in the relation of co-existent
things, which the mind of man seizes hold of; and by means of this as a clue,
he runs back or forward over aeons 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 toward a sublime apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence whose dwelling
place is Eternity." ("World-Life," p. 535 and 548.)
According to the teachings, Maya, or
the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events and actions on this earth,
changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief features of one's life
are always in accordance with the "Constellation" one is born under,
or, we should say, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the
deity that presides over it, whether we call it a Dhyan Chohan, as in Asia, or
an Archangel, as with the Greek and Latin churches. In ancient Symbolism it was
always the SUN (though the Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was
supposed to send forth the chief Saviours and Avatars. Hence the connecting
link between the Buddhas, the Avatars, and so many other incarnations of the highest
SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the
better for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal deity
(the seventh principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of
will toward purification and unity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Cycles of Matter," a
name given by Professor Winchell to an Essay of his written in 1860.
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with that "Self-god," one
of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher and
ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until, from ray to ray, the
inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of the Parent-SUN. Thus,
"the events of humanity do run coordinately with the number forms,"
since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same
source -- the central and its shadow, the visible SUN. For the equinoxes and
solstices, the periods and various phases of the Solar course, astronomically
and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally
living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals. And
this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical
relations, as shown by several authors.
Yes; "our destiny is written in
the stars!" Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection MAN
and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external conditions and
subsequent reincarnations -- which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This
is not superstition, least of all is it Fatalism. The latter implies a blind
course of some still blinder power, and man is a free agent during his stay on
earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths
that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery -- if such
is decreed to him, either in the snowy white robes of the Martyr, or in the
soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for, there are
external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will
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 to death, every
man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb;
and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible
prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is
but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these
lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very
beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation
steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the
last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own
doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made
destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable
rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own
actions, and this is -- KARMA.
A materialist, treating upon the
periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in one sentence. "The
whole past of the Earth is nothing but an unfolded present." This was
Buchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an axiom of the Occultists.
It is quite true also, as Burmeister (quoted in "Force and matter")
remarks, that
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"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."
The "Forces" -- their
noumena rather -- are the same, of course; therefore, the phenomenal Forces
must be the same also. But how can any one feel so sure that the attributes of
matter have not altered under the hand of Protean Evolution? How can any materialist
assert with such confidence, as is done by 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 were the Huxleys and Buchners when the foundations of the earth were laid
by the great Law? It is a fundamental principle of the Occult philosophy, this
same homogeneity of matter and immutability of natural laws, which are so much
insisted upon by materialism; but that unity rests upon the inseparability of
Spirit from matter, and, if the two are once divorced, the whole Kosmos would
fall back into chaos and non-being. Therefore, it is absolutely false, and but
an additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert (as men
of science do) that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions
have been produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were
but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes,
acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse
mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every
important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical. But
spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the purely physical, the
former are denied by, and therefore, have to remain unknown to Science, because
left unexamined.*
"The history of the World begins
with its general aim," says Hegel; "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 a
priori. Actual Science is not sufficiently advanced to give you such
right." ("La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilites.")
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SPIRIT for attaining its object;
bringing it to consciousness and realising 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 power, of a higher and broader
purpose of which they know nothing -- which they realise 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."*
No metaphysician or theosophist could
demur to these truths, which are all embodied in esoteric teachings. There is a
predestination in the geological life of our globe, as in the history, past and
future, of races and nations. This is closely connected with what we call Karma
and Western Pantheists, "Nemesis" and "Cycles." The law of
evolution is now carrying us along the ascending arc of our cycle, when the
effects will be once more re-merged into, and re-become the (now neutralized)
causes, and all things affected by the former will have regained their original
harmony. This will be the cycle of our special "Round," a moment in
the duration of the great cycle, or the Mahayuga.
The fine philosophical remarks of
Hegel are found to have their application in the teachings of Occult Science,
which shows nature ever acting with a given purpose, whose results are always
dual. This was stated in our first Occult volumes, in Isis Unveiled, p. 268,
Vol. II., 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 reasserts 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.
But these cycles -- wheels within
wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously symbolized by the various Manus and
Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in the West** -- do not affect all mankind
at one and the same
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "On World History" in
"Philosophy of History," p. 26. (Sibree's Eng. Transl.).
** This symbolism does not prevent
these now seemingly mythic personages from [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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time -- as explained in the Racial
division of Cycles (See sub-section 6.) Hence, as we see, the difficulty of
comprehending, and discriminating between them, with regard to their physical
and spiritual effects, without having thoroughly mastered their relations with,
and action upon the respective positions of nations and races, in their destiny
and evolution. This system cannot be comprehended if the spiritual action of
these periods -- pre-ordained, so to say, by Karmic law --is separated from
their physical course. The calculations of the best astrologers would fail, or
at any rate remain imperfect, unless this dual action is thoroughly taken into
consideration and dealt with upon these lines. And this mastery can be achieved
only through INITIATION.
The Grand Cycle includes the progress
of mankind from the appearance of primordial man of ethereal form. It runs
through the inner cycles of his (man's) progressive evolution from the ethereal
down to the semi-ethereal and purely physical: down to the redemption of man
from his coat of skin and matter, after which it continues running its course
downward and then upward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the
manvantaric "Serpent swallows its tail" and seven minor cycles are
passed. These are the great Racial Cycles which affect equally all the nations
and tribes included in that special Race; but there are minor and national as
well as tribal cycles within those, which run independently of each other. They
are called in the Eastern esotericism the Karmic cycles. In the West, since
Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and been developed by the
dark powers supposed to be at constant war and in opposition to the little
tribal Jehovah -- the full and awful significance of the Greek NEMESIS (or
Karma) has been entirely forgotten. Otherwise Christians would have better
realized the profound truth that Nemesis is without attributes; that while the
dreaded goddess is absolute and immutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves --
nations and individuals -- who propel her to action and give the impulse to its
direction. KARMA-NEMESIS is the creator of nations and mortals, but once
created, it is they who make of her either a fury or a rewarding Angel. Yea --
"Wise are they who worship
Nemesis"*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] having ruled the earth once upon a time under the human form of actual
living, though truly divine and god-like man. The opinion of Colonel Vallancey
(and also of Count de Gobelin) 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, Praef. Sect. 5) is as absurd as his
assertion that OEon, Kronos, 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.
* Who dread Karma-Nemesis would be
better.
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-- as the chorus tells Prometheus.
And as unwise they, who believe that the goddess may be propitiated by whatever
sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the path it has once
taken. "The triform Fates and ever mindful Furies" are her attributes
only on earth, and begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she
cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively
or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE,
minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so
unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will
not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with
Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches
over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer --
aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his
having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of
harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma -- an
eternal and immutable decree -- is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as
it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or
punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we
work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that
Harmony depends, or -- break them.
Nor would the ways of Karma be
inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and
strife. For our ignorance of those ways -- which one portion of mankind calls
the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the
action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor
devils to guide them -- would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these
to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident
conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think
of harming them, the 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 work
for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of
every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations,
tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that
is the chief cause of the "ways of Providence." We cut these numerous
windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we
are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and
then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered
before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not
solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is
not an accident in our lives,
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not a misshapen day, or a misfortune,
that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If
one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it,
"the laws of life," one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one
has oneself produced. 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 re-action."
Therefore, if any one is helpless
before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the artificers of our
destinies, but rather those angels, the guardians of harmony. Karma-Nemesis is
no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes produced and forces
awakened into activity by our own actions. It is a law of occult dynamics that
"a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is
productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical
objective plane of existence."
This state will last till man's
spiritual intuitions are fully opened, which will not happen before we fairly
cast off our thick coats of matter; until we begin acting from within, instead
of ever following impulses from without; namely, those produced by our physical
senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliative to the evils of
life is union and harmony -- a Brotherhood IN ACTU, and altruism not simply in
name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but a
variety of bad effects. And if a Brotherhood or even a number of Brotherhoods
may not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each other's
throats -- still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into
the mysteries of being, will always prevent some, while trying to comprehend
that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional
causes in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives the
conviction that if --
". . . . virtue in distress, and
vice in triumph
Make atheists of mankind,"*
it is only because that mankind has
ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own saviour as
his own destroyer. That he need not accuse Heaven and the gods, Fates and
Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity. But
let him rather remember and repeat this bit 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 . . ."
-- which are now the ways and the
high road on which move onward the great European nations. The Western Aryans
had, every nation
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dryden.
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and tribe, like their Eastern
brethren of the Fifth Race, their Golden and their Iron ages, their period of
comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while now, several of
them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali-Yuga, an age BLACK WITH HORRORS. . .
. .
It is true, on the other hand, that
the exoteric cycles of every nation have been correctly made to be derived
from, and depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are inseparably blended with
the destinies of nations and men. But in their purely physical sense, Europe
knows of no other cycles than the astronomical, and makes its computations
accordingly. Nor will it hear of any other than imaginary circles or circuits
in the starry heavens that gird them --
"With centric and eccentric
scribbled o'er
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb . .
."
But with the pagans, with whom, as
Coleridge has it -- ". . . . . Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction
of the Deity . ." that "Deity" manifesting co-ordinately with,
and only through Karma, and being that KARMA-NEMESIS itself, the cycles meant
something more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time
of more or less prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with
recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character than are exhibited in
the periodical return of seasons or of certain constellations. Modern wisdom is
satisfied with astronomical computations and prophecies based on unerring
mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold shell of astronomy the
vivifying elements of its soul and spirit -- ASTROLOGY. And, as the sidereal
motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth -- besides potatoes and
the periodical disease of that useful vegetable -- (a statement which, not
being amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while accepted) --
those events have to be allowed to find themselves predetermined by even simple
astronomical computations. Believers in astrology will understand our meaning,
sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes,
ostrich-like, to their own fate. . . . . . .*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 susceptible of moving matter to action. Profound
philosophers have admitted it 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 (neant) and gradually reaching man, can it
stop abruptly at man to reappear only in the infinite, in the sovereign
regulator of the world? This is little probable." Therefore . . "I
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This because their little historical
period, so called, allows them no margin for comparison. Sidereal heaven is
before them; and though their spiritual vision is still unopened and the
atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their sight and chains it to the
limits of physical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements
and note the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical
advents of those wanderers and "flaming messengers," and prophesy, in
consequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers, the apparition of certain stars,
comets, etc., etc. Are they soothsayers for all that? No, they are learned
astronomers.
Why, then, should occultists and
astrologers, as learned, be disbelieved, when they prophesy the return of some
cyclic event on the same mathematical principle? Why should the claim that they
know it be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, having recorded the
recurrence of such events in their time and day, throughout a period embracing
hundreds of thousands of years, the conjunction of the same constellations must
necessarily produce, if not quite the same, at any rate, similar effects. Are
the prophecies derided, because of the claim of the hundreds of thousands of
years of observation, and the millions of years of the human races? In its turn
modern Science is laughed at for its far more modest geological and
anthropological figures, by those who hold to Biblical chronology. Thus Karma
adjusts even human laughter at the mutual expense of sects, learned societies,
and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of such future events, at any rate,
all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, there is no psychic
phenomenon involved. It is neither prevision, nor prophecy; no more than is the
signalling of a comet or star, several years before its appearance. It is
simply knowledge and mathematically correct computations which enable the WISE
MEN OF THE EAST to foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such
or another catastrophe; France, nearing such a point of her cycle, and Europe
in general threatened with, or rather, on the eve of, a cataclysm, which her
own cycle of racial Karma has led her to. The reliability of the information
depends, of course, on the acceptation or rejection of the claim for a
tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that
they have preserved records of the racial development and of events of
universal import ever since the beginning of the Fourth Race -- that which
preceded being traditional. Moreover, those who believe in Seership and Occult
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] no more deny the existence of Spirits than I deny soul while trying to
explain certain facts without their hypothesis . . ." "The
Non-Defined Forces," Historical and Experimental Researches, p. 3. The
above is written by A. de Rochas, a well-known man of science in France, his
work being one of the signs of the time. (Paris: Masson, Boulevard St. Germain,
1887.)
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powers will have no difficulty in
crediting the general character, at least, of the information given, even if
traditional, once the latter is checked and corrected by the corroboration of
clairvoyance and esoteric knowledge. But in the present case no such
metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, but a proof is given on
what, to every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence -- the records preserved
through the Zodiac for incalculable ages.
It is now amply proved that even
horoscopes and judiciary astrology are not quite based on a fiction, and that
stars and constellations, consequently, have an occult and mysterious influence
on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the latter, why not with
nations, races, and mankind in bulk? This, again, is a claim made on the
authority of the Zodiacal records. We shall examine then, if you please, how
far the Zodiac was known to the ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the
moderns.
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XVII.
"THE ZODIAC AND ITS
ANTIQUITY."
"ALL men are apt to have a high
conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious of the opinions they
profess," said Jordan, justly adding to this -- "and yet almost all
men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be
said more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions."
This becomes doubly true in the
matter of scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for consideration -- the
prejudice and preconceptions of "authorities," so called, often
deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for history. There are
several such predetermined opinions among our learned Orientalists, yet few are
more unjust or illogical than the general error with regard to the antiquity of
the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German Orientalists, English and
American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber's opinion that the peoples
of India had no idea or knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian
invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient Hindus imported it
into their country. We are further told, by several other
"authorities," that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the
Hellenes kindly acquainted their neighbours with their invention. This, in the
face of the Book of Job, declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the
Hebrew canon, certainly prior to Moses, and which speaks of the making "of
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (Ash, Kesil, and
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Cimah) and the chambers of the
South" (ix. 9); of Scorpio and the Mazzaroths -- the TWELVE SIGNS
(xxxviii., 31, 32), which words, if they mean anything, imply knowledge of the
Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabic tribes. The Book of Job, they say,
precedes Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years -- the two Greek poets
having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the Christian era
(!!). One who prefers, by the bye, to believe Plato, who shows Homer
flourishing far earlier, could point to a number of Zodiacal signs mentioned in
the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the Orphic poems, and elsewhere. But since the
cock-and-bull hypothesis of some modern critics to the effect that neither
Orpheus, nor yet Homer and Hesiod, ever existed, it would seem time lost to
mention these Archaic authors at all. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless,
indeed, his volume of lamentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks,
adding to them those of Linus, should now be also declared to be the patriotic
forgery of the Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job,
how could the civilized and philosophical Hindus have remained ignorant of it?
Risking the arrows of modern
criticism -- rather blunted by misuse -- the reader may be made acquainted with
Bailly's learned opinion upon the subject. Inferred speculations may be shown
to be erroneous. Mathematical calculations stand on more secure grounds. Taking
as a starting point several astronomical references in Job, Bailly devised a
very ingenious means of proving that the earliest founders of the science of
the Zodiac belonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he
seems willing to see in Thoth, Seth, and in Fohi (of China), some of the
Biblical patriarchs, does not interfere with the validity of his proof as to
the antiquity of the Zodiac.* Even accepting, for argument's sake, his cautious
3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the science, this date proves in the most
irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for the
simple reason that they did not yet exist as a nation thirty-seven centuries
B.C. -- not as an historical race admitted by the critics, at any rate. Bailly
then calculated the period at which the constellations manifested the
atmospheric influence called by Job "sweet influences of the
Pleiades"** (in Hebrew, Chimah, see Job xxxviii. 31); of the Cesil
(Orion); and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth
constellation; and found that in presence the eternal conformity of those
divisions of the zodiac and names of the planets applied in the same order
everywhere and always; and in presence of the impossibility of attributing it
all to chance and coincidence,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Astronomie Antique.
** 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 Hindu esoteric philosophy, and are connected with
sound and other mystic principles in Nature.
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"which never creates such
similarities," there must be allowed for the zodiac a great antiquity
indeed. (See Astronomie Antique, pp. 63 to 74.)
Again, if the Bible is supposed to be
an authority on any matter (and there are some who still believe so, 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 high priest (xxii.), the signs of the zodiac
were known and worshipped. They were held 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, moon, and to the planets, and to all the
host of heaven," or the twelve signs or constellations, as the marginal
note in the English Bible explains (see II. Kings xxiii. 5), had followed the
injunction for centuries. They were stopped in their idolatry only by King
Josiah, 624 years B.C.
The Old Testament is full of
allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and the whole scheme is built upon it
-- heroes, personages, and events. Thus in the dream of Joseph, who saw eleven
"stars" bowing to the twelfth, which was his "star," the
zodiac is meant. The Roman Catholics have discovered in it, moreover, a
prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth star, they say, and the eleven apostles;
the absence of the twelfth being also regarded as a prophetic allusion to the
treachery of Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob are again a reference to the same,
as justly pointed out by Villapandus (Temple de Jerusalem, Vol. II., p. 2nd
part, chap. xxx). Sir James Malcolm, in his History of Persia (ch. vii.), shows
the Dabistan echoing all such traditions about the Zodiac. He traces the
invention of it to the palmy days of the golden age of Iran, remarking that one
of the said traditions maintains that the genii of the planets are represented
under the same shapes and figures they had assumed, when they showed themselves
to several holy prophets, and have thus led to the establishment of the rites
based on the Zodiac.
Pythagoras, and after him Philo
Judaeus, held the number 12 as very sacred. "The dodecahedron is a PERFECT
number." It is the one among the signs of the Zodiac, Philo adds, that the
sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour that sign that Moses divided
his nation into twelve tribes, established the twelve cakes (Levit. xxiv., 5)
of the shewbread, and placed twelve precious stones around the ephod of the
pontiffs. (See De Profugis.)
According to Seneca, Berosus taught
prophecy of every future event and cataclysm by the Zodiac; and the time fixed
by him for the conflagration of the world (pralaya), and another for a deluge,
is found to answer to the time given in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. It comes
at every renewal of the cycle of the sidereal year of 25,868 years. The names
of the Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the
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names of the signs of the Zodiac, and
the Akkadians themselves are far earlier than the Chaldaeans. Mr. Proctor
shows, in his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, that the ancient astronomers had
acquired a system of the most accurate astronomy 2,400 years B.C.; the Hindus
date their Kali Yug from a great periodical conjunction of the planets
thirty-one centuries B.C.; and, withal, it is the Greeks belonging to the
expedition of Alexander the Great, who were the instructors of the Aryan Hindus
in astronomy!
Whether the origin of the Zodiac is
Aryan or Egyptian, it is still of an immense antiquity. Simplicius (VIth cent.
A.D.) writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical
observations and records for the last 630,000 years. This statement appears to
frighten Mr. G. Massey, who remarks on this in his Natural Genesis (318) that
"if we read this number of years by the month which Euxodus said the
Egyptians termed a year, that would still yield the length of two cycles of
precession (or 51,736 years)." Diogenes Laertius carried back the astronomical
calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great
(Proem, 2). Martianus Capella corroborates the same by telling posterity that
the Egyptians had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years, before they
imparted their knowledge to the world (Astronomy of the Ancients, Lewis, p.
264).
Several valuable quotations are made
in the Natural Genesis with the view of supporting the author's theories, but
they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far more. For instance,
Plutarch is quoted from his Life of Sulla, saying: "One day when the sky
was serene . . . a sound was heard in it . . . of a trumpet, so loud, shrill
and mournful, that it affrighted . . . 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).
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 successive submersions and
destruction of the continents which finally disposed of almost the entire bulk
of that race.
"The Assyrians," says
Iamblichus, "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."
(Proclus, in Timaeus, b. I.) This is the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine,
as approximately as it can be. For 1,000,000 of years are allowed for our
present Root-race (the Fifth), and about 850,000 years since the submersion of
the last large island (part of the Continent), the Ruta of the Fourth Race, or
the Atlanteans;
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while Daitya, a small island
inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the
glacial period or thereabouts (vide Book II.). 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, these are invariably
the 12 signs of the zodiac.
So patent is the fact, that the Roman
Catholic writers -- especially among the French Ultramontanes -- have tacitly
agreed to connect the twelve Jewish Patriarchs with the signs of the Zodiac.
This is done in a kind of prophetico-mystic way, which would sound to pious and
ignorant ears like a portentous sign, a tacit divine recognition of the
"chosen people of God," whose finger has purposely traced in heaven,
from the beginning of creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance,
these writers (De Mirville among others) recognise curiously enough all the
characteristics of the 12 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.
(Vide Genesis, ch. xlix.) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes
are claimed to have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the signs,
repeated in the 12 stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the 12 wings of the
cherub. Leaving the proof of exactitude in the alleged correspondence to the
said mystics, it is as follows: Man, or the Aquarius, is in the sphere of
Reuben, who is declared as "unstable as water" (the Vulgate has it,
to be "rushing like water,"; Gemini, in the strong fraternal
association of Simeon and Levi; Leo, in that of Judah, "the strong
Lion" of his tribe, "the lion's whelp"; the Pisces, in Zabulon,
who "shall dwell at the haven of the sea"; Taurus, in Issachar,
because he is "a strong ass couching down," etc., and therefore
associated 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 is
"ravenous"; Libra, the "Balance," in Asher, whose
"bread shall be fat"; Saggitarius in Joseph, because "his bow
abode in strength." To make up for the twelfth sign, Virgo, made
independent of Scorpio, is Dina, the only daughter of Jacob. (See Genesis
xlix.) Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the 12 signs on their
banners. But the Bible is, besides these, full of theo-cosmological and
astronomical symbols and personifications.
It remains to wonder, and query -- if
the actual, living Patriarch's destiny was so indissolubly wound up with the
Zodiac -- how it is that after the loss of the ten tribes, ten signs out of the
twelve have not also miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But
this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of
the Zodiac itself.
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Now the reader may be reminded of
some opinions expressed on the subject by several of the highest authorities in
Science.
Newton believed the invention of the
Zodiac could be traced as far back 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 according to the Bible chronology.
Creuzer believes it very easy to show
that most of the theogonies are intimately connected with religious calendars,
and point to the Zodiac as their prime origin -- if not identical with the
Zodiac known to us now, then something very analogous to it. He feels certain
that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the
mythologies, under one form or the other, and that it had existed in the old
form for ages before; owing to some singular co-ordination of events, it was
brought out in the present defined astronomical garb. (Creuzer, Book III., page
930.)
Whether "the genii of the
planets" (our Dhyan Chohans of supra-mundane spheres) showed themselves to
"holy prophets" or not, as claimed in the Dabistan, it would seem
that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the same way in days of old,
when astrological magic and theophania went hand in hand in Chaldea. For Xenophon,
no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus, that at the moment of his death that king
was giving ardent thanks to gods and heroes, for having so often instructed him
themselves about the signs in heaven, [[ev ouraniois semeiois]] (Cyropedie,
"Ant. du Zodiaque.")
Unless the science of the zodiac is
supposed to be of the highest antiquity and universality, how account for its
signs being traced in the oldest theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt
struck with amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus
(Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others being related to
the days 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
belief, at the root of all this? (Pneumatologie, Vol. IV., p. 61.) Most truly
has Dupuis asserted the same: "Il est impossible de decouvrir le moindre
trait de ressemblance entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les
astronomes y ont arbitrairement tracees, et de l'autre cote; le hazard est
impossible," he says. (Origine des Cultes, "Zodiaque.")
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Most certainly chance is
"impossible." There is no "chance" in Nature, wherein
everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its units.
"Chance," says Coleridge, "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 that of
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 and sacred it may be
for some one portion of humanity, but to ever-recurrent, periodical laws in
nature, understood but by the Initiates of the 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 science and erudition notwithstanding; simply
because, if his premises are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are
one-sided and biassed by Christian preconceptions. Where the latter finds a
prophecy directly pointing at the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an
eternal law decreed for the actual manvantara. Why see in the Pisces a direct
reference to Christ -- one of the several world-reformers, a Saviour but for his
direct followers, but only a great and glorious Initiate for all the rest --
when that constellation 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 it was that of Ephraim (Joseph's son),
the elect of Jacob, that therefore, it was at the moment of the Sun entering
into the sign of the Fish (Pisces) that "the Elect Messiah, the
[[Ichthus]] 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 he
made to be so born by the adaptation of theologians, who sought only to make
their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal facts and popular belief?
Everyone knows that the real time and year of the birth of Jesus are totally
unknown. And it is the Jews, whose forefathers have made the word Dag signify
both "fish" and "Messiah," who, during the forced
development of their rabbinical language, are the first to deny this Christian
claim. And what of the further facts that Brahmins also connect their
"Messiah," the eternal Avatar Vishnu, with a fish and the Deluge, and
that the Babylonians made of their Dag-On, equally a fish and a Messiah, the
Man-Fish and Prophet?
There are those 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 Jonas' (Mat.
xvi. 4). . . . . The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or fishman of Nineveh. .
. . . Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the Sun reborn in Pisces.
The
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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 moment of the
"incarnation," all the planets were in conjunction in the sign of
Pisces, called by the Jews (the Kabalists) the "constellation of the
Messiah." "It is in this constellation," he averred, "that
was placed the star of the Magi." This statement, quoted by Dr. Sepp (Vie
de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. I. p. 9), emboldened him to remark that
"all the Jewish traditions while announcing that star, that many nations
have seen,"(!)* added that "it would absorb the seventy planets that
preside over the destinies of various nations on this globe."** "In
virtue of those natural prophecies," explains 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 feasting its jubilee."
There was indeed a rage, at the
beginning of the present century, for claiming from the Hindus restoration of
an alleged robbery from the Jews of their "gods," patriarchs, and
chronology. It was Wilford who had recognized Noah in Prithee and in
Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in Iswara. Yet, after being
residents for so many years in India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to
have known that it was not the Hindus alone who had these figures, or who had
divided their great age into four minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the
Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant speculations.
"Christian theologians think it
their duty to write against the long periods of Hindu chronology," argues
very pertinently S. A. Mackey, the Norwich "philosopher, astronomer, and
shoemaker." "But when a man of learning crucifies the names and
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 pre-existing in his own brain
with so much exactness that he pretends to be amazed at the discovery, I cannot
think him quite so pardonable" (Key of Urania).
This is intended to apply to Captain
(later Colonel) Wilford, but the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** 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.
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words may fit more than one of our
modern Orientalists. The former was the first to crown his unlucky speculations
in Hindu chronology and the Puranas by connecting the 4,320,000 years with
biblical chronology, simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years (the supposed lunar
year of the Nativity), and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this
gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, as
well as a Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Aryans of having helped
themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas it was the reverse. The Jews,
moreover, need not be accused of despoiling the Hindus, of whose figures Ezra
probably knew nothing. They had evidently and undeniably borrowed them from the
Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 432,000 years of the Chaldean divine
Dynasties* they made 4,320 lunar years from the world's creation to the
Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they transformed them as
quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of
such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon (common once to all) of
universal, into national, tribal gods and Heroes. It was their property in its
new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it upon any
other nation -- least of all upon Europeans.
Without stopping to notice this very
unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we may make a few remarks that
may be found to the point. These figures of 4,320 lunar years of the world (in
the Bible the solar years are used) are not fanciful, as such, even if their
application is quite erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the
primitive esoteric, and later on Brahminical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A
"Day" of Brahma equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also a
"Night" of Brahma, or the duration of Pralaya, after which a new SUN
rises trium-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Every scholar is aware, of course,
that the Chaldeans claimed the same figures (432) or (432,000) for their divine
dynasties as the Hindus do for their Mahayuga, namely, 4,320,000. Therefore has
Dr. Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support Kepler and Wilford in their charge
that the Hindus had borrowed them from the Christians, and the Chaldeans from
the Jews, who, as 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 do not thus appear
peremptory. But 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 into 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 Jesus Christ, Vol. II., p. 417.)
Suidas said nothing of the kind, and,
if he had, he would prove little, if anything, by it. 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
they have found their unlucky Newtons as the latter figures have.
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phantly over a new manvantara, for
the septenary chain it illuminates. The teaching had penetrated into Palestine
and Europe centuries before the Christian era (see Isis Unveiled II. 132), and
was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon it 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 incarnated. What wonder,
then, that the Messiah was made to be born "the lunar year of the world
4,320?" The "Son of Righteousness and Salvation" had once more
arisen and had dispelled pralayic darkness of chaos and non-being on the plane
of our objective little globe and chain. Once the subject of the adoration was
settled upon, it was easy to make the supposed events of his birth, life, and
death, fit in with the Zodiacal exigencies and old traditions, though they had
to be somewhat remodelled for the occasion.
Thus what Kepler said, as a great
astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognised the grand and universal
importance of all such planetary conjunctions, "each of which" -- as
he has well said -- "is a climacteric year of Humanity."* The rare
conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and importance on
account of its certain great results -- in India and China as much as it has in
Europe for the respective mystics of all those countries. And it is certainly
no better now than a mere assumption to maintain that nature had only Christ in
view, when building her (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless
constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the
archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark with the
asterisk (a) the figure of Taurus, with no better or more valid proof of it
being prophetic of the Verbum or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means
"the ONE" and the FIRST, and that Christ was also the alpha or the
ONE, then this "proof" may be shown strangely invalidated in more
than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at
all events; further, all the Sun-gods had been mystically connected with that
constellation (Taurus) -- Osiris, for instance -- and were all called by their
respective votaries "the First." Then the compilers of the mystical
epithets given to the Christian Saviour, were all more or less acquainted with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 spiritual universal 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 seven is the real scale of nature, in Occultism,
and 7 has to be multiplied in quite a different way and method, unknown as yet
to European nations.
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the significance of the Zodiacal
signs; and it is easier to suppose that they should have arranged their claims
so as to answer the mystic signs, than that the latter should have shone as a
prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of
the numberless generations that had gone before, and those to be born
hereafter.
"It is not simple chance,"
we are told, "that has placed in certain spheres, on a throne, the head of
that bull (Taurus), trying to push away with the ansated cross on its horns, a
Dragon; the more so, since 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 Hermoutis, in Egypt, which (as the patristic
fathers would assure the world) preferred oracles that related to the birth of
the Saviour" (Pneumatologie, iv., 71).
To this theological assumption there
are several answers. Firstly, the ansated Egyptian cross, or tau, the Jaina cross,
or Swastica, and the Christian cross have all the same meaning. Secondly, no
peoples or nations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon
that is given to it now. The serpent was the symbol of WISDOM; and the Bull
(Taurus) the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. Thus the latter,
pushing off the Dragon, or spiritual, Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or Cross --
which is esoterically "the foundation and framework of all
construction" -- would have an entirely phallic, physiological meaning,
had it not still another significance unknown to our Biblical scholars and
symbologists. At any rate, it shows no special reference to the Verbum of St.
John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The taurus (which, by the way, is no
lamb, but a bull) was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindus as with the
Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So much, every schoolboy
knows.
It may perhaps help to refresh the
memory of our Theosophists by referring them to what was said of the Virgin and
the Dragon, and the universality of periodical births and re-births of
World-Saviours -- solar gods -- in Isis, II., 490, with reference to certain
passages in Revelations.
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 signs of which were found the root and
philosophy of all the most important religious festivals of that country, the
origin of which religious ceremonies goes back into the night of time at least
3,000 B.C., as the lecturer tried to demonstrate. The Zodiac of the Hindus, he
thought, was far anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from it in
some particulars vastly. In it one sees the Dragon on a tree, at the foot of which
the "Virgin," Kanya-Durga, one of the most ancient goddesses, is
placed on a lion dragging after him the solar car. "This is the reason
why," he added, "this Virgin Durga is not the simple memento of
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an astronomical fact, but verily the
most ancient divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is evidently the same of whom
all the Sibylline books spoke, those works that have been the source of the
inspiration of Virgil; the virgin whose return was prophesied as a sign of
universal renovation. . . . . And why," he added, "when we see to
this day, the months named after the deity-names of this solar Zodiac by the
Malayalim-speaking people of southern India -- why should that people have
abandoned their ancestral Zodiac to burden themselves with that of the Greeks?
Everything proves, on the contrary, that these zodiacal figures have been transmitted
to the Greeks by the Chaldees, who got them from the Brahmans." (See
Recueil de l'Academie des Inscriptions, 1853.)
But all this is very poor testimony.
Let us remember, however, also that which was said and accepted by the
contemporaries of Volney, who, in his "Ruins of Empires," p. 360,
remarks that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1447 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 years
since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the origin of the
Zodiac.
Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his
Uranographie Chinoise assigns to the Chinese Astronomical Sphere an antiquity
of 18,000 years. (Vide pp. 54, 196, et seq.)
Nevertheless, as opinions quoted
without adequate proofs are of little avail, it may be more useful to turn to
scientific evidence. M. Bailly, the famous French astronomer of the last
century, Member of the Academy, etc., etc., asserts that the Hindu systems of
astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from them the Egyptians, Greeks,
Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. In support of these views he
says --
"The astronomers who preceded
the epoch 1,491 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 Massireddin 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
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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 Hindu epochs 1491 and 3102 could not have been
derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug-beg."
There remains the supposition that
the Hindus, 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 Hindu 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 Hindus. But this
is not the case. Hence foreign epochs were either unknown or useless to the
Hindus.*
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 Hindus. The latter, therefore, borrowed
nothing from their neighbours.
Condensing Bailly's remarks, he comes
to the following conclusions:--
If the Hindus 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 4592 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For a detailed scientific proof of
this conclusion, see page 121 of Mr. Bailly's work, where the subject is
discussed technically.
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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 Hindus 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 4592 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 4592 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 Hindus 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 Hindus possessed in 1491 a
knowledge of the heavenly motions
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sufficiently accurate to enable them
to calculate backwards for 4,592 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 Hindus 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 Hindu 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
Hindus, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only. Says Bailly:--
Now, there was no eclipse of the sun
at the moment of the epoch 1492; and no eclipse of the moon either 14 days
before or after that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is not based on an
observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brahmins of Tirvalour 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 Brahmins 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 Libra.
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 Hindu 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
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is a first proof of the truth of the
longitude assigned by the Hindus 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, first, that the Hindus
seem to have combined two epochs together into the year 3102. The Tirvalour
Brahmins reckon primarily from the first moment of the Kali-Yug; 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-Yug 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-Yug, 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 Hindus assert that at the
first moment of Kali-Yug 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 [[degrees]] and Saturn 17 [[degrees]] distant from it. It follows
that about this time, or some fourteen days after the commencement of Kali-Yug,
the Hindus 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 Brahmins here coincides with that of our tables; and this
evidence, the result of a tradition, must be founded on actual observation.
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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
Hindus 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 13 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 Hindu 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-Yug.
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 Hindu Zodiac must lie between
the fifth and sixth degree of Libra. The Brahmins, 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 Hindus 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 Yug, 3000 or 3100 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 collected in Ptolemy's calendars, though
he does not give their authors, these observations, which are older than those
of the Chaldeans, may well be the work of the Hindus. They are well acquainted
with the constellation of the Pleiades, and while we call it vulgarly the
"Poussiniere" they name it: Pillaloo-codi -- the "Hen and
chickens." This name has therefore, passed from people to
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people, and comes to us from the most
ancient nations of Asia. We see that the Hindus 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 Krittika. Now they have a month
of the same name, and this coincidence 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 Hindus 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 1985 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 Hindu Astronomy. At the date fixed for these
observations, 1985 years before Ptolemy, the first point of the Hindu 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 1985 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
Hindu 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 Hindu, but we see that the
observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindu manner, and we
conclude that they were made by the Hindus, 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 Hindus, having once determined the moon's daily motion of 13deg. 10m.
35sec., made
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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 8h. 24m., the Heart of the Hydra in 4d.
7h., longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are calculated on the
Hindu Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the "Wheatear 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 6d. 6h. 40m.,
the other in 1d. 23h. 20min. of the Hindu Zodiac. This being so, the eclipse of
Moon which occurred 14 days after the Kali Yug epoch, took place at a point
between the "Wheat Ear" of Virgo and the star [[ ]] 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 3,102 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 Hindu year.
7th. The Hindus state that 20,400
years before the age of Kali Yug, 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;* but we may inquire from what point, from
what epoch, the Hindus set out in establishing it. Taking the Hindu values for
the revolution of the sun and moon, viz., 365d. 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 Hindus, 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 Hindu 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Why it should be
"fictitious" can never be made plain by European scientists.
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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 Tiravalore Brahmins give the
Moon's motion as 7d. 2h. 8m. on the movable Zodiac, and as 9d. 7h. 45m. 1s. 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 Hindus 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 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 Hindus,
and her longitude was ... 7d. 13h. 45m. 1s.
Maier gives the longitude as ... 7d.
13h. 53m. 48s.
And places the apogee at ... ... 7d.
14h. 6m. 54s.
The determination of the moon's place
by the Brahmins 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 Hindu 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 Hindus
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 Hindus are all copies of the same Astronomy.
It cannot be denied that the Siamese tables existed
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in 1687, when they were brought from
India by M. de la Loubere. At that time the tables of Cassini and Maier were
not in existence, and thus the Hindus 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 Hindu 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.
Bailly is referred to at such length,
as he is one of the few scientific men who have tried to do full justice to the
Astronomy of the Aryans. From John Bentley down to Burgess'
"Surya-Siddhanta," not one astronomer has been fair enough to the
most learned people of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood the Hindu
Symbology, no Occultist can fail to do it justice once that he knows something
of the Secret Sciences; nor will he turn away from their metaphysical and
mystical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The following is an answer to those
men of science who might suspect that our Astronomy was carried to India and
communicated to the Hindus by our Missionaries. 1st. Hindu astronomy has its
own peculiar forms, characterized by their originality; if it had been our
astronomy translated, great skill and knowledge would have been needed to
disguise the theft. 2nd. When adopting the mean movement of the moon, they
would have adopted also the inclination of the ecliptic, the equation of the
sun's centre, the length of the year; these elements differ completely from
ours, and are remarkably accurate as applying to the epoch of 3102; while they
would be exceedingly erroneous if they had been calculated for last century.
3rd, finally, our missionaries could not have communicated to the Hindus in
1687 the tables of Cassini, which were not then in existence; they could have known
only the mean motions of Tycho, Riccioli, Copernicus, Bouilland, Kepler,
Longomontanus, and those of the tables of Alphonso. I will now give a tabular
view of these mean motions for 4383 years and 94 days:--
Table. ------------- Mean Motion. ---
Difference from Hindu.
Alphonso ............9d 7h 2m 47s ...
- 0h 42m 14s
Copernicus ......... 9d 6h 2m 13s ...
- 1h 42m 48s
Tycho .............. 9d 7h 54m 40s ..
+ 0h 9m 39s
Kepler ............. 9d 6h 57m 35s ..
- 0h 47m 26s
Longomontanus ...... 9d 7h 2m 13s ...
- 0h 42m 48s
Bouilland .......... 9d 6h 48m 8s ...
- 0h 58m 53s
Riccioli ........... 9d 7h 53m 57s ..
+ 0h 8m 56s
Cassini ............ 9d 7h 44m 11s ..
- 0h 0m 50s
Indian ............. 9d 7h 45m 1s
None of these mean motions, except
Cassini's, agrees with that of the Hindus, who therefore, did not borrow their
mean motions, since their figures agree only with those of Cassini, whose
tables were not in existence in 1687. This mean motion of the moon belongs,
therefore, to the Hindus, who could only have obtained it by observation."
-- Bailly's "Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale."
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interpretation of the Zodiac, even
though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies rise in arms against
their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and re-ascent of the Monad or
Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural,
in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy
between the metaphysical soul and the bright constellations, and in the
influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the
creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in heaven the types of twelve vicious
Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics 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 Hindu mythology were but names for the ENERGIES of the
First Triad in its successive AVATARS or manifestations unto man," whither
can we turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root -- better than
to old Indian wisdom? We say it again: archaic Occultism would remain
incomprehensible to all, if it were rendered otherwise than through the more
familiar channels of Buddhism and Hinduism. For the former is the emanation of
the latter; and both are children of one mother -- ancient Lemuro-Atlantean
Wisdom.
-------
XVIII.
SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION.
THE reader has had the whole case
presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its
summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as void, a
vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a physical law, in
the minds of helpless admirers of the "lights" of science, who pass
their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that
"two lights make darkness" found its application it is in this case,
when one half of the "lights" imposes its Forces and "modes of
motion" on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very
existence of the same. "Ether, Matter, Energy" -- the sacred
hypostatical trinity, the three principles 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 three persons in one Godhead -- one God
as to substance, three persons as to individuality; and we are laughed at for
our belief in unproved and unprovable doctrines, in Angels and Devils, Gods and
Spirits. And,
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indeed, that which made the
Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great "Conflict between
Religion and Science," was precisely the argument that neither the
identity of that substance, nor the triple individuality claimed, after having
been conceived, invented, and worked out in the depths of Theological
Consciousness, could be proved by any Scientific inductive process of
reasoning, least of all on the evidence of our senses. Religion must perish, it
is said, because it teaches mysteries. Mystery is the negation of Common Sense,
and Science repels it. According to Mr. Tyndall, metaphysics is fiction, like
poetry. The man of Science takes nothing on trust; rejects everything that is
not proven 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 and in
invisible but potential influences, all share in the same contempt. Very well,
then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last time whether exact
Science does not act precisely in the same way as Theosophy, Spiritualism, and
Theology do.
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 laudatory review of the Times, "exhibits
with much power and effect the immense discoveries of Science, and its numerous
victories over old opinions, whenever THEY HAVE THE RASHNESS TO CHALLENGE
CONCLUSIONS WITH IT," one reads in chapter III., "On Matter," as
follows:
"WHAT IS THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE
COMPOSED OF? ETHER, MATTER, ENERGY" . . . . . is the answer.
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."
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 composition of ANY (material) BODY WHATEVER AS IT
IS." (Lecture on Protoplasm by Mr. Huxley.)
And Energy? Surely you can define the
third person of the Trinity of your Material universe?
"THE ENERGY IS THAT WHICH IS
ONLY KNOWN TO US BY ITS EFFECTS." (Books on Physics.)
Pray explain, for this is rather
hazy.
"IN MECHANICS THERE IS ACTUAL
AND POTENTIAL ENERGY: WORK
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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, THE
OTHER TO SEPARATE THEM. . . . . THE FIRST IS MOLECULAR ATTRACTION, THE SECOND
FORCE IS DUE TO vis viva, OR MOVING FORCE." . . . . (Ganot's Physics.)
Just so: it is the nature of this
moving force, the vis viva that we want to know. What is it? . . . . .
"WE DO NOT KNOW!" IS THE
INVARIABLE ANSWER. "IT IS AN EMPTY SHADOW OF MY IMAGINATION," 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 senses," (Dubois Reymond,) and on
effects, the shadowy and illusive will-o'-the-wisps of a something entirely
unknown to and beyond the reach of Science, "Self-moving" atoms!
Self-moving Suns, planets, and stars! But who, then, or what are they all, if
they are self-endowed with motion? Why then should you, physicists, laugh and
deride our "Self-moving ARCHAEUS"? Mystery is rejected and scorned by
Science, and "MYSTERY is the fatality of Science," as Father Felix
has truly said. . . . . Science cannot escape it!" The language of the
French preacher is ours, and we quote it in "Isis Unveiled" (Vide
Vol. I. 338-9). 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?"*
Do the men of science deny all these
charges? Not at all, for here is a confession of Tyndall, which shows how
powerless is science, even over the world of matter.
"The first marshalling of the
atoms, on which all subsequent action depends,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Le Mystere et la
Science," Conferences, Pere Felix de Notre Dame; des Mousseaux:
"Hauts Phen. Magiques."
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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 suspected for years, on the very admissions of
these men of science themselves. And now there are some materialists who would
even make away with Ether -- or whatever Science calls the infinite Substance,
the noumenon of which the Buddhists call Swabhavat -- as well as with atoms,
too dangerous both on account of their ancient philosophical and their present
Christian and theological associations. From the earliest philosophers whose
records passed to posterity, down to our present age, which, if it denies
"invisible Beings" in Space, can never be so insane as to deny a
plenum of some sort -- the fulness of the universe was an accepted belief. And
what it was said to contain, one learns from Hermes Trismegistus (in Mrs.
Kingsford's able rendering) -- who is made to say:--
"Concerning the void . . . my
judgment is that it does not exist, that it never 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,* 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 intelligent 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
highest airs; wherein are neither clouds nor any tempest" (p. 84).
And we "hold" it too. Only,
as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would speak of spheres "above us,
between the earth and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 modes of motion,
and yet bold electricity (for one) as being as atomic as matter itself --
(Helmholtz). Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in official as in
heterodox Science.
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airs," even the highest, as
there is no such division or measurement in occult speech, no "above"
as no "below," but an eternal "within," within two other
withins, or the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into that of
terrestrial objectivity -- this being for man the last one, his own plane. This
necessary 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 intelligent 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.* 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."
This is quite philosophical and in
accordance with the spirit of Eastern esotericism: for all the Forces, such as
Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., etc., are called the "Gods" --
esoterically.
It must be so, since the esoteric
teachings in Egypt and India were identical. And, therefore, the
personification of Fohat synthesizing all the manifesting forces in nature is a
legitimate result. Moreover, as will be shown in the division that follows this
one, the real and Occult forces in nature only now begin to be known -- and
even in this case, by heterodox, not orthodox, Science (See also § X., THE
COMING FORCE), though their existence, in one instance at any rate, is
corroborated, and certified to by an immense number of educated people and even
by some official men of science.
This sentence, moreover, in Stanza
VI., "Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-germs, or the aggregation
of Cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another, in the opposite
direction" -- looks orthodox and Scientific enough. For there is, at all
events, one fact in support of this position fully recognized by Science, and
it is this. The meteoric showers (periodical in November and August) belong to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hermes here includes as gods
the sensible Forces of nature, the elements and the phenomena of the
Universe," remarks Mrs. A. Kingsford in a foot-note explaining it very
correctly. So does Eastern philosophy.
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a system moving 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 to the Earth's orbit at an
angle of 64 [[degrees]] 3', and the direction of the meteoric swarm moving
round this orbit is contrary to that of the Earth's revolution.
This fact, recognized only in 1833,
shows it to be the modern rediscovery of what was very anciently known. Fohat
turns with his two hands in contrary directions the "seed" and
"the curds," or Cosmic matter; is turning, in clearer language,
particles in a highly attenuated condition, and nebulae.
Outside the boundaries of the solar
system, it is other Suns, and especially the mysterious "central Sun"
(the "Abode of the invisible deity" as some reverend gentlemen have
called it) that determines the motion of bodies and their direction. That
motion serves also to differentiate the homogeneous matter, round and between
the several bodies, into elements and sub-elements unknown to our earth, which
are regarded by modern Science as distinct individual elements, whereas they
are merely temporary appearances, 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 symbols and respective allegories in the
so-called mythology of every nation; demonstrating the wonderful philosophy and
the deep insight into the mysteries of nature, in the Egyptian and Chaldean as
well as in the Aryan religions. Fohat, shown in his true character, proves how
deeply versed were all those prehistoric nations in every science of nature,
now called physical and chemical branches of natural philosophy. In India,
Fohat is the scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra, the latter older and
more important in the Rig Veda than his sectarian successor; while in Egypt
Fohat was known as Toum issued of Noot,* or Osiris in his character of a
primordial god, creator of heaven and of beings (see chapter xvii., "Book
of the Dead"). For Toum is spoken of as the Protean god who generates
other gods and gives himself the form he likes; the "master of life"
"giving their vigour to the gods" (chapter lxxix.) He is the overseer
of the gods, and he "who creates spirits and gives them shape and
life"; he is "the north wind and the spirit of the west;" and
finally the "Setting Sun of Life," or the vital electric force that
leaves the body at death, wherefore the defunct begs that Toum should give him
the breath from his right nostril (positive elec-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Oh Toum, Toum! issued from
the great (female) which is in the bosom of the waters" (the great Deep or
Space) . . . "Thou, 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, III., and Egyptian Pantheon,
chapter ii.)
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tricity) that he might live in his
second form. Both the hieroglyph, and the text of chapter lxii. in the
"Book of the Dead," show the identity of Toum with Fohat. The former
represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the breaths in his
hands. The latter says:--
"I open to the chief of An
(Heliopolis), I am Toum. 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,
and am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I ate my heir.* . . . . I glide on the
soil of the field of Aanroo,** given me by the master of limitless eternity. I
am the germ of eternity. I am Toum, to whom eternity is accorded. . . . "
The very words used by Fohat in the
XIth Book, and the very titles given him. In the Egyptian Papyri the whole
Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is found scattered about in isolated
sentences, even in the "Book of Dead." Number seven is quite as much
insisted upon and emphasized therein as in the Book of Dzyan. "The Great
Water (the Deep or Chaos) is said to be seven cubits deep" --
"cubits" standing here of course for divisions, zones, and
principles. Therein, "in the great mother, all the Gods, and the seven
great ones are born." (See chapter cviii., 4, Book of the Dead and
Egyptian Pantheon). Both Fohat and Toum are addressed as the "Great ones
of the Seven Magic Forces," who, "conquer the Serpent Apap" or
Matter.
No student of occultism, however,
ought to be betrayed, by the usual phraseology used in the translations of
Hermetic Works, into believing that the ancient Egyptians or Greeks spoke of,
and referred, monk-like, at every moment in conversation, to a Supreme Being,
God, the "One Father and Creator of all," etc., as found on every
page of such translations. No such thing indeed; and those texts are not the
original Egyptian texts. They are Greek compilations, the earliest of which
does not go beyond the early period of Neo-Platonism. No Hermetic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An image expressing the succession
of divine functions, the substitution from one form into another, or the
correlation of forces. Aam is the electro-positive force, devouring all others
as Saturn devoured his progeny.
** 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 Kama-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 Uraeus -- 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.)
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work written by Egyptians (vide
"Book of the Dead") would speak of the one universal God of the
Monotheistic systems -- the one Absolute cause of all, 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 remarks, whenever he "arrived at the notion
of divine Unity, the God One was never 'God,' simply." And Lepage Renouf
very justly observed that the word Nouter, nouti, "god" had never
ceased being a generic name with the Egyptians, nor has it ever become a
personal pronoun. 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 Saivas 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 his
neighbour. The one god is but the god of the nome or the city, noutir, noutti,
and does not exclude the existence of the one god of that town or of the
neighbouring nome. In short, whenever speaking of Egyptian Monotheism, one ought
to speak of the Gods 'One' of Egypt, and not of the one god" (Maspero, in
the Guide au Musee de Boulak.) It is by this feature, pre-eminently Egyptian,
that the authenticity of the various so-called Hermetic Books, ought to be
tested; and it is totally absent from the Greek fragments known as such. This
proves that a Greek Neo-Platonic, or even a Christian hand, had no small share
in the editing of such works. Of course the fundamental philosophy is there,
and in many a place -- intact. But the style has been altered and smoothed in a
monotheistic direction, as much, if not more than that of the Hebrew Genesis in
its Greek and Latin translations. They may be Hermetic works, but not works
written by either of the two Hermes -- or rather, by Thot (Hermes) the
directing intelligence of the Universe (See ch. xciv., Book of the Dead), or by
Thot, his terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus, of the Rosetta stone.
But all is doubt, negation,
iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age of the 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 than units and individuals do. History
itself is dealt with by the so-called historians as unscrupulously as legendary
lore. For this, Augustin Thierry has made the amende honorable, if one may
believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made them all
(the would-be historiographers) lose their way, and each presume to
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correct tradition, "that vox
populi which nine times out of ten is vox Dei;" and he finally admitted
that in legend alone rests real history; for "legend," he adds,
"is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we
call History."*
While Materialists deny everything in
the universe, save matter, Archaeologists are trying to dwarf antiquity, and
seek to destroy every claim to ancient Wisdom by tampering with Chronology. Our
present-day Orientalists and Historical writers are to ancient History that
which the white ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than
those Termites, the modern Archaeologists -- the "authorities" of the
future in the matter of Universal History -- are preparing for the History of
past nations the fate of certain edifices in tropical countries: "History
will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the twentieth century,
devoured to its foundations by her annalists," said Michelet. Very soon,
indeed, under their combined efforts, it will share the fate of those ruined
cities in both Americas, which lie deeply buried under impassable virgin forests.
Historical facts will remain as concealed from view by the inextricable jungles
of modern hypotheses, denials and scepticism. But very happily actual History
repeats herself, for she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead
facts and events deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will
ascend once more and reappear on the surface. . . .
In our Book II. the very fact that a
work with pretensions to philosophy, and which is an exposition of the most
abstruse problems, has to be commenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from
what are regarded as supernatural beings -- Spirits -- will arouse the most
malevolent criticism. Believers in, and the defenders of, the Secret Doctrine,
however, will have to bear the accusation of madness and worse, as
philosophically as for long years already the writer has done. Whenever a
Theosophist is taxed 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."
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[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------
* Revue des Deux Mondes, 1865, pp.
157 and 158.
END OF VOL. I.
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE
BY H. P. BLAVATSKY
VOLUME 2
THEOSOPHCAL UNIVERSITY PRESS ASCII
EDITION
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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[[blank]]
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY
AUTHOR OF "ISIS UNVEILED."
"There is no Religion higher
than Truth."
VOL. II. -- ANTHROPOGENESIS.
London:
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
LIMITED.
7 Duke Street, Adelphi, W. C.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
117 Nassau Street, New York.
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar, Madras
---
1888.
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"Entered according to Act of
Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of the Librarian of
Congress at Washington, D. C."
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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.
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[[blank]]
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-------
VOLUME SECOND.
PRELIMINARY NOTES. PAGE.
On the Archaic Stanzas, and the Four
Prehistoric Continents ... 1
The Imperishable Sacred Land ... 6
The Hyperborean ... 7
Lemuria ... 7
Atlantis ... 8
The Tropics at the Pole ... 11
-------
BOOK II. -- PART I.
ANTHROPOGENESIS.
STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN... 15
-------
STANZA I. -- BEGINNINGS OF SENTIENT
LIFE ... 22
Man, the Third Logos ... 25
The Celestial Governors of Humanity
... 29
Parent Stars and Sister Planets ...
33
Three Kinds of Light ... 35
The Numbers of Creation ... 39
The First War in Heaven ... 45
-------
TWO ANTEDILUVIAN ASTRONOMERS ... 47
-------
STANZA II. -- NATURE UNAIDED FAILS
... 52
The Monsters of Chaos ... 53
The "Double Dragon" ... 57
Who are the Flames? ... 63
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PAGE.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS ... 66
The Race that never dies ... 67
Cosmogony, an intelligent plan ... 73
-------
STANZA III. -- ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN
... 75
The various classes of Creators ...
77
Man, a god in animal form ... 81
"Fires," "Sparks,"
and "Flames" ... 83
-------
STANZA IV. -- CREATION OF THE FIRST
RACES ... 86
Pitris of the Gods and Demons ... 89
What Prometheus symbolized ... 95
The Hammer of Thor ... 99
The Divine Rebels ... 103
Man's Father, the Sun ... 105
-------
STANZA V. -- THE EVOLUTION OF THE
SECOND RACE ... 109
The Secret Work of Chiram ... 113
The outgrowth of Races ... 117
Leda, Castor, and Pollux ... 121
Jah-Hovah Androgynous ... 125
The Jewish God-name ... 127
-------
STANZA VI.-THE EVOLUTION OF THE SWEAT-BORN
... 131
Bi-sexual reproduction ... 133
The Virgin Third Race ... 135
A Few Words about Deluges and Noah's
... 138
Various Deluges ... 141
The Arkite Symbols ... 143
Could Men Exist 18,000,000 Years ago?
... 148
Spontaneous Generation ... 151
The Solar System in the Puranas ...
155
Oceans of Carbonic Acid? ... 159
-------
STANZA VII. -- FROM THE SEMI-DIVINE
DOWN TO THE FIRST HUMAN RACES ... 161
Monads and Rounds ... 167
A Suggestive Explanation ... 171
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PAGE.
A Saint -- Hypnotised ... 175
Sweat-born and Androgynes ... 177
-------
STANZA VIII. -- EVOLUTION OF THE
ANIMAL MAMMALIANS -- THE FIRST FALL ... 180
Archaic Zoology ... 182
The Sin of the Mindless Men ... 183
-------
WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE
FOREGOING ... 185
-------
STANZA IX. -- THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF
MAN ... 191
The Hairy Men of China ... 195
The Separation of Sexes ... 197
Primeval Language ... 199
-------
EDENS, SERPENTS AND DRAGONS ... 202
The Garden of Eden a College ... 203
Flying Camels ... 205
Two Schools of Magic ... 211
The Flying Dragons ... 219
-------
THE SONS OF GOD AND THE SACRED
ISLAND0 ... 220
The Magicians of Atlantis ... 223
-------
STANZA X. -- THE HISTORY OF THE
FOURTH RACE ... 227
The Mysteries among the Mayas ... 229
Satanic Myths ... 233
Mahasura and Satan ... 237
Man, the pale shadow of God ... 243
The curse of Vasishta ... 247
-------
ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND
GENESIS ... 251
From worm to man ... 255
Identity of Human and Animal embryos
... 259
-------
A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES
... 263
The Natural "Fall" ... 267
The Symbolism of Kronos ... 269
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PAGE.
STANZA X. -- Continued ... 271
The Golden Age ... 273
The Devil's outside Humanity ... 275
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ARE GIANTS A FICTION? ... 277
The Seven Virgin Youths ... 281
The Tibetan Lilith ... 285
The Races of Men not all Human ...
287
-------
THE RACES WITH THE "THIRD
EYE" ... 289
Occult Physiology ... 295
The Evolution of the Eve ... 299
The Third Eye is now a Gland ... 301
-------
THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY ...
307
The Four Earlier Races ... 311
The Esoteric Meaning of
"Fish" ... 313
-------
STANZA XI. -- THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION
OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RACES ... 316
Degeneration of Mankind ... 319
Atlantis now Ocean Floor ... 325
Changes of Climate ... 329
How to Read Symbols ... 335
The Antediluvian Buddhas ... 339
-------
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES
TO GIANTS 341
Living, Speaking, and Moving Stones
... 345
It takes a God to become a Man ...
349
-------
STANZA XII. -- THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS
DIVINE INSTRUCTORS 351
The Astronomical Dragon ... 353
Serpents and Dragons under different
Symbolisms ... 355
The Sidereal and Cosmic Glyphs ...
357
Our Divine Instructors ... 365
The Origin of the Satanic Myth ...
378
Noah was a Kabir, hence he must have
been a Demon ... 390
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PAGE.
The oldest Persian Traditions about
the Polar, and the Submerged Continents ... 393
Western Speculations founded on the
Greek and Puranic Traditions ... 401 [[sic]]
The "Curse" from a
Philosophical point of view ... 409
-------
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A
COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA XII. ... 423
The Oldest Records about Atlantis ...
425
The Doom of Atlantis ... 427
The Races, Sub-Races, and Family
Races ... 434
CONCLUSION ... 437
-------
BOOK II. -- PART II.
THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE
WORLD-RELIGIONS.
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY
SCRIPTURE ... 449
-------
§ XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452
The Cabalistic Four Adams ... 457
-------
XVII. THE "HOLY OF HOLIES":
ITS DEGRADATION ... 459
Christian Symbolism ... 463
The "Four-faced" Brahm ...
465
The Old and the New Jehovah ... 469
-------
XVIII. ON THE MYTH OF THE
"FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS ... 475
The Evil Spirit: Who and What? ...
475
The Gods of Light proceed from the
Gods of Darkness 483
The many meanings of the "War in
Heaven" ... 492
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XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? ... 506
Jehovah's Personating Spirit ... 509
The Mysterium Magnum ... 512
The Logos and Satan are One ... 515
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PAGE.
XX. PROMETHEUS THE TITAN ... 519
His Origin in Ancient India ... 519
The Boon he Gives ... 523
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XXI. ENOICHION-HENOCH ... 529
-------
XXII. THE SYMBOLTSM OF THE MYSTERY
NAMES IAO, AND JEHOVAH 536
Cross and Circle ... 545
The Fall of the Cross into Matter ...
553
-------
XXIII. THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC
LITERATURE ... 563
When Time be no longer ... 565
The Divine Self's Wisdom ... 566
-------
XXIV. THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN
DECADE ... 573
Poseidon's Five Ministers ... 577
The Mystery of the Number Six ... 583
The Cross and Christian After-thought
... 587
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XXV. THE MYSTERIES OP THE HEBDOMAD
... 590
Saptaparna ... 590
The Tetraktis in relation to the
Heptagon ... 598
The Septenary Element in the Vedas
... 605
The Septenary in the Exoteric Works
... 611
Seven in Astronomy, Science and Magic
... 618
The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists
... 630
---------------------
BOOK II. -- PART III.
ADDENDA.
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE
CONTRASTED.
§§
I. ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY?
... 645
The Occult and the Modern Doctrines
... 649
Science is Silent on every Problem
... 653
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PAGE.
II. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED
BY SCIENCE ... 656
Various Modes of Reproduction ... 659
A Pithecoid Man Wanted ... 669
Plastidular Souls and Conscious
Nerve-Cells ... 670
The atoms of our
"Father-Bathybius" ... 674
-------
III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE
ANTHROPOID APE ... 675
Insurmountable difficulties for the
Darwinians ... 677
The Argument of "Rudimentary
Organs" ... 683
"Epitomized History" in the
Foetus ... 684
The Evidence of Skulls ... 687
-------
IV. DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL
PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN ... 690
Sayce's Sketch of Chronology ... 691
(a) Speculations on the Age of the
Globe ... 694
The Adept-Astronomer ... 698
(b) On Chains of Planets and their
Plurality ... 699
States of Consciousness ... 701
Worlds mentioned in the Bible ... 703
(c) Esoteric Geological Chronology
... 709
Parallelism of Life ... 711
The Two Sciences contrasted ... 713
The Paleolithic Landseer ... 721
Astral Man -- the Solution ... 728
The Kabalists and Science ... 730
-------
V. ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE
CENTRES ... 731
Dhyan Chohans and these Centres ...
732
(a) Origin and Evolution of the
Mammalia ... 734
(b) The European Paleolithic Races --
whence and how distributed ... 738
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PAGE.
VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND
SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY ... 742
A Mysterious Nation ... 743
The Seven Sabbaths ... 747
"Revelation" and the
"Secret Doctrine" ... 748
Druidic Stones ... 752
Races of Giants ... 755
Mazdean "Seven Earths" ...
759
(a) Statements about the Sacred
Islands ... 760
The Heirloom of Atlantis ... 763
The God-bearing Land ... 765
The Power of Names ... 767
The Sons of Coelus and Terra ... 769
Southern and Northern Atlantis ...
770
Niobe and her Children ... 771
The Cycles of Time ... 773
The Titans in Prison ... 776
-------
VII. SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS
OF THE EXISTENCE OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS ... 778
Corroborations of Occultism by
Geology ... 779
Evidence of the Flora ... 781
Atlantis necessary to Ethnology ...
783
Astraea falls on her Head ... 785
Communication between South-Sea
Islands ... 788
Evidence of Language ... 790
[[And now to conclude. ... 794]]
Ragon explains Masonic Symbols ...
795
The End a fitting prelude to Truth
... 798
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INDEX. [[Not included in ASCII
version.]]
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[[Eh eme didache ouk estin eme, alla
tou pemphantos me.]]
"My doctrine is not mine, but
his that sent me."
-- John vii. 16.
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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 preexisted 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 man, had modified
its own primordial and distinctive forms. -- "Isis Unveiled," Vol.
I., p. 153.
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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 Book, the second, are drawn from the same Archaic Records as
the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Book I. As far as possible a verbatim translation
is given; but some of the Stanzas were too obscure to be understood without
explanation. Hence, as was done in Book I., while they are first given in full
as they stand, when taken verse by verse with their Commentaries an attempt is
made to make them clearer, by words added in brackets, in anticipation of the
fuller explanation of the Commentary.
As regards the evolution of mankind,
the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct
antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas: it teaches
(a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different
portions of our globe; (b) the birth of the astral, before the physical body:
the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round,
preceded every mammalian -- the anthropoids included -- in the animal kingdom.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Genesis ch. ii., v. 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 [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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The Secret Doctrine is not alone in
speaking of primeval MEN born simultaneously on the seven divisions of our
Globe. In the Divine "Pymander" of Hermes we find the same Seven
primeval men* evolving from Nature and "Heavenly Man," in the
collective sense of the word, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the
fragments (collected by George Smith) of Chaldean tablets 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 (black, swarthy complexions), whom
"the (Seven) great gods created," are mentioned. Or, as explained in
lines 16 and 18 -- "In the midst of the Earth they grew up and became
great . . . . Seven kings, brothers of the same family." These are the
Seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the Kabala; the first race,
which was imperfect, i.e., was born before the "balance" (sexes)
existed, and which was therefore destroyed. (Zohar, Siphrah Dzeniouta, Idrah
Suta, 2928, La Kabbale, p. 205.) "Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and
begat children, 6,000 in number were their peoples" (Hibbert Lectures, p.
372). The god Nergas (death) destroyed them. "How did he destroy
them?" "By bringing into equilibrium (or balance) those who did not
yet exist" (Siphrah Dzeniouta). They were "destroyed," as a
race, by being merged in their own progeny (by exudation); that is to say, the
sexless race reincarnated in the bisexual
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 septenate 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.
* Thus saith Pymander -- "This
is the mystery that to this day was hidden. Nature being mingled with the
Heavenly man (Elohim, or Dhyanis), brought forth a wonder . . . . Seven men,
all males and females (Hermaphrodite) . . . according to the nature of the
seven Governors" -- Book II. v. 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 ch. i. Genesis) was
masculine-feminine, the seven may signify the succeeding patriarchs named in
Genesis" (p. 9) . . . A truly theological way of cutting the Gordian knot.
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(potentially); the latter in the
Androgynes; these again in the sexual, the later third Race; (for further
explanation, vide infra). Were the tablets less mutilated, they would be found
to contain word for word the same account as given in the archaic records and
in Hermes, at least as regards the fundamental facts, if not as regards minute
details; for Hermes is a good deal disfigured by mistranslations.
It is quite certain that the seeming
supernaturalism of these teachings, although allegorical, is so diametrically
opposed to the dead-letter statements of the Bible* as well as to the latest
hypotheses of science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists,
however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right
ones, simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty.
Besides, we have the Egyptian "Books of Thoth," and "Book of the
Dead," and the Hindu Puranas with the seven Manus, as well as the
Chaldeo-Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven primitive men, or Adams,
the real meaning of which name may be ascertained through the Kabala. Those who
know anything of the Samothracian mysteries will also remember that the generic
name of the Kabiri was the "Holy Fires," which created on seven
localities of the island of Electria (or Samothrace) the "Kabir born of
the Holy Lemnos" (the island sacred to Vulcan).
According to Pindar (See
"Philosophumena," Miller's edition, p. 98), this Kabir, whose name
was Adamas, was, in the traditions of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man
born from the bosom of the Earth. He was the Archetype of the first males in
the order of generation, and was one of the seven autochthonous ancestors or
progenitors of mankind (ibid, p. 108). If, while coupling with this the fact
that Samothrace was colonised by the Phoenicians, and before them by the
mysterious Pelasgians who came from the East, one remembers also the identity
of the mystery gods of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Israelites, it will be
easy to discover whence came also the confused account of the Noachian deluge.
It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their primitive
ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As it is now asserted that the
Chaldean 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" (See G. Smith's "Chaldean Account of
Genesis," p. 86), how can the Pentateuch be called a revelation? It is
simply another version of the same story.
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the Egyptians, compiled their Genesis
and first Cosmogonic traditions -- when these were rewritten by Ezra and others
-- from the Chaldeo-Akkadian account. It is, therefore, sufficient to examine
the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and other inscriptions to find also
therein, scattered here and there, not only the original meaning of the name
Adam, Admi, or Adami,* but also the creation of seven Adams or roots of men,
born of Mother Earth, physically, and of the divine fire of the progenitors,
spiritually or astrally. The Assyriologists, ignorant of the esoteric
teachings, could hardly be expected to pay any greater attention to the
mysterious and ever-recurring number seven on the Babylonian cylinders, than
they paid to it on finding the same in Genesis and the Bible. Yet the number of
the ancestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are there,
notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, as plainly as they
are to be found in "Pymander" and in the "Book of the Concealed
Mystery" of the Kabala. In the latter Adam Kadmon is the Sephirothal TREE,
as also the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." And that
"Tree," says verse 32, "hath around it seven columns," or
palaces, of the seven creative Angels operating in the spheres of the seven
planets on our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a collective name, so also is the name
of the man Adam. Says George Smith in his "Chaldean Account of
Genesis:" --
"The word Adam used in these
legends for the first human being is evidently not a proper name, but is only
used as a term for mankind. Adam appears as a proper name in Genesis, but
certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the Assyrian
word" (p. 86).
Moreover, neither the Chaldean nor
the Biblical deluge (the stories of Xisuthrus and Noah) is based on the
universal or even on the Atlantean deluges, recorded in the Indian allegory of
Vaivaswata Manu. They are the exoteric allegories based on the esoteric
mysteries of Samothrace. If the older Chaldees knew the esoteric truth concealed
in the Puranic legends, the other nations were aware only of the Samothracian
mystery, and allegorised it. They adapted it to their astronomical and
anthropological, or rather phallic, notions. Samothrace is known historically
to have been famous in antiquity for a deluge, which submerged the country and
reached the top of the highest mountains; an event which happened before the
age of the Argonauts. It was overflowed very
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide § "Adam-Adami," in
Part II. of this volume.
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suddenly by the waters of the Euxine,
regarded up to that time as a lake.* But the Israelites had, moreover, another
legend upon which to base their allegory: the "deluge," that
transformed the present Gobi Desert into a sea for the last time, some 10 or
12,000 years ago, and which drove many Noahs and their families on to the
surrounding mountains. As the Babylonian accounts are now only restored from
hundreds of thousands of broken fragments (the mound of Kouyunjik alone having
yielded to Layard's excavations over twenty thousand fragments of inscriptions),
the proofs here cited are comparatively scanty; yet such as they are, they
corroborate almost every one of our teachings, certainly three, at least. These
are:--
(1.) That the race which was the
first to fall into generation was a dark Race (Zalmat Gaguadi), which they call
the Adami or dark Race, and that Sarku, or the light Race, remained pure for a
long while subsequently.
(2.) That the Babylonians recognised
two principal Races at the time of the Fall, the Race of the Gods (the Ethereal
doubles of the Pitris), having preceded these two. This is Sir H. Rawlinson's
opinion. These "Races" are our second and third Root-races.
(3) That these seven Gods, each of
whom created a man, or group of men, were "the gods imprisoned or
incarnated." These gods were: the god Zi; the god Ziku (noble life,
Director of purity); the god Mirku (noble crown) "Saviour from death of
the gods" (later on) imprisoned, and the creator of "the dark Race
which his hand has made;" the god Libzu "wise among the gods"; the
god Nissi . . . . and the god Suhhab; and Hea or Sa, their synthesis, the god
of wisdom and of the Deep, identified with Oannes-Dagon, at the time of the
fall, and called (collectively) the Demiurge, or Creator. (See Chaldean Account
Genesis, p. 82.)
There are two "Creations"
so called, in the Babylonian fragments, and Genesis having adhered to this, one
finds its first two chapters distinguished as the Elohite and the Jehovite
creations. Their proper order, however, is not preserved in these or in any other
exoteric accounts. Now these "Creations," according to the occult
teachings, refer respectively to the formation of the primordial seven men by
the progenitors (the Pitris, or Elohim): and to that of the human groups after
the fall.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Pliny, 4, c. 12; Strabo, 10;
Herodotus, 7, c. 108; Pausanias, 7, c. 4, etc.
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All this will be examined in the
light of science and comparisons drawn from the scriptures of all the ancient
nations, the Bible included, as we proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to the
Anthropogenesis of the prehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree upon the
names to be given to the Continents on which the four great Races, which
preceded our Adamic Race, were born, lived, and died. Their archaic and
esoteric names were many, and varied with the language of the nationality which
mentioned them in its annals and scriptures. That which in the Vendidad, for
instance, is referred to as Airyanem Vaego (see Bund. 79, 12) wherein was born
the original Zoroaster,* is called in the Puranic literature
"Sveta-Dwipa," "Mount Meru," the abode of Vishnu, etc.,
etc.; and in the Secret Doctrine is simply named the land of the
"Gods" under their chiefs the "Spirits of this Planet."
Therefore, in view of the possible,
and even very probable confusion, that may arise, it is considered more
convenient to adopt, for each of the four Continents constantly referred to, a
name more familiar to the cultured reader. It is proposed, then, to call the
first continent, or rather the first terra firma on which the first Race was
evolved by the divine progenitors:--
I. "The Imperishable Sacred
Land."
The reasons for this name are
explained as follows: This "Sacred Land" -- of which more later on --
is stated never to have shared the fate of the other continents; because it is
the only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of the
Manvantara throughout each Round. It is the cradle of the first man and the
dwelling of the last divine mortal, chosen as a Sishta for the future seed of
humanity. Of this mysterious and sacred land very little can be said, except,
perhaps, according to a poetical expression in one of the Commentaries, that
the "pole-star has its watchful eye upon it, from the dawn to the close of
the twilight of 'a day' of the GREAT BREATH."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* By "original" we mean the
"Amshaspend," called "Zarathustra, the lord and ruler of the
Vara made by Yima in that land." There were several Zarathustra or
Zertusts, the Dabistan alone enumerating thirteen; but these were all the
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.
** In India called "The Day of
Brahma."
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II. The "HYPERBOREAN" will
be the name chosen for the Second Continent, the land which stretched out its
promontories southward and westward from the North Pole to receive the Second
Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known as Northern Asia. Such was
the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far-off and mysterious region,
whither their tradition made Apollo the "Hyperborean" travel every
year. Astronomically, Apollo is of course the Sun, who, abandoning his Hellenic
sanctuaries, loved to visit annually his far-away country, where the Sun was said
never to set for one half of the year. [[Eggus gar nuktos te kai ematos eisi
keleuthoi]], says a verse in the Odyssey (x. 86).
But historically, or better, perhaps,
ethnologically and geologically, the meaning is different. The land of the
Hyperboreans, the country that extended beyond Boreas, the frozen-hearted god
of snows and hurricanes, who loved to slumber heavily on the chain of Mount
Riphaeus, was neither an ideal country, as surmised by the mythologists, nor
yet a land in the neighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.* It was a real
Continent, a bona-fide land which knew no winter in those early days, nor have
its sorry remains more than one night and day during the year, even now. The
nocturnal shadows never fall upon it, said the Greeks; for it is the land of
the Gods, the favourite abode of Apollo, the god of light, and its inhabitants
are his beloved priests and servants. This may be regarded as poetised fiction
now; but it was poetised truth then.
III. The third Continent, we propose
to call "Lemuria." The name is an invention, or an idea, of Mr. P. L.
Sclater, who asserted, between 1850 and 1860, on zoological grounds the actual
existence, in prehistoric times, of a Continent which he showed to have
extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. It included some portions of
what is now Africa; but otherwise this gigantic Continent, which stretched from
the Indian ocean to Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of
the Pacific, leaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are
now islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the naturalist, "extends the Australia of
tertiary periods to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and perhaps to
Fiji;" and from its Marsupial types he infers "a connection with the
Northern Continent during the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Volcker, "Mythological
Geography," pp. 145 to 170.
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Secondary period," writes Mr. C.
Gould in "Mythical Monsters," p. 47. The subject is treated at length
elsewhere.*
IV. "Atlantis" is the
Fourth Continent. It would be the first historical land, were the traditions of
the ancients to receive more attention than they have hitherto. The famous
island of Plato of that name was but a fragment of this great Continent. (See
"Esoteric Buddhism.")
V. The Fifth Continent was America;
but, as it is situated at the Antipodes, it is Europe and Asia Minor, almost
coeval with it, which are generally referred to by the Indo-Aryan Occultists as
the fifth. If their teaching followed the appearance of the Continents in their
geological and geographical order, then this classification would have to be
altered. But as the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of
evolution of the Races, from the first to the fifth, our Aryan Root-race,
Europe must be called the fifth great Continent. The Secret Doctrine takes no
account of islands and peninsulas, nor does it follow the modern geographical
distribution of land and sea. Since the day of its earliest teachings and the
destruction of the great Atlantis, the face of the earth has changed more than
once. There was a time when the delta of Egypt and Northern Africa belonged to
Europe, before the formation of the Straits of Gibraltar, and a further
upheaval of the continent, changed entirely the face of the map of Europe. The
last serious change occurred some 12,000 years ago,**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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," and he adds 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" (accepting this name for the third
Continent) had perished before Atlantis had fully developed; and the latter
sunk and its chief portions had disappeared before the end of the Miocene
period.
** 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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
(iii., fol. 10a): "These secrets (of land and sea) were divulged to the
men of the secret science, but not to the geographers."
The claim that physical man was
originally a colossal pre-tertiary giant, and that he existed 18,000,000 years
ago, must of course appear preposterous to admirers of, and believers in,
modern learning. The whole posse comitatis of biologists will turn away from
the conception of this third race Titan of the Secondary age, a being fit to
fight as successfully with the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and
land, as his forefathers -- the ethereal prototype of the Atlantean -- had
little need to fear that which could not hurt him. The modern anthropologist is
quite welcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at the Biblical Adam, and as
the theologian laughs at his pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists and their
severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually squared their
accounts by this time. Occult sciences claim less and give more, at all events,
than either Darwinian Anthropology or Biblical Theology.
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to
frighten any one; for, with regard to figures, the greatest authorities of the
day are as fickle and as uncertain as the Mediterranean wave. As regards the
duration of the geological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal Society
are all hopelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions
of years with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this
comparison.
Take one instance for our present
purpose -- the calculations of Mr. Croll. Whether, according to this authority,
2,500,000 years represent the time since the beginning of the tertiary age, or
the Eocene period, as an American geologist makes him say;* or whether again
Mr. Croll "allows fifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene
period," as quoted by an English geologist,** both sets of figures cover
the claims
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of
the same Gastropoda that live on the shores of the Mediterranean." (Prof.
Oscar Schmidt, "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 244.)
* A. Winchell, Professor of Geology,
"World-Life," p. 369.
** Mr. Charles Gould, late Geological
surveyor of Tasmania, in "Mythical Monsters," p. 84.
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made by the Secret Doctrine.* For assigning
as the latter does from four to five million years between the incipient and
the final evolution of the Fourth Root-Race, on the Lemuro-Atlantean
Continents; one million years for the Fifth, or Aryan Race, to the present
date; and about 850,000 since the submersion of the last large peninsula of the
great Atlantis -- all this may have easily taken place within the 15,000,000
years conceded by Mr. Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking,
the duration of the period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all,
certain American scientists to fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the
fact that their assertions are called not only dubious but absurd, yet maintain
that man existed so far back as in the Secondary Age. They have found human
footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. de Quatrefages finds
no valid scientific reason why man should not have existed during the Secondary
Age.
The "Ages" and periods in
geology are, in sober truth, purely conventional terms, as they are still
hardly delineated, and, moreover,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 age 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 quote one 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 W. Thomson, one of the most eminent among
the modern authorities, has changed, about half-a-dozen times, his opinion upon
the age of the Sun and the date of the consolidation of the Earth's crust. In
Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy," one finds only ten million
years allowed, since the time when the temperature of the Earth permitted
vegetable life to appear on it; (App. D et seq. also Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.
xxiii, Pt. 1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled). Mr. Darwin gives Sir W.
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). 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 W. Thomson declares (1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions of
years! Meanwhile, basing his arguments as to the limits to the age of the Sun's
heat, on figures previously established by Sir W. 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.
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no two geologists or naturalists
agree as to the figures. Thus, there is a wide margin for choice offered to the
Occultist by the learned fraternity. Shall we take for one of our supports Mr.
T. Mellard Reade? This gentleman, in a paper on "Limestone as an Index of
Geological Time," read by him in 1878 before the Royal Society, claims
that the minimum time required for the formation of the sedimentary strata and
the elimination of the calcareous matter is in round numbers 600 million years
(See "Proceedings of Royal Society," London, Vol. XXVIII., p. 281);
or shall we ask support for our chronology from Mr. Darwin's works, wherein he
demands for the organic transformations according to his theory from 300 to 500
million years? Sir C. Lyell and Prof. Houghton were satisfied with placing the
beginning of the Cambrian Age at 200 and 240 millions of years back
respectively. Geologists and zoologists claim the maximum time, though Mr.
Huxley, at one time, placed the beginning of the incrustation of the earth
1,000 million years ago, and would not surrender a millennium of it.
But the main point for us lies not in
the agreement or disagreement of the Naturalists as to the duration of
geological periods, but rather in their perfect accord on one point, for a
wonder, and this a very important one. They all agree that during "The
Miocene Age" -- whether one or ten million years ago -- Greenland and even
Spitzbergen, the remnants of our Second or Hyperborean Continent, "had
almost a tropical climate." Now the pre-Homeric Greeks had preserved a
vivid tradition of this "Land of the Eternal Sun," whither their
Apollo journeyed yearly. "During the Miocene Age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70
degrees) 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," says Science; in
short Greenland had Southern plants unknown to Northern regions.
And now this natural question rises.
If the Greeks knew, in the days of Homer, of a Hyperborean land, i.e., a
blessed land beyond the reach of Boreas, the god of winter and of the
hurricane, an ideal region which the later Greeks and their classics have
vainly tried to locate by searching for it beyond Scythia, a country where
nights were short and days long, and beyond that land a country where the sun never
set and the palm grew freely -- if they knew of all this, who then told them of
it? In
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their day, and for ages previously,
Greenland must certainly have been already covered with perpetual snows, with
never-thawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show that the land of
the short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond which was
the blessed land of eternal light and summer; and to know of this, their
tradition must have descended to the Greeks from some people more ancient than
themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details of which the Greeks
themselves could know nothing. Even in our day, science suspects beyond the
Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which
never freezes and a continent which is ever green. The archaic teachings, and
likewise the Puranas -- for one who understands the allegories of the latter --
contain the same statements. Suffice, then, to us the strong probability that a
people, now unknown to history, lived during the Miocene period of modern
science, at a time when Greenland was an almost tropical land.
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NOTE. The reader is requested to bear
in mind that the first and the following sections are not strictly consecutive
in order of time. In the first Section the Stanzas which form the skeleton of
the exposition are given, and certain important points commented upon and
explained. In the subsequent sections various additional details are gathered,
and a fuller explanation of the subject is attempted.
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BOOK II. -- PART I.
ANTHROPOGENESIS.
---------------------
STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
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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 them,
Then a Seventh, an egg of iron . . .
. ."
(Kalevala, Rune I.)
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ANTHROPOGENESIS IN THE SECRET VOLUME.
(VERBATIM EXTRACTS.*)
I.
1. THE LHA WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH IS
SUBSERVIENT TO THE LHA OF THE SEVEN, THEY WHO REVOLVE DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS
AROUND THEIR LORD, THE ONE EYE. HIS BREATH GAVE LIFE TO THE SEVEN; IT GAVE LIFE
TO THE FIRST.
2. SAID THE EARTH:-- "LORD OF
THE SHINING FACE; MY HOUSE IS EMPTY . . . . SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL.
THOU HAST SENT THY SEVEN SONS TO THE LORD OF WISDOM. SEVEN TIMES DOTH HE SEE
THEE NEARER TO HIMSELF, SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL THEE. THOU HAST FORBIDDEN
THY SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY TO
INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE. SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME."
3. SAID THE "LORD OF THE SHINING
FACE":-- "I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE
THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; APPLY TO THY FATHER, THE LORD OF THE LOTUS, FOR HIS
SONS . . . . THY PEOPLE SHALL BE UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS. THY MEN SHALL
BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF THE LORD OF WISDOM, NOT THE LUNAR SONS, ARE IMMORTAL.
CEASE THY COMPLAINTS. THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE . . . . THOU ART NOT
READY. THY MEN ARE NOT READY."
4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE CAST OFF
HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE.
-------
II.
5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY
CRORES MORE. IT CONSTRUCTED RUPAS: SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED; HARD PLANTS THAT
SOFTENED. VISIBLE FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES. SHE SHOOK THEM OFF
HER BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER.
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* Only forty-nine Slokas out of
several hundred are here given. Not every verse is translated verbatim. A
periphrasis is sometimes used for the sake of clearness and intelligibility,
where a literal translation would be quite unintelligible.
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. . . . AFTER THIRTY CRORES SHE
TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE . . . SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS OF
HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN BOSOM. SHE
EVOLVED WATER-MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD.
6. THE WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD SHE
HERSELF CREATED FROM THE REMAINS OF OTHERS, FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER
FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD, SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYANI CAME AND LOOKED -- THE
DHYANI FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER-MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE REGIONS THEY CAME, FROM
THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL MORTALS.
7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. OUR FLESH IS
NOT THERE. NO FIT RUPAS FOR OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE
LIVES. PURE WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK. LET US DRY THEM.
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH
THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT FIRES AND THE DAY FIRES. THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK
WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS OF THE HIGH, THE LHAMAYIN
OF BELOW, CAME. THEY SLEW THE FORMS WHICH WERE TWO- AND FOUR-FACED. THEY FOUGHT
THE GOAT-MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES' BODIES.
9. MOTHER-WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT.
SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE MOON WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN
HER BIRTH.
10. WHEN THEY WERE DESTROYED,
MOTHER-EARTH REMAINED BARE. SHE ASKED TO BE DRIED.
-------
III.
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM
HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS CALLED THE
LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY BODIES. "BRING FORTH MEN, MEN OF YOUR
NATURE. GIVE THEM THEIR FORMS WITHIN. SHE WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.
MALES-FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO . . . . "
13. THEY WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED
LAND: SEVEN OF THEM EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY
WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE.
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IV.
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE
"WILL-BORN LORDS," PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING, SEPARATE
MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS OF
FUTURE MEN WERE BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR AND KIND. EACH INFERIOR TO HIS
FATHER. THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH BONES.
THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA, WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND. THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED
THE CHHAYA.
16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA BORN? THE
MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY MADE? THE FATHERS CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN
FIRE; WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO
HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE. THESE THREE PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD
RUPA. IT COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A
CHHAYA, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE . . . .
17. THE BREATH NEEDED A FORM; THE
FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE
BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE; THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE
BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF ITS BODY; "WE GAVE IT OUR OWN," SAID THE
DHYANIS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES; "IT HAS IT," SAID
THE DRAINER OF WATERS. BUT BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; "WE
CANNOT GIVE THAT," SAID THE FATHERS. "I NEVER HAD IT," SAID THE
SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. "THE FORM WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT
MINE," SAID THE GREAT FIRE . . . . MAN REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHUTA .
. . . THUS HAVE THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN
THE THIRD.
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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
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EXPANSION, THE A-SEXUAL FROM THE
SEXLESS* -- THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED.
20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN.
THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS,
THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.
21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD
WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS. WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY
VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE
OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND. THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW
SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING.
-------
VI.
22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE
EGG-BORN, THE THIRD. THE SWEAT GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD
AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT
UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT OVERSHADOWED THE BIG
DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN OF THE LATER THIRD. FIRST MALE-FEMALE,
THEN MAN AND WOMAN.
23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHAYAS:
THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.
-------
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 CHHAYA. SOME PROJECTED THE SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE
FOURTH. FROM THEIR OWN RUPA THEY FILLED THE KAMA. THOSE WHO ENTERED BECAME
ARHATS. THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE; THE
SPARK BURNED LOW. THE THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS. THEIR JIVAS WERE NOT
[[Footnote(s)
-------------------------------------------------]]
* The idea and the spirit of the
sentence is here given, as a verbal translation would convey very little to the
reader.
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READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE
SEVEN. THEY BECAME NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. "IN THESE SHALL WE
DWELL," SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME.
25. HOW DID THE MANASA, THE SONS OF
WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF-BORN. THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE
SWEAT-BORN. THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST EGG-BORN.
26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE
EGG-BORN, THE TWOFOLD AND THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF
WISDOM SAID: "NOW SHALL WE CREATE."
27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VAHAN
OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT CREATED "SONS OF WILL AND YOGA," BY
KRIYASAKTI IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS. .
-------
VIII.
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT; FROM THE
RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE
WHEEL BEFORE; AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS WERE PRODUCED.
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF
THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP
ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE
PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR.
30. DURING THE THIRD RACE THE
BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED: THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR
CHHAYAS BECAME SOLID.
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.
THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO-FOLD MAN SEPARATED ALSO. HE SAID: "LET US AS
THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES." THEY DID.
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK TOOK
HUGE SHE-ANIMALS UNTO THEM. THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY WERE
THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED. THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED
STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED-HAIR-COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON
ALL FOURS. A DUMB RACE TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.
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IX.
33. SEEING WHICH, THE LHAS WHO HAD
NOT BUILT MEN, WEPT, SAYING:--
34. "THE AMANASA HAVE DEFILED
OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM
BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD HAPPEN. THEY DID . . . .
35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH
MANAS. THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS.
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.
37. THE ONE BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE
LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH-BIRDS AND SERPENTS
WITH SHELL-HEADS.
-------
X.
38. THUS TWO BY TWO ON THE SEVEN
ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE FOURTH-RACE MEN; THE GODS BECAME
NO-GODS; THE SURA BECAME A-SURA.
39. THE FIRST, ON EVERY ZONE, WAS
MOON-COLOURED; THE SECOND YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN,
WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN. THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE
COMPLEXION. THE NEXT SEVEN BEGAN MIXING.
40. THEN THE FOURTH BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE.
WE ARE THE KINGS, IT WAS SAID; WE ARE THE GODS.
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK
UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, THE NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS. WICKED
DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE, ALSO KHADO (DAKINI), WITH LITTLE MINDS.
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN
BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED. THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER.
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XI.
43. THEY BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE
EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT, AND OUT OF THE FIRES VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE
STONE OF
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THE MOUNTAINS AND OF THE BLACK STONE,
THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM.
44. THEY BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE
YATIS HIGH, THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES. INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF
THEIR FATHERS. THE WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH.
45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY
SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS.
46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY
DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE
EARTH.
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XII.
47. FEW MEN REMAINED: SOME YELLOW,
SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED WERE GONE
FOREVER.
48. THE FIFTH PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY
STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
49. . . . . WHO RE-DESCENDED, WHO
MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH, WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT. . . . . .
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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
(Globe, or our Earth) IS SERVANT TO THE LHA(S) OF THE SEVEN (the planetary
Spirits) (b), THEY WHO REVOLVE, DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND THEIR LORD, THE
ONE EYE (Loka-Chakshub) OF OUR WORLD. HIS BREATH GIVES LIFE TO THE SEVEN (gives
light to the planets). IT GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST (c). "THEY ARE ALL
DRAGONS OF WISDOM," adds the Commentary (d).
(a) Lha is the ancient word in
trans-Himalayan regions for "Spirit," any celestial or superhuman
Being, and it covers the whole series of heavenly hierarchies, from Archangel,
or Dhyani, down to an angel of darkness, or terrestrial Spirit.
(b) This expression shows in plain
language that the Spirit-Guardian of our globe, which is the fourth in the
chain, is subordinate to the chief Spirit (or God) of the Seven Planetary Genii
or Spirits. As already explained, the ancients had, in their Kyriel of gods,
seven chief Mystery-gods, whose chief was, exoterically, the visible Sun, or
the eighth, and, esoterically, the second Logos, the Demiurge. The seven (who
have now become the "Seven Eyes of the Lord" in the Christian
religion) were the regents of the seven chief planets; but these were not
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* All the words and sentences placed
in brackets in the Stanzas and Commentaries are the writer's. In some places
they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the Hindu standpoint; but in
the meaning attached to them in Trans-Himalayan Esotericism they are correct.
In every case the writer takes any blame upon herself. Having never claimed
personal infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave much
to be desired, in the very abstruse cases where too deep metaphysics is
involved. The teaching is offered as it is understood; and as there are seven
keys of interpretation to every symbol and allegory, that which may not fit a
meaning, say from the psychological or astronomical aspect, will be found quite
correct from the physical or metaphysical.
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reckoned according to the enumeration
devised later by people who had forgotten, or who had an inadequate notion of,
the real Mysteries, and included neither the sun, the moon, nor the earth. The
sun was the chief, exoterically, of the twelve great gods, or zodiacal
constellations; and, esoterically, the Messiah, the Christos (the subject
anointed by the Great BREATH, or the ONE) surrounded by his twelve subordinate
powers, also subordinate, in turn, to each of the seven
"Mystery-gods" of the planets.
"The seven higher make the Seven
Lhas create the world," states a Commentary; which means that our Earth,
leaving aside the rest, was created or fashioned by terrestrial spirits, the
"Regents" being simply the supervisors. This is the first germ, the
seed of that which grew later into the Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The
Higher ones were the Kosmocratores, the fabricators of our solar system. This
is borne out by all the ancient Cosmogonies: that of Hermes, of the Chaldees,
of the Aryans, of the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. Heaven's belt, the signs
of the Zodiac (the Sacred animals), are as much the Bne' Alhim (Sons of the
Gods or the Elohim) as the Spirits of the Earth; but they are prior to them.
Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar gods or goddesses, called the
fathers and mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these, in
their turn, are subordinate to their "Fathers" and
"Mothers" -- the latter interchangeable and varying with each nation
-- the gods and their planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn Bel, Brihaspati, etc.
(c) "His breath gave life to the
seven," refers as much to the sun, who gives life to the Planets, as to
the "High One," the Spiritual Sun, who gives life to the whole
Kosmos. The astronomical and astrological keys opening the gate leading to the
mysteries of Theogony can be found only in the later glossaries, which
accompany the Stanzas.
In the apocalyptic Slokas of the
Archaic Records, the language is as symbolical, if less mythical, than in the
Puranas. Without the help of the later commentaries, compiled by generations of
adepts, it would be impossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the
ancient Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links
of one and the same chain. As the invisible Logos, with its seven hierarchies
(represented or personified each by its chief angel or rector), form one POWER,
the inner and the invisible; so, in the world of Forms, the Sun and the seven
chief Planets constitute the visible and active potency; the latter "Hierarchy"
being, so to speak, the visible and objective Logos of the invisible and
(except in the lowest grades) ever-subjective angels.
Thus -- to anticipate a little by way
of illustration -- every Race in its
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evolution is said to be born under
the direct influence of one of the Planets: Race the first receiving its breath
of life from the Sun, as will be seen later on; while the third humanity --
those who fell into generation, or from androgynes became separate entities,
one male and the other female -- are said to be under the direct influence of
Venus, "the little sun in which the solar orb stores his light."
The summation of the Stanzas in Book
I. showed the genesis* of Gods and men taking rise in, and from, one and the
same Point, which is the One Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and absolute UNITY.
In its primary manifested aspect we have seen it become: (1) in the sphere of
objectivity and Physics, Primordial Substance and Force (centripetal and
centrifugal, positive and negative, male and female, etc., etc.); (2) in the
world of Metaphysics, the SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE, or Cosmic Ideation, called by
some the LOGOS.
This LOGOS is the apex of the
Pythagorean triangle. When the triangle is complete it becomes the Tetraktis,
or the Triangle in the Square, and is the dual symbol of the four-lettered
Tetragrammaton in the manifested Kosmos, and of its radical triple RAY in the
unmanifested, or its noumenon.
Put more metaphysically, the
classification given here of Cosmic Ultimates, is more one of convenience than
of absolute philosophical accuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara,
Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is
equivalent to the "Unconscious Universal Mind," etc., of Western
Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the SUBJECT-side of manifested Being,
and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness.
Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the
OBJECT-side of things -- the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis.
Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmic
Latency. It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of
the Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of
potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of matter:
hence the "primal impress" so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple.
Force thus is not synchronous with the first objectivation of Mulaprakriti. But
as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and necessarily inert -- a mere
abstraction -- it is unnecessary to weave too fine a cobweb of subtleties as to
the order of succession of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* According to Dr. A. Wilder's
learned definition, Genesis, [[genesis]], is not generation, but "a coming
out of the eternal into the Kosmos and Time": "a coming from esse
into exsistere," or "from BE-NESS into 'being' " -- as a
Theosophist would say.
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the Cosmic Ultimates. Force succeeds
Mulaprakriti; but, minus Force, Mulaprakriti is for all practical intents and
purposes non-existent.*
The "Heavenly Man"
(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 Kabala, of the Universe itself, also called the
second Logos. The second springs from the first and develops the third triangle
(see the Sephirothal Tree); from the last of which (the lower host of Angels)
MEN are generated. It is with this third aspect that we shall deal at present.
The reader must bear in mind that
there is a great difference between the LOGOS and the Demiurgos, for one is
Spirit and the other is Soul; or as Dr. Wilder has it: "Dianoia and Logos
are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely in affinity with [[To
agathon]], one being the superior apprehending, the other the comprehending --
one noetic and the other phrenic."
Moreover, Man was regarded in several
systems as the third Logos. The esoteric meaning of the word Logos (speech or
word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of
the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting DIVINE MIND, and the
Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that
Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects
in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth. It is the
three Heads of the Kabala: "Unum intra alterum, et alterum super
alterum" (Zohar, Idra Suta, sec. VII). "Every Universe (world or
planet) has its own Logos," says the doctrine. The Sun was always called
by the Egyptians "the eye of Osiris," and was himself the Logos, the
first-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, "which is the Mind
and divine intellect of the Concealed." It is only by the sevenfold Ray of
this light that we can become cognizant of the Logos through the Demi-urge,
regarding the latter as the creator of our planet and everything pertaining to
it, and the former as the guiding Force of that "Creator" -- good and
bad at the same time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This
"Creator" is neither good nor bad per se, but its differentiated
aspects in nature make it assume one or the other character. With the invisible
and the unknown Universes disseminated through space, none of the sun-gods had
anything to do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the "Books of
Hermes," and in every ancient folk lore. It is symbolised generally by the
Dragon and the Serpent -- the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented
on Earth by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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the right and the left-hand Magic. In
the epic poem of Finland, the Kalewala,* the origin of the Serpent of Evil is
given: it is born from the "spittle of Suoyatar . . . . and endowed with a
living Soul by the Principle of Evil," Hisi. A strife is described between
the two, the "thing of Evil" (the Serpent or Sorcerer), and Ahti, the
Dragon; "Magic Lemminkainen." The latter is one of the seven sons of
Ilmatar, the virgin "daughter of the air," she "who fell from
heaven into the sea," before Creation, i.e., Spirit transformed into the
matter of sensuous life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in
these few lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The
hero Lemminkainen, the good magician,
"Hews the wall with might of
magic,
Breaks the palisade in pieces,
Hews to atoms seven pickets,
Chops the Serpent wall to fragments.
. . . . . .
When the monster little heeding,
. . . . . .
Pounces with his mouth of venom
At the head of Lemminkainen.
But the hero, quick recalling,
Speaks the Master words of Knowledge,
Words that came from distant ages,
Words his ancestors had taught him .
. . . "
(d) In China the men of Fohi (or the
"Heavenly Man") are called the twelve Tien-Hoang, the twelve
hierarchies of Dhyanis or Angels, with human Faces, and Dragon bodies; the
dragon standing for divine Wisdom or Spirit**; and they create men by
incarnating themselves in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* J. W. Alden, New York.
** 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 Staniland Wake. "This animal was
the especial symbol of Thot or Taut . . . and of all those gods, such as Hermes
(?) and Seth who can be connected with him. This is also the primitive Chaldean
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." Esculapius, Serapis,
Pluto, Knoum 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 Nagas of the exoteric Buddhist are not "the fabulous creatures of the
nature of serpents . . . beings superior to men and the protectors of the
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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seven figures of clay -- earth and
water -- made in the shape of those Tien-hoang, a third allegory; (compare the
"Symbols of the Bonzes"). The twelve AESERS of the Scandinavian Eddas
do the same. In the Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria -- a legend which
is repeated word for word by the oldest tribes about and around the Euphrates
-- men were created by the "Sons of God" descending on Earth, where,
after culling seven Mandragoras, they animated these roots, which became
forthwith men.*
All these allegories point to one and
the same origin -- to the dual and the triple nature of man; dual, as male and
female; triple -- as being of spiritual and psychic essence within, and of a
material fabric without.
--------
2. SAID THE EARTH, "LORD OF THE
SHINING FACE (the Sun) MY HOUSE IS EMPTY. . . . SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS
WHEEL (Earth). 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. THOU
HAST FORBIDDEN THY SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY
GREAT BOUNTY TO INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE (b). SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE
SAME!" (c).
(a) The "Lord of Wisdom" is
Mercury, or Budha.
(b) The modern Commentary explains
the words as a reference to a well-known astronomical fact, "that Mercury
receives seven times more
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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." (Schlagintweit's
"Tibetan Buddhism.")
* The Mandragora is the mandrake of
the Bible, of Rachel and Leah. They are the roots of a plant, fleshy, hairy,
and forked below, representing roughly the limbs of a man, the body and even a
head. 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, without any stalk, and
with large leaves growing out of the head of the root, like a gigantic crop of
hair, 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; being 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.
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light and heat from the Sun than
Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which receives but twice that amount more
than our insignificant Globe." Whether the fact was known in antiquity may
be inferred from the prayer of the "Earth Spirit" to the Sun as given
in the text.* The Sun however, refuses to people the globe, as it is not ready
to receive life as yet.
Mercury is, as an astrological
planet, still more occult and mysterious than Venus. It is identical with the
Mazdean Mithra, the genius, or god, "established between the Sun and the
Moon, the perpetual companion of 'Sun' of Wisdom." Pausanias shows him as
having an altar in common with Jupiter (Book V). He had wings to express his
attendance upon the Sun in its course; and he was called the Nuntis, or
Sun-wolf, "solaris luminis particeps." He was the leader of and the
evocator of Souls, the "great Magician" and the Hierophant. Virgil
depicts him as taking "his wand to evoke from Orcus the souls plunged
therein" -- tum virgam capit, hac animas ille evocat Orco. (See also the
21st Fargard of the Vendidad on the celestial militia.) He is the
golden-coloured Mercury, the [[chrusophaes Hermes]] whom the Hierophants
forbade to name. He is symbolised in Grecian mythology by one of the dogs
(vigilance), which watch over the celestial flock (occult wisdom), or Hermes
Anubis, or again Agathodaemon. He is the Argus watching over the Earth, and
which the latter mistakes for the Sun itself. It is through the intercession of
Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed to the Occult Sun every night; for, as
says Vossius: "All the theologians agree to say 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." (Idolatry,
Vol. II., p. 373.) Vossius utters here a greater occult truth than he
suspected. The Hermes-Sarameyas of the Greeks is closely related to the Hindu
Saram and Sarameya, the divine watchman, "who watches over the golden
flock of stars and solar rays."
In the clearer words of the
Commentary:
"The Globe, propelled onward by
the Spirit of the Earth and his six assistants,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Copernicus wrote his theories on
the "Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies" in the XVIth century, and the
Zohar, even if compiled by Moses de Leon in the XIIIth century, states that:
"In the book of Hammannunah, the Old, 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 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 "Qabbalah,"
p. 139.)
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gets all its vital forces, life, and
powers through the medium of the seven planetary Dhyanis from the Spirit of the
Sun. They are his messengers of Light and Life."
"Like each of the seven regions
of the Earth, each of the seven* Firstborn (the primordial human groups)
receives its light and life from its own especial Dhyani -- spiritually, and
from the palace (house, the planet) of that Dhyani physically; so with the
seven great Races to be born on it. The first is born under the Sun; the second
under Brihaspati (Jupiter); the third under Lohitanga (the
"fiery-bodied," Venus, or Sukra); the fourth, under Soma (the Moon,
our Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the Moon) and Sani,
Saturn** the Krura-lochana (evil-eyed) and the Asita (the dark); the fifth,
under Budha (Mercury)."
"So also with man and every
'man' in man (every principle). Each gets its specific quality from its primary
(the planetary spirit), therefore every man is a septenate (or a combination of
principles, each having its origin in a quality of that special Dhyani). Every
active power or force of the earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords.
Light comes through Sukra (Venus), who receives a triple supply, and gives
one-third of it to the Earth. Therefore the two are called 'Twin-sisters,' but
the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the 'Lord' of Sukra. Our wise men
represent the two Globes, one over, the other under the double Sign (the
primeval Svastica bereft of its four arms, or the cross [[diagram]])."***
The "double sign" is, as
every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of the male and the female
principles in Nature, of the positive and the negative, for the Svastica or
[[diagram]] is all that and much more. All antiquity, ever since the birth of
Astronomy -- imparted to the Fourth Race by one of its divine kings of the
Divine Dynasty -- and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Science teaches that Venus receives
from the sun twice as much light and heat as the earth. Thus the planet,
precursor of the dawn and the twilight, the most radiant of all the planets,
said to give the earth one-third of the supply she receives, has two parts left
for herself. This has an occult as well as an astronomical meaning.
** "As it is above so it is
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 Brahmins, "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 Pragna, or consciousness, are allied to seven states of
matter and the seven forms of force, the division must be the same in all that
concerns the earth.
*** Venus is thus [[diagram]] the
Earth [[diagram]].
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also of Astrology, represented Venus
in its astronomical tables as a Globe poised over a Cross, and the Earth, as a
Globe under a Cross. The esoteric meaning of this is: "Earth fallen into
generation, or into the production of its species through sexual union."
But the later Western nations did not fail to give quite a different
interpretation. They explained this sign through their mystics -- guided by the
light of the Latin Church -- as meaning that our Earth and all on it were redeemed
by the Cross, while Venus (otherwise Lucifer or Satan) was trampling upon it.
Venus is the most occult, powerful, and mysterious of all the planets; the one
whose influence upon, and relation to the Earth is most prominent. In exoteric
Brahmanism, Venus or Sukra -- a male deity* -- is the son of Bhrigu, one of the
Prajapati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya-Guru, or the priest-instructor of the
primeval giants. The whole history of "Sukra" in the Puranas, refers
to the Third and to the Fourth Races.
"It is through Sukra that the
'double ones' (the Hermaphrodites) of the Third (Root-Race) descended from the
first 'Sweat-born,'" says the Commentary. Therefore it is represented
under the symbol of [[diagram]] (the circle and diameter) during the Third (Race)
and of [[diagram]] during the Fourth.
This needs explanation. The diameter,
when found isolated in a circle, stands for female nature, for the first ideal
World, self-generated and self-impregnated by the universally diffused Spirit
of Life -- referring thus to the primitive Root-Race also. It becomes
androgynous as the Races and all on Earth develop into their physical forms,
and the symbol is transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a
vertical line: expressive of male and female, not separated as yet -- the first
and earliest Egyptian Tau [[diagram]]; after which it becomes [[diagram]] or
male-female separated** (See first pp. of Book I) and fallen into generation.
Venus (the planet) is symbolised by the sign of a globe over the cross, which
shows it as presiding over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians
symbolised Ank, "life," by the ansated cross, or [[diagram]], which
is only another form of Venus (Isis) [[diagram]], and meant, esoterically, that
mankind and all animal life bad stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and
fallen into physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the
Third Race, has the same phallic significance as the "tree
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the esoteric philosophy it is
male and female, or hermaphrodite; hence the bearded Venus in mythology.
** Therefore, putting aside its
religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross of the Christians is symbolically far
more phallic than the pagan Svastica.
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of life" in Eden Anouki, a form
of Isis, is the goddess of life; and Ank was taken by the Hebrews from the
Egyptians and introduced by Moses, one learned in the Wisdom of the priests of
Egypt, with many other mystical words. The word Ank in Hebrew, with the
personal suffix, means "my life," my being, which "is the
personal pronoun Anochi," from the name of the Egyptian goddess Anouki.*
In one of the most ancient Catechisms
of Southern India, Madras Presidency, the hermaphrodite goddess Adanari (see
also "Indian Pantheon") has the ansated cross, the Svastica, the
"male and female sign," right in the central part, to denote the
pre-sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now represented with a lotus
growing out of his navel -- or the Universe of Brahma evolving out of the
central point Nara -- is shown in one of the oldest carvings as double-sexed
(Vishnu and Lakshmi) standing on a lotus-leaf floating on the water; which
water rises in a semicircle and pours through the Svastica, "the source of
generation" or of the descent of man.
Pythagoras calls Sukra-Venus the Sol
alter, "the other Sun." Of the "seven palaces of the Sun,"
that of Lucifer Venus is the third one in Christian and Jewish Kabala, 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, Sukra's car
(Venus-Lucifer's) is said to be drawn by an ogdoad of "earth-born
horses," while the steeds of the chariots of the other planets are
different.
"Every sin committed on Earth is
felt by Usanas-Sukra. The Guru of the Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the
Earth and Men. Every change on Sukra is felt on, and reflected by, the
Earth."
Sukra, or Venus, is thus represented
as the preceptor of the Daityas, the giants of the Fourth Race, who, in the
Hindu allegory, obtained at one time the sovereignty of all the Earth, and
defeated the minor gods. The Titans of the Western allegory are as closely
connected with Venus-Lucifer, identified by later Christians with Satan.
Therefore, as Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with Cow's horns on her
head, the symbol of mystic Nature, and one that is 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.** It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 recognised among
all the ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression." (From a
modern Kabalistic MS.)
** Athenaeus shows that the first
letter of Satan's name was represented in days of old by an arc and crescent;
and some Roman Catholics, good and kind men, would persuade the public that it
is in honour of Lucifer's crescent-like horns that Mussulmen [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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archaic tradition, which states that
Venus changes simultaneously (geologically) with the Earth; that whatever takes
place on the one takes place on the other; and that many and great were their
common changes -- it is for these reasons that St. Augustine repeats it,
applying the several changes of configuration, colour, and even of the orbital
paths, to that theologically-woven character of Venus-Lucifer. He even goes so
far in his pious fancy as to connect the last changes of the planet with the
Noachian and mythical Deluge alleged to have taken place 1796 years B.C. (See
"City of God" lxxi., ch. viii.).
As Venus has no satellites, it is
stated allegorically, that "Asphujit" (this "planet")
adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, "who overgrew its parent and
gave much trouble," a reference to the occult connection between the two.
The Regent (of the planet) Sukra* loved his adopted child so well that he
incarnated as Usanas and gave it perfect laws, which were disregarded and
rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in Harivansa, is that Sukra went to
Siva asking him to protect his pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from the
fighting gods; and that to further his object he performed a Yoga rite
"imbibing the smoke of chaff with his head downwards for 1,000
years." This refers to the great inclination of the axis of Venus
(amounting to 50 degrees), and to its being enveloped in eternal clouds. But it
relates only to the physical constitution of the planet. It is with its Regent,
the informing Dhyan Chohan,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] have chosen the Crescent for their national arms. Venus has always been
identified, since the establishment of Roman Catholic dogmatism, with Satan and
Lucifer, or the great Dragon, contrary to all reason and logic. As shown by the
symbologists and astronomers, the association between the serpent and the idea
of darkness had an astronomical foundation. The position which the
constellation of 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," says
Staniland Wake, "sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference to the
celestial serpent," remarks that "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 Earth"; (Dupuis, tome III., p. 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.
* Sukra is the son of Bhrigu the
great Rishi, and one of the Seven Prajapati, the founder of the Race of
Bhargavas, in which Parasu Rama is born.
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that Occult mysticism has to deal.
The allegory which states that for killing Sukra's mother, Vishnu was cursed by
him to be reborn seven times on the Earth, is full of occult philosophical
meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu's Avatars, since these number nine, the
tenth being still to come, but to the Races on Earth. Venus, or Lucifer (also
Sukra and Usanas) the planet, is the light-bearer of our Earth, in both its
physical and mystic sense. The Christians knew it well in early times, since
one of the earliest popes of Rome is known by his Pontiff name as Lucifer.
"Every world has its parent star
and sister planet. Thus Earth is the adopted child and younger brother of
Venus, but its inhabitants are of their own kind. . . . All sentient complete
beings (full septenary men or higher beings) are furnished, in their
beginnings, with forms and organisms in full harmony with the nature and state
of the sphere they inhabit."*
"The Spheres of Being, or
centres of life, which are isolated nuclei breeding their men and their
animals, are numberless; not one has any resemblance to its sister-companion or
to any other in its own special progeny."**
"All have a double physical and
spiritual nature."
"The nucleoles are eternal and
everlasting; the nuclei periodical and finite. The nucleoles form part of the
absolute. They are the embrasures of that black impenetrable fortress, which is
for ever concealed from human or even Dhyanic sight. The nuclei are the light
of eternity escaping therefrom."
"It is that LIGHT which
condenses into the forms of the 'Lords of Being' -- the first and the highest
of which are, collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagatma (said figuratively to issue
from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers -- appearing at the
beginning of every new Manvantara). From these downwards -- formed from the
ever-consolidating waves of that light, which becomes on the objective plane
gross matter -- proceed the numerous hierarchies of the Creative Forces, some
formless, others having their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 masque. Even the famous astronomer
Huygens laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have the
same identical beings as those who live on our Earth, possessing the same
figures, senses, brain-power, arts, sciences, dwellings and even to the same
fabric for their wearing apparel! (Theorie du Monde). For the clearer
comprehension of the statement that the Earth "is the progeny of the
Moon," see Book I., stanza VI.
** 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.
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own distinctive form, others, again,
the lowest (Elementals), having no form of their own, but assuming every form
according to the surrounding conditions."
"Thus there is but one Absolute
Upadhi (basis) in the spiritual sense, from, on, and in which, are built for
Manvantaric purposes the countless basic centres on which proceed the
Universal, cyclic, and individual Evolutions during the active period."
"The informing Intelligences,
which animate these various centres of Being, are referred to indiscriminately
by men beyond the Great Range* as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris**, the
Prajapati, and so on; and as Dhyani Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas (fire-gods),
Bodhisattvas,*** and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call them gods;
the learned profane, the one God; and the wise, the Initiates, honour in them
only the Manvantaric manifestations of THAT which neither our Creators (the
Dhyan Chohans) nor their creatures can ever discuss or know anything about. The
ABSOLUTE is not to be defined, and no mortal or immortal has ever seen or
comprehended it during the periods of Existence. The mutable cannot know the
Immutable, nor can that which lives perceive Absolute Life."
Therefore, man cannot know higher
beings than his own "progenitors." "Nor shall he worship
them," but he ought to learn how he came into the world.
(c) Number Seven, the fundamental
figure among all other figures in every national religious system, from
Cosmogony down to man, must have its raison d'etre. It is found among the
ancient Americans, as prominently as among the archaic Aryans and Egyptians.
The question will be fully dealt with in the second part of this Book;
meanwhile a few facts may be given here. Says the author of the "Sacred
Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches, 11,500 years ago"****:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Beyond" the Great Range,
means, in our case, India, as being the Trans-Himalayan region for the
Cis-Himalayan region.
** The term Pitris is used by us in
these Slokas 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."
*** It is erroneous to take literally
the worship of the human Bodhisattvas, or Manjusri. It is true that,
exoterically, the Mahayana 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 Manjusri
personally that received honours, but the divine Bodhisattvas and Dhyani
Buddhas that animated (Amilakha, as the Mongolians say) the human forms.
**** 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 [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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"Seven seems to have been the
sacred number par excellence among all civilised nations of antiquity. Why?
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 into 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 of a Trinity or
action and matter. The Emperor Julian, 'In matrem, etc.,' expresses himself
thus: 'Were I to touch upon the initiation into our Sacred 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.' " (p. 141).
And who, acquainted with the Puranas,
the Book of the Dead, the Zendavesta, the Assyrian tiles, and finally the
Bible, and who has observed the constant occurrence of the number seven, in
these records of people living from the remotest times unconnected and so far
apart, can regard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same
explorer of ancient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic
number, among the inhabitants of the "Western continent" (of
America), he adds that it is not less remarkable. For:--
"It frequently occurs in the
Popul-vuh . . . we find it besides in the seven families said by Sahagun and
Clavigero to have accompanied the mystical personage named Votan, the reputed
founder of the great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the
seven caves* from which the ancestors of the Nahuatl are reported to have
emerged. In the seven cities of Cibola, described by Coronado and Niza. . . .
In the seven Antilles; in the seven heroes who, we are told, escaped the Deluge
. . . ."
"Heroes," moreover, whose
number is found the same in every "Deluge" story -- from the seven
Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to Noah's ark, into which
beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by "Sevens." Thus we
see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because thoroughly mystic, numbers
playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and evolution of living Beings. In
China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called "celestial numbers" in the canonical
"Book of Changes." (Yi King, or transformation, as in
"Evolution").
The explanation of it becomes evident
when one examines the ancient
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] seems to believe and to seek to prove that the esoteric learning of the
Aryans and the Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, although certainly
coeval with Plato's Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth Continent, which
was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria.
* 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.
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Symbols: all these are based upon and
start from the figures given from the Archaic Manuscript in the proem of Book
I. [[diagram]], the symbol of evolution and fall into generation or matter, is
reflected in the old Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the
Kabalistic Sephiroth, and the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MSS (Add. MSS.
Brit. Mus. 9789)*; you will find in it a tree whose trunk is covered with ten
fruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it, while
from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the right and
left, thus forming a perfect [[diagram]] (tau), the ends of the two branches,
moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird -- the bird of immortality,
Atman or the divine Spirit -- sitting between the two, and thus making the
seventh. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal Tree, ten in all,
yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving Seven. These are the celestial
fruits, the ten or [[diagram]] 10, born out of the two invisible male and
female seeds, making up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic
system contains the [[diagram]], the central point; the 3 or [[diagram]]; the
five, [[diagram]], and the seven or [[diagram]], or again [[diagram]]; the
triangle in the square and the synthesizing point in the interlaced double
triangles. This for the world of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives
its culmination and the reflex of all in MAN. Therefore he is the mystic square
-- in his metaphysical aspect -- the Tetraktis; and becomes the Cubeon the
creative plain. His symbol is the cube unfolded** and 6 becoming 7, or the
[[diagram]] three crossways (the female) and four vertically; and this is man,
the culmination of the deity on Earth, whose body is the cross of flesh, on,
through, and in which he is ever crucifying and putting to death the divine
Logos or his HIGHER SELF.
"The universe," says every
Philosophy and Cosmogony, "hath a Ruler (Rulers collectively) set over it,
which is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen: which
two are the First Power after the ONE."
These are the Spirit and Nature,
which two form our illusory universe. The two inseparables remain in the
Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into Parabrahm, the
One ever changeless. "The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and
self-existent," emanates a pure ethereal LIGHT -- a dual light not
perceptible to the elementary senses -- in the Puranas, in the Bible, in the
Sepher
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The engraving is reproduced in the
"Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and Quiches" on p. 134.
** See "Source of Measures"
p. 50 to 53 and also Book II. Part 2.
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Jezirah, the Greek and Latin hymns,
in the Book of Hermes, in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, in the esotericism of
Lao-tse, everywhere. In the Kabala, which explains the secret meaning of
Genesis, this light is the DUAL-MAN, or the Androgyne (rather the sexless)
angels, whose generic name is ADAM KADMON. It is they who complete man, whose
ethereal form is emanated by other divine, but far lower beings, who solidify
the body with clay, or the "dust of the ground" -- an allegory
indeed, but as scientific as any Darwinian evolution and more true.
The author of the "Source of
Measures" says that the foundation of the Kabala and all its mystic books
is made to rest upon the ten Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth.* He shows
these ten Sephiroth or the ten numbers in the following diagram:--
[[diagram]]
wherein the circle is the naught, its
vertical diameter line is the first or primal ONE (the Word or Logos), from
which springs the series of the other numbers up to 9, the limit of the digits.
The 10 is the first Divine Manifestation** containing "every possible
power of exact expression of proportion." By this Kabalistic speculation
we are taught that the Sephiroth "were the numbers or emanations of the
Heavenly Light (figures 20612 to 6561), they were the 10 'Words,' DBRIM, 41224,
the light, of which they were the flux, was the Heavenly Man, the Adam KDM (the
144- 144); and the Light, by the New Testament or Covenant (or 41224) created
God; just as, by the Old Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates light (20612 to
6561)."
Now there are three kinds of light in
Occultism, as in the Kabala. (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 Dhyan Chohans, the minor logoi
(the Elohim, collectively), who, in their turn, shed it on the objective
Universe. But in the Kabala -- re-edited and carefully adjusted to fit the
Christian tenets by the Kabalists of the XIII. 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),
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Masonic Review,"
Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. Kabala No. 6.
** See "Isis Unveiled,"
Vol. II., pp. 300 et seq., for a proof of the antiquity of the decimal system
of figures.
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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 and made." The author of the
"Source of Measures" pertinently refers the reader to Inman's
"Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names," vol. ii., p. 648. There,
an engraving of "the vesica piscis, Mary and the female emblem, copied
from a rosary of the blessed Virgin . . . . printed at Venice, 1542," and
therefore, as Inman remarks, "with a license from the Inquisition,
consequently orthodox," will show the reader what the Latin Church understood
by this "penetrating power of light and its effects " How sadly
disfigured -- applied as they were to the grossest anthropomorphic conceptions
-- have become, under Christian interpretation, the noblest and grandest, as
the most exalted, ideas of deity of the Eastern philosophy!
The Occultists call this light
Daiviprakriti in the East, and light of Christos in the West. It is the light
of the LOGOS, the direct reflection of the ever Unknowable on the plane of
Universal manifestation. But here is the interpretation thereof given by the
modern Christians from the Kabala. 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 the Zohar, 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.'"
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 Hindus this is an exoteric account, a
surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out as the esoteric
and final meaning. But to proceed:--
"Now light," explains the
author, "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, i.e., 3.1415 to one, a modified form of the above) is the reduction of
this, so as to obtain a standard unitone, 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 ('man
even Jehovah' measure), viz. 113 to 355, have to be specialised.* 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, or
Alhim or God) -- and in such a manner that one can be made
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Source of Measures,"
pp. 276, et seq. App. VII.
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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
measuring use for the Cabbalah as was employed in the three Covenants of the
Bible, and in the symbols 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 Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that
Light represents the ratio of 20612 to 6561, as part of the 'Words,' DBRIM,
41224, or as to the Word, Debar, 206 (= 10 cubits). Light is so much the burden
of the Kabbalah, in explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the
Kabbalah is called Zohar 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 nine), together made the 10, that is [[diagram]] or [[diagram]], 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."
In Sepher Jezirah, or Numbers of
Creation, the whole process of evolution is given out in Numbers. In its
"32 paths of Wisdom" the number 3 is repeated four times, and the
number 4 five times. Therefore, the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim
or Sephiroth), for Sepher (or S-ph-ra when unvowelled) means "to
cipher." And therefore, also, we find Plato stating that the deity
geometrizes in fabricating the Universe.
The Kabalistic book, the Sepher
Jezirah, opens with a statement of the hidden wisdom of Alhi in Sephrim, i.e,
the Elohim in the Sephiroth.
"In thirty and two paths, hidden
wisdom, established Jah, JHVH, 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."
"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
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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 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 two tables of stone, on which these,
DBRIM or 41224, were written or engraved -- or 20612 by 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 1) said: Let there be Light (20612 to
6561)."
The three words as given in the text
are: [[hebrew]]. 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, and weighs and numbers the
stars of heaven, and yet resolves them back into the final Oneness of the
Universe through Words). "Their final accord perfects itself in that
Oneness that ordains them and which consists in [[hebrew]] (Book of
Al-Chazari), 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, 346; together
these are 1026, and the division of the general word into these has been to
produce these numbers, which by Temurah may be changed in various ways for
various purposes." (Kabala.)
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza
IV. of Book I. and its fourth commentary to find that the 3, 4 -- (7), and the
thrice seven, or 1065, the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajapati
mentioned in the Mahabharata, or the three Sephrim (words in cipher or
figures). And this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic philosophy
and the anthropomorphic Creator of exoteric Judaism (since their esotericism
shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the student to perceive
and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a lunar and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the "Book Al-Chazari"
by Jehuda-ha-Levi, translated by Dr. D. Cassell.
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"generation" god. (See Book
I, Part 2, "Deus Lunus.") It is a fact well known to every
conscientious student of the Kabala, that the deeper he dives into it, the more
he feels convinced that unless the Kabala -- or what is left of it -- is read
by the light of the Eastern esoteric philosophy, its study leads only to the
discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, the
monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry, now
vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat that primal
intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be comprehended, nor can it be
located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. Hence the Ain-Soph
-- the "UNKNOWABLE" and the "UNNAMEABLE" -- which, as it
could not be made manifest, was conceived to emanate manifesting Powers. It is
then with its emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can deal.
Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of emanations and replaced
them with direct, conscious creations of angels and the rest out of nothing,
now finds itself hopelessly stranded between Supernaturalism, or miracle, and
materialism. An extra-cosmic god is fatal to philosophy, an intra-cosmic Deity
-- i.e. Spirit and matter inseparable from each other -- is a philosophical
necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a
mask of emotionalism. But why "geometrize," as Plato has it, why
represent these emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The
question is well answered by the author just cited. His remarks are quoted in
Part II., § "The Theogony of the Creative Gods."
"Mental perception," he
says, "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 groundwork of
the philosophy of the divine manifesting in the Universe."
This is philosophy. It is otherwise
when we find the Rabbi in Al-Chazari saying that "under s'ph-r is to be
understood calculation and weighing of 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 whereunto joins or adapts itself the design of 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. . . .
."
This is materialising the Spiritual
without scruple. But the Kabala
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was not always so well adapted to
anthropo-monotheistic conceptions. Compare this with any of the six schools of
India. For instance, in Kapila's "Sankhya" Philosophy, unless,
allegorically speaking, Purusha mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter
remains irrational, while the former remains inactive without her. Therefore
Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes
what he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and
consciousness gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable
and animal forms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man.
Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as "MAN," but
has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever changing forms. Evolution, not
creation, by means of WORDS is recognized in the philosophies of the East, even
in their exoteric records. Ex oriente lux. Even the name of the first man in
the Mosaic Bible had its origin in India, Professor Max Muller's negation
notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from Chaldea; and Adam-Adami is a
compound word and therefore a manifold symbol, and proves the occult dogmas.
This is no place for philological
disquisitions. But the reader may be reminded that the words Ad and Adi mean in
Sanskrit "the first"; in Aramaean, "One" (Ad-ad, "the
only one"); in Assyrian, "father" whence Ak-Ad or
"father-creator."* And once the statement is found correct it becomes
rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic Bible alone, and to see therein
simply a Jewish name. Vide Part II. of this Volume, § "Adam-Adami."
There is frequent confusion in the
attributes and genealogies of the gods in their theogonies, as given to the
world by the half-initiated writers, Brahmanical and Biblical, the Alpha and
the Omega of the records of that symbolical science. Yet there could be no such
confusion made by the earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the
divine instructors: for both the attributes and the genealogies were
inseparably linked with cosmogonical symbols, the "gods" being the
life and animating "soul-principle" of the various regions of the
Universe. Nowhere and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond
those manifested gods. The boundless and infinite UNITY remained with every
nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The appellation Ak-ad (or
Akkadians) is of the same class as Ad-m, Ha-va (Eve), AEd-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-AEden
(Eden) or Gandunia was Babylonia and Mesopotamia. In Assyrian Ak meant Creator,
the letter K 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 Akasa of the phenomenal world.
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untouched by fruitless speculation.
The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and
systolic property, of its periodical expansion or dilatation, and contraction.
In the Universe with all its incalculable myriads of systems and worlds
disappearing and re-appearing in eternity, the anthropomorphised powers, or
gods, their Souls, had to disappear from view with their bodies:-- "The
breath returning to the eternal bosom which exhales and inhales them,"
says our Catechism.
"Ideal nature," the
abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is mysteriously and
invisibly generated, is the same female side of procreative power in Nature in
the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony. Aditi is Sephira, and the
Sophia-Achamoth of the Gnostics, and Isis, the virgin Mother of Horus. In every
Cosmogony, behind and higher than the creative deity, there is a superior
deity, a planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the executive agent.
And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the UNKNOWABLE
and the unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations. . . . .
It thus becomes easy to account for
the reason why "Adam-Adami" is found in the Chaldean scripture,
certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In Assyrian Ad is the father, and in
Aramaean Ad is "One," and Ad-ad the "only one," while Ak is
in Assyrian "creator." Thus Ad-am-ak-ad-mon became Adam Kadmon in the
Kabala (Zohar), meaning as it did, the "One (Son) of the divine Father, or
the creator," for the words "am" and "om" meant at one
time in nearly every language the divine, or the deity. Thus Adam Kadmon and
Adam-Adami came to mean:-- "The first emanation of the Father-Mother or
divine nature," and literally "the first divine one." And it is
easy to see that Ad-Argat (or Aster't, the Syrian goddess, the consort of
Ad-on, the lord god of Syria or the Jewish Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ishtar,
Mylitta, Eve, etc., etc., are identical with the Aditi and Vach of the Hindus.
They are all the "Mothers of all living" and "of the gods."
On the other hand -- cosmically and astronomically -- all the male gods became
at first "Sun-gods," then, theologically, the "Suns of
Righteousness" and the Logoi, all symbolised by the Sun.* They are all
Protogonoi (the first-born) and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Adam-Jehovah, Brahma 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 Brahma-Viraj 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 Kartikeya God of War (in one sense) -- which god is born of the
Sweat of Siva, Siva Gharmaja and the Earth. In the Mahabharata 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam
Kadmon was the same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks -- "the
One with, and of his father" -- the "Father" becoming during the
later Races Helios, the Sun, as Apollo Karneios,* for instance, who was the
"Sun born"; Osiris, Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and
found themselves transformed later on into still more earthly types: such as
Prometheus, the crucified of Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others,
sun-gods and heroes, until all of them came to have no better significance than
phallic symbols.
In the Zohar is it said "Man was
created by the Sephiroth (Elohim-Javeh, also) and they engendered by common
power the earthly Adam." Therefore in Genesis the Elohim say:--
"Behold Man is become as one of us." But in Hindu Cosmogony or
"Creation," Brahma-Prajapati creates Viraj and the Rishis,
spiritually; therefore the latter are distinctly called "the Mind-born
Sons of Brahma"; and this specified mode of engendering precluded every
idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the earlier human nations. This instance
well illustrates the respective spirituality of the two nations.
-------
3. SAID THE "LORD OF THE SHINING
FACE." "I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE
THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS, APPLY TO THY FATHER THE LORD OF THE LOTUS
(Kumuda-Pati) (a) FOR HIS SONS . . . . THY PEOPLE SHALL BE UNDER THE RULE OF
THE FATHERS (Pitri-pati). THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF THE LORD OF
WISDOM (Budha, Mercury) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA (the Moon) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY
COMPLAINTS (b). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE. . . . THOU ART NOT READY. THY
MEN ARE NOT READY (c).
(a) Kumuda-Pati is the Moon, the
Earth's parent, in his region of Soma-loka. Though the Pitris (Pitar or
"Fathers") are sons of the Gods, elsewhere sons of Brahma and even
Rishis, they are generally known as the "lunar" ancestors.
(b) Pitri-pati is the lord or king of
the Pitris, Yama, the god of Death and the Judge of mortals. The men of Budha
(Mercury) are
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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.)
* Apollo Karneios is certainly a
Greek transformation from the Hindu Krishna Karna. "Karna" means
radiant from "carne," "a ray," and Karneios, which was a
title of Apollo with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant "Sun born."
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metaphorically immortal through their
Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who credit every star or planet with
being inhabited. (And there are men of science -- M. Flammarion among others --
who believe in this fervently, on logical as well as on astronomical data). The
Moon being an inferior body to the Earth even, to say nothing of other planets,
the terrestrial men produced by her sons -- the lunar men or
"ancestors" -- from her shell or body, cannot be immortal. They
cannot hope to become real, self-conscious and intelligent men, unless they are
finished, so to say, by other creators. Thus in the Puranic legend, the son of
the Moon (Soma) is Budha (Mercury), "the intelligent" and the Wise,
because he is the offspring of Soma, the "regent" of the visible
Moon, not of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus Mercury is the elder brother of the
Earth, metaphorically -- his step-brother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit
-- while she (the Earth) is the progeny of the body. These allegories have a
deeper and more scientific meaning (astronomically and geologically) then our
modern physicists are willing to admit. The whole cycle of the "first War in
Heaven," the Taraka-maya, is as full of philosophical as of Cosmogonical
and astronomical truths. One can trace therein the biographies of all the
planets by the history of their gods and rulers. Usanas (Sukra, or Venus), the
bosom-friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter) the instructor of the
gods, whose wife Tara (or Taraka) had been carried away by the Moon, Soma --
"of whom he begat Budha" -- took also an active part in this war
against "the gods" and forthwith was degraded into a demon (Asura)
deity, and so he remains to this day.*
Here the word "men" refers
to the celestial men, or what are called in India the PITAR or pitris, the
Fathers, the progenitors of men. This
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Usanas-Sukra 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 Hindu 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. Tara, 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., 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 Hindu gods, and regarding
Usanas (Lucifer), who helped Soma against that ancient personification of
ritualistic worship (Brahmanaspati, the lord of the Brahmans, now become
"Jupiter-Jehovah") as SATAN, the "enemy of God"!
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does not remove the seeming
difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of the teaching, which shows these
progenitors or ancestors creating the first human Adams out of their sides: as
astral shadows. And though it is an improvement on Adam's rib, still geological
and climatic difficulties will be brought forward. Such, however, is the
teaching of Occultism.
(c) Man's organism was adapted in
every race to its surroundings. The first Root-Race was as ethereal as ours is
material. The progeny of the seven Creators, who evolved the seven primordial
Adams,* surely required no purified gases to breathe and live upon (see Part
III. of this Volume). Therefore, however strongly the impossibility of this
teaching may be urged by the devotees of modern science, the Occultist
maintains that the case was as stated aeons of years before even the evolution
of the Lemurian, the first physical man, which itself took place 18,000,000
years ago.**
Preliminary evolution is described in
one of the BOOKS OF DZYAN and the Commentaries thereon in this wise:--
Archaic Scripture teaches that at the
commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the earth is reborn; "as the
human Jiva (monad), when passing into a new womb, gets re-covered with a new
body, so does the Jiva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and solid covering
with each Round after re-emerging once more from the matrix of space into
objectivity" (Comment). This process is attended, of course, by the throes
of the new birth or geological convulsions.
Thus the only reference to it is
contained in one verse of the volume of the Book of Dzyan before us, where it
says:
--------
4. AND AFTER GREAT THROES SHE (the
Earth) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER
FIRST ONE (a).
(a) This refers to the growth of the
Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of the First Round it is said (given in
the Commentary):--
"After the changeless (avikara)
immutable nature (Essence, sadaikarupa) had awakened and changed
(differentiated) into (a state of) causality (avayakta), and from cause
(Karana) had become its own discrete effect (vyakta), from invisible it became
visible. The smallest of the small (the most atomic of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 chapter ii., 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.
** For a discussion of the scientific
objections to the views and figures here enunciated, the reader is referred to
the Addenda, which form Part III. of this book.
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atoms, or aniyamsam aniyasam) became
one and the many (ekanekarupa); and producing the Universe produced also the
Fourth Loka (our Earth) in the garland of the seven lotuses. The Achyuta then
became the Chyuta.*
The Earth is said to cast off her old
three skins, because this refers to the three preceding Rounds she has already
passed through; the present being the fourth Round out of the seven. At the
beginning of every new ROUND, after a period of "obscuration," the
earth (as do also the other six "earths") casts off, or is supposed
to cast off, her old skins as the Serpent does: therefore she is called in the
Aitareya-Brahmana the Sarpa Rajni, "the Queen of the Serpents," and
"the mother of all that moves." The "Seven Skins," in the
first of which she now stands, refer to the seven geological changes which
accompany and correspond to the evolution of the Seven Root-Races of Humanity.
Stanza II., which speaks of this
Round, begins with a few words of information concerning the age of our Earth.
The chronology will be given in its place. In the Commentary appended to the
Stanza, two personages are mentioned: Narada and Asura Maya, especially the
latter. All the calculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and what
follows will make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these
figures.
--------
TWO ANTEDILUVIAN ASTRONOMERS.
To the mind of the Eastern student of
Occultism, two figures are indissolubly connected with mystic astronomy,
chronology, and their cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like
two giants in the Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to
Yugas and Kalpas. When, at what period of pre-history they lived, none save a
few men in the world know, or ever can know with that certainty which is
required by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may have
been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The mystic West
and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic East speaks of
NARADA, the old Vedic Rishi, and of ASURAMAYA, the Atlantean.
It has already been hinted that of
all the incomprehensible characters in the Mahabharata and the Puranas, Narada,
the son of Brahrna in Matsya Purana, the progeny of Kasyapa and the daughter of
Daksha
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Dhyanis
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.
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in the Vishnu Purana, is the most
mysterious. He is referred to by the honourable title of Deva Rishi (divine
Rishi, more than a demi-god) by Parasara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and
even by Brahma. He informs Kansa that Bhagavat (or Vishnu in exotericism) would
incarnate in the eighth child of Devaki, and thus brings the wrath of the
Indian Herod upon Krishna's mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is
seated -- invisible as a true Manasaputra -- he lauds Krishna, in delight at
the Avatar's feat of killing the monster Kesim. Narada is here, there, and
everywhere; and yet, none of the Puranas gives the true characteristics of this
great enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in
Hindu Esotericism, Narada -- who is called in Cis-Himalayan Occultism Pesh-Hun,
the "Messenger," or the Greek Angelos -- is the sole confidant and
the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi-Budh: a kind of active
and ever incarnating logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the
beginning to the end of the Kalpa.
"Pesh-Hun" is a general not
a special Hindu possession. He is the mysterious guiding intelligent power,
which gives the impulse to, and regulates the impetus of cycles, Kalpas and
universal events.* He is Karma's visible adjuster on a general scale; the
inspirer and the leader of the greatest heroes of this Manvantara. In the
exoteric works he is referred to by some very uncomplimentary names; such as
"Kali-Karaka," strife-maker, "Kapi-vaktra," monkey-faced,
and even "Pisuna," the spy, though elsewhere he is called
Deva-Brahma. Even Sir W. Jones was strongly impressed with this mysterious character
from what he gathered in his Sanskrit Studies. He compares him to Hermes and
Mercury, and calls him "the eloquent messenger of the gods" (see
Asiat. Res. I. p. 264). All this led the late Dr. Kenealy ("Book of
God"), on the ground that the Hindus believe him to be a great Rishi,
"who is for ever wandering about the earth, giving good counsel," to
see in him one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real
track as some imagine.
What Narada really is, cannot be
explained in print; nor would the modern generations of the profane gather much
from the information. But it may be remarked, that if there is in the Hindu
Pantheon a deity which resembles Jehovah, in, tempting by
"suggestion" of thoughts and "hardening" of the hearts of those
whom he would make his tools and victims, it is Narada. Only with the latter it
is no desire to obtain a pretext for "plaguing," and thus showing
that "I am the Lord God."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is perhaps the reason why, in
the Bhagavad Gita, we are told that Brahma had communicated to Narada in the
beginning that all men whatsoever, even Mlechchhas, outcasts and barbarians,
might know the true nature of Vasudeva and learn to have faith in that deity.
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Nor is it through any ambitious or
selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and guide universal progress and
evolution.
Narada is one of the few prominent
characters, save some gods, in the Puranas, who visits the so-called nether or
infernal regions, Patala. Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the
thousand-headed Sesha, the serpent who bears the seven Patalas and the entire
world like a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of astronomy,*
that Narada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses Garga's
Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has charge of our
progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on wars and puts an end
to them. In the old Stanzas Pesh-Hun is credited with having calculated and
recorded all the astronomical and cosmic cycles to come, and with having taught
the Science to the first gazers at the starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who
is said to have based all his astronomical works upon those records, to have
determined the duration of all the past geological and cosmical periods, and
the length of the all the cycles to come, till the end of this life-cycle, or
the end of the seventh Race.
There is a work among the Secret
Books, called the "Mirror of Futurity," wherein all the Kalpas within
Kalpas and cycles within the bosom of Sesha, or infinite Time, are recorded.
This work is ascribed to Pesh-Hun Narada. There is another old work which is
attributed to various Atlanteans. It is these two Records which furnish us with
the figures of our cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of cycles
to come. The chronological calculations which will presently be given are,
however, those of the Brahmins as explained further on; but most of them are
also those of the Secret Doctrine.
The chronology and computations of
the Brahmin Initiates are based upon the Zodiacal records of India, and the
works of the above-mentioned astronomer and magician -- Asuramaya. The
Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the guidance
of those who first taught astronomy, among other things, to mankind.
But here again we are deliberately
and recklessly facing a new difficulty. We shall be told that our statement is
contradicted by science, in the person of a man regarded as a great authority
(in the West) upon all subjects of Sanskrit literature -- Professor Albrecht
Weber, of Berlin. This, to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready
to maintain what is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as
the earliest astronomer in Aryavarta, one to whom "the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Sesha, 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.
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Sun-god imparted the knowledge of the
stars," in propria persona, as Dr. Weber himself states, is identified by
him, in some very mysterious way, with the "Ptolemaios" of the
Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this identification than that "this
latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of Piyadasi, became
the Indian 'Turamaya,' out of which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily
grow." No doubt it "might," but the vital question is -- Are
there any good proofs that it has thus grown? The only evidence that is given
for it is, that it must be so: "since this Maya is distinctly assigned to
Romaka-pura in the West."* The Maya is evident, since no Sanskritist among
Europeans can tell where that locality of "Romaka-pura" was, except,
indeed, that it was somewhere "in the West." Anyhow, as no member of
the Asiatic Society, or Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brahmanical
teaching, it is useless to take the objections of European Orientalists into
consideration. "Romakapura" was in "the West," certainly,
since it was part and parcel of the last continent of ATLANTIS. And it is
equally certain that it is Atlantis, which is assigned in the Hindu Puranas as
the birth-place of Asuramaya, "as great a magician as he was an Astrologer
and an Astronomer." Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great
antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the Hindus
never knew of a Zodiac at all till "they had borrowed one from the
Greeks."** This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of
India, and must therefore be ignored. (Vide "The Zodiac and its
Antiquity"). We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the learned
German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work (History of
Sanskrit Literature) that "in addition to the natural obstacles which
impede investigation (in India), there still prevails a dense mist of
prejudices and preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it
as with a veil." Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should
himself have been led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better
now.
Now whether Asuramaya is to be
considered a modern myth, a personage who flourished in the day of the
Macedonian Greeks, or as that which he is claimed to be by the Occultists, in
any case his calculations agree entirely with those of the Secret Records.
From fragments of immensely old works
attributed to the Atlantean astronomer, and found in Southern India, the
calendar elsewhere men-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See "Lectures on the Indian
Literature," p. 253, by Prof. A. Weber; in Trubner's Asiatic Series.
** 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.
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tioned was compiled by two very
learned Brahmins* in 1884 and 1885. The work is proclaimed by the best Pundits
as faultless -- from the Brahmanical standpoint -- and thus far relates to the
chronology of the orthodox teachings. If we compare its statements with those
made several years earlier in "Isis Unveiled," with the fragmentary
teachings published by some Theosophists, and with the present data derived
from the Secret Books of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly,
save in some details which may not be explained; for secrets of higher
Initiation -- as unknown to the writer as they are to the reader -- would have
to be revealed, and that cannot be done. (But see "Chronology of the
Brahmins" at the close of Stanza II.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Tirukkanda
Panchanga" for the Kali Yug 4986, by Chintamany Raghanaracharya, son of
the famous Government astronomer of Madras, and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna
Rao.
--------
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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 (of years, or 300,000,000*). IT CONSTRUCTED RUPAS (forms). SOFT STONES,
THAT HARDENED (minerals); HARD PLANTS, THAT SOFTENED (vegetation). VISIBLE FROM
INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES (sarisripa, swapada). SHE (the Earth) SHOOK
THEM OFF HER BACK, WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (a). AFTER THIRTY CRORES OF
YEARS, SHE TURNED ROUND. SHE LAID ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE. . . . . SHE WOULD
CALL NO SONS OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER
OWN BOSOM. SHE EVOLVED WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD (b).
(a) This relates to an inclination of
the axis -- of which there were several -- to a consequent deluge and chaos on
Earth (having, however, no reference to primeval chaos), in which monsters,
half-human, half-animal, were generated. We find it mentioned in the "Book
of the Dead," and also in the Chaldean account of creation, on the Cutha
Tablets, however mutilated.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Brahmins"
at the end of this Stanza).
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It is not even allegory. Here we have
facts, that are found repeated in the account of Pymander, as well as in the
Chaldean tablets of creation. The verses may almost be checked by the
Cosmogony, as given by Berosus, which has been disfigured out of recognition by
Eusebius, but some of the features of which may yet be found in fragments left
by ancient Greek authors -- Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc., etc.
"The water-men terrible and bad," who were the production of physical
nature alone, a result of the "evolutionary impulse" and the first
attempt to create man the "crown," and the aim and goal of all animal
life on Earth -- are shown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do we not find the
same in the Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the
culmination of heathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that
things in the beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as
maintained in the Puranas, the Egyptian and Chaldean fragments, and even in
Genesis, there have not been two, and even more, "creations" before
the last formation of the Globe; which, changing its geological and atmospheric
conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men? This claim agrees
not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with modern science, and even,
to a certain degree, with the theory of evolution, as may be demonstrated in a
few words.
There is no "dark
creation," no "Evil Dragon" conquered by a Sun-God, in the
earliest World-Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the great Deep (the Watery
Abyss, or SPACE) was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the incognizable
infinite Deity. But with the Semites and the later Chaldeans, the fathomless
Deep of Wisdom becomes gross matter, sinful Substance, and Ea is changed into
Tiamat, the dragon slain by Merodach, or Satan, in the astral waves.
In the Hindu Puranas, Brahma, the
creator, is seen recommencing de novo several creations after as many failures;
and two great creations are mentioned,* the Padma and the Varaha, the present,
when the Earth was lifted out of the water by Brahma, in the shape of a boar,
or "Varaha Avatar." Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lila)
of the creative god. The Zohar speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as
soon as they came into existence. And the same is said in Midraish, Rabbi Abahu
explaining distinctly (in Bereschith Rabba, Parscha IX.) that "the Holy
One" had successively created and de-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These two must not be confused with
the seven creations or divisions in each Kalpa (See Book I. "The Seven
Creations"). The primary and secondary creations are here meant.
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stroyed sundry worlds, before he
succeeded in the present one. This does not relate only to other worlds in
space, but to a mystery of our own globe contained in the allegory about the
"kings of Edom." For the words, "This one pleases me," are
repeated in Genesis i. 31, though in disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldean
fragments of Cosmogony on the Cuneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two
distinct creations of animals and men, the first being destroyed, as it was a
failure. The Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our actual creation was
preceded by others (See "Hibbert Lectures," p. 390); and as shown by
the author of "The Qabbalah," in the Zohar, Siphrah Dzeniouta, in
Jovah Rabbah, 128a, etc., etc. The Kabala states the same.
(b) Oannes (or Dagon, the Chaldean
"Man-fish") divides his Cosmogony and Genesis into two portions.
First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein resided most hideous beings --
men with wings, four and two-faced men, human beings with two heads, with the
legs and horns of a goat (our "goat-men,")* hippocentaurs, bulls with
the heads of men, and dogs with tails of fishes. In short, combinations of
various animals and men, of fishes, reptiles and other monstrous animals
assuming each other's shapes and countenances. The feminine element they resided
in, is personified by Thalatth -- the Sea, or "Water" -- which was
finally conquered by Belus, the male principle. And Polyhistor says:
"Belus came and cut the woman asunder, and of one half of her he formed
the Earth, and of the other half the heavens, and at the same time he destroyed
the animals within her." As pertinently remarked by I. Myer, "with
the Akkadians each object and power of Nature had its Zi, Spirit. The Akkadians
formed their deities into triads, usually males (sexless, rather?); the Semites
also had triadic deities, but introduced sex" (p. 246) -- or phallicism.
With the Aryans and the earliest Akkadians all things are emanations through,
not by, a creator or logos. With the Semites everything is begotten.
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Yu, (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 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. (See "Mythical
Monsters," by C. Gould, p. 27.)
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6. THE WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD SHE
HERSELF CREATED. FROM THE REMAINS OF OTHERS (from the mineral, vegetable and
animal remains) FROM THE FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD (Rounds) SHE FORMED THEM. THE
DHYANI CAME AND LOOKED. . . . . THE DHYANI FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER-MOTHER, FROM
THE WHITE (Solar-lunar) REGIONS THEY CAME,* FROM THE ABODES OF THE
IMMORTAL-MORTALS (a).
(a) The explanations given in our
Stanzas are far more clear than that which the legend of creation from the
Cutha tablet would give, even were it complete. What is preserved on it,
however, corroborates them. For, in the tablet, "the Lord of Angels"
destroys the men in the abyss, when "there were not left the carcases and
waste" after they were slaughtered. After which they, the Great Gods,
create men with the bodies of birds of the desert, human beings, "seven
kings, brothers of the same family," etc., which is a reference to the
locomotive qualities of the primary ethereal bodies of men, which could fly as
well as they could walk,** but who "were destroyed" because they were
not "perfect," i.e., they "were sexless, like the Kings of
Edom."
Weeded of metaphors and allegories,
what will science say to this idea of a primordial creation of species? It will
object to the "Angels" and "Spirits" having anything to do
therewith: but if it is nature and the physical law of evolution that are the
creators of all there is now on Earth, why could there be "no such
abyss" when the globe was covered with waters, in which numbers of
monstrous beings were generated? Is it the "human beings" and animals
with human heads and double faces, which are a point of the objection? But if
man is only a higher animal and has evolved from the brute species by an
infinite series of transformations, why could not the "missing links"
have had human heads attached to the bodies of animals, or, being two-headed,
have heads of beasts and vice versa, in Nature's early efforts? Are we not
shown during the geological periods, in the ages of the reptiles and the
mammalia, lizards with birds' wings, and serpents' heads on animal bodies.***
And, arguing from the standpoint of science, does not even our modern human
race occasionally furnish us with monster-specimens: two-headed children,
animal bodies with human heads, dog-headed babies, etc., etc.? And this proves
that, if nature will still play such
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Gods and planetary Spirits,
especially the Ribhus. "The three Ribhus" who yet become "thrice
seven in number" of their gifts.
** 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.
*** See "Mythical
Monsters," by Charles Gould.
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freaks now that she has settled for
ages into the order of her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by
Berosus, were a possibility in her opening programme; which possibility may
even have existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species
and began regular work upon them; which indeed now admits of definite proof by
the bare fact of "REVERSION," as science puts it.
This is what the doctrine teaches and
demonstrates by numerous proofs. But we shall not wait for the approval of
either dogmatic theology or materialistic science, but proceed with the
Stanzas. Let these speak for themselves, with the help of the light thrown by
the Commentaries and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these
questions will be considered later on.
Thus physical nature, when left to
herself in the creation of animal and man, is shown to have failed. She can
produce the first two and the lower animal kingdoms, but when it comes to the
turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his
creation, besides the "coats of skin" and the "Breath of animal
Life." The human Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than
purely physical materials to build their personalities with, under the penalty
of remaining even below any "Frankenstein" animal.*
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the first volume of the lately
published "Introduction a l'atude 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, 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.
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7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. OUR FLESH IS
NOT THERE (they said). THIS IS NO FIT RUPA FOR OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO
DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.* PURE WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (a). LET US
DRY THEM (the waters).
(a) Says the Catechism
(Commentaries):--
"It is from the material Worlds
that descend they, who fashion physical man at the new Manvantaras. They are
inferior Lha (Spirits), possessed of a dual body (an astral within an ethereal
form). They are the fashioners and creators of our body of illusion." . .
. .
"Into the forms projected by the
Lha (Pitris) the two letters** (the Monad, called also 'the Double Dragon')
descend from the spheres of expectation.*** But they are like a roof with no
walls, nor pillars to rest upon." . . . .
"Man needs four flames and three
fires to become one on Earth, and he requires the essence of the forty-nine
fires**** to be perfect. It is those who have deserted the Superior Spheres,
the Gods of Will,***** who complete the Manu of illusion. For the 'Double
Dragon' has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no
tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there
is no agent of transmission (Manas, "Mind") and the form knows it
not."
"In the highest worlds, the
three are one,****** on Earth (at first) the one becomes two. They are like the
two (side) lines of a triangle that has lost its bottom line -- which is the
third fire." (Catechism Book III., sec. 9.)
Now this requires some explanation
before proceeding any further. To do so especially for the benefit of our Aryan
Hindu brethren --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Monads of the presentments of
men of the Third Round, the huge Ape-like forms.
** 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.
*** The intermediate spheres, wherein
the Monads, which have not reached Nirvana, are said to slumber in unconscious
inactivity between the Manvantaras.
**** Explained elsewhere. The
"Three Fires," Pavaka, Pavamana, and Suchi, who had forty-five sons,
who, with their three fathers and their Father Agni, constitute the 49 fires.
Pavamana (fire produced by friction) is the parent of the fire of the Asuras;
Suchi (Solar fire) is the parent of the fire of the gods; and Pavaka (electric
fire) is the father of the fire of the Pitris (See Vayu Purana). But this is an
explanation on the material and the 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.
***** The Suras, who become later the
A-Suras.
****** Atma, 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.
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whose esoteric interpretations may differ
from our own -- we shall have to explain to them the foregoing by certain
passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the Puranas. In the allegories of
the latter, Brahma, who is collectively the creative Force of the Universe, is
said to be "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," (see Vishnu Purana, Book I. ch. V., closing Sloka.
Also "Manava Dharma Shastra" I. 30.) It is now proposed to examine
the exoteric account in the Vishnu Purana, and see how much it may agree or
disagree with our occult version.
-------
CREATION OF DIVINE BEINGS IN THE
EXOTERIC ACCOUNTS.
In the Vishnu Purana -- which is
certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name -- we find, as in all
the others, Brahma assuming as the male God, for purposes of creation,
"four bodies invested by three qualities."* It is said: "In this
manner, Maitreya, Jyotsna (dawn), Ratri (night), Ahan (day), and Sandhya
(evening twilight) are the four bodies of Brahma" . . (p. 81, Vol. I.,
Wilson's translation). As Parasara explains it, when Brahma wants to create the
world anew and construct progeny through his will, in the fourfold condition
(or the four orders of beings) termed gods (Dhyan Chohans), Demons** (i.e.,
more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and men, "he collects Yoga-like
(Yuyuje) his mind."
Strange to say, he begins by creating
DEMONS, who thus take precedence over the angels or gods. This is no
incongruity, nor is it due to inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a
profound esoteric meaning, quite clear to one free from Christian theological
prejudice. He who bears in mind that the principle MAHAT, or Intellect, the
"Universal Mind" (literally "the great"), which esoteric
philosophy explains as the "manifested Omniscience" -- the
"first product" of Pradhana (primordial matter) as Vishnu Purana
says, but the first Cosmic aspect of Parabrahm or the esoteric SAT, the
Universal Soul,*** as Occultism
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This has in esotericism a direct
bearing upon the seven principles of the manifested Brahma, or universe, in the
same order as in man. Exoterically, it is only four principles.
** 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.
*** The same order of principles in
man:-- Atma (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul), its vehicle, as Matter is the Vahan of
Spirit, and Manas (mind), the third, or the fifth microcosmically. On the plane
of personality, Manas is the first.
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teaches -- is at the root of
SELF-Consciousness, will understand the reason why. The so-called
"Demons" -- who are (esoterically) the Self-asserting and
(intellectually) active Principle -- are the positive poles of creation, so to
say; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated
allegorically in the Puranas.
"Having concentrated his mind
into itself and the quality of darkness pervading Brahma's assumed body, the
Asuras, issuing from his thigh, were first produced; after which, abandoning
this body, it was transformed into NIGHT." (See Part II., § "The Fallen
Angels.")
Two important points are involved
herein:-- (a) Primarily in the Rig-Veda, the "Asuras" are shown as
spiritual divine beings; their etymology is derived from asu (breath), the
"Breath of God," and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the
Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that
they are shown issuing from Brahma's thigh, and that their name began to be
derived from a privative, and sura, god (solar deities), or not-a-god, and that
they became the enemies of the gods. Every ancient theogony without exception
-- from the Aryan and the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod -- places, in the
order of Cosmogonical evolution, Night before the Day; even Genesis, where
"darkness is upon the face of the deep" before "the first
day." The reason for this is that every Cosmogony -- except in the Secret
Doctrine -- begins by the "Secondary Creation" so-called: to wit, the
manifested Universe, the Genesis of which has to open by a marked differentiation
between the eternal Light of Primary Creation, whose mystery must remain for
ever "Darkness" to the prying finite conception and intellect of the
profane, and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible nature. The Veda
contains the whole philosophy of that division without having ever been
correctly explained by our Orientalists, because it has never been understood
by them.
Continuing to create, Brahma assumes
another form, that of the Day, and creates from his breath the gods, who are
endowed with the quality of goodness (passivity)*. In his next body the quality
of great passivity prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the
side of that personage issued the Pitris, the progenitors of men, because, as
the text explains, "Brahma thought of himself (during the process) as the
father of the world."** This is Kriya-sakti -- the mysterious Yoga power
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thus, says the Commentary, the
saying "by day the gods are most powerful, and by night the demons,"
is purely allegorical.
** 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.
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explained elsewhere. This body of
Brahma when cast off became the Sandhya (evening twilight), the interval
between day and night.
Finally Brahma assumed his last form
pervaded by the quality of foulness, "and from this MEN, in whom foulness
and passion predominate, were produced." This body when cast off became
the dawn, or morning twilight -- the twilight of Humanity. Here Brahma stands
esoterically for the Pitris. He is collectively the Pitar, "father."
The true esoteric meaning of this
allegory must now be explained. Brahma here symbolizes personally the collective
creators of the World and Men -- the universe with all its numberless
productions of things movable and (seemingly) immovable.* He is collectively
the Prajapatis, the Lords of Being; and the four bodies typify the four classes
of creative powers or Dhyan Chohans, described in the Commentary directly
following Stanza VII. in Book I. The whole philosophy of the so-called
"Creation" of the good and evil in this world and of the whole cycle
of Manvantaric results therefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these
Four bodies of Brahma.
The reader will now be prepared to
understand the real, the esoteric significance of what follows. Moreover there
is an important point to be cleared up. Christian theology having arbitrarily
settled and agreed that Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest
creation, Satan being the first-created, the wisest and most beautiful of God's
Archangels, the word was given, the key-note struck. Henceforth all the pagan
scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown to be
demoniacal, and it was and is claimed that truth and fact belong to, and
commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and Mythologists, some
of them no Christians at all but "infidels," or men of science,
entered unconsciously to themselves, and by the mere force of association of
ideas and habit, into the theological groove. Purely Brahmanical
considerations, based on greed of power and ambition, allowed the masses to
remain in ignorance of great truths; and the same causes led the Initiates
among the early Christians to remain silent, while those who had never known
the truth disfigured the order of things, judging of the hierarchy of
"Angels" by their exoteric form. Thus as the Asuras had become the rebellious
inferior gods fighting the higher ones in popular creeds, so the highest
archangel, in truth the Agathodaemon, the eldest benevolent Logos, became with
theology the "Adversary" or Satan. But is this warranted by the
correct interpretation of any old Scripture? The answer is, most certainly not.
As the Mazdean Scriptures of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad and others
correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu
Pantheon, and restore through AHURA the Asuras to their legitimate place in
theogony, so the recent discoveries of the Chaldean tablets vindicate the good
name of the first divine Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian
Angelology is directly and solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who
brought their tenets from Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the
Laws of Moses, knew not of, and rejected, any angels, opposing even the immortality
of the human Soul (not impersonal Spirit). In the Bible the only
"Angels" spoken of are the "Sons of God" mentioned in
Genesis vi. (who are now regarded as the Nephilim, the Fallen Angels), and
several angels in human form, the "Messengers" of the Jewish God,
whose own rank needs a closer analysis than heretofore given. (Vide Supra,
Stanza I., sub-sections 2, 3, et seq., where it is shown that the early
Akkadians called Ea, Wisdom, that which was disfigured by the later Chaldees
and Semites into Tismat, Tisalat and the Thallath 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? But
compare Mr. G. Smith's "Assyrian Discoveries," p. 398, and his
"Chaldean Account of Genesis," p. 107. The "Tablet with the
story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits," has the following account --
we print the important passages in italics:--
1. In the first days the evil Gods,
2. the angels, who were in rebellion,
who in the lower part of heaven
3. had been created,
4. they caused their evil work
5. devising with wicked heads . . . .
etc.
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can
be, on a fragment which remained unbroken, so that there can be no dubious
reading, that the "rebellious angels" had been created in the lower
part of heaven, i.e., that they belonged and do belong to a material plane of
evolution, although as it is not the plane of which we are made cognizant
through our senses, it remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded
as subjective. Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this
our visible world, and especially the Earth, had been created by lower angels,
the inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one. These
Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, and
therefore ought to be allowed to have known better than non-initiated
Christians, who took upon themselves, hundreds of years
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later, to remodel and correct what
was said. But let us see what the same Tablet says further on:--
7. There were seven of them (the
wicked gods) . . . . (then follows the description of these, the fourth being a
"serpent," the phallic symbol of the fourth Race in human Evolution).
15. The seven of them, messengers of
the God Anu, their king.
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldean
trinity, and is identical with Sin, the "Moon," in one aspect. And
the Moon in the Hebrew Kabala is the Argha of the seed of all material life,
and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is
double-sexed as Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism and viewed
from a dual aspect: male or spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and
Matter, the two antagonistic principles. Hence the "Messengers of
Anu," (who is Sin, the "Moon,") are shown, in verses 28 to 41,
as being finally overpowered by the same Sin with the help of Bel (the Sun) and
Ishtar (Venus). This is regarded as a contradiction by the Assyriologists, but
is simply metaphysics in the esoteric teaching.
There is more than one
interpretation, for there are seven keys to the mystery of the Fall. Moreover
there are two "Falls" in Theology: the rebellion of the Archangels
and their "Fall," and the "Fall" of Adam and Eve. Thus the
lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a supposed crime. The
word "supposed" is the true and correct term, for in both cases it is
founded on misconception. Both are considered in Occultism as Karmic effects,
and both belong to the law of Evolution: intellectual and spiritual on the one
hand, physical and psychic on the other. The "Fall" is a universal
allegory. It sets forth at one end of the ladder of Evolution the "rebellion,"
i.e., the action of differentiating intellection or consciousness on its
various planes, seeking union with matter; and at the other, the lower end, the
rebellion of matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And
here lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the
intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original
allegory it is matter -- hence the more material angels -- which was regarded
as the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who "fell" on this
plane. "They of the flaming sword (or animal passions) had put to flight
the Spirits of Darkness." Yet it is the latter who fought for the
supremacy of the conscious and divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing
to the power of matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is
Michael, "who is like unto God," the representative of Jehovah, who
is the leader of the celestial hosts -- as Lucifer, in Milton's fancy, is of
the infernal hosts -- who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of
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Michael depends upon that of his
Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may find out by carefully studying
the allegory of the "War in Heaven" with the astronomical key. As
shown by Bentley, the "War of the Titans against the gods" in Hesiod,
and also the war of the Asuras (or the Tarakamaya) against the devas in Puranic
legend, are identical in all save the names. The aspects of the stars show
(Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the nearest date for such conjunction)
that "all the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the heavens
as the Sun and Moon," and hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn,
or the Jewish "Moon-god," who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod
and Moses, neither of whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning
became distorted.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH
THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT FIRES AND THE DAY FIRES (a). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID
DARK WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS (Spirits) OF THE
HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN (those) OF BELOW, CAME (b). THEY SLEW THE FORMS, WHICH WERE
TWO- AND FOUR-FACED. THEY FOUGHT THE GOAT-MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED MEN, AND THE
MEN WITH FISHES' BODIES.
(a) The "Flames" are a
Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the
"burning" fiery Saraph (Seraphim) mentioned by Isaiah (vi. 2-6),
those who attend, according to Hebrew Theogony, "the Throne of the
Almighty." Melha is the Lord of the "Flames." When he appears on
Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He is one
of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.
(b) The word "Below" must
not be taken to mean infernal regions, but simply a spiritual, or rather
ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step
higher than our terrestrial sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest
Spheres -- whence the name of the capital of Tibet, Lha-ssa.
Besides a statement of a purely
physical nature and belonging to the
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evolution of life on Earth, there may
be another allegorical meaning attached to this Sloka, or indeed, as is taught,
several. The FLAMES, or "Fires," represent Spirit, or the male
element, and "Water," matter, or the opposite element. And here again
we find, in the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a
reference to the eternal struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between
Spirit and Matter, besides a scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next
verse:--
-------
9. MOTHER-WATER, THE GREAT SEA WEPT.
SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN
HER BIRTH (a).
(a) Now what can this mean? Is it not
an evident reference to tidal action in the early stage of the history of our
planet in its fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of late in its
speculations on the Palaeozoic high-tides. Mr. Darwin's theory was that not
less than 52,000,000 years ago -- and probably much more -- the Moon originated
from the Earth's plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left
by Helmholtz, Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of
tidal retardation of the earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of
time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our planet at only "a
fraction of its present distance." In short, his theory was that it is the
Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring with the
swing of the globular mass -- centrifugal tendency being then nearly equal to
gravity -- the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus
separate completely from the Earth.*
The Occult teaching is the reverse of
this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as explained in Book I., it is
the latter which owes its being to the former, however astronomy and geology
may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown
by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its
parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that "the Mother-Water arose
and disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her
birth."
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* But see the difficulties suggested
later, in the works of various geologists, against this theory. Compare Sir R.
S. Bull's article in "Nature" (Dec. 1, 1881), and also what the
American geologists say.
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10. WHEN THEY (the Rupas) WERE
DESTROYED, MOTHER-EARTH REMAINED BARE,* SHE ASKED TO BE DRIED (a).**
(a) The time for its incrustation had
arrived. The waters had separated and the process was started. It was the
beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. Another key
teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire (liquid fire it calls
it),*** and enters upon an alchemical description of the progeny of the two --
solid matter such as minerals and earths. From the "Waters of Space,"
the progeny of the male Spirit-Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become
the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space,
to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found
to be based on a strictly scientific foundation.
Water is the symbol of the female
element everywhere; mater, from which the letter M, is derived pictorially from
[[diagram]] a water hieroglyph. It is the universal matrix or the "Great
Deep." Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, issues forth from the Sea-wave, and
Cupid or Eros is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gaia
(or Gaea), the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Nature (Prakriti), and
metaphysically Aditi, and even Mulaprakriti, the root of Prakriti or its
noumenon.
Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive
sense is Eros, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible
creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Eros, becomes on Earth the great power
"Life-electricity," or the Spirit of "Life-giving." Let us
remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its philosophy. We are
taught by the Greeks (See "Iliad" IV., 201, 246) that all things,
gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter
being Gaea, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable
SPACE (Spirit in Chaos), which is the Deity (see Book I.); and Tethys is not
the Earth, but primordial matter in the process of formation. In our case it is
no longer Aditi-Gaea who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Aditya among the
seven planetary gods, but Prakriti, materialised and localised. The Moon,
masculine in its theogonic character, is,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The goddess who gave birth to these
primordial monsters, in the account of Berosus, was Thallath, in Greek
Thalassa, "the Sea."
** See, for comparison, the account
of creation by Berosus (Alexander Polyhistor) and the hideous beings born from
the two-fold principle (Earth and Water) in the Abyss of primordial creation:
Neras (Centaurs, men with the limbs of horses and human bodies), and Kimnaras
(men with the heads of horses) created by Brahma in the commencement of the
Kalpa.
*** See Commentary following Sloka
18.
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in its cosmic aspect only, the female
generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the
progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.
Evolution proceeds on the laws of
analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest globe. Thus the above,
applying to the modus operandi at the time when the Universe was appearing,
applies also in the case of our Earth's formation.
This Stanza opens by speaking of
thirty crores, 30,000,000, of years. We may be asked -- What could the ancients
know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern scientist or
mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like
approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means (and it is
maintained that they had them in their Zodiacs), still the chronology of the
ancient Brahmins shall now be given as faithfully as possible.
-------
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS.
No greater riddle exists in science,
no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old -- even
approximately -- are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does modern
science know of the duration of the ages of the World, or even of the length of
geological periods?
Nothing; absolutely nothing.
If one turns to science for
chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and
truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent geologist, "We do not
know."* One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of
the ages of the world and man could be made, and that both geology and
anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of esoteric philosophy presumes to
bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why
should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the
greatest scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?
It is true that science can hardly be
blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the
explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing
no visible exit into the Archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own
conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern
tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them,
what can geologists or anthropologists do but pick up the slender
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For a similar admission see Prof.
Lefevre's Philosophy, p. 481.
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thread of Ariadne where they first
perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told
that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally
regarded by Anthropology as but "the earliest distinctly visible point of
the pre-historic period." (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)
At the same time it is confessed that
"beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of prehistoric
ages." (Ibid.)
It is with those specified
"Ages" that we shall begin. They are "prehistoric" to the
naked eye of matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the seer and the
prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that "historic
period" without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of
time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it
break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane;
though many of them are tacitly accepted by philosophers and men of great
learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and
collective body of orthodox science. And since the latter refuses to give us
even an approximate idea of the duration of the geological ages -- save in a
few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses -- let us see what Aryan
philosophy can teach us.
Such computations as are given in
Manu and the Puranas -- save trifling and most evidently intentional
exaggerations -- are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in
esoteric philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindu
calendar of recognised orthodoxy.
The best and most complete of all
such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brahmins of Southern
India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called the "Tirukkanda
Panchanga," compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with,
secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the
greatest astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful
"Sorcerer" of the "WHITE ISLAND, which had become BLACK with
sin," i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.
The "White Island" is a
symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived (see the tradition of
Jhana-bhaskara) in Romaka-pura in the West: because the name is an allusion to
the land and cradle of the "Sweat-born" of the Third Race. That land
or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an
Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race, the Race that never
dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Surya (the
Sun-God) himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he
lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no
myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The
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fact of "Romaka-pura in the
West" being named as the birth-place of this hero of the archaic ages, is
the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the esoteric teaching
about the "Sweat-born" Races, the men born from the pores of their
parents. "ROMAKUPAS" means "hair-pores" in Sanskrit. In
Mahabharata XII. 10,308, a people named Raumyas are said to have been created
from the pores of Virabhadara, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's
sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way.
All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root Races.
The following figures are from the
calendar just referred to; a footnote marks the points of disagreement with the
figures of the Arya Samaj school:--
I. From the beginning of cosmic
evolution,* up
to the Hindu year Tarana (or 1887)
.............. 1,955,884,687 years.
II. The (astral) mineral, vegetable
and animal
kingdoms up to Man, have taken to
evolve** ........ 300,000,000 years.
III. Time, from the first appearance
of
"Humanity" (on planetary
chain)...................1,664,500,987 years.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The esoteric doctrine says that
this "cosmic evolution" refers only to our solar system; while
exoteric Hinduism makes the figures refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole
Universal System.
** Another point of disagreement. Occultism
says: "The astral prototypes of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms
up to man have taken that time (300 million years) to evolve, re-forming 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 materialising
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
Brahmanical figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and in the First
Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round."
*** 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 Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, gives
a date of 1,960,852,987. See the "Arya Magazine" of Lahore, the cover
of which bears the words: "Aryan era 1,960,852,987."
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IV. The number that elapsed since the
"Vaivasvata Manvantara"* -- 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. 14 "Manvantaras" plus
the period of one Satya Yuga make ONE DAY OF BRAHMA, or complete Manvantara and
make .............. 4,320,000,000 years.
Therefore a Maha-Yuga consists of ...
......... 4,320,000 years.**
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.
Mortal years.
360 days of mortals make a year
.......................... 1
Krita Yuga contains ..............................
1,728,000
Treta Yuga contains
.............................. 1,296,000
Dwapara Yuga contains
.............................. 864,000
Kali Yuga contains
................................. 432,000
The total of the said four Yugas
constitute a
Maha Yuga
........................................ 4,320,000
Seventy-one of such Maha-Yugas form
the
period of the reign of one Manu
................ 306,720,000
The reign of 14 Manus embraces the
duration
of 994 Maha-Yugas, which is equal to
......... 4,294,080,000
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* VAIVASVATA Manu is the one human
being -- some versions add to him the seven Rishis -- who in the Matsya Avatar
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, "Prakritika," elemental, "Atyantika," the
absolute, and "Nitya," the perpetual Pralaya; the latter being
described as "Brahma's contingent recoalescence of the Universe at the end
of Brahma's DAY." The question was raised by a learned Brahmin
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
reabsorbed into the parent essence. Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not
for the Arupa, formless, world. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at
the end of one hundred years of Brahma; 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. . . . ."
** Since a Maha-Yuga is the 1,000th
part of a day of Brahma.
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Add Sandhis, i.e., intervals between
the reign of each Manu, which amount
to six Maha-Yugas, equal to
............................................................ 25,920,000
The total of these reigns and
interregnums of 14 Manus, is 1,000 Maha-Yugas,
which constitute a Kalpa, i.e., one
day of Brahma .........................................................
4,320,000,000
As Brahma's Night is of equal
duration, one Day and Night of Brahma would contain
................................................. 8,640,000,000
360 of such days and nights make one
year of Brahma make .....................................................
3,110,400,000,000
100 such years constitute the whole
period of Brahma's age, i.e., Maha-Kalpa
................................................... 311,040,000,000,000
These are the exoteric figures
accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the
Secret works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of
esoteric cycles, never mentioned in Brahmanical popular writings -- one of
which, the division of the Yugas into racial cycles, is given elsewhere as an
instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public.
They are, nevertheless, known to every "Twice-born" (Dwija, or
Initiated) Brahmin, and the Puranas contain references to some of them in
veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make
out, nor could he if he would.
These sacred astronomical cycles are
of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations
of Narada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a giant and a
sorcerer. But the antediluvian giants (the Gibborim of the Bible) were not all
bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a
servant of the Evil one, would have it; nor were they worse than many of
"the faithful sons of the Church." A Torquemada and a Catherine de
Medicis certainly did more harm in their day and in the name of their Master
than any Atlantean giant or demigod of antiquity ever did; whether his name was
Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as
Ephialtes. There were good "giants" in days of old just as there are
bad "pigmies" now; and the Rakshasas and Yakshas of Lanka are no
worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilised generals
during modern wars. Nor are they myths. "He who would laugh at Briareus
and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Karnac or
Stonehenge," remarks somewhere a modern writer.
As the Brahmanical figures given
above are approximately the basic calculations of our esoteric system, the
reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.
In the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica" one finds, as the last word of science, that the antiquity of
man is allowed to stretch only over "tens of thou-
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sands of years."* It becomes
evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and
100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still
denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that
science places the birth of man in the "pre- or post-glacial drift,"
if we are told at the same time that the so-called "ice age" is
simply a long succession of ages which "shaded without abrupt change of
any kind into what is termed the human or Recent period . . . the overlapping
of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time."
The latter "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if
strictly scientific and correct, information, that "even to-day man is contemporary
with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark."**
Thus, had it not been for the lessons
taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hinduism and its
traditions, we should be left to this day to float in perplexed uncertainty between
the indefinite ages of one school of science, the "tens of thousands"
of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is
one of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of
the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such
questions of pre-historic antiquity.
Modern Geology and Anthropology must,
of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons
against these two sciences as it has against astronomical and physical
theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that*** "in (chronological)
calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is no
theory, and they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible
(?) amount of error either way," occultism will prove, scientific
confessions in hand, that geology is very much in error, and very often even
more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to
Geology pre-eminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in
flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves.
Says the author --
"In short, the conclusions of
Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period,**** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See article "Geology," in
"Encyclopaedia Britannica."
** This allows a chance even to the
Biblical "Adam Chronology" of 6,000 years. (Ibid.)
*** See his "Modern Science and
Modern Thought."
**** To the Silurian period as
regards Molluscs and Animal life -- granted; but what do they know of man?
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cases they give results incredibly
short . . . in others they give results almost incredibly long."
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," as "Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown
time 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." (p. 49.)
Judging from past experience, we do
not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer "the
absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and esoteric) Aryan
chronology," the scientist of "the results incredibly short," i.e.,
only 15,000,000 years, and the scientist, who "would require 600,000,000
years," together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of
1,000,000,000 "since sedimentation began in Europe" (World Life),
would all be as dogmatic one as the other. Nor would they fail to remind the
Occultist and the Brahmin, that it is the modern men of science alone who
represent exact science, whose duty it is to fight inaccuracy and superstition.
The earth is passing through the
"habitable phase" only for the present order of things, and as far as
our present mankind is concerned with its actual "coats of skin" and
phosphorus for bones and brain.
We are ready to concede the 100
millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present
physical mankind -- or the Vaivasvata humanity -- began only 18 millions of
years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological
periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic
letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says that: "It is
at present, and perhaps always will be, IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even
approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums." And
having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the present
form -- what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with
these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the
same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will
admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material
"to the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,"
whether "man has existed in state of constant though slow progression for
the last 50,000 years of period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years
of a period of 150 millions" ("Modern Science, etc." p. 49), as
Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the
Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a possibility, if not a perfect
certainty, that man
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lived 18 millions of years ago, the
Secret Doctrine might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must,
therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern geologists and men
of science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the third
part of this volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindu Chronology
is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no
"actual computation,"* but simply a "childish boasting," it
is nevertbeless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit
in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and
tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers of the Yugas and
Maha-Yugas.
As the whole cycle of prehistoric
events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme
antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely
important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology
is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other --
whether the figures of Science or of the Churches -- is one whit more reliable.
As Professor Max Muller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a
thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the
fallacies of both Christian and scientific computations -- by allowing them a fair
chance of comparison with our Chronology -- neither of the two will have a
reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the esoteric figures less
reliable than its own.
We may here refer the reader to our
earlier work "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I., p. 32, for some remarks
concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.
To-day a few more facts may be added
to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist.
The sacredness of the cycle of 4320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact
that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various
combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature.
Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two
together making 7, or again the three added together and yielding 9, all these
numbers have their application in the most sacred and occult things, and record
the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never
erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the
secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony,
which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible
influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reaction on
terrestrial and even moral nature; on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Wilson's "Translation of
Vishnu Purana," Vol. I., pp. 50, 51.
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birth, death, and growth, on health
and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical
processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from
without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from one end
to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric, and
endexoteric, so to say.
In Isis Unveiled we wrote that which
we now repeat:-- "We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a
transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe
during every cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions,
the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with
the divine nature, he says; 'but their parts,' owing to a too close proximity
to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is matter, and
therefore the realm of evil), 'are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary
to (divine) nature.' When those circulations -- which Eliphas Levi calls '
currents of the astral light' -- in the universal ether which contains in
itself every element, take place in harmony with the divine spirit, our earth
and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The occult powers of
plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the ' superior
natures,' and the divine soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these
'inferior' ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic
sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as
to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own divine spirit. We are in
a barren period: the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of
scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary
disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal
brain alone philosophizes." And philosophizing alone, how can it
understand the "SOUL DOCTRINE"?
In order not to break the thread of
the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part
II., proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of geological and racial
cycles.
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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
(the atmosphere, or the air, the firmament) (a).
(a) Here tradition falls again into
the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the Puranas, so in the
latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said: "He the Lord"
(the god who has the form of Brahma) "when the world had become one ocean
(Harivamsa I. 36) 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. etc." In the Elohistic
"creation" (Genesis, verses 6, 7, 8, and 9) "God" creates a
firmament in the midst of the waters . . . . . and says "let dry land
appear." And now comes the traditional peg whereunto is hung the esoteric
portion of the Kabalistic interpretation.
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS (Lords), CALLED
THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY BODIES (a). "BRING FORTH MEN, (they
were told), MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM (i.e., the Jivas or Monads) THEIR
FORMS WITHIN. SHE (Mother Earth or Nature) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT
(external bodies). (For) MALES-FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME,
ALSO."
(a) Who are the Lords of the Moon? In
India they are called Pitris or "lunar ancestors," but in the Hebrew
scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the "Lord of the Moon,"
collectively as the Host, and also as one of the Elohim. The astronomy of the
Hebrews and their observance of times was regulated by the moon. A Kabalist,
having shown that "Daniel . . . told off God's providence by set
times," and that the "Revelation" of John "speaks of a
carefully measured cubical city descending out of the heavens," etc., adds
--
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"But the vitalizing power of
heaven lay chiefly with the moon. . . . It was the Hebrew [[hebrew]] (Jehovah),
and St. Paul enjoins: 'Let no man judge you for your observance of the seventh
day, and the day of the new moon, which are a shadow of things to come; but the
body (or substance) is of Christ" or Jehovah, that function of this power
that "made the barren woman . . . a mother . . . 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
seventh day nor the day of the new moon. . . . (2 Kings, iv., 23.) 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 Hindu
"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* or produced from the sea, SRI (Sarai, S-r-i, the wife of the Hebrew
A-bram**). Sri is also Venus-Aphrodite the Western emblem "of the
luni-solar year or the moon (as Sri is the wife of the moon; vide foot-note),
the goddess of increase*** . . . " Therefore . . . "the grand
monument and landmark of the exact period of the lunar year and month, by which
this cycle (of 19 tropical years 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) is Mount Sinai in Arabia.'
How could a woman be a mountain? and such a mountain! Yet . . . she was. . . .
Her name was Hagar, Hebrew [[hebrew]], whose numbers re-read 235, or in exact
measure, the very number of lunar months to equal nineteen tropical years to
complete this cycle. . . . Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of the
wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 Hindu dates as far as they can.
** Now Sri is the daughter of Bhrigu,
one of the Prajapatis and Rishis, the chief of the Bhrigus, "the
Consumers," the aerial class of gods. She is Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu,
and she is "the bride of Siva" (Gauri), and she is Sarasvati,
"the watery," the wife of Brahma, because the three gods and
goddesses are one, under three aspects. Read the explanation by Parasara, in
Vishnu Purana in Bk. I., ch. viii. (Vol. I., Wilson's trans., p. 119), and you
will understand. "The Lord of Sri" is the moon, he says, and
"Sri is the wife of Narayana, the God of Gods"; Sri or Lakshmi
(Venus) is Indrani, as she is Sarasvati, for in the words of Parasara:
"Hari (or Iswara, "the Lord") is all that is called male in the
Universe; Lakshmi is all that is termed female. There is nothing else than
they." Hence she is "female," and "God" is male
Nature.
*** Sri is goddess of, and herself
"Fortune and Prosperity."
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years and months, by which this
spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed -- and which mountain, indeed, was
called (see 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]], giving to her the property of this lunar influence."*
This may be regarded as a digression
from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one with a view to Christian
readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective legends of
Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was "fair to look upon," and
those of Brahma and Sarasvati, or Sri, Lakshmi-Venus, with the relations of all
these to the Moon and Water; -- and especially one who understands the real
Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection
with, the moon -- who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of
Brahma, or that Genesis was written upon the old lines used by every ancient
nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical -- all based upon and
inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
-------
13. THEY (the Moon-gods) WENT, EACH
ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME
REMAINED BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE (a).
(a) The Secret teachings show the
divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of the globe "each on
his lot" -- i.e., each a different race of men externally and internally,
and on different zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere (vide
Stanza VII.). But who are "They" who create, and the "Lords of
the Flame," "who do not"? Occultism divides the "Creators"
into twelve classes; of which four have reached liberation to the end of the
"Great Age," the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active
on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic law.
These last act on the man-bearing globes of our chain.
Exoteric Hindu books mention seven
classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of Progenitors or
Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishwatta; or those possessed of the
"sacred fire" and those devoid of it. Hindu ritualism seems to
connect them with sacrificial fires, and with Grihasta Brahmins in earlier
incarnations: those who have, and those who have not attended as they should to
their household sacred fires in their previous births. The distinction, as
said, is derived from the Vedas. The first and highest class (esoterically) the
Agnishwatta,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Masonic Review";
Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. "The Cabbalah."
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are represented in the exoteric
allegory as Grihasta (Brahman-householders) who, in their past births in other
Manvantaras having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt
sacrifices, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to
them. Whereas the Barhishad, being Brahmins who have kept up their household
sacred fires, are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishwatta are
represented as devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
But esoteric philosophy explains the
original qualifications as being due to the difference between the natures of
the two classes: the Agnishwatta Pitris are devoid of fire (i.e., of creative
passion), because too divine and pure (vide supra, Sloka 11th); whereas the
Barhishad, being the lunar spirits more closely connected with Earth, became
the creative Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust.
The allegory says that Sanandana and
other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahma, his first progeny, "were without desire
or passion, inspired with the holy wisdom, estranged from the Universe and
undesirous of progeny" (Vishnu Purana, Book I. vii.). This also is what is
meant in Sloka 11 by the words: "They would not create," and is
explained as follows:-- "The primordial Emanations from the creative Power
are too near the absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which
will develop only in the next and subsequent removes." This makes it
plain. Hence Brahma is said to have felt wrathful when he saw that those
"embodied spirits, produced from his limbs (gatra), would not multiply
themselves." After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven mind-born
Sons (see "Moksha-Darma" and "Mahabharata"), namely,
Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishta, the latter being
often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the creators. In most of the
texts these Seven Sons of Vasishta-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 Prajapati, and at the same
time they appear as divers reincarnations in the early Manvantaras or races.
It thus becomes clear why the
Agnishwatta, devoid of the grosser creative fire, hence unable to create
physical man, having no double, or astral body, to project, since they were
without any form, are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogis, Kumaras (chaste
youths), who became "rebels," Asuras, fighting and opposing gods,*
etc., etc. Yet it is they
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Yogis, and thus
threatened to upset the power of the former by their self-acquired powers --
renounced them. All this has a deep philosophical meaning and refers to the
evolution and acquirement of divine powers through self-exertion. Some Rishi-
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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alone who could complete man, i.e.,
make of him a self-conscious, almost a divine being -- god on Earth. The
Barhishad, though possessed of creative fire, were devoid of the higher
MAHAT-mic element. Being on a level with the lower principles -- those which
precede gross objective matter -- they could only give birth to the outer man,
or rather to the model of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see
them intrusted with the task by Brahma (the collective Mahat or Universal
Divine Mind), the "Mystery of Creation" is repeated on Earth, only in
an inverted sense, as in a mirror. It is those who are unable to create the
spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral) of the
physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who
sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to
complete the septenary man, to add to his three lower principles and cement
them with the spiritual Monad -- which could never dwell in such a form
otherwise than in an absolutely latent state -- two connecting principles are
needed: Manas and Kama. This requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle
principle from the fifth and third states of Pleroma. But this fire is the
possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize the
Angelic Beings:* the former having from the first creation got hold of it and
being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of
Prometheus. These are the active, and therefore -- in Heaven -- no longer
"pure" Beings. They have become the independent and free
Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for that independence and
freedom, and hence -- in the ordinary sense -- "rebellious to the divine
passive law." These are then those "Flames" (the Agnishwatta)
who, as shown in Sloka 13, "remain behind" instead of going along
with the others to create men on Earth. But the true esoteric meaning is that
most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of
Mankind. The human Ego is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas: the
intellectual fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-conscious
Egotism -- in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as
Karana Sarira on the plane of Sutratma, which is the golden thread on which,
like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego are strung. If the
reader were told, as in the semi-esoteric allegories, that these Beings were
returning Nirvanees, from preceding Maha-Manvantaras -- ages of incalculable
dura-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Yogis are shown in the Puranas 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.
* See Book I., Stanzas III. to V. The
triangle becomes a Pentagon (five-fold) on Earth.
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tion which have rolled away in the
Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago -- he would hardly understand the
text correctly; while some Vedantins might say: "This is not so; the
Nirvanee can never return"; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs
to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred
Slokas:
"The thread of radiance which is
imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvana, re-emerges from it in its integrity
on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action. . . ."
Hence, as the higher "Pitris or
Dhyanis" had no hand in his physical creation, we find primeval man,
issued from the bodies of his spiritually fireless progenitors, described as
aeriform, devoid of compactness, and MINDLESS. He had no middle principle to
serve him as a medium between the highest and the lowest, the spiritual man and
the physical brain, for he lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those
empty SHELLS, remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous
incomplete forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for creation, or
self-Consciousness, in a pure Spirit on this our plane, unless its too
homogeneous, perfect, because divine, nature is, so to say, mixed with, and
strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower line
of the Triangle -- representing the first triad that emanates from the
Universal MONAD -- that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of
differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this
principle, must have originally been themselves unconscious (in our sense), be
of any use in supplying the required principle, as they could hardly have
possessed it themselves? The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is
well acquainted with the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and
endless series of Cosmic Re-births; and becomes well impressed and familiarised
with that immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and spiral,
therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one divine
Principle, the nameless THAT of the Vedas, is the universal Total, which,
neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its physical atoms, can
ever be at "absolute rest" except during the "Nights" of
Brahma. Hence, also, the "first-born" are those who are first set in
motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into the
lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology "the
Thrones," and are the "Seat of God," must be the first incarnated
men on Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series
of past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first
last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless aeons
before, through the "Seven Circles," and thus robbed them of the
Sacred fire;
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which means in plain words, that they
had assimilated during their past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher
worlds, all the wisdom therefrom -- the reflection of MAHAT in its various
degrees of intensity. No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state
of Nirvana, or of absolute purity, except through aeons of suffering and the
knowledge of EVIL as well as of good, as otherwise the latter remains
incomprehensible.
Between man and the animal -- whose
Monads (or Jivas) are fundamentally identical -- there is the impassable abyss
of Mentality and Self-consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect,
whence comes it, if it is not a portion of the essence -- and, in some rare
cases of incarnation, the very essence -- of a higher Being: one from a higher
and divine plane? Can man -- a god in the animal form -- be the product of
Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from
man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric,
and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad -- seeing that the
intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the
Glow-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal
plus a living god within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves
seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the
materialistic and the psychological modern sciences.
To some extent, it is admitted that
even the esoteric teaching is allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to
the average intelligence, requires the use of symbols cast in an intelligible
form. Hence the allegorical and semi-mythical narratives in the exoteric, and
the (only) semi-metaphysical and objective representations in the esoteric
teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are
adapted only to the perceptions of those who "see without eyes, hear
without ears, and sense without organs," according to the graphic
expression of the Commentary. The too puritan idealist is at liberty to
spiritualise the tenet, whereas the modern psychologist would simply try to
spirit away our "fallen," yet still divine, human Soul in its
connection with Buddhi.
The mystery attached to the highly
spiritual ancestors of the divine man within the earthly man is very great. His
dual creation is hinted at in the Puranas, though its esoteric meaning can be
approached only by collating together the many varying accounts, and reading
them in their symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the Bible, both
in Genesis and even in the Epistles of Paul. For that creator, who is called in
the second chapter of Genesis the "Lord God," is in the original the
Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of them makes the earthly
Adam of dust, the other breathes into him the breath of life, and the third
makes of him a living soul (ii. 7), all of which readings
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are implied in the plural number of
the Elohim.* "The first man is of the Earth, the second (the last, or
rather highest) is from heaven," says Paul in I. Corinthians xv. 47.
In the Aryan allegory the rebellious
Sons of Brahma are all represented as holy ascetics and Yogis. Re-born in every
Kalpa, they generally try to impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha,
the chief of the Prajapati (creators), brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose
of peopling the world, Narada -- a son of Brahma, the great Rishi, and
virtually a "Kumara," if not so in name -- interferes with, and twice
frustrates Daksha's aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy ascetics and
eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Narada to be re-born as a man, as
Brahma had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain progeny,
saying:-- "Perish in thy present (Deva or angelic) form and take up thy
abode in the womb," i.e., become a man (Vayu Purana; Harivamsa, 170). Notwithstanding
several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy to see that Narada
belongs to that class of Brahma's, "first-born," who have all proven
rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which they had to incarnate as
men. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Narada, as already shown, is the most
incomprehensible, because the most closely connected with the occult doctrines
-- especially with the secret cycles and Kalpas (vide supra).
Certain contradictory statements
about this Sage have much distracted the Orientalists. Thus he is shown as
refusing positively to create (have progeny), and even as calling his father
Brahma "a false teacher" for advising him to get married
("Narada-Pancha-Ratra"); nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the
Prajapati, "progenitors"! In Naradiya Purana, he describes the laws
and the duties of the celibate adepts; and as these occult duties do not happen
to be found in the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of
European museums, the Brahmins are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists
forgetting that the Naradiya is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and
that it is not very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the
Hindu profane, those who are ready to sell any precious olla for a red pottage.
Suffice it to say, that Narada is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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," vol. i, pp. 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" (Staniland Wake, "The Great Pyramid"). And Seth
became considered in the later Theology of the Egyptians as "AN EVIL
DAEMON," says the same Bunsen, for he is one with Typhon and one with the
Hindu demons as a logical sequel.
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the Deva-Rishi of Occultism par
excellence; and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyse, and study
Narada from his seven esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom certain
anthropological, chronological, and even Cosmic Mysteries. He is one of the Fires
above-mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of this Kalpa from its
incipient, down to its final stage. He is an actor who appears in each of the
successive acts (Root-Races) of the present Manvantaric drama, in the world
allegories which strike the key-note of esotericism, and are now becoming more
familiar to the reader. But shall we turn to other ancient Scriptures and
documents for the corroboration of the "Fires," "Sparks,"
and "Flames?" They are plentiful, if one only seeks for them in the right
places. In the "Book of the Concealed Mystery," they are clearly
enunciated, as also in the "Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha," or the lesser holy
Assembly. The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still comprehensible.
Therein, among the sparks of Prior Worlds, "vibrating Flames and
Sparks," from the divine flint, the workmen proceed to create man,
"male and female" (427); which "Flames and Sparks" (Angels
and their Worlds, Stars and Planets) are said, figuratively, to "become
extinct and die," that is to say, remain unmanifested until a certain
process of nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from public view
are the most important facts of anthropogenesis, two passages are now quoted
from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the Book of the Concealed
Mystery:--
(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.*
Now the following extract from the
Zohar** also deals with the same mystery:-- "The Pre-Adamite Kings. 'We
have learned in the Siphrah D'Tzniootha: That the At-tee'kah DAt-tee'keen,
Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared his Form, built Kings, and engraved
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Mr. Mather's "Kabbalah
Unveiled."
** Translated in I. Myer's Qabbalah.
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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
Ancients, arranged Himself . . . . and 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." (Zohar iii., 135a; 292a
Idra Zootah. Brody, etc.)
Now the plain meaning of these two
allegorical and metaphysical disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were
in turn formed and destroyed, under the law of evolution and from pre-existing
material, until both the planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its
animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle: opposite
polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive
and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and
female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form
on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic
forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be
marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in
an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the Balance, through which
everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in
this present stage of materiality. Chochmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephiroth, had to
diffuse itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding.
Therefore the First Root-race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be
overthrown and "hidden until after a time"; i.e., the first race,
instead of dying, disappeared in the second race, as certain lower lives and
plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The First became
the Second Root-race, without either begetting it, procreating it, or dying.
"They passed by together," as it is written: "And he died and
another reigned in his stead" (Genesis xxvi. 31 et seq. Zohar iii., 292a).
Why? Because "the Holy City had not been prepared." And what is the
"Holy City"? The Maquom (the Secret Place or the Shrine) on Earth: in
other words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the
Heavenly Matrix, the female space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit
fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe.* So much so, that in
the paragraph on "the Emanation of the Male and Female Principles" in
the Zohar
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide "The Holy of Holies: its
esoteric meaning," in Part IO of this Volume.
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(ibid.), it is said that, on this
earth, the WISDOM from the "Holy Ancient" "does not shine except
in male and female." "Hohmah, 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 Je-yeva
Sabah, i.e., the Old, we learned this: What is Binah Understanding? But when
they connect in one another, the [[diagram]] (Yod) in the [[diagram]] (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."*
This is also the
"completeness" of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis,
the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the
terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in
the primitive Kabala -- the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." We have said
so 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
Maha 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 Mahody of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhangulpore, the minarets of Islam
-- either rounded or pointed -- are the originals of the Campanile column of
San Marco, at Venice, of the 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."
(Vol. II., p. 5.)
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 Aryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabala.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Zohar iii., 290a, quoted in Isaac
Myer's Qabbalah, p. 387.
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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
(or Mind)-BORN" LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING (Fohat),
SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE (a).
(a) They threw off their
"shadows" or astral bodies -- if such an ethereal being as a
"lunar Spirit" may be supposed to rejoice in an astral, besides a
hardly tangible body. In another Commentary it is said that the "Ancestors"
breathed out the first man, as Brahma is explained to have breathed out the
Suras (Gods), when they became "Asuras" (from Asu, breath). In a
third it is said that they, the newly-created men, "were the shadows of
the Shadows."
With regard to this sentence --
"They were the shadows of the Shadows" -- a few more words may be
said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of
mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and
all will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the
Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their
primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of
procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist.
Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process,
though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to
speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their
being misunderstood. An "Adam" made of the dust of the ground will
always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected
out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never
been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists
in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of
those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materialising form oozing out of
the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his left side, can fail to credit
the possibility, at least, of such a birth? If there are
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in the Universe such beings as Angels
or Spirits, whose incorporeal essence may constitute an intelligent entity
notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are
those who believe that a god made the first man out of dust, and breathed into
him a living Soul -- and there are millions upon millions who believe both --
what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the
day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the
miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of nothing, according to the
dead letter of Genesis, or a first man born from a fantastic link -- absolutely
"missing" so far -- the common ancestor of man, and of the "true
ape."* Between these two fallacies,** Occult philosophy steps in. It
teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi-divine
Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as
abnormal or even inconceivable -- because obsolete in Nature at this point of
evolution -- it is yet proven possible on the authority of certain
"Spiritualistic" FACTS. Which, then, we ask of the three hypotheses
or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one --
provided he is not a soul-blind materialist -- can ever object to the occult
teaching.
Now, as shown, we gather from the
latter that man was not "created" the complete being he is now,
however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an
intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well
as a physical development -- from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more
complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the
modern evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required
various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and
intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one
absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* ". . . 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 Ernest Haeckel, 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).
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same lines from one eternity (or
Manvantara) to the other -- ever furnishing an ascending scale for the
manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Maha-Maya), but plunging
Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then redeeming
it through flesh and liberating it -- this law, we say, uses for these purposes
the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance
with their Karmic exigencies.
At this juncture, the reader is again
asked to turn to the Indian philosophy and religion. The Esotericism of both is
at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
-------
ON THE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCES OF
THE INCARNATING POWERS.
THE Progenitors of Man, called in
India "Fathers," Pitara or Pitris, are the creators of our bodies and
lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are
they. Primeval man would be "the bone of their bone and the flesh of their
flesh," if they had body and flesh. As stated, they were "lunar
Beings."
The Endowers of man with his conscious,
immortal EGO, are the "Solar Angels" -- whether so regarded
metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious EGO or human Soul
are great. The esoteric name of these "Solar Angels" is, literally,
the "Lords" (Nath) of "persevering ceaseless devotion"
(pranidhana). Therefore they of the fifth principle (Manas) seem to be
connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogis who make of
pranidhana their fifth observance (see Yoga Shastra, II., 32.) It has already
been explained why the trans-Himalayan Occultists regard them as evidently
identical with those who in India are termed Kumaras, Agnishwattas, and the
Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato's
expression, how profound and philosophical his remark on the (human) soul or
EGO, when he defined it as "a compound of the same and the other."
And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to
mean that the soul was the breath of God, of Jehovah. It is "the same and
the other," as the great Initiate-Philosopher said; for the EGO (the
"Higher Self" when merged with and in the Divine Monad) is Man, and
yet the same as the "OTHER," the Angel in him incarnated, as the same
with the universal MAHAT. The great classics 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;
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it is quintessence; it is a slender
likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is harmony. . . . . "
(Voltaire).
All these are the Manasam and
Rajasas: the Kumaras, Asuras, and other rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in
the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are seven classes of Pitris, as
shown below, three incorporeal and four corporeal; and two kinds, the
Agnishwatta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two kinds of
Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishwatta. The
former, having given birth to their astral doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri,
and are the "Pitris of the Demons," or corporeal beings, on the
authority of Manu (III., 196); while the Agnishwatta are reborn as Sons of
Marichi (a son of Brahma), and are the Pitris of the Gods (Manu again, Matsya
and Padma Puranas and Kulluka in the Laws of the Manavas, III., 195).*
Moreover, the Vayu Purana declares all the seven orders to have originally been
the first gods, the Vairajas, whom Brahma "with the eye of Yoga, beheld in
the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of gods"; and the Matsya adds
that the Gods worshipped them; while the Harivansa (S. 1, 935) distinguishes the
Virajas as one class of the Pitris only -- a statement corroborated in the
Secret Teachings, which, however, identify the Virajas with the elder
Agnishwattas** and the Rajasas, or Abhutarajasas, who are incorporeal without
even an astral phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated
in and through them. "In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of
gods, was born of Sambhuti, as the divine Manasas -- originating with the
deities called Rajasas." Sambhuti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marichi,
the father of the Agnishwatta, who, along with the Rajasas, are ever associated
with Manasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr.
Fitzedward Hall, "Manasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated
with the Rajasas. We appear to have in it Manasam -- the same as Manas -- with
the change of termination required to express male personification"
(Vishnu Purana Bk. III., ch. I., p. 17 footnote). All the sons of Viraja are
Manasa, says Nilakantha. And
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We are quite aware that the Yayu
and Matsya Puranas identify (agreeably to Western interpretation) the
Agnishwatta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the months; adding
a fourth class -- the Kavyas -- cyclic years. But do not Christian, Roman
Catholics identify their Angels with planets, and are not the seven Rishis
become the Saptarshi -- a constellation? They are deities presiding over all
the cyclic divisions.
** The Vayu Purana shows the region
called Viraja-loka inhabited by the Agnishwattas.
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Viraja is Brahma, and, therefore, the
incorporeal Pitris are called Vairajas from being the sons of Viraja, says Vayu
Purana.
We could multiply our proofs ad
infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise
are not required to. There are thirty-three crores, or 330 millions, of gods in
India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gita,
"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," he remarks, "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 to worship thirty-three crores
of gods." And he adds suggestively: "These beings, as may be
naturally inferred have a certain affinity with one of the three component
Upadhis (basic principles) into which we have divided man." -- (Vide
Theosophist, Feb., 1887, et seq.)
The names of the deities of a certain
mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus the twelve great gods, Jayas,
created by Brahma to assist him in the work of creation in the very beginning
of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samadhi, neglected to create -- whereupon they
were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh -- are
respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sadhyas, and
Adityas: they are Tushitas (in the second Kalpa), and Adityas in this Vaivasvata
period (see Vayu Purana), besides other names for each age. But they are
identical with the Manasa or Rajasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyan
Chohans. They are all classes of the Gnana-devas.
Yes; besides those beings, who, like
the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinaras, etc., etc., taken in their individualities,
inhabit the astral plane, there are real Devagnanams, and to these classes of
Devas belong the Adityas, the Vairajas, the Kumaras, the Asuras, and all those
high celestial beings whom Occult teaching calls Manaswin, the Wise, foremost
of all, and who would have made all men the self-conscious spiritually
intellectual beings they will be, had they not been "cursed" to fall
into generation, and to be reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of
duty.
-------
STANZA IV. -- (Continued.)
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS
(chhayas) OF FUTURE MEN (or Amanasas) (a) WERE (thus) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN
COLOUR (complexion) AND KIND (b). EACH (also) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER (creator).
THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH
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BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA (phantoms)
WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND, THEREFORE THEY WERE CALLED THE CHHAYA (image or
shadow) RACE (c).
(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes
from the root "man" to think, hence "a thinker." It is from
this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin "mens," mind,
the Egyptian "Menes," the "Master-Mind," the Pythagorean
Monas, or conscious "thinking unit," mind also, and even our
"Manas" or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these shadows are
called amanasa, "mindless."
With the Brahmins the Pitris are very
sacred, because they are the Progenitors,* or ancestors of men -- the first
Manushya on this Earth -- and offerings are made to them by the Brahmin when a
son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important
than the worship of the gods (See the "Laws of Manu," Bk. III., p.
203).
May we not now search for a
philosophical meaning in this dual group of progenitors?
The Pitris being divided into seven
classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Puranas agree
that three of these are arupa, formless, while four are corporeal; the former
being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect.
Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three classes of Pitris --
"born in the body of night" -- whereas the other four were produced
from the body of twilight. Their fathers, the gods, were doomed to be born
fools on Earth, according to Vayu Purana. The legends are purposely mixed up
and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the sons of the gods, and, in
another those of Brahma; while a third makes them instructors of their own
fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material classes who create men
simultaneously on the seven zones.
Now, with regard to the seven classes
of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a
query to the profane. That class of the "Fire Dhyanis," which we
identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishwattas, is called in our school
the "Heart" of the Dhyan-Chohanic Body; and it is said to have
incarnated in the third race of men and made them perfect. The esoteric
Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic
essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This was hinted at in Isis
Unveiled, Vol. I., p. 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 modem pigmies.
In Manava-Dharma-Sastra they are called the Lunar ancestors."
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every physical organ, and psychic,
and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial
plane of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be such a
strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why
should the heart have four lower "cavities and three higher
divisions," answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human
principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should
the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our
Fire Dhyanis? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four corporeal (or
grosser) and three incorporeal (or subtler) "principles," or call
them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the
body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven
distinct layers in the human skin?
"Having projected their shadows
and made men of one element (ether), the progenitors re-ascend to Maha-loka,
whence they descend periodically, when the world is renewed, to give birth to
new men.
"The subtle bodies remain
without understanding (Manas) until the advent of the Suras (Gods) now called
Asuras (not Gods)," says the Commentary.
"Not-gods," for the
Brahmins, perhaps, but the highest Breaths, for the Occultist; since those
progenitors (Pitar), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man,
but endow him with mind; the four corporeal classes creating only his body.
This is very plainly shown in various
texts of the Rig Veda -- the highest authority for a Hindu of any sect whatever.
Therein Asura means "spiritual divine," and the word is used as a
synonym for Supreme Spirit, while in the sense of a "God," the term
"Asura" is applied to Varuna and Indra and pre-eminently to Agni --
the three having been in days of old the three highest gods, before Brahmanical
Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic
Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.
In the Zendavesta the same is found.
In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, "Asura" is the lord Asura
Visvavedas, the "all-knowing" or "omniscient Lord"; and
Asura-Mazdha, become later Ahura-Mazdha, is, as Benfey shows, "the Lord
who bestows Intelligence" -- Asura-Medha and Ahura-Mazdao. Elsewhere in
this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura
was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdha, as
above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the "Lord," or
"Lords" collectively "who bestow Intelligence," connects
the Amshaspends with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans, as well
as with the Elohim, and the seven informing gods of Egypt, Chaldea, and every
other country.
Why these "gods" refused to
create men is not, as stated in exoteric
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accounts, because their pride was too
great to share the celestial power of their essence with the children of Earth,
but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless
fancies and theology taken advantage thereof in every country to make out its
case against these first-born, or the logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the
minds of the ignorant and credulous. (Compare also what is said about Makara
and the Kumaras in connection with the Zodiac.)
The Christian system is not the only
one which has degraded them into demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brahmanism
have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldean
exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, i.e., who are said to oppose thereby
the Demiurgos, are also denounced as the Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who
win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who are devoid thereof,
who are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on
blind faith -- a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brahmins -- and forthwith the
former become A-Suras. The first and mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to
create progeny, and are cursed by Brahma to be born as men. They are hurled
down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the
infernal regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd -- which is the
emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the "germ of sorrow" -- and,
forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of
immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live,
Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the devil. Typhon cuts
Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent his peopling the world and
thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological
teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the
worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the
effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status
of divinity through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of Form
who have made demons of the Angels of Light.
Esoteric philosophy, however, teaches
that one third* of the Dhyanis -- i.e., the three classes of the Arupa Pitris,
endowed with intelligence, "which is a formless breath, composed of
intellectual not elementary substances" (see Harivamsa, 932) -- was simply
doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be reborn (or incarnated) on
Earth.** Some
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.).
** The verse "did cast them to
the Earth," plainly shows its origin in the grandest and oldest allegory
of the Aryan mystics, who, after the destruction of the Atlantean [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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of these were Nirmanakayas from other
Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Puranas, reappearing on this globe,
in the third Manvantara, as Kings, Rishis and heroes (read Third Root-Race).
This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the
multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the
purpose of preserving a hold over them through superstitious fear.
The supposed "rebels,"
then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall
to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible
thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren.
Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite
materials -- i.e., an astral body -- since they were arupa. The refusal of
others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogis of long past
preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmanakayas, they
sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were
waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for
countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human,
forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is
left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with
his spiritual eye.
As to their fashioners or
"Ancestors" -- those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the
law -- they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitar-Devata,
i.e., those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or
rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could
not make man in their image and likeness. "Man must not be like one of
us," say the creative gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower
animal but higher; (see Gen. and Plato's Timaeus). Their creating the semblance
of men out of their own divine Essence means, esoterically, that it is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] giants and sorcerers, concealed the truth -- astronomical, physical, and
divine, as it is a page out of pre-cosmic theogony -- under various allegories.
Its esoteric, true 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 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 Hindu
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., etc., all of
which refer to Adepts and Initiates.
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they who became the first Race, and
thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because
they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the
flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give.
This was left to that class of Devas who became symbolised in Greece under the
name of Prometheus, to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet
everything with the purely spiritual man. (See Part II of this volume,
"The Fallen Angels"; also "The Gods of Light proceed from the
Gods of Darkness.")
Each class of Creators endows man
with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him
its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal
exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves
-- perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale
shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect -- from the human
standpoint -- white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no
struggle, there is no merit. Humanity, "of the Earth earthy," was not
destined to be created by the angels of the first divine Breath: therefore they
are said to have refused to do so, and man had to be formed by more material
creators,* who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own
natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure gods could only
project out of themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual,
less divine and perfect than themselves -- shadows still. The first humanity,
therefore, was a pale copy of its progenitors; too material, even in its
ethereality, to be a hierarchy of gods; too spiritual and pure to be MEN,
endowed as it is with every negative (Nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be
fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out
of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast.
Absolute light is absolute darkness, and vice versa. In fact, there is neither
light nor
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In spite of all efforts to the
contrary, Christian theology -- having burdened itself with the Hebrew esoteric
account of the creation of man, which is understood 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 is 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.
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darkness in the realms of truth. Good
and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Maya.
Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die.
Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the
other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before
becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.
Nevertheless, as the illusionary
distinction exists, it requires a lower order of creative angels to
"create" inhabited globes -- especially ours -- or to deal with
matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to
think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this
theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their Creators
occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of spiritual Being. With them,
those who created our earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of
mayavic matter, and their followers were taught to think -- to the great
disgust of the Church Fathers -- that for the creation of those wretched races,
in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our globe, no high divinity could
be made responsible, but only angels of a low hierarchy,* to which class they
relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
Mankinds different from the present
are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phaedrus, of
a winged race of men. Aristophanes (in Plato's Banquet), speaks of a race
androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is
double-sexed. Thus in § 18, 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."** Again, in the
ancient Quiche Manuscript, the Popol Vuh -- published by the late Abbe Brasseur
de Bourbourg -- the first men are described as a race "whose sight was
unlimited, and who knew all things at once": thus showing the divine
knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable
exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the
Archaic symbols.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In Isis Unveiled several of these
Gnostic systems are given. One is taken from the Codex Nazaraeus, the
Scriptures 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.
** See the translation from the Greek
by Francois, Monsieur de Foix, Evesque d'Ayre: the work dedicated to Marguerite
de France, Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, Bordeaux.
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(b) These "shadows" were
born "each of his own colour and kind," each also "inferior to
his creator," because the latter was a complete being of his kind. The
Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human
race thus evolved. In Pymander, the Seven primitive men, created by Nature from
the "heavenly Man," all partake of the qualities of the "Seven
Governors," or Rulers, who loved Man -- their own reflection and
synthesis.
In the Norse Legends, one recognizes
in Asgard, the habitat of the gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same
mystical loci and personifications woven into the popular "myths," as
in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the Vedas, the Puranas, the Mazdean
Scriptures and the Kabala. The Ases of Scandinavia, the rulers of the world
which preceded ours, whose name means literally the "pillars of the
world," its "supports," are thus identical with the Greek
Cosmocratores, the "Seven Workmen or Rectors" of Pymander, the seven
Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldean gods and seven evil spirits, the
seven Kabalistic Sephiroth synthesised by the upper triad, and even the seven
Planetary Spirits of the Christian mystics. The Ases create the earth, the
seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the
slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or
ash-tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given
him blood and bones, and finally it is Honir who furnishes him with his
intellect (manas) and with his conscious senses. The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic
Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third
Root-Race, and the Tzite tree of the Popol-Vuh, out of which the Mexican third
race of men was created, are all one.* This may be plainly seen by any reader.
But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindu Aswatha, the Gogard,
the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic
Sephirothal Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree
of Eden -- who among the western scholars can tell?** Nevertheless, the fruits
of all those "Trees," whether Pippala or Haoma or yet the more
prosaic apple, are the "plants of life," in fact and verity. The
prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the microcosmic tree, which grew
and developed within and under the great mundane macrocosmic tree***; and the
mystery is half revealed in the Dirghotamas, where it is said: "Pippala,
the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come spirits who
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's review of the
Popol-Vuh.
** Mr. James Darmesteter, the
translator of the Vendidad, speaking of it, says: "The tree, whatever it
is . . ." (p. 209).
*** Plato's "Timaeus."
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love the science, and where the gods
produce all marvels." As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of
all those mundane trees, the "Serpent" dwells. But while the
Macroscosmic tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself,
those who dwell in the Microcosmic tree are the Serpents of the manifested
Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are its reflected parts. The
"tree" is man himself, of course, and the Serpents dwelling in each,
the conscious Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, heaven and
earth.
Everywhere, it is the same. The
creating powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these logoi
strive to endow man with conscious immortal spirit, reflected in the Mind
(manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for
the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A
sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which is our earth; the
lowest in its chain; an "eternity" -- meaning the duration of the
life-cycle -- in the darkness of matter, or within animal Man. It has pleased
the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic
symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory found in every old
religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed
into the darkness of a material hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from
his indwelling Principle (the Manasa), or the incarnated Deva, became the
glaring flames of the infernal region; and our globe that Hell itself. Pippala,
Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the forbidden
fruit, and the "Serpent of Wisdom," the Voice of reason and
consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the
old Dragon, the Devil! (Vide Part II., "The Evil Spirit, who, or what?")
The same for the other high symbols.
The Svastica, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the
"Jaina-Cross" as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its
direct connection, and even identity with the Christian Cross, has become
dishonoured in the same manner. It is the "devil's sign," we are told
by the Indian missionaries. "Does it not shine on the head of the great
Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand headed Sesha-Ananta, in the depths of
Patala, the Hindu Naraka or Hell"? It does: but what is Ananta? As Sesha,
it is the almost endless Manvantaric cycle of time, and becomes infinite Time
itself, when called Ananta, the great seven-headed Serpent, on which rests
Vishnu, the eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do
with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastica is the most philosophically
scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary
in a few lines of the whole work of creation, or evolution, as one should
rather say, from Cosmo-theogony down to Anthro-
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pogony, from the indivisible unknown
Parabrahm to the humble moneron of materialistic science, whose genesis is as
unknown to that science as is that of the All-Deity itself. The Svastica is
found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the
"Worker's Hammer" in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the "Hammer"
just referred to in the "Book of Concealed Mystery" (Ch. I., §§ 1, 2,
3, 4, etc.), "which striketh sparks from the flint" (Space), those
sparks becoming worlds. It is "Thor's Hammer," the magic weapon
forged by the dwarfs against the Giants, or the pre-cosmic Titanic forces of
Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of matter, will not be
subdued by the Gods, the Agents of Universal Harmony, but have first to be
destroyed. This is why the world is formed out of the relics of the murdered
Ymir. The Svastica is the Miolnir, the "storm-hammer"; and therefore
it is said that when the Ases, the holy gods, after having been purified by
fire (the fire of passions and suffering in their life-incarnations), become
fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miolnir will become useless. This
will be when the bonds of Hel (the goddess-queen of the region of the Dead)
will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.
"Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging
waters" of the several deluges. . . . . "Then came the sons of Thor.
They brought Miolnir with them, no longer as a weapon of war, but as the hammer
with which to consecrate the new heaven and the new Earth. . . . . "*
Verily many are its meanings! In the
Macrocosmic work, the "HAMMER OF CREATION," with its four arms bent
at right angles, refers to the continual motion and revolution of the invisible
Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Kosmos and our Earth, it points to
the rotation in the cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial
belts; the two lines forming the Svastica [[diagram]] meaning Spirit and
Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied
to the Microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between heaven and Earth: the
right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to
the Earth. In the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is
inscribed with the word "Solve," the left with the word
"Coagula." It is at one and the same time an Alchemical,
Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner
meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this
universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great
mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Aryans, and
by them placed at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent
Ananta, it found
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See "Asgard and the
Gods": "The renewal of the World."
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its spiritual death in the scholastic
interpretations of mediaeval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega
of universal creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross
Matter. It is also the key to the cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who
comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahamaya,
the great Illusion and Deceiver. The light that shines from under the divine
hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic
Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or
fictions.
How prophetic are the songs of the
three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the
future, as they flutter around in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing
river. The songs are all written down in the "Scrolls of Wisdom," of
which many are lost but some still remain: and they repeat in poetical allegory
the teachings of the archaic ages. To summarise from Dr. Wagner's "Asgard
and the Gods," the "renewal of the world," which is a prophecy
about the seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.
The Miolnir 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 ancestor which had all been fulfilled. Near
them, but unseen of them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things.
. . . 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, Widblain. Over Gimil's cave, a wondrous palace was erected, covered with
gold and shining bright in the sun." These are the three gradually ascending
planets of our "Chain." There the Gods were enthroned, as they used
to be. . . . From Gimil's heights (the seventh planet or globe, the highest and
the 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, step by step, from one "heaven to
another," until they were at last fit to be united to the Gods in the
house of All-Father (p. 305).
He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric
Budhism, (or Wisdom), though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly
the allegory contained in the above.
Its more philosophical meaning will
be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of
Prometheus. It is examined
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further on in the light of the Hindu
Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists,
and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an
insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is
thus dragged down to matter. The "friction" of divine Pramantha and
Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of
the German materialists -- than whom there are none worse. It is true that the
Divine babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the
Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani (Svastica) during
the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Twashtri (Viswakarman) is the
"divine artist and carpenter"* and is also the Father of the gods and
of creative fire in the Vedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that
there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being
found. A number of such terra cotta discs, called fusaiolos, were found by Dr.
Schliemann under the ruins of ancient Troy. Both these forms [[diagram]] and
[[diagram]] were excavated in great abundance, their presence being one more
proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.
(c) Chhaya, as already explained, is
the astral image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjna
(Spiritual Consciousness), the wife of Surya, the Sun, is shown retiring into
the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her
Chhaya, shadow or image.
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Father of the Sacred
Fire," writes Prof. Jolly, "is Twashtri . . . his mother was Maya. He
himself was styled Akta (anointed, [[christos]]), 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 Kuhn, in his "Die
Herabkunft des Feuers," identifies the two signs [[diagram]] and
[[diagram]] 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 that 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. "Maya, Mary,
his mother; Twastri, St. Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible." In the Rig
Veda, Viswakarman 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.
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16. HOW ARE THE (real) MANUSHYAS
BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY MADE? (a) THE FATHERS (Barhishad (?))
CALL TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE (the Kavyavahana, electric fire), WHICH IS
THE FIRE WHICH BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO HIS HELP THE
SOLAR FIRE (Suchi, the spirit in the Sun). THESE THREE (the Pitris and the two
fires) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RUPA. IT (the form) COULD STAND,
WALK, RUN, RECLINE AND FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHAYA, A SHADOW WITH NO
SENSE (b) . . . . . .
(a) Here an explanation again becomes
necessary in the light, and with the help of the exoteric added to the esoteric
scriptures. The "Manushyas" (men) and the Manus are here equivalent
to the Chaldean "Adam" -- this term not meaning at all the first man,
as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but mankind collectively, as with
the Chaldeans and Assyrians. It is the four orders or classes of Dhyan Chohans
out of the seven, says the Commentary, "who were the progenitors of the
concealed man," i.e., the subtle inner man. The "Lha" of the
Moon, the lunar spirits, were, as already stated, only the ancestors of his
form, i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon
him. Thus primitive man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhuta* or a
"Phantom." This "creation" was a failure, the reason of
which will be explained in the Commentary on Sloka 20.
(b) This attempt was again a failure.
It allegorizes the vanity of physical nature's unaided attempts to construct
even a perfect animal -- let alone man. For the "Fathers," the lower
Angels, are all Nature-Spirits and the higher Elementals also possess an
intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct a THINKING man.
"Living Fire" was needed, that fire which gives the human mind its
self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Parvaka
and Suchi are the animal electric and solar fires, which create animals, and
could thus furnish but a physical living constitution to that first astral
model of man. The first creators, then, were the Pygmalions of primeval man:
they failed to animate the statue -- intellectually.
This Stanza we shall see is very
suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the
informing principle in man -- the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not clear why
"Bhutas" should be rendered by the Orientalists as meaning "evil
Spirits" in the Puranas. In the Vishnu Purana, Book I, ch. 5, the Sloka
simply says: "Bhutas -- 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, noncompound essence, and, specifically, the astral double
of any man or animal. In this case these primitive men are the doubles of the
first ethereal Dhyanis or Pitris.
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HIGHER SELF or human Monad -- and the
animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed with divine
intelligence, the latter with instinctual faculty alone. How is the difference
to be explained, and the presence of that HIGHER SELF in man accounted for?
"The Sons of MAHAT are the
quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil
of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human animal. They are the
Lords of Spiritual Life eternal." . . . . "In the beginning (in the
Second Race) some (of the Lords) only breathed of their essence into Manushya
(men); and some took in man their abode."
This shows that not all men became
incarnations of the "divine Rebels," but only a few among them. The
remainder had their fifth principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into
it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities
of men and races. Had not the "sons of Mahat," speaking
allegorically, skipped the intermediate worlds, in their impulse toward
intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward
from this earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The cyclic
pilgrimage would have to be performed through all the planes of existence half
unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing
to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure
spirit, that we are what we are -- self-conscious, thinking men, with the
capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence
the REBELS are our saviours. Let the philosopher ponder well over this, and
more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive
force of the contrasts that the two opposites -- Spirit and Matter -- can be
cemented on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and
suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of
many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called "fables."
(Vide infra, "The Secret of Satan.")
It explains, to begin with, the
statement made in Pymander: that the "heavenly MAN," the "Son of
the Father," who partook of the nature and essence of the Seven Governors,
or creators and Rulers of the material world, "peeped through the Harmony
and, breaking through the Seven Circles of Fire, made manifest the
downward-born nature."* It explains every verse in that Hermetic
narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it
explains the many allegorical accounts about the "Wars in Heaven,"
including that of Revelation with respect to the Christian dogma of the fallen
angels. It explains the "rebellion" of the oldest and highest Angels,
and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Pymander," Bk. II.,
verses 17 to 29.
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i.e., MATTER. It even solves the
recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the
late George Smith.
"My first idea of this
part" (of the rebellion), he says, "was that the wars with the powers
of Evil preceded the Creation; I now think it followed the account of the
fall" (Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 92). In this work Mr. George Smith
gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the
Serpent, man and woman. The tree has seven branches: three on the man's side,
four on that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races,
in the third of which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes
and the so-called FALL into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless,
then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each
other. "The Dragon," says Mr. G. Smith, "which in the Chaldean
account of the creation leads man to sin, is the creation of Tiamat, the living
principle of the Sea, or Chaos . . . which was opposed to the deities at the
creation of the world." This is an error. The Dragon is the male
principle, or Phallus, personified, or rather animalized; and Tiamat, "the
embodiment of the Spirit of Chaos," of the deep, or Abyss, is the female
principle, the Womb. The "Spirit of Chaos and Disorder" refers to the
mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic
principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever living active element which
throws the whole world into disorder, chaos, and sin. The Serpent seduces the
woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the
Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George
Smith: "It is clear that the Dragon is included in the curse for the Fall,
and that the Gods" (the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming
a Creator in his turn, like all the animals,) "invoke on the head of the
human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall
injure him, he shall have family quarrels, he will anger the gods, he shall
submit to tyranny. . . . he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour
out useless prayers, he shall commit future sin. . No doubt subsequent lines
continue this topic, but again our narrative is broken, and it re-opens only
where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by
Tiamat (the woman). . . . " (Babylonian Legend of Creation, p. 92.)
This account is omitted in Genesis,
for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy -- born no doubt of
fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions -- to have sought
to restore the Chaldean fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far
younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
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17. THE BREATH (human Monad) 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 (astral shadow); "WE GAVE IT
OUR OWN," SAID THE DHYANIS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES (Kama
Rupa); "IT HAS IT," SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS (Suchi, the fire of
passion and animal instinct). THE 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 (solar) FIRE . . . . (nascent) MAN REMAINED AN
EMPTY, SENSELESS BHUTA . . . . THUS HAVE THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO
BECAME (later) MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD (race) (a).
As a full explanation is found in
Stanza V. (Vide paragraph (a)), a few remarks will now suffice. The
"Father" of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the vital
electric principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its Mother, because of that
mysterious power in the Moon which has as decided an influence upon human gestation
and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and
animals. The "Wind" or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of
transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries
and diffused upon Earth, is referred to as the "nurse"; while
"Spiritual Fire" alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.
Now what is that "Spiritual
Fire"? In alchemy it is HYDROGEN, in general; while in esoteric actuality
it is the emanation or the Ray which proceeds from its noumenon, the
"Dhyan of the first Element." Hydrogen is gas only on our terrestrial
plane. But even in chemistry hydrogen "would be the only existing form of
matter, in our sense of the term,"* and is very nearly allied to protyle,
which is our layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the
Upadhi (basis), of both AIR and WATER, and is "fire, air and water,"
in fact: one under three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In
the world of manifestation or matter it is the objective symbol and the
material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in
the region of noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to,
and even identified it with, the To ON, the "One" of the Greeks. For,
as he remarks, Hydrogen is not Water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not
fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it Air, though air may be
regarded as a product of the union of Water and
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See "Genesis of the
Elements," by Prof. W. Crookes, p. 21.
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Fire -- since Hydrogen is found in
the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.
If one studies comparative Theogony,
it is easy to find that the secret of these "Fires" was taught in the
Mysteries of every ancient people, pre-eminently in Samothrace. There is not
the smallest doubt that the Kabeiri, the most arcane of all the ancient
deities, gods and men, great deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumaras
and Rudras headed by Kartikeya -- a Kumara also. This is quite evident even
exoterically; and these Hindu deities were, like the Kabeiri, the personified
sacred Fires of the most occult powers of Nature. The several branches of the
Aryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindu and the Greek, did their
best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of
the Kumaras, the number of the Kabeiri is uncertain. Some say that there were
three or four only; others say seven. Aschieros, Achiosersa, Achiochersus, and
Camillus may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumaras --
Sanat-Kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana. The former deities, whose reputed
father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscuri, Corybantes, Anaces,
etc.; just as the Kumara, whose reputed father is Brahma, (or rather, the
"Flame of his Wrath," which prompted him to perform the ninth or
Kumara creation, resulting in Rudra or Nilalohita (Siva) and the Kumaras), were
confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason
that they are all one -- i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space
to describe these "fires" and their real meaning here, though we may
attempt to do so if the third and fourth volumes of this work are ever
published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.
The foregoing are all mysteries which
must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than
described. If he would learn something of the secret of the FIRES, let him turn
to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect fire with every
element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the ancients
considered religion, and the natural sciences along with philosophy, to be
closely and inseparably linked together. AEsculapius was the Son of Apollo --
the Sun or FIRE of Life; at once Helios, Pythios, and the god of oracular
Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in esoteric philosophy, the Elements
-- especially fire, water, and air -- are made the progenitors of our five
physical senses, and hence are directly connected (in an occult way) with them.
These physical senses pertain even to a lower creation than the one called in
the Puranas 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;
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and their union is LIFE." In the
Kabala, Bath-Kol is the daughter of the Divine Voice, or primordial light,
Shekinah. In the Puranas and Hindu exotericism, Vach (the Voice) is the female
Logos of Brahma -- a permutation of Aditi, primordial light. And if Bath-Kol,
in Jewish mysticism, is an articulate praeternatural voice from heaven,
revealing to the "chosen people" the sacred traditions and laws, it
is only because Vach was called, before Judaism, the "Mother of the
Vedas," who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations;
just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israel and the Jewish
High-Priests. And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred
symbologies, because the ancients associated sound or Speech with the Ether of
Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the
primordial Cosmic Trinity. "I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than
the moist principle, the light that radiates within Darkness (Chaos), and the
shining Word of God (Sound) is the Son of the Deity." ("Pymander,"
§ 6.)*
Thus we have to study well the
"Primary creation," before we can understand the Secondary. The first
Race had three rudimentary elements in it; and no fire as yet; because, with
the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his
spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the
elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavapyaya,
the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the gods, and even of
the so-called creative deity himself. This is found in the names and
appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric scriptures. As the Protologos (the
Orphic), he is called Purvaja, "pregenetic," and then the other names
connect him in their descending order more and more with matter.
The following order on parallel lines
may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic
terrestrial "MAN" or "Spirit," and mortal physical man:--
1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.
2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.
3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ...
Sound, Touch and Colour.
4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch,
Colour and Taste.
5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch,
Colour, Taste and Smell.
As seen, each Element adds to its own
characteristics, those of its
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The opponents of Hinduism 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.
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predecessor; as each Root-Race adds
the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the
septenary creation of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the
same principles, as will be shown further on.
Thus, while Gods or Dhyan Chohans
(Devas) proceed from the First Cause -- which is not Parabrahm, for the latter
is the ALL CAUSE, and cannot be referred to as the "First Cause," --
which First Cause is called in the Brahmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, "the womb
of the world," mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But
men, during the first and the second races, were not physical beings, but
merely rudiments of the future men: Bhutas, which proceeded from Bhutadi,
"origin," or the "original place whence sprung the
Elements." Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavapyaya,
"the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of
all things," as explained by the Commentator. Whence also our physical
senses. Whence even the highest "created" deity itself, in our
philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahma, Iswara, or
Purusha, he is a manifested deity, -- hence created, or limited and conditioned.
This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.
After being called the incognizable,
eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Punda-Rikaksha, "supreme and
imperishable glory," once that instead of Sadaika-Rupa,
"changeless" or "immutable" Nature, he is addressed as
Ekanaka-Rupa, "both single and manifold," he, the cause, becomes
merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in esoteric order, show
the following descending scale:--
1. Mahapurusha or Paramatman ........
Supreme Spirit.
2. Atman or Purvaja (Protologos) ....
The living Spirit of Nature.
3. Indriyatman, or Hrishikesa .......
Spiritual or intellectual soul (One with the senses).
5. Bhutatman ........................
The living, or Life Soul.
6. Kshetrajna .......................
Embodied soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.
7. Bhrantidarsanatah ................
False perception -- Material Universe.
The last name means something
perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a
material form; but, in fact, only Maya, illusion, as all is in our physical
universe.
It is in strict analogy with ITS
attributes in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the
Dhyan Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being
reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;
every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion
of their various "fires" and elements.
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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 (Race) WERE THE SONS OF
YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
In the later Commentary, the sentence
is translated:--
"The Sons of the Sun and of the
Moon, the nursling of ether (or the wind ) (a) . . . . . . .
"They were the shadows of the
shadows of the Lords (b). They (the shadows) expanded. The Spirits of the Earth
clothed them; the solar Lhas warmed them (i.e. preserved the vital fire in the
nascent physical forms). The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They
had no fire nor water of their own (c).
(a) Remember in this connection the
Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to
it. The Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the anthropological may be
given now. The "One thing" mentioned in it is MAN. It is said:
"The Father of THAT ONE ONLY THING is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the
Wind carries it in his bosom, and its nurse is the Spirituous Earth." In
the occult rendering of the same it is added: "and Spiritual Fire is its
instructor (Guru)."
This fire is the higher Self, the
Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating under the influence of
its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or
desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher
(Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the
Ego takes refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the
essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be
thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the
mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines -- spiritual, psychic and
physical.
That which propels towards, and
forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man towards
perfection, is (a) the MONAD,
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or that which acts in it
unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower astral body
or the personal SELF. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an
animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its
identity with the ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is
all-potent on the Arupa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too
pure, it remains all-potential, but individually becomes inactive: e.g., the
rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select
this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece
of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it.
So with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun the
Monad -- the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every
case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live
a Senseless life (Tanha), which is "the maker of the tabernacle," as
Buddha calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the expression, "the Spirits
of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them." To these
"Spirits" belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is they
who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its
conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the "Solar" Lhas,
Spirits, warm them, the shadows. This is physically and literally true;
metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that
the Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e., it enlightens it with the ray of
divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the reincarnating
Ego, its immortality. Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half
Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the
"progenitors," the lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in
the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical
form towards perfection -- this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of
spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating
principle, the nous or Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it
whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its
ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing
on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the personality has
so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward
attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober
truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this
period of our human evolution -- at least they ought to be so. The fact that
mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations
having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of the
second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the
phenomenon.
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The entire scheme is in the
"Chaldean Book of Numbers," and even in the Zohar, if one only
understood the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes En-Soph, 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 -- called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second,
the World of Formation, or Jetzira, 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 it that this world, also called Kliphoth,
containing the (six other) Spheres, [[hebrew]], and matter, is the residence of
the "Prince of Darkness." This is as clearly stated as can be; for
Metatron, the Angel of the second or Briatic World, means Messenger
[[angelos]], Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of
the third World, Jetzira, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,* of whom
it is said that "they inhabit and vivify this world as Essential Entities
and Intelligences, whose correlatives and contraries inhabit the third or
Asiatic World." These "Contraries" are called "the
Shells," [[hebrew]], or demons,** who inhabit the seven habitations called
Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven zones of our globe. Their prince is
called in the Kabala Samael, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing
serpent Satan; but that Satan is also Lucifer, the bright angel of Light, the Light
and Life-bringer, the "Soul" alienated from the Holy Ones, the other
angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would have descended
on Earth to incarnate in their turn.
"The Souls (Monads) are
pre-existent in the world of Emanations," (Book of Wisdom viii., 20); and
the Zohar teaches that in the "Soul" "is the real man, i.e., the
Ego and the conscious I AM: 'Manas.' "
"They descend from the pure air
to be chained to bodies," says Josephus repeating the belief of the
Essenes (De Bello Judaeo, 11, 12). "The air is full of Souls," states
Philo, "they descend to be tied to mortal bodies, being desirous to live
in them." (De Gignat, 222 c.; De Somniis, p. 455)***; because through, and
in, the human form they will become progressive beings, whereas the nature of
the angel is purely intransitive, therefore man has in him the potency of
transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that
it is the Brahmin, the twice-born, who rules the gods or devas; and Paul repeated
it in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Vol. I. Part III., "Gods,
Monads and Atoms." It is symbolised in the Pythagorean Triangle, the 10
dots within, and the seven points of the Triangle and the Cube.
** Whence the Kabalistic name of
Shells given to the astral form, the body called Kama Rupa, left behind by the
higher angels in the shape of the higher Manas, when the latter leaves for
Devachan, forsaking its residue.
*** Which shows that the Essenes
believed in re-birth and many reincarnations on Earth, as Jesus himself did, a
fact we can prove from the New Testament itself.
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I Corinthians vi., 3: "Know ye
not that we (the Initiates) shall judge angels"?
Finally, it is shown in every ancient
scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal
form, over which, like the molten brass round the clay model of the sculptor,
the physical frame of his body was built by, through, and from, the lower forms
and types of animal terrestrial life. "The Soul and the Form when
descending on Earth put on an earthly garment," says the Zohar. His
protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are
fashioned. "When Adam dwelt in the garden of Eden, he was clothed in the
celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light. . . . light of that
light which was used in the garden of Eden," (Zohar II 229 B). "Man
(the heavenly Adam) was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziric world, and
by the common power they (the seven angels of a still lower world) engendered
the earthly Adam . . . . First Samael 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 an universal belief. The Devas are
credited in the East with having no shadows of their own. "The devas cast
no shadows," and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.
Why had they "no fire or water
of their own"?* Because:--
(c) That which Hydrogen is to the
elements and gases on the objective plane, its noumenon is in the world of
mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored
in its three
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 (the day that the heavens and the Earth were made,
v. 4) was in the Earth" (v. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is
accepted, which shows that in this 4th 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 Earth 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, ch. 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.
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active emanations from the three
higher principles in man, namely, "Spirit, Soul, and Mind," or Atma,
Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis.
Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the "air" or the
"wind," becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development
of "Spiritual fire," the noumenon of the "Three in One"
within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of
Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again
divine Spirit is symbolised by the Sun or Fire; divine Soul by Water and the
Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, human Soul, or Mind,
symbolised 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 Kabala, "one in Essence, but three in Aspect," is the
Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is
Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three elements
is the Occult Solvent in the "Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or
Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its
relation to the other gases. The To ON, truly; the ONE "whom no person has
seen except the Son"; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and
physical Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the
latter understand the To ON the "One Father," if his Manas, the
"Son," does not become (as) "One with the Father," and
through this absorption receive enlightenment from the "divine
instructor," Guru -- Atma-Buddhi?
"If thou would'st understand the
SECONDARY ("Creation," so-called), oh Lanoo, thou should'st first
study its relation to the PRIMARY." (Commentary, Book of Dzyan, III. 19.)
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" (creation) that which is marked [[diagram]] reads
"Root," as in the Secondary likewise.
Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermetism
(a variant on Eastern Esotericism) we find:--
X. . . . . . . . . [[diagram]] . . .
. . . X.
Sulphur . . . . . . Flamma . . . . .
. Spiritus
Hydrargyum . . . . . Natura . . . . .
. Aqua
Sal . . . . . . . . Mater . . . . . .
Sanguis
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And these three are all quaternaries
completed by their Root, Fire. The Spirit, beyond manifested Nature, is the
fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the manifested Universe, it is the
Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible
Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the
Earth, the fiery Spirit thereof -- air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire;
Earth, solid fire. All is fire -- ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I,
the root of which is O (nought) in our conceptions, the All in nature and its
mind. Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the
Preserver. The primitive names of the gods are all connected with fire, from
AGNI, the Aryan, to the Jewish god who "is a consuming fire." In
India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Is'Vara, in
Sanskrit the Lord, from Isa, but this is primarily the name of Siva, the
Destroyer; and the three Vedic chief gods are Agni (ignis), Vayu, and Surya --
Fire, Air, and the Sun, three occult degrees of fire. In the Hebrew [[hebrew]]
(aza), means to illuminate, and [[hebrew]] (asha) is fire. In Occultism,
"to kindle a fire" is synonymous to evoking one of the three great
fire-powers, or "to call on God." In Sanskrit Osch or Asch is fire or
heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded (as shown by Schelling) of the
two primitives aish and asr, or a "fireenchanter." Aesar in the old
Etruscan meant a God (being perhaps derived from Asura of the Vedas). Aeswar
and Eswara are analogous terms, as Dr. Kenealy thought. In the Bhagavad Gita we
read, "Iswara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his
supernatural power, 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, oh
Lord!' In the Irish language Easam, or Asam, means 'to create,' and Aesar was
the name of an ancient Irish god, meaning 'to light a fire' " (Kenealy).
The Christian Kabalists and symbologists who disfigured Pymander -- prominent
among them the Bishop of Ayre, Francois de Tours, in the 16th century -- divide
the elements in this way:--
The four elements formed from divine
substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature represented by --
[[diagram]]. . St. Matthew. .
Angel-Man. . Water. . (Jesus-Christ, Angel-Man, Mikael)
A - [[diagram]] . St. Mark. . .The
Lion . . Fire
E - Y . . . . . . St. Luke. . . The
Bull . . Earth
I - O . . . . . . St. John. . . The
Eagle . . Air*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To those who would inquire
"What has Hydrogen to do with air or oxygena- [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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H, THE QUINTESSENCE, [[HEPHLOX]],
FLAMMA-VIRGO (virgin oil), FLAMMA DURISSIMA, VIRGO, LUCIS AETERNA MATER.
The first race of men were, then,
simply the images, the astral doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers,
or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower sphere, the shell
of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, having
generated the Earth, it is the phantom of the Moon which, attracted by magnetic
affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters, (vide
supra, Stanza II.). To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to
the Chaldean Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his
information, he tells us, from Ea, the male-female deity of Wisdom. While the
gods were generated in its androgynous bosom (Svabhavat, Mother-space) its (the
Wisdom's) reflections became on Earth the woman Omoroka, who is the Chaldean
Thavatth, or the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which esoterically and
even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omoroka) who presided over the
monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dyanis. (Vide
Hibbert Lectures, p. 370 et seq.; also in Part II. "Adam-Adami.")
Evolutionary law compelled the lunar
"Fathers" to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms
of life and being on this globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were
already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the
creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less
progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These "Forms" are
called "Sons of Yoga," because Yoga (union with Brahma exoterically)
is the supreme condition of the passive infinite deity, since it contains all
the divine energies and is the essence of Brahma, who is said (as Brahma) to
create everything through Yoga power. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva are the most
powerful energies of God, Brahma, the Neuter, says a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] tion?" 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, they thus identified
also the 7 Kabeiri 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
recognise. 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 (Erataoth); the Mule (Uriel or Thartharaoth).
All these have a qualificative meaning.
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Puranic text. Yoga here is the same
as Dhyana, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where
the "Sons of Yoga" are called "Sons of Dhyana," or of that
abstract meditation through which the Dhyani-Buddhas create their celestial
sons, the Dhyani-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. (Sepher M'bo Ska-arim, translated by Isaac Myer, Qabbalah, pp.
109-111.)
-------
19. THE SECOND RACE (was) THE PRODUCT
BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION; THE A-SEXUAL (form) FROM THE SEXLESS (shadow). THUS
WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED (a).
(a) What will be most contested by
scientific authorities is this a-sexual Race, the Second, the fathers of the
"Sweat-born" so-called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the
"Egg-born" androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most
difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no
explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult
metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature
repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no
meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in
the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature,
spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other
forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any
particular mode of reproducing life. For "it shows that the same organism
may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during
some of which it may be sexual, and in others a-sexual; i.e., it may reproduce
itself alternately by the co-operation of two beings of opposite sex, and also
by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex."*
"Budding" is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these
Chhayas reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since
they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of
desire, or Kama Rupa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the
Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amoeba, only
on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory
applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to
the Physiology of organisms,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Laing's "Modern Science
and Modern Thought," p. 90.
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and if the microscopic cells are
looked upon by physical science as independent living beings -- just as
Occultism regards the "fiery lives"* -- there is no difficulty in the
conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the
development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone
or spindle, thus, [[diagram]] within the cell. This spindle approaches the
surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are
called the "polar cells." These polar cells now die, and the embryo
develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus
which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have
lived thus, and been created in this way -- at the very beginning of human and
mammalian evolution?
This may, perhaps, serve as an
analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed
from the First.
The astral form clothing the Monad
was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere of aura, which here
corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral form itself
is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life.
When the season of reproduction
arrives, the sub-astral "extrudes" a miniature of itself from the egg
of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes
fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it
its own sphere of aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by
growth and subsequent division into two.
The analogy with the "polar
cells" would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to
the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero,
i.e., within the cell, became the rule.
"The early Second (Root) Race
were the Fathers of the 'Sweat-born'; the later Second (Root) Race were
'Sweat-born' themselves."
This passage from the Commentary
refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The
"Sons of Yoga," or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of
evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and
has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series
of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were
born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last
began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed
otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Book I. Part I. Stanza VII
Commentary 10.
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in each Race, each covering aeons of
time. What physiologist or biologist could tell whether the present mode of
generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or
at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly
half a century ago.
Primeval human hermaphrodites are a
fact in Nature well known to the ancients, and form one of Darwin's greatest
perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a
great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early
races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one
universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction
of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of
mono-genesis, and the descent of man from the mammals instead of the reverse,
are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on
Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable
difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition -- if the terms Science and
Knowledge are denied in this particular to antiquity -- can alone reconcile the
inconsistencies and fill the gap. "If thou wilt know the invisible, open
thine eye wide on the visible," says a Talmudic axiom.
In the "Descent of Man"*
occurs the following passage; which shows how near Darwin came to the
acceptance of this ancient teaching.
"It has 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** . . . But here we encounter a singular
difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with
the adjacent passages in the Vesiculae prostaticae; they bear also rudiments of
mammae, 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,*** for we have
to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent
androgynous forms."
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly
disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz.,
that of a primeval androgynous
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Second Edition, p. 161.
** And why not all the progenitive
first Races, human as well as animal; and why one "remote
progenitor"?
*** Obviously so, on the lines of
Evolutionism, which traces the mammalia to some amphibian ancestor.
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stem from which the mammalia sprang.
His explanation runs:-- "The fact 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 condition to the other." He
instances the case of "spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for
battle or for ornament by male birds" and only partially inherited by
their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of
a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more
prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with
which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in
favour of the hermaphroditism which characterises the old fauna? Occultism
proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple
manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same
category as the pineal gland, and other organs as mysterious, which afford us
silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become
atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a
signal part in the general economy of primeval life.
The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be
advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of science, who have
theorised upon the origin of the first man.
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave
the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call protoplasm, put forward
a theory half occult and half scientifico-materialistic. He made Adam, the
a-sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the
Blastema of Science. "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," explains Naudin. For the eminent botanist, Adam was not
one man, however, but mankind, "which remained concealed within a
temporary organism . . . . distinct from all others and never contracting
alliance with any of these." He shows the differentiation of sexes
accomplished by "a process of germination similar to that of Medusae and
Ascidians." Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, "would retain
a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great
human races."
De Quatrefages criticises this
position in the "Human Species." It is unscientific, he says, or,
properly speaking, Naudin's ideas "do not form a scientific theory,"
inasmuch as primordial Blastema is connected
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in his theory with the First Cause,
which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past,
present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings
en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the secondary Causes, or
their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only
occupied with Secondary Causes, has thus "nothing to say to the theory of
Naudin" (p. 125).
Nor will it have any more to say to
the occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we
but see in his "primordial Blastema" the Dhyan-Chohanic essence, the
Chhaya or double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality
of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital
differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has
progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over
millions of years; and his primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind
instincts -- a kind of unconscious First Cause in the manifested Kosmos --
which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyan Chohanic essence -- the
causality of the primal cause which creates physical man -- which is the
living, active and potential matter, pregnant per se with that animal
consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver,
which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from
this his "ancient and general process of creation" from
proto-organisms is as occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are
full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the
visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe. "All that which is in
the lower (our) world is found in the upper. The Lower and the Upper act and
react upon each other." (Zohar, fol. 186.) Vide infra, Part II.,
"Esoteric Tenets corroborated in every Scripture."
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20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN.
THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS,
THE SONS OF TWILIGHT (a).
(a) The "shadows," or
Chhayas, are called the sons of the "self-born," as the latter name
is applied to all the gods and Beings born through the WILL, whether of Deity
or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name,
though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name "Sons
of Twilight" shows that the "Self-born" progenitors of our
doctrine are identical with the Pitris
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of the Brahmanical system, as the
title is a reference to their mode of birth, these Pitris being stated to have
issued from Brahma's "body of twilight." (See the Puranas.)
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21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD
WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS (a); WHEN THE 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
SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING (c).
(a) The old (primitive) Race merged
in the second race, and became one with it.
(b) This is the mysterious process of
transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first forms --
shadowy, ethereal, and negative -- was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became
the complement of the forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by
saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the astral shadows of the
creative progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of
their own -- this Race never died. Its "men" melted gradually away,
becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own "sweat-born" progeny,
more solid than their own. The old form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared
in, the new form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of
a period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent material
was used for the formation of the new being, to form the body and even the
inner or lower principles or bodies of the progeny.
(c) When the shadow retires, i.e.
when the astral body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a
physical body. The "wing," or the ethereal form that produced its
shadow and image, became the shadow of the astral body and its own progeny. The
expression is queer but original.
As there may be no occasion to refer
to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once the dual meaning
contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of evolution. It
is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons
Castor and Pollux, which variants have each 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
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and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with
a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi-immortal; they live and die,
each in turn, and every alternate day; [[eteremeroi*]]. As the Tyndaridae, the
twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their
two wives, Phoebe and Hilasira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun,
personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.** Again, in the allegory where Zeus is
shown as the father of the two heroes -- born from the egg to which Leda gives
birth -- the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic
allegories in which the world is described as born from an egg. For Leda
assumes in it the shape of a white swan when uniting herself to the Divine
Swan.*** Leda is the mythical bird, then, to which, in the traditions of
various peoples of the Aryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms
of birds which all lay golden eggs.**** In the Kalevala (the Epic Poem of
Finland), the beauteous daughter of the Ether, "the Water Mother,"
creates the world in conjunction with a "Duck" (another form of the
Swan or Goose, Kalahansa), who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, "an
egg of iron," in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a
direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar***** only, with a slighter
reference to it in the Homeric hymns.****** Castor and Pollux are in it no
longer the Dioscuri (of Apollodorus III. 10, 7); but become the highly
significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this,
but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its
transformation from the animal man into a god-man with only an animal body.
Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in
the same night to her husband and also to the father of the gods -- Zeus. Thus
Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the
allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance
against the Apherides******* Pollux kills Lynceus -- "of all mortals he
whose sight is the most penetrating" -- but Castor is wounded by Idas,
"he who sees and knows." Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his
thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother
dying.******** In
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Odyssey," xi. 298 to
305; "Iliad," iii., 243.
** Chants Cypriaques, Hyg. Tal., 80.
Ovid, "Fasti," etc. See Decharme's "Mythologie de la Grece
Antique."
*** See Brahma Kalahamsa in Book I.
Stanza III., p. 78.
**** See Decharme's
"Mythologie," etc., p. 652.
***** Nem., x., 80 et seq. Theocras,
xxiv., 131.
****** xxxiv., v. 5; Theocritus,
xxii., 1.
******* Apollodorus, III. ii., 1.
******** 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 [[mizarchagetas]]. (See
Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 23.)
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his despair he calls upon Zeus to
slay him also. "Thou canst not die altogether," answers the master of
the Gods; "thou art of a divine race." But he gives him the choice:
Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he
would share his brother's fate in all things, he must pass half his existence
underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This
semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.*
And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other
during the night.**
Is this a poetical fiction only? An
allegory, one of those "solar myth" interpretations, higher than
which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here
we have an allusion to the "Egg-born," Third Race; the first half of
which is mortal, i.e., unconscious in its personality, and having nothing
within itself to survive***; and the latter half of which becomes immortal in
its individuality, by reason of its fifth principle being called to life by the
informing gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux;
while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a
superior kind, when unlinked from the divine individuality. "Twins"
truly; yet divorced by death forever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of
twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine
nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.
Such is the occult meaning of the
metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of
it -- so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,**** as symbolical of
brotherly devotion -- namely, that it was an image borrowed from the spectacle
of Nature -- is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the
fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and
could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor -- and at the same time be
identified with Diana -- ancient symbologists who held the Sun, the King of all
sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest deity, would not have
personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.*****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pindar. Nem. x., 60, Dissen.
** Schol. Eurip. "Orestes,"
463, Dindorf. See Decharme's "Mythol.," etc., p. 654.
*** 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 Prakrit (matter) in the material spheres; and so does Atma-Buddhi
without Manas.
**** "Morals," p. 484 f.
***** This strange idea and
interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his "Mythologie de la Grece
Antique." "Castor and Pollux," he says, "are nothing but
the Sun and [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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If from Greek mythology we pass to
the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find a still more striking
corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace in Genesis
the "Egg-born," we shall still find there unmistakably the
androgynes, and the first three races of the Secret Doctrine hidden under most
ingenious symbology in the first four chapters of Genesis.
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THE DIVINE HERMAPHRODITE.
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was
thrown over the occult and religious mysteries taught, after the submersion of
the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should
be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences several have
now become exoteric -- such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely
mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all
symbolised and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been
forgotten, and their meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the
hermaphrodite in the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why
such unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
It is this secrecy which led the
Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of the
religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming
generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable
witness to the evolution of the human races from the divine, and especially
from the androgynous Race -- the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages!
Divine wisdom incarnating on earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of
personal experience of pain and suffering, generated under the shade of the
tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil -- a secret first known only to the
Elohim, the SELF-INITIATED, "higher gods" -- on earth only.*
In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,**
the first divine androgyne,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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. See Decharme, p. 655.)
* See "Book of Enoch."
** Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahma 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 Hindu Mangala, the planet Mars, identical
with Kartikeya, the "War-God," born of Gharma-ja (Siva's sweat) and
of the [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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separating into man and woman, and
becoming JAH-HEVA in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel* (male and female) in
its other form or Race -- the double-sexed Jehovah** -- an echo of its Aryan
prototype, Brahma-Vach. After which come the Third and Fourth Root-Races of
mankind*** -- that is to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of
opposite sexes, no longer sexless semi-spirits and androgynes, as were the two
Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is
found in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and
tradition. Because, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from
hoary antiquity, this is one of the greatest. It accounts for the bi-sexual
element found in every creative deity, in Brahma-Viraj-Vach, 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"
(ch. v. 5). Then it proceeds to say: "And Adam begat a son in his own
likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth" (v. 3); after which
he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and Abel are his own
allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive human race, especially
in its cosmo-sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo-anthropological
meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah-Hovah, meaning male life and
female life -- first androgynous, then separated into sexes -- is used in this
sense in Genesis from ch. v. onwards. As the author of "The Source of
Measures" says (p. 159): "The two words of which Jehovah is composed
make up the original idea of male-female, as the birth originators"; for the
Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the mother of all
living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore,
that "It is seen that the perfect one" (the perfect female circle or
Yoni, 20612, numerically), "as originator of measures, takes also the form
of birth-origin, as Hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use."
Precisely; only "the phallic
form and use" came long ages later; and the first and original meaning of
Enos, the son of Seth, was the First Race born in the present usual way from
man and woman --for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was
hermaphrodite.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Earth. He is Lokita, the red, like Brahma also and Adam. The Hindu Mars
is, like Adam, born from no woman and mother. With the Egyptians, Mars was the
primeval generative Principle, and so are Brahma, in exoteric teaching, and
Adam, in the Kabala.
* Abel is Chebel, meaning "Pains
of Birth," conception.
** See "Isis Unveiled,"
Vol. II, p. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and Eve blended, and Hevah,
and Abel, the feminine serpent.
*** See "Isis Unveiled,"
Vol. I., 305: "The union of the two create a third Race, etc."
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While Seth is the first result
(physiologically) after the FALL, he is also the first man; hence his son Enos
is referred to as the "Son of man." (Vide infra.) Seth represents the
later Third Race.
To screen the real mystery name of
AIN-SOPH -- the Boundless and Endless No-Thing -- the Kabalists have brought
forward the compound attribute-appellation of one of the personal creative
Elohim, whose name was Yak and Jab, the letters i or j or y being
interchangeable, or Jah-Hovah, i.e. male and female;* Jah-Eve an hermaphrodite,
or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon,
whose " mind-born son" is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And
knowing this, the crafty Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that
he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he
was obliged to make it sacred.
How close is the identity between
Brahma-Prajapati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, between Brahma-Viraj and Jehovah-Adam,
the Bible and the Puranas compared can alone show. Analysed and read in the
same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same
original -- made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once more
in relation to this subject Genesis ch. 4. verses 1 and 26 and Manu I., and
they will both yield their meaning. In Manu (Book I. 32) Brahma, who is also
both man and god, and divides his body into male and female, stands in his
esoteric meaning, as does Jehovah or Adam in the Bible, for the symbolical
personification of creative and generative power, both divine and human. The
Zohar affords still more convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins
repeat word for word certain original Puranic expressions; e.g., the
"creation" of the world is generally considered in the Brahmanical
books to be the Lila, delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator,
"Vishnu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time,
sports like a playful boy in frolics." (Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. ii.)
Now compare this with what is said in the Book, "Nobeleth' Hokhmah":
"The Kabalists say that the entering into existence of the worlds happens
through delight, in that Ain-Soph (? !) rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and
beamed from Itself to Itself . . . . which are all called delight," etc.
(Quoted in Myer's "Qabbalah," p. 110). Thus it is not a "curious
idea of the Qabbalists," as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely
Puranic, Aryan idea. Only, why make of Ain-Soph a Creator?
The "Divine Hermaphrodite"
is then Brahma-Vach-Viraj; and that of the Semites, or rather of the Jews, is
Jehovah-Cain-Abel. Only the "Heathen" were, and are, more sincere and
frank than were the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jod in the Kabala has for symbol
the hand, the forefinger and the lingham, while numerically it is the perfect
one; but it is also the number 10, male and female, when divided.
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later Israelites and Rabbis, who
undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The Jews regard the
name given to them -- the Yah-oudi -- as an insult. Yet they have, or would
have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the
ancient Yah-oudi, "Jah-hovians," as the Brahmins have to call
themselves Brahmins, after their national deity. For Jah-hovah is the generic
name of that group or hierarchy of creative planetary angels, under whose star
their nation has evolved. He is one of the planetary Elohim of the regent group
of Saturn. Verse 26 of Genesis, ch. iv., when read correctly, would alone give
them such a right, for it calls the new race of men sprung from Seth and Enos,
Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible:--
"To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah
or Yah-hovah," to with men and women, the "lords of creation."
One has but to read the above-mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and
by the light of the Kabala, to find that, instead of the words as they now
stand translated, it is:-- "Then began men to call themselves
Jehovah," which is the correct translation, and not "Then began men
to call upon the name of the Lord"; the latter being a mistranslation,
whether deliberate or not. Again the well-known passage: "I have gotten a
man from the Lord," should read: "I have gotten a man, even
Jehovah."* Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics
quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it: "Cain -- I have gotten
Kain, from Kanithi, I have gotten." Luther: "I have gotten a man 0--
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, because (a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the
passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) because this rendering is
identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahma.
In "Isis Unveiled,"** it was explained by the writer that "Cain
. . . is the son of the 'Lord' not of Adam (Genesis iv. I)" The
"Lord" is Adam Kadmon, the "father" of Yodcheva,
"Adam-Eve," or Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of
flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader and the progenitor of
the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but
esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a
female, the counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the
collective name for man and woman: "male and female (Zachar va Nakobeh)
created he them . . . and called their name Adam." The verses in Genesis
from chs. i. to v., are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After MAN of
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See "Source of Measures,"
p. 227.
** Vol. II., p. 264, et seq.
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Genesis ch. i. 26 and Enos, Son of
Man of ch. iv. v. 26, after Adam, the first androgyne, after Adam Kadmon, the
sexless (the first) Logos, Adam and Eve once separated, come finally
Jehovah-Eve and Cain-Jehovah. These represent distinct Root-Races, for millions
of years elapsed between them.
Hence the Aryan and the Semitic
Theo-anthropographies are two leaves on the same stem; their respective
personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to each other in
this way.
I. The Unknowable, referred to in
various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as "Nought Was," called, later
on "Parabrahm;" the [[diagram]] (Ain, nothing, or the
"Ain-Soph" of the Kabalists), and again, the "Spirit" (of
God) that moves upon the face of the waters, in Genesis. All these are
identical. Moreover, in Genesis, ch. i., v. 2, is placed as verse 1 in the
secret Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim "creating the
Heaven and the Earth." This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses
was necessary for monotheistic and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah's curse
against those Elohim (gods) who have not created the Heavens and the Earth, ch.
x., v. 11, shows that there were other Elohim who had.
II. The "Heavenly"
Manu-Swayambhuva, who sprang from Swayambhu-Narayana, the "Self-existent,"
and Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the androgyne MAN of Genesis ch. 1 are
also identical.
III. Manu-swayambhuva is Brahma, or
the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who in Genesis iv., 5, separates himself into
two halves, male and female, thus becoming Jah-Hovah or Jehovah-Eve; as Manu
Swayambhuva or Brahma separates himself to become "Brahma-Viraj and
Vach-Viraj," male and female; all the rest of the texts and versions being
blinds.
IV. Vach is the daughter of Brahma
and is named Sata-Rupa, "the hundred-formed," and Savitri,
"generatrix," the mother of the gods and of all living. She is
identical with Eve, "the mother (of all the lords or gods or) of all
living." Besides this there are many other occult meanings.
What is written in "Isis,"
although scattered about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct:
Explaining esoterically Ezekiel's
wheel,* it is said of Jodhevah or Jehovah: -
"When the ternary is taken in
the beginning of the Tetragram, it expresses the divine creation spiritually, without
any carnal sin; taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter: it is
feminine. The name of Eva is composed of three letters, that of the primitive
or heavenly
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Isis Unveiled," Vol.
II., p. 462.
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Adam, is written with one letter, Jod
or Yodh; 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 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 Prajapatis
and Sephiroth are led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yod-cheva.
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, Hermes, and
Libra, are one."
This is only one of the several
meanings. No need to remind the scholar that Scorpio is the astrological sign
of the organs of reproduction. Like the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all
convertible in their numbers, as well as interchangeable. According to the subject
to which they relate they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even fourteen,
and they have the same esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.
Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown,
has a variety of etymologies, but only those are true which are found in the
Kabala. [[hebrew]] (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was pronounced Ya-va.
Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words [[hebrew]] Yaho-Iah,
Jaho-Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is [[hebrew]] which is, however, a
Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni or [[hebrew]], which has
the same points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews
anciently read the name [[hebrew]] (Adoni), when they had so many names of
which Jeho and Jah and Iah constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus,
who gives us the so-called fragment of Sanchoniathon, spelt it in Greek letters
[[IEUO]], Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced Yahva,
and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus:
[[hebrew]] (Ye-hou-vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true occult
meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means "he will --
be."* It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb [[hebrew]] or [[hebrew]]
eue (eva) or eua (Eva) "to be." And so it was, since from Enosh, the
"Son of Man," only, were the truly human races to begin and "to
be," as males and females. This statement receives further corroboration,
inasmuch as Parkhurst makes the verb [[hebrew]] to mean: (1) "To
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See for comparison Hosea, xii. 6,
where it is so punctuated.
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fall down" (i.e. into generation
or matter); and (2) "To be, to continue " -- as a Race. The aspirate
of the word eua (Eva) "to be" being [[hebrew]] Heve (Eve), which is
the feminine of [[hebrew]] and the same as Hebe, the Grecian goddess of youth
and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still more
clearly in its primitive double-sexed form.
Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as
Jah and Yah, e.g., Jah (navi) "Ganges" and Jagan-natha, "Lord of
the World," it becomes clear why Mr. Rawlinson is so very confident in his
works of an Aryan or Vedic influence on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is
it to be much wondered at that the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared
during the captivity period, without leaving a trace behind them, when we are
informed that the Jews had de facto but two tribes -- those of Judah and of
Levi. The Levies, moreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The
descendants have only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into
thin, sidereal air. There were Brahms and A-brahms, in days of old, truly, and
before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first god and gods to
be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded their distant
primeval progenitors, their dual-sexed ancestors, as divine Beings and Gods,
just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine in one sense, as also
were their first human progeny, the "mind-born" primitive humanity,
which were most assuredly bi-sexuals as all the more ancient symbols and
traditions show. Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the
priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet undiscovered during the
present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing
and hieroglyphical system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift
their records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the
picture writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed geometrical
figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before he ventures on an
interpretation."
"But there are myths which speak
for themselves. In this class we may include the double-sexed first creators of
every Cosmogony. The Greek Zeus-Zen (AEther), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth)
and Metis (water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona -- the former god also
representing AEther, 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" -- all these are records of the
primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
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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
SWEAT-BORN, THE THIRD (Race). 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 (the
Moon), OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN
(Hamsa) OF THE LATER THIRD (a). FIRST MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (b).
(a) The text of the Stanza clearly
implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra by Cosmic forces, and that
the "Father-Mother" furnished apparently the germ that ripened: in
all probability a "sweat-born egg," to be hatched out, in some
mysterious way, disconnected from the "double" parent. It is
comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is,
in one sense, "egg-born." Magendie, moreover, in his Precis
Elementaire de Physiologie, citing "a case where the umbilical cord was
ruptured and perfectly cicatrized," yet the infant was born alive,
pertinently asks, "How was the circulation carried on in this organ?"
On the next page he says: "Nothing is at present known respecting the use
of digestion in the foetus;" and respecting its nutrition, 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 generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of
ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession." Indeed; then let us
turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir M. Foster (Text-Book
of Physiology, third edition, 1879, p. 623); and to the disadvantage of modern
Science we shall find him saying, "Concerning the rise and development of
the functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We
know scarcely anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental
qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex
phenomena which we have attempted in
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this book to explain." The
students of Trin. Coll. Cantab. will now kindly draw a veil before the statue
of Hygeia 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 M. Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured
umbilical cord cited by his great French confrere.
This is a very curious statement as
explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created
the Second by "budding," as just explained, the Second Race gives
birth to the Third -- which itself is separated into three distinct divisions,
consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced
by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the
early sub-races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of
exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an
oviform ball -- or shall we say egg? -- which served as an extraneous vehicle
for the generation therein of a foetus and child, the mode of procreation by
the later races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the
earlier races were entirely sexless -- shapeless even for all one knows*; but
those of the later races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that
the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity
became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs
began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary
development, first, to Beings in which one sex predominated over the other,
and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for
corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West.
Let us take the "Egg-born Race" first. Think of Kasyapa, the Vedic
sage, and the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahma's
mind-born son; and he is made to become the father of the Nagas, or Serpents,
among other beings. Exoterically, the Nagas are semi-divine beings which have a
human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nagas, said to be
a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadra, Kasyapa's wife,
for the purpose of peopling Patala, which is undeniably America, as will be
shown; and there was a NAGA-Dwipa, one of the seven divisions of
Bharata-Varsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are
allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a
trace behind them to this day.
Now the point most insisted upon at
present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, his evolution took place
in this order: (1) Sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a
natural transition, he became,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See the "Timaeus."
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"a solitary hermaphrodite,"
a bi-sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what he is now. Science
teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, "still retained
the power of undergoing the processes of A-Sexual multiplication;" why,
then, should man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi-sexual reproduction is
an evolution, a specialized and perfected form on the scale of matter of the
fissiparous act of reproduction. Occult teachings are pre-eminently panspermic,
and the early history of humanity is hidden only "from ordinary
mortals;" nor is the history of the primitive Races buried from the
Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane science. Therefore,
supported on the one hand by that science which shows to us progressive
development and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in
Nature; and, on the other hand, by an implicit faith in the wisdom -- we may
say pansophia even -- of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the
Initiates, who have perfected them into an almost faultless system -- thus
supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly.
In an able article, written some
fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alex. Wilder, of New
York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing "The Primeval
Race Double-Sexed," and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.* He
argues firstly, "that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the
phenomenon of bisexuality . . . the Linnaean classification enumerating thus
almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable
kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the Hemp to the Lombardy Poplar
and Ailanthus. In the animal kingdom, in insect life, the moth generates a
worm, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed: "Taurus Draconem
genuit, et Taurum Draco." The coral-producing family, which, according to
Agassiz, 'has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present
geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida . . . . produce their
offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree.' Bees are
somewhat in the same line . . . . The Aphides or plant lice keep house like
Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the Race for ten successive
generations."
What say the old sages, the
philosopher-teachers of antiquity. Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in
Plato's "Banquet": "Our nature of old was not the same as it is
now. It was androgynous, the form and name partaking of, and being common to
both the male and female. . . . Their bodies were round, and the manner of
their running
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Extracts from that Essay in
"The Theosophist," of February, 1883.
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circular.* 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 Toleduth (generation) 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."*** This will show the esoteric point. The sexless Race was
their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure
spiritual existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the second Race:
Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the Third, or the
"Separating Hermaphrodite," Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth,
Seth-Enos, etc. It is that Third, the last semi-spiritual race, which was also
the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the
Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had tasted from the fruit of the Tree
of Good and Evil -- Wisdom united already to earthy, and therefore impure,
intelligence **** had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and
great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the
latter, is called in the Hermetic books "the God possessing the double
fecundity of the two sexes." Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman.
See also in the Orphic hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 wheel."
** See Prof. Wilder's Essay "The
Primeval Race Double-Sexed."
*** Eugibinus, a Christian, and the
Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh 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 Brahma), but afterwards
the parts were separated." The one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm of David
recited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar is 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."
**** See the union of Chochmah,
Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or Jehovah, the Demiurge, called
Understanding in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. 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."
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"Zeus is a male, Zeus is an
immortal maid." The Egyptian Ammon was the goddess Neith, in his other
half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and
Ila, the goddess, is also Su-Dyumna, the god, as Vaivasvata's progeny.
"The name Adam," says
Professor A. Wilder, "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' . . . and the side which the Elohim had taken from man, 'made he a
woman' (Gen. ii.). 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 Omoroca, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She
was also Melita, the queen of the Moon. . . . The two 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,"
continues the author. "Unto thee shall be his desire," said the Lord
God to Cain, "and thou shalt rule over him." The same language had
been uttered to Eve: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall
rule over thee." . . .
Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of
the human Third Root-Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin
individuals were raised to "Gods," because that Race represented their
"divine Dynasty." The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male
heroes of the Fourth Race, who created gods after their own sexual image,
whereas the gods of primeval mankind were "male and female."
As stated in Book I, the humanities
developed coordinately, and on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new
Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional element. Our Fifth
Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element -- call it interstellar ether, if
you will -- which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics.
We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but
the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to
any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to
the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole
globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a
"world," says M. Flammarion, "which is not subject like our own
to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but
which is enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring."
("Pluralite des Mondes," p. 69.) Those astronomers who maintain that
Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to
settle their dispute with this learned French
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Astronomer.* It must, however, be
always borne in mind that the "eternal spring" referred to is only a
condition cognised as such by the Jovians. It is not "spring" as we
know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two
theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.
It is thus a universal tradition that
mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent
condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse.
Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient philosophies; from those of
Egypt and India with their Divine Dynasties down to that of Plato. And all
these universal beliefs must be classed with the "presentiments" and
"obstinate conceptions," some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths.
Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are "frequently the outcome of
the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of generations of men."
For, "a tradition which has an uniform and universal existence,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An hypothesis evolved in 1881 by
Mr. 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. M. 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 [[degrees]] is reached, the boundary between liquid and gas
vanished; liquid and gas have blended into one mysterious intermediate fluid;
an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the whole of the tube --
an etherealised 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. 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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has all the weight of scientific
testimony."* And there is more than one such tradition in the Puranic
allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the first Race of
mankind was formed out of the chhayas (astral images) of the Pitris, is fully
corroborated in the Zohar. "In the Tzalam (shadow image) of Elohim (the
Pitris), was made Adam (man). (Cremona, Ed. iii., 76a; Brody, Ed. iii., 159a;
"Qabbalah," Isaac Myer, p. 420.)
It has been repeatedly urged as an
objection that, however high the degree of metaphysical thought in ancient
India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to
boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of mystic Greeks who lived in
Egypt. To this, one answer can be given -- a direct proof that the Egyptians believed
in the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the
objectors open the "Eclogae Physicae et Ethicae" of Stobaeus, the
Greek compiler of ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The
following is a transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the
Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:--
"From one Soul, that of ALL,
spring all the Souls, which spread themselves as if purposely distributed
through the world. These souls undergo many transformations; those which are
already creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic
animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds. From the
beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born. On reaching that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 rarified planets."
It is gratifying to see how
scientific imagination approaches every year more closely to the borderland of
our occult teachings.
* "The Day After Death," p.
23.
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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 CHHAYAS,
THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE
COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS WERE (so destroyed) (a).
(a) This verse cannot be understood
without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root-Race, the
"Shadows" of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by
death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be
affected by any element -- flood or fire. But their "Sons," the
Second Root-Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the
"progenitors" merged wholly in their own astral bodies, which were
their progeny; so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the
"Sweat-born." These were the second Humanity -- composed of the most
heterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters -- the first attempts of material
nature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent
(Greenland, among others) were transformed, in order, from Edens with their
eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the
displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their beds;
and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the
evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great
cataclysms there have already been four.* 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 Puranas
about our Progenitors are as contradictory in their details as everything else.
Thus while, in the Rig Veda, Ida (or Ila) is called the Instructress of
Vaivasvata Manu, Sayana makes of her a goddess presiding over the Earth, and
the Sathapatha Brahmana shows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offering of his
sacrifice, and, later on, his (Vaivasvata's) wife, by whom he begat the race of
Manus. In the Puranas, again, she is Vaivasvata's daughter, yet the wife of
Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet
Jupiter's (Brihhaspati's) wife, Tara. All this, which seems a jumble to the
profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of
the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The first occurred when what is now
the North Pole was separated from the later Continents.
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ceivable, all the details, however,
being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can
follow them and place the events in their proper order.
The story as told in the
"Mahabharata" strikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be explained
by the secret sense contained in the Bhagavad Gita. It is the prologue to the
drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the
river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves and
places it in a jar, where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him
the news of the forthcoming deluge. It is the well-known "Matsya Avatar,"
the first Avatar of Vishnu, the Dagon* of the Chaldean Xisuthrus, and many
other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu
orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is said to be saved along with the
seven Rishis, the latter, however, being absent from other texts. Here the
seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven principles, and various other
things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.
We have said elsewhere that the great
Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the FALL, to
both spiritual and physical, cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is
below. The ship or ark -- navis -- in short, being the symbol of the female
generative principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by
the Womb: both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being,
which the sun, or Vishnu, the male principle, vivifies and fructifies.** The
First Cosmic Flood refers to primordial creation, or the formation of Heaven
and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the
"Flood," and the Moon for the "Mother," from whom proceed
all the life-germs.*** But the terrestrial Deluge and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** See Part. II. § "The Holy of
Holies."
*** It is far later on that the Moon
became a male god; with the Hindus it was Soma, with the Chaldeans Nannak or
Nannar, and Sin, the son of Mulil, the older Bel. The "Akkadians"
called him the "Lord of Ghosts"; and he was the god of Nipoor
(Niffer) in northern Babylonia. It is Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood
to fall from heaven on Earth, for which Xisuthrus would not allow him to
approach his altar. As the modern Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is
the northern Nipoor which is the centre whence Chaldean (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 Israel's Jehovah and his
seed, because Ur was the chief seat of the worship of the Moon-god, and because
Abraham is said to have come from Ur, when from A-bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham.
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its story has also its dual
application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was
saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of
the human seed at the end of the Third Race,* and in the other to the real and
historical Atlantean submersion. In both cases the "Host" -- or the
Manu which saved the seed -- is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity
between the Puranic and other versions; while in the Sathapatha Brahmana,
Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu; which is a
reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by will
(Kriyasakti), before they were naturally born from the hermaphrodites as an
independent sex, and who were, therefore, regarded as their creator's
daughters. The Puranic accounts make of her (Ida or Ila) the wife of Budha
(Wisdom), the latter version referring to the events of the Atlantean flood,
when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-race from being
destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.
This is shown very clearly in the
Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna is made to say:--
"The Seven great Rishis, the
four preceding Manus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind: from
them sprung (were born) the human races and the world." (Chapter X., verse
6).
Here the four preceding
"Manus," out of the seven, are the four Races** which have already
lived, since Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated
the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* When Narada, the virgin-ascetic,
threatened to put an end to the human race by preventing Daksha's sons from
procreating it.
** This is corroborated by a learned
Brahmin. In his most excellent lectures on the Bhagavad Gita (see
"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 'Chatvaraha' is separated from
the word 'Manavaha,' and is made to refer to Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumara,
and Sanatsujata, who are also included among the mind-born sons of Prajapati.
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 those 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
Puranic 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 Santhathi of a particular Manu.
Now, the Fourth Race has passed, or, in other words, there have been four past
Manus. . . . . "
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Manu, the son of Surya (the Sun), and
the saviour of our Race, is connected with the Seed of Life, both physically
and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern
ourselves only with the first two.
The "Deluge" is undeniably
an universal tradition. "Glacial periods" were numerous, and so were
the "Deluges," for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate
some half dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges -- the earliest of all
being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000, years ago.* But which
was our Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains
recorded in the traditions of all the peoples, from the remotest antiquity; the
one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with
Ruta and Daitya and ending with the (comparatively) small island mentioned by
Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It
was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which
Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years
B.C., had nothing to do with either the semi-universal Deluge, or Noah's flood
-- the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions -- nor even
with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; at least, only a moral
connection.
Our Fifth Race (the non-initiated
portions), hearing of many deluges, confused them, and now know of but one.
This one altered the whole aspect of the globe in its interchange and shifting
of land and sea.
We may compare the traditions of the
Peruvians:-- "The Incas, seven in number, have repeopled the Earth after
the deluge," they say (Coste I, IV., p. 19); Humboldt mentions the Mexican
version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the
still-preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent
Naturalist mentions twice seven companions and the divine bird which preceded
the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and
the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of
Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped
with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, is saved and
translated alive to heaven -- like Enoch -- with the seven gods, the Kabirim,
or the seven divine Titans; again the Chinese Yao has seven figures which sail
with him and which he will animate when he lands, and use for "human
seed." Osiris, when he enters the ark, or solar boat, takes seven Rays
with him, etc., etc.
Sanchoniathon makes the Aletae or
Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Smithsonian Contributions to
Knowledge," xviii.; "American Journal of Science," III., xi.,
456; and Croll's "Climate and Time." Lemuria was not submerged by a
flood, but was destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank.
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with Agruerus, the great Phoenician
god (whom Faber sought to identify with Noah*); further, it is suspected that
the name of "Titan" is derived from Tit-Ain -- "the fountains of
the chaotic abyss"** (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is "the divine
deluge"); and thus the Titans, who are seven, are shown to be connected
with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.***
They are the sons of Kronos (Time)
and Rhea (the Earth); and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same
personage, and as the seven Kabiri are said to be the sons of Sydyk or
Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber
was right in his conclusions when he wrote: "I have no doubt of the seven
Titans and Kabiri being the same as the seven Rishis of the Hindu mythology
(?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Manu, the head (?) of
the family."
But he is less fortunate in his
speculations when he adds "The Hindoos, in their wild legends have
variously perverted the history of the Noachidae (? !), yet it is remarkable
that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven."**** Hence
Captain (Col.) Wilford very judiciously observes: that "Perhaps the seven
Manus, the seven Brahmadicas and the seven Rishis are the same, and make only
seven individual persons.***** The seven Brahmadicas were Prajapatis, or lords
'of the prajas or creatures.' From them mankind was born, and they are probably
the same with the seven Manus. . . . These seven grand ancestors of the human
race were created for the purpose of replenishing the Earth with
inhabitants." (Asiatic Researches, Vol. V. p. 246); and Faber adds that:
"the mutual resemblance of the Kabirs, the Titans, the Rishis, and the
Noetic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident."******
Faber was led into this mistake, and
subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that
the name of the scriptural
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and
the prototype of the Israelitish 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. (But see Faber's "Kabiri," Vol. I,
pp. 35, 43, and 45.)
** See ibid., Vol. II., p. 240.
*** Sanchoniathon says that the
Titans were the sons of Kronos, and seven in number; and he calls them
fire-worshippers, Aletae (sons of Agni?), and diluvians. Al-ait is the god of
fire.
**** Of which seven, let us remark,
the Aryans, and not the Semites, were the originators, while the Jews got that
number from the Chaldeans.
***** Seven individual sons of God,
or Pitars and Pitris; also in this case the sons of Kronos or Saturn (Kala
"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.
****** See "Kabiri," Vol.
I., p. 131.
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Japhet is on the list of the Titans
contained in a verse of the Orphic hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the
seven "Arkite" Titans (whom Faber refuses to identify with the
impious Titans, their descendants) were Koeus, Kroeus, Phorcys, Kronos,
Oceanus, Hyperion, and Iapetus:--
[[Koion te, Kroion te melan, Phorkun
te krataion,
Kai Kronon, Okeanon d, 'Huperioa te
Iapeponet.]]
-- (Orph. apud Proclum. In Tim. lib.
v. p. 295.
But why could not the Babylonian Ezra
have adopted the name of Iapetos for one of Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are
the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to
Arnobius. (Adversum Gentes, lib. III., p. 124.) The Hindus can therefore claim
with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is the
female Manu. (See Ramayana.) Mania is Ila or Ida, the wife and daughter of
Vaivasvata Manu, from whom "he begat the race of Manus." Like Rhea,
the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth (Sayana making her the goddess of
the Earth), and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vach. Both Ida
and Vach are turned into males and females; Ida becoming Sudyumna, and Vach,
"the female Viraj," turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas;
one version referring to cosmic and divine theogony, the other to the later
period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin,
appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.
Thus it is no accident, but the
result of one archaic doctrine common to all, of which the Israelites, through
Ezra, the author of the modernised Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So
unceremonious were they with other people's property, that Berosus
(Antiquitates Libyae, I, fol. 8), shows that Titea -- of whom Diodorus makes
the mother of the Titans or Diluvians (See Bibl. lib. III. p. 170) -- was the
wife of Noah. For this Faber calls him the "pseudo-Berosus," yet
accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the pagans
have borrowed all their gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal
material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs
possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it
is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from pagan myths, if
myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the
source of Genesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as
the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and other older "Arkite"
symbols. For, Berosus says that "Titea magna" was afterwards called
Aretia,* and worshipped with the Earth; and this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aretia is the female form of Artes
(Egyptian Mars). Thence the Chaldean (and now Hebrew) word [[hebrew]] (Aretz)
"Earth." The author of "Beitrage zur Kenntniss" (Art. under
"Artes" Mars) quotes: "Addit Cedrenus (Salem I., 3): Stella
Martis ab [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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identifies "Titea," Noah's
consort, with Rhea, the mother of the Titans, and with Ida -- both being goddesses
who preside over the Earth, and the mothers of the Manus and Manes (or
Tit-an-Kabiri). And "Titea-Aretia" was worshipped as Horchia, says
the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, goddess of the Earth.
"Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam lingua Janigena
Horchiam." (Ibid. lib. V. fol. 64.)
Scarce an ancient poet of historic or
prehistoric days who failed to mention the sinking of the two continents --
often called isles -- in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides
Atlantis, of the Phlegyae. (See Pausanias and Nonus, who both tell how:
"From its deep-rooted base the
Phlegyan isle
Stern Neptune shook, and plunged
beneath the waves
Its impious inhabitants. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . ."
-- Dionysius lib xviii. p. 319).
Faber felt convinced that the
"insulae Phlegyae" were Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or
less distorted echoes of the Hindu tradition about that great Cataclysm, which
befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded
the Aryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, that of "the Deluge
has more than one meaning. It refers in Theogony, to pre-cosmic
transformations, to spiritual correlations -- however absurd the term may sound
to a scientific ear -- and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great FLOOD of
WATERS (matter) in CHAOS, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which
were swamped by, and perished in, the mysterious differentiation -- a
pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah
preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva
preceded Vaivasvata and the rest." (See "Isis Unveiled.," Vol.
II., pp. 420 et seq., where one or two of the seven meanings are hinted at.)
All this goes to show that the semi-universal
deluge known to geology (first glacial period) must have occurred just at the
time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years (in round
numbers) after the commencement of our FIFTH RACE, or about the time assigned
by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first glacial period: i.e., about
850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by geologists
and astronomers to "an extreme eccentricity of the Earth's
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Egyptiis vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). Significat autem hoc omnis
generis procreationem et vivificationem, omnisque substantiae et materiae
naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem." It is Earth as "source
of being"; or, as explained by the author of "The Source of
Measures," Arts is the same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and both combine the
primeval idea of Earth as source; precisely as in the Hebrew itself, under
another form, Adam and Madim, (Mars) are the same, and combine the idea of
Earth with Adam under the form of H-Adam-H.
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orbit," and as the Secret
Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another
factor, the shifting of the Earth's axis -- a proof of which may be found in
the Book of Enoch,* if the veiled language of the Puranas is not understood --
all this should tend to show that the ancients knew something of the
"modern discoveries" of Science. Enoch, when speaking of "the
great inclination of the Earth," which "is in travail," is quite
significant and clear.
Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah,
floating on the waters in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or
Moon, the feminine principle; Noah is the "spirit" falling into
matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a
vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk on it, 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 ch. 7 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 Chaldean 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 Ishtar (Astaroth or Venus, the lunar goddess)
who is shut up in the ark and sends out "a dove in search of dry
land." ("Isis Unveiled" Vol. II, pp. 423 and 424).
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 Ishtar or Astoreth, the
Moon, speak of the creation of the sun after the deluge? The waters might have
reached as high as the mountain of Nizir (Chaldean version), or Jebel Djudi
(the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend), or yet Ararat (of the Biblical narrative),
and even the Himalaya (of the Hindu tradition), and yet not reach the sun: the
Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge of
the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and
far more philosophical than that of an universal deluge, of which there are no
geological traces whatever.
As all such Cataclysms are periodical
and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a generic character, under
various circumstances and events (vide infra: "The Seven Manus of
Humanity"), there seems to be no
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Chap. lxiv., Sect. xi.
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serious objection to the supposition
that the first "great flood" had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic
meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the "age of
Truth," when the Second Root Race, "The Manu with bones," made
its primeval appearance as "the Sweat-Born."*
The Second Flood -- the so-called
"universal" -- which affected the Fourth Root Race (now conveniently
regarded by theology as "the accursed race of giants," the CAINITES,
and "the sons of Ham") is that flood which was first perceived by
geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the
Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them
agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brahmanical books. And it may
be perceived that while, in the first account, "there is no God or mortal
yet on Earth," when Manu Vaivasvata lands on the Himavan; in the second,
the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company: thus showing that whereas
some accounts refer to the sidereal and cosmic FLOOD before the so-called
creation, the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the
other of a real watery deluge. In the Satapatha Brahmana, Manu finds that
"the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was
left" -- i.e., the seed of life alone remained from the previous
dissolution of the Universe, or Mahapralaya, after a "Day of Brahma";
and the Mahabharata refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away
nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata
Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our esoteric Cosmogony:** (a) as
the "Root-Manu"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* All such expressions are explained
in the "Anthropogenesis" of this Book, and elsewhere.
** One has to remember that, in the
Hindu philosophy, every differentiated unit is such only through the cycles of
Maya, being one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. Hence arises the
seeming confusion and contradiction in the various Puranas, and at times in the
same Purana, about the same individual. Vishnu -- as the many-formed Brahma,
and as Brahma (neuter) -- is one, and yet he is said to be all the 28 Vyasas
(Vishnu Purana). "In every Dvapara (third) age, Vishnu, in the person of
Vyasa, divides the Veda, which is one, into four and many portions.
Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the
Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvapara Yuga . . . and, consequently,
twenty-eight Vyasas have passed away . . . they who were all in the form of
Veda-Vyasas, who were the Vyasas of their respective eras. . . . " (Book
III., Ch. III.) "This world is Brahma in Brahma, from Brahma . . . nothing
further to be known." Then, again . . . "There were in the First
Manvantara seven celebrated sons of Vasishta, who in the Third Manvantara, were
sons of Brahma (i.e., Rishis), the illustrious progeny of Urja." 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
reincarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyan Chohans of our Planetary
chain.
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on Globe A in the First Round; (b) as
the "seed of life" on Globe D in the Fourth Round; and (c) as the
"Seed of Man" at the beginning of every Root-Race -- in our Fifth
Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the
Dvapara Yuga,* the destruction of the accursed sorcerers; "of that island
(Plato speaking only of its last island) beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the
Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the
neighbourhood of another large Continent" (America). It is this
"Atlantic" land which was connected with the "White
Island," and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the
"White Devil" of Colonel Wilford (see "Asiatic Researches,"
Vol. VIII., p. 280), as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the
Dvapara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if
the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 since
that destruction took place. Again, these figures are not very widely different
from those given by the geologists, who place their "glacial period"
850,000 years ago.
Then "a woman was produced who
came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat
the offspring of Manu." This refers to the physiological transformation of
sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear
to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of
sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves (as in
the case of Brahma and Vach, and even of Adam and Eve), and thus the female is,
in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, "the flesh
of his (and her) flesh and the bone of his (and her) bone." Let it be also
well remembered that not one of our Orientalists have yet learned to discern in
those "contradictions and amazing nonsense," as some call the
Puranas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a
Sub-Race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic theogony. This double
and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same
individual apparently, under an identical name, while it refers, in fact, to
events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ila. She is first
represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is
said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to
Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Dvapara 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-Yug, when
destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga. The Aryan 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 6th 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.
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Brahman, a daughter only was obtained
-- Ila. Then, "through the favour of the gods," her sex is changed
and she becomes a man, Su-dyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so
on; the fable adding that Siva and his consort were pleased that "she
would be male one month and female another." This has a direct reference
to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned
Orientalists think (see "Hindu Classical Dictionary") and have
declared that "Ila was primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk;
thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech." The
"profane" are not told, however, the reason why "a libation of
milk," or "a stream of praise," should be male and female by
turn: unless, indeed there is some "internal evidence" which the
occultists fail to perceive.
In their most mystical meanings, the
union of Swayambhuva Manu with Vach-Sata-Rupa, his own daughter (this being the
first "euhemerization" of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu
and Ila are a secondary and a third form), stands in Cosmic symbolism as the
Root-life, the germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the worlds, angels
and the gods. For, as says Vishnu:--
"From Manu all creation, gods,
Asuras, man must be produced,
By him the world must be created,
that which moves and moveth not. . . . ."
But we may find worse opponents than
even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures,
Brahmins may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of them,
orthodox conservatives, may not raise objections to the modes of procreation
attributed to their Pitar Devatas. We shall be called upon to produce the works
from which we quote, while they will be invited by us to read their own Puranas
a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we
repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent
allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or
two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second
Race, which is called the "Sweat-Born." This allegory is regarded as
a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of
the greatest mysteries of Nature.
But in view of the chronological
statements made herein, it is natural to ask:--
COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
To this Occultism answers in the
affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration
covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man, i.e., the male and female entity already
separated into
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distinct sexes. The two and a half
Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all
that science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way
of the theory could not exist for the primeval, ethereal man of the Occult
teachings. The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric
sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an
astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul
d'Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,* not to
speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern
spiritualists and mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in
our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.
The Secret Doctrine maintains that,
notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of our globe, which --
owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the
Fourth Round is the middle-point of the life allotted to it -- were far more
terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds (the cycles
of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions)
physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.** This
period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable
development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a
"boneless," purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows
only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic theology
still more so. The first will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based
on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same
plane of materiality in all the ages; the last on a tissue of most absurd
fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by theologians, is based
on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this planet have
the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a
globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Posthumous Humanity" --
translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887.
** Professor Newcomb says: "The
heat evolved by contraction would last only 18,000,000 years"
("Popular Astronomy," p. 500); but "a temperature permitting the
existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago"
(Winchell's "World-Life," p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the
whole age of the incrustation of the Earth is 18,000,000 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.
*** 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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The Occultists, who believe firmly in
the teachings of the mother-philosophy, repel the objections of both
theologians and scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, during those
periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, successive
floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and
seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and
organization, such as is assigned by them to the early mankind. Neither the
heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of
a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from
making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian age
itself.
Thus the Monads destined to animate
future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their
phases of immetalization, of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the
highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet, what
could the plastic modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature?
Could they, as claimed by the Biblical dead-letter, form
"Lord-God"-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea
out of volcanic dust, and breathe a living soul into Man? No: because the soul
was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a coating. Pygmalion,
who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak-Zivo of the Nazarean Gnostics, who
fails to construct "a human soul in the creature," are, as
conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the
dead-letter sense, or the Biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric philosophy, which
teaches spontaneous generation -- after the Sishta and Prajapati have thrown
the seed of life on the Earth -- shows the lower angels able to construct
physical man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the
ethereal form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve
gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic model.
This will again be objected to:
"Spontaneous Generation" is an exploded theory, we shall be told.
Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is
against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous
generation
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of life, all the realm and dwelling of intelligent creatures endowed
with will, subject to law and capable of free-will; then, it would become
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 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.
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be indeed proven impossible in our
present world-period and actual conditions -- which the Occultists deny --
still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under
different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian period, but
even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science
could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially
of Man, once that she rejects both the Biblical teachings and spontaneous
generation. Pasteur's observations, however, are far from being perfect or
proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance and show that they
have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well as that other one
"when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth?" As to the idea
that Haeckel's Moneron -- a pinch of salt! -- has solved the problem of the
origin of life, it is simply absurd. Those materialists, who feel inclined to
pooh-pooh the theory of the "Self-existent," the "Self-born
heavenly man," represented as an ethereal, astral man, must excuse even a
tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of modern
thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of protoplasm
(moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has no ancestors
among either of these, since it is that moneron which serves as a point of
departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are
their own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical
also; too much so, even for the Occultist.
If spontaneous generation has changed
its methods now, owing perhaps to accumulated material on hand, so as to almost
escape detection, it was in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even
the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds.
The scale-bound, gigantic sauria, the winged pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and
the hundred-feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of
the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of
the primary epoch. There was a time when all those above enumerated
"antediluvian" monsters appeared as filamentoid infusoria without
shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced
their kind by gemmation: as do microscopical animals also, the architects and
builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of science. Why not
man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth,
i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe
that primeval humanity had at first an ethereal -- or, if so preferred, a huge
filamentoid, jelly-like form, evolved by gods or natural "forces,"
which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its
physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of
the Fourth Race Man, -- rather
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than believe him created of the dust
of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.
Nor does our esoteric theory clash
with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S.,
says, in a letter to "Knowledge," (Dec. 23, 1881). "Evolution --
rather Nature, in the light of evolution -- has only been studied for some
twenty-five years or so. That is, of course, a mere fractional space in the
history of human thought." And just because of that we do not lose all
hope that materialistic science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept
the esoteric teachings -- if even at first divorced from their (to science) too
metaphysical elements.
Has the last word on the subject of
human evolution yet been said? "Each . . . . 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,"
writes Prof. Huxley; "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"! ! Will this eminent
Darwinian admit the possibility of his pithecoid ancestry being assignable to
the list of "wholly intolerable beliefs," in the "larger
knowledge" of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere "rising to the
civilized state" does not account for the evolution of form.
In the same letter, "The
Evolution of Man," Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. Thus, he
observes, in answer to the queries put to "Knowledge" by "G.
M.":--
" 'Has evolution effected any
change in man? If so, what change? If not, why not?' . . . If we refuse to
admit (as science does) that man was created a perfect being, and then became
degraded, there exists only another supposition -- that of evolution. If man
has arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is evolution. We do
not yet know, because such knowledge is difficult to acquire, if the human frame
is subject to the same influences as those of lower animals. But there is
little doubt that elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies
'evolution,' and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man's evolution cannot
be doubted; the ever-widening sphere of thought has sprung from small and rude
beginnings, like language itself. But man's ways of life, his power of
adaptation to his surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made
the facts and course of his 'evolution' very difficult to trace."
This very difficulty ought to make
the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. But why is evolution
impossible, if "man was created a perfect being, and then became
degraded?" At best it can only apply
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to the outward, physical man. As
remarked in "Isis Unveiled," Darwin's evolution begins at the middle
point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from the
universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has
undeniably already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded
from the Universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of
modern science, than was Aristotle. For he opposed and denounced the idea of
the revolution of the earth and even of its rotundity. "Almost all
those," he wrote, "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.
. . ." Because (a) the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and (b) they followed
the deductive method. Whereas, Aristotle, the father of the inductive system,
complained of those who taught that "the centre of our system was occupied
by the Sun, and the earth was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around
the same centre, produces night and day" (Vide De Caelo, Book II., c. 13.)
The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now
expounded, is the only one, which can -- without falling into the absurdity of
a "miraculous" man created out of the dust of the Earth, or the still
greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, (the ex-protoplasmic
moneron) -- account for his appearance on Earth.
Analogy is the guiding law in Nature,
the only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths
of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative
potency, is infinite, and no generation of physical scientists can ever boast
of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws
upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of Fire-mist becoming
gradually -- as it rolls through aeons of time in the interstellar spaces -- a
planet, a self-luminous globe, to settle into a man-bearing world or Earth,
thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock-bound globe; and if we
see on it everything evolving from the non-nucleated jelly-speck that becomes
the sarcode* of the moneron, then passes from its protistic state** into the
form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic
times; then dwindles again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now
confined solely to tropical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Or what is more generally known as
Protoplasm. This substance received its name of "Sarcode" from Prof.
Dujardin Beaumetz far earlier.
** The Monera are indeed Protista.
They are neither animals "nor plants," writes Haeckel; " . . .
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.)
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regions, and the universally common
lizard* -- how can man alone escape the general law? "There were giants on
earth in those days," says Genesis, repeating the statement of all the
other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded on anthropological and
physiological fact.
And, as the hard-shelled crustacean
was once upon a time a jelly-speck, "a thoroughly homogeneous particle of
albumen in a firmly adhesive condition," so was the outward covering of primitive
man, his early "coat of skin," plus an immortal spiritual monad, and
a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular
man almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago,
just what the Haeckelian Moneron is, strictly "an organism without
organs," an entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen
body within, and a human form only outwardly.
No man of science has the right, in
this century, to find the figures of the Brahmins preposterous in the question
of Chronology; for their own calculations often exceed by far the claims made
by esoteric science. This may easily be shown.
Helmholtz calculated that the cooling
of our Earth from a temperature of 2,000 [[degrees]] to 200' Cent. must have
occupied a period of no less than 350,000,000 years. Western science (including
geology) seems generally to allow our globe an age of about 500,000,000 years
altogether. Sir W. 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"
(Burmeister). "We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not
merely in space, what no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without beginning
or end; that it never was created, and is imperishable." (See Czolbe).**
Czolbe repeats exactly what the
Occultists say. But the Aryan Occultists, we may be told, knew nothing of these
later speculations. "They were even ignorant of the globular form of our
earth."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 the Bible, may some day be
shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone ought to
make us accept these traditions as scientific verities.
** "Force and Matter"; by
L. Buchner, edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p. 61.
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(Coleman.) To this the Vishnu Purana
contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very
widely.
. . . "The Sun is stationed, for
all time, in the middle of the day, and over against midnight, in all the
Dwipas (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." (Vishnu Purana, Book IL, ch. viii.)
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks,
"The Heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is
contradicted, however, a little further on." Contradicted purposely,
because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching
in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Aryans any longer.
To return to the Chronology of the
geologists and anthropologists. We are afraid Science has no reasonable grounds
on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this direction. Except
that "of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found
in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so-called alluvial
layer," is all that can be urged, so far. That man was not the last member
in the mammalian family, but the first in this Round, is something that science
will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been
mooted in France on very high authority.
That man can be shown to have lived
in the mid-Tertiary period, and in a geological age when there did not yet
exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, is a statement
that science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.* But
even supposing his existence in the Eocene period is not yet demonstrated, what
period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous period? We are aware of the
fact that only the boldest geologists dare to place man further back than the
Miocene age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods
since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and
wrangling, science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the subject being
compelled to answer to the question: "We do not know." This ought to
show that the men of science are no greater authorities in this matter than are
the profane. If, according to Prof. Huxley, "the time represented by the
coal formation would be six millions of years,** how many more millions would
be required to cover
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Introduction a l'Etude des
Races Humaines."
** "Modern Science and Modern
Thought," by S. Laing, p. 32.
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the time from the Jurassic period, or
the middle of the so-called "Reptilian" age (when the Third Race
appeared), up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged?*
The writer is well aware that those
specialists, whose computations of the ages of the globe and man are the most
liberal, always had the shyer majority against them. But this proves very
little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long
run. Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic
with steamers were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer
is classed to this day (in the Encyclopaedias) along with Cagliostro, and St.
Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet
have vindicated Mesmer's claims, and that "Mesmerism" under its new
name of Hypnotism -- a false nose on a very old face -- is accepted by science,
it does not strengthen one's respect for that majority, when one sees the ease
and unconcern with which its members treat of "Hypnotism,"
"Telepathic Impacts," and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in
short, as if they had believed in it since the days of Solomon, and had never
called its votaries, only a few years ago, "lunatics and
impostors!"**
The same revulsion of thought is in
store for the long period of years, claimed by esoteric philosophy as the age
of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says:--
"The mind-born, the boneless,
gave being to the will-born with bones"; adding that this took place in
the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago -- has yet a chance of being
accepted by future scientists.
As far as XIXth century thought is
concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal friends who are imbued with
an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of science, that such a
statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further
assertion, to the effect that the antiquity of the First Race dates back
millions of years beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are
withheld, and it is out of the question to refer the incipient evolution of the
primeval Divine
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Esoteric Buddhism," p.
70.
** 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 a 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 Vedantic teaching as the pessimism of Schopenhauer and von
Hartmann recalls the esoteric philosophy, the heart and soul of true Buddhism.
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Races with certainty to either the
early Secondary, or the Primary ages of geology, one thing is clear: that the
figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, physical,
man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral
and physical development is taken into account. Many geologists, indeed,
consider that the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the
concession of such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial
conditions whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene Man, if evidence for
his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date
carries us far back into the secondary or "Reptilian" age, may refer
to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote
antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very
different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid,
that escaped from the soil or was held in suspension in the atmosphere since
the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal obstacle to the life of
human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, could the primeval men
have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such terrestrial
conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the
evolution of the ethereal astral races proceeded. Only in relatively recent
geological periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the
lowest grade of physical evolution -- the plane of gross material causation. In
those early ages, astral evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes,
the astral and the physical,* though developing on parallel lines, had no
direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow-like
ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization -- if such it can be
called -- only to that plane from which the substance of his Upadhi is derived.
There are things, perhaps, that may
have escaped the far-seeing -- but not all-seeing -- eyes of our modern
naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who undertakes to furnish the missing
links. Agnostic speculative thinkers have to choose between the version given
by the Secret Doctrine of the East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian
and Biblical accounts of the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual
evolution, and the Occult doctrine which repudiates "Special
creation" and the "Evolutionist" Anthropogenesis equally.
Again, to take up the question of
"Spontaneous generation"; life -- as science shows -- has not always
reigned on this terrestrial plane.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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There was a time when even the
Haeckelian Moneron -- that simple globule of Protoplasm -- had not yet appeared
at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the Impulse which caused the molecules
of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to group themselves into the Urschleim of
Oken, that organic "slime," now christened protoplasm. What were the
prototypes of the Monera? They, at least, could not have fallen in meteorites
from other globes already formed, Sir W. Thomson's wild theory to this effect,
notwithstanding. And if they have so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of
life-germs from other planets; who, or what, had carried them into those
planets? Here, again, unless the Occult teaching is accepted, we are compelled
once more to face a miracle; to accept the theory of a personal,
anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as formulated
by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as they degrade
the ideal of an infinite Universal deity, before whose incomprehensible awful
grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed. Let not the modern
philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the highest pinnacle of human
intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself spiritually and intuitionally so
far below the conceptions of even the ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower
level, in these respects, than the philosophers of Eastern Aryan antiquity.
Hylozoism, when philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism.
It is the only possible escape from idiotic atheism based on lethal
materiality, and the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the
monotheists; between which two it stands on its own entirely neutral ground.
Hylozoism demands absolute Divine Thought, which would pervade the numberless
active, creating Forces, or "Creators"; which entities are moved by,
and have their being in, from, and through that Divine Thought; the latter,
nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or their creations, than
the Sun has in the sun-flower and its seeds, or in vegetation in general. Such
active "Creators" are known to exist and are believed in, because
perceived and sensed by the inner man in the Occultist. Thus the latter says
that an ABSOLUTE Deity, having to be unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be
thought of at the same time as an active, creating, one living god, without
immediate degradation of the ideal.* A Deity that manifests in Space and Time
-- these two being simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL -- can be
but a fractional part of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 W. Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more
acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindu Vedantin.
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whole. And since that "all"
cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that sensed creator (we say
Creators) can be at best but the mere aspect thereof. To use the same metaphor
-- inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand --
these creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains
unconscious of, and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the
rays, become the instrumental media every spring -- the Manvantaric dawn of the
Earth -- in fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature
and its differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that
even the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct
creation would be quite unbecoming to God -- [[aprepes toi theo]]. Plato and
other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to creation,
-- [[autournein hapanta]]. This Cudworth calls "Hylozoism." As old
Zeno is credited by Laertius 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."*
Let us return to our subject, pausing
to think over it. Indeed, if there was vegetable life during those periods that
could feed on the then deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life
whose aquatic organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed
scarcity of Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical
form, i.e., in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and its
surroundings? Besides, science confesses that it knows nothing of the real
length of "geological periods."
But the chief question before us is,
whether it is quite certain that, from the time of that which is called the
"Azoic" age, there ever was such an atmosphere as that hypothesised
by the Naturalists. Not all the physicists agree with this idea. Were the
writer anxious to corroborate the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact
science, it would be easy to show, on the admission of more than one physicist,
that the atmosphere has changed little, if at all, since the first condensation
of the oceans -- i.e., since the Laurentian period, the Pyrolithic age. Such,
at any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof -- as
the experiments of the latter scientist with basalts have shown. For were we to
take the word of the majority of scientists as to the quantity of deadly gases,
and of elements entirely saturated with carbon and nitrogen, in which the
vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived, thriven, and developed,
then one would have to come to the curious conclusion that there were, in those
days, oceans
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*Cudworth's "Intellectual
System," I. p. 328.
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of liquid carbonic acid, instead of
water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether the Ganoids, or even
the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the oceans of the primary age
-- let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by Blanchard.
The conditions that were necessary
for the earliest race of mankind, however, require no elements, whether simple
or compound. That which was stated at the beginning is maintained. The
spiritual ethereal Entity which lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the
first sidereal "jelly-speck" evolved in the ocean of crude Cosmic
Matter, -- billions and trillions of years before our globular speck in
infinity, called Earth, came into being and generated the Moneron in its drops,
called Oceans -- needed no "elements." The "Manu with soft
bones" could well dispense with calcic phosphate, as he had no bones, save
in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera, however homogeneous their
organism, still required physical conditions of life that would help them toward
further evolution, the being which became primitive Man and the "Father of
man," after evolving on planes of existence undreamt of by science, could
well remain impervious to any state of atmospheric conditions around him. The
primitive ancestor, in Brasseur de Bourbourg's "Popul-Vuh," who -- in
the Mexican legends -- could act and live with equal ease under ground and
water as upon the Earth, answers only to the Second and early Third Races in
our texts. And if the three kingdoms of Nature were so different in
pre-diluvian ages, why should not man have been composed of materials and
combinations of atoms now entirely unknown to physical science? The plants and
animals now known, in almost numberless varieties and species, have all
developed, according to scientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer
organic forms. Why should not the same have occurred in the case of man, the
elements, and the rest? "Universal Genesis starts from the one, breaks
into three, then five, and finally culminates into seven, to return into four,
three, and one." (Commentary.)
For additional proofs consult Part
II. of this Volume, "The Septenary in Nature."
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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 (issued from the body of Brahma when it became Night), READY FOR RE-BIRTH,
CAME DOWN. THEY SAW THE (intellectually) VILE FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD (still
senseless Race) (a). "WE CAN CHOOSE," SAID THE LORDS, "WE HAVE
WISDOM." SOME ENTERED THE CHHAYAS. SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED
TILL THE FOURTH (Race). FROM THEIR OWN ESSENCE THEY FILLED (intensified) THE
KAMA (the vehicle of desire). THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK REMAINED DESTITUTE
OF (higher) KNOWLEDGE. THE SPARK BURNT LOW (b). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS.
THEIR JIVAS (Monads) WERE NOT READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN
(primitive human species). THEY (became the) NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE
READY. IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL, SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK
WISDOM (c).
This Stanza contains, in itself, the
whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so-called Fall of the angels, and the
many problems that have puzzled the brains of the philosophers from the time
that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent
inequalities of intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a
logical explanation to the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the aeons
which followed. The best explanation which can be given, in view of the
difficulties of the subject, shall now be attempted.
(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even
to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man -- if the ever-changing
forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds and the first two
and a half races of the present one can be given that misleading name -- is, so
far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the actual midway Round that
he develops in himself entirely the fourth principle as a fit vehicle for the
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fifth. But Manas will be relatively
fully developed only in the following Round, when it will have an opportunity
of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As Christian
Schoettgen says in Horae Hebraic, etc., the first terrestrial Adam "had
only the breath of life," Nephesh, but not the living Soul.
(b) Here the inferior Races, of which
there are still some analogues left -- as the Australians (now fast dying out)
and some African and Oceanic tribes -- are meant. "They were not
ready" signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not yet
fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher
intellectual Races. But this is explained later on.
(c) The Zohar speaks of "Black
Fire," which is Absolute Light-Wisdom. To those who, prompted by old
theological prejudice, may say: "But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the
opponents of the Gods -- hence devils, and the spirits of Evil," it is
answered: Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing
independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in
the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human
nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved,
as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light
and of Darkness; thus LUCIFER -- the spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and
Freedom of Thought -- is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to
find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the LOGOS
in his highest, and the "Adversary" in his lowest aspect -- both of
which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ,
makes the LOGOS, the Word, the first-born brother of Satan, the "first of
all creatures." (Inst. div. Book II., c. viii., "Qabbalah,"
116.)
The Vishnu Purana describes these
primeval creatures (the Arvaksrota) with crooked digestive canals: They were
"endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in ignorance about their
kind and nature." The twenty-eight kinds of Badha, or imperfections, do
not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known and specified by him,*
for these did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain in the
said work, in which the first created (on this globe) are the "five-fold
immovable creation," minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous
animals, Tiryaksrota, (the monsters of the abyss slain by the "Lords,"
see Stanzas II. and III.); then the Urdhwasrotas, the happy celestial beings,
which feed on ambrosia; then lastly, the Arvaksrotas, human beings -- Brahma's
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Book I., chap. v., p. 71.
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seventh creation so-called. But these
"creations," including the latter, did not occur on this globe,
wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahma who creates things
and men on this Earth, but the chief and Lord of the Prajapati, the Lords of
Being and terrestrial Creation.* Obeying the command of Brahma, Daksha (the
synthesis, or the aggregate, of the terrestrial creators and progenitors,
Pitris included) made superior and inferior (vara and avara) things
"referring to putra" progeny, and "bipeds and quadrupeds, and
subsequently by his will (the Sons of Will and Yoga) made females," i.e.,
separated the androgynes. Here again, we have "bipeds" or men,
created before the "quadrupeds" as in the esoteric teachings. (Vide
supra and Stanza XII as explained.)
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the
Asuras are the first beings created from the "body of night," while
the Pitris issue from that of Twilight; the "gods" being placed by
Parasara (Vishnu Purana) between the two, and shown to evolve from the
"body of the day," it is easy to discover a determined purpose to
veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvaksrota coming from the "Body of
the Dawn"; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the creator of
the world, Brahma, is shown "creating fierce beings, denominated Bhutas
and eaters of flesh," or as the text has it, "fiends frightful from
being monkey-coloured and carnivorous."** Whereas the Rakshasas are
generally translated by "Evil Spirits" and "the enemies of the
gods," which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Ramayana, when
Hanuman is reconnoitering the enemy in Lanka, he finds there Rakshasas, some
hideous, "while some were beautiful to look upon," and, in Vishnu
Purana, there is a direct reference to their becoming the Saviours of
"Humanity," or of Brahma.
The allegory is very ingenious. Great
intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and
instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with Selfishness, they
will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who
possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied
to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation
of many. At all events, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will
make of man an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahma is Mahat -- the universal
Mind -- hence the too-selfish among the Rakshasas showing the desire to become
possessed of it all -- to "devour" Mahat. The allegory is
transparent.
At any rate, esoteric philosophy
identifies the pre-Brahmanical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Vishnu Purana," Book I.,
chap. xv. of vol. 2.
** Ibid., Book I., chap. v.
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Asuras, Rudras,* Rakshasas and all
the "Adversaries" of the Gods in the allegories, with the Egos,
which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him
consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the
true dual Logos -- the conflicting and two-faced divine Principle in Man. The
Commentary that follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light
on this very difficult tenet, but the writer does not feel competent to give it
out fully. Of the succession of Races, however, they say:--
"First come the SELF-EXISTENT on
this Earth. They are the 'Spiritual Lives' projected by the absolute WILL and
LAW, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These LIVES are the divine
'Sishta,' (the seed-Manus, or the Prajapati and the Pitris)."
From these proceed --
1. The First Race, the
"Self-born," which are the (astral) shadows of their Progenitors.**
The body was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). The
inner being (the higher self or Monad), though within the earthly frame, was
unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet.
2. From the First (race) emanated the
second, called the "Sweat-born"*** and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Whom Manu calls "our paternal
grandfathers" (III., 284). The Rudras are the seven manifestations of
Rudra-Siva, "the destroying god," and also the grand Yogi and
ascetic.
** See § II, §§ 1, Commentary.
*** 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 Haeckel's theory -- now fast becoming
an axiom with science -- which is quoted verbatim:--
". . . 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 inquiries, 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, etc), exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without
structure or organisation, 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 Haeckelii, 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the "Boneless." This is the
Second Root-Race, endowed by the preservers (Rakshasas)* and the incarnating
gods (Asuras and the Kumaras) with the first primitive and weak spark (the germ
of intelligence) . . And from these in turn proceeds:--
3. The Third Root-Race, the
"Two-fold" (Androgynes). The first Races hereof are shells, till the
last is "inhabited" (i.e., informed) by the Dhyanis.
The Second Race, as stated above,
being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the Third
Androgyne Race by an analogous, but already more complicated process. As
described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that race were:--
"The 'Sons of Passive Yoga.*
They issued from the second Manushyas
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] has beyond a doubt (to the minds of Haeckel and his like) arisen from
the lower mammalia, apes and the earlier simian creatures, the still earlier
Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations," all
produced by "a series of natural forces working blindly. . . . . . . . .
aim, without design" (p. 36).
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?
* The Rakshasas, regarded in Indian
popular theology as demons, are called the "Preservers" beyond the
Himalayas. This double and contradictory meaning has its origin in a
philosophical allegory, which is variously rendered in the Puranas. It is
stated that when Brahma created the demons, Yakshas (from Yaksh, to eat) and
the Rakshasas, 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 Rakshasas (Vishnu Purana Book I. ch. v.).
The Bhagavata Purana (III, 20, 19-21) renders the allegory differently. Brahma
transformed himself into night (or ignorance) invested with a body, upon which
the Yakshas and Rakshasas seized, exclaiming "Do not spare it; devour
it." Brahma then 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 Rakshasas
are shown in almost every case to be Yogis, pious Saddhus 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. "Brahma is for the Brahmins
alone," says that proud caste. The moral of the fable is evident.
** 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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(human race), and became oviparous.
The emanations that came out of their bodies during the seasons of procreation
were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft,
egg-like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke
and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our
race."
This must seem to the reader
ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of evolutionary
analogy, which science perceives in the development of the living animal
species. First the moneron-like procreation by self-division (vide Haeckel);
then, after a few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which
are followed by the birds; then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous
modes of producing their young ones.
If the term ovoviviparous is applied
to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs within their bodies, why
should it not be applied to female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in
which, after impregnation, the development of the foetus takes place, is an
egg.
At all events, this conception is
more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly created placenta giving
birth to Cain, because of the Apple, when even the marsupial, the earliest of
mammals, is not placental yet.
Moreover, the progressive order of
the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by science, is a brilliant
confirmation of esoteric Ethnology. It is only necessary to tabulate the data
in order to prove our assertion. (Cf. especially Schmidt's "Doctrine of
Descent and Darwinism," p. 39, et. seq., and Laing's "A Modern
Zoroastrian," pp. 102-111.)I
1. Fission:--
(a) As seen in the division of the
homogeneous speck of protoplasm, known as Moneron or Amoeba, into two.
(b) As seen in the division of the
nucleated cell, in which the cell-nucleus splits into two sub-nuclei, which
either develop within the original cell-wall or burst it, and multiply outside
as independent entities. (Cf., the First Root-Race.)
II. Budding:--
A small portion of the parent
structure swells out at the surface and finally parts company, growing to the
size of the original organism; e.g., many vegetables, the sea-anemone, etc.
(Cf., the Second Root-Race.)*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] regarded as the spiritual ancestors of our present generations, and
especially of the Eastern Aryan Races. Weber's idea that the Indo-Germanic Race
preceded the Aryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the last
degree.
* 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.
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III. Spores:--
A single cell thrown off by the
parent organism, which develops into a multicellular organism reproducing the
features of the latter, e.g., bacteria and mosses.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism:--
Male and female organs inhering in
the same individual; e.g., the majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied
to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root-Races.)
V. True sexual union:--
(Cf. later Third Root-Race.)
We now come to an important point
with regard to the double evolution of the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or
the spiritual Dhyanis, had become "intellectual" through their
contact with matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles
of incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become
independent and self-conscious entities, on this plane of matter. They were
reborn only by reason of Karmic effects. They entered those who were
"ready," and became the Arhats, or sages, alluded to above. This
needs explanation.
It does not mean that Monads entered
forms in which other Monads already were. They were "Essences,"
"Intelligences," and conscious spirits; entities seeking to become
still more conscious by uniting with more developed matter. Their essence was
too pure to be distinct from the universal essence; but their "Egos,"
or Manas (since they are called Manasaputra, born of "Mahat," or
Brahma) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and
be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles,
limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle.
The entrance into a dark room through the same aperture of one ray of sunlight
following another will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is
not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect septenary
being, before the seventh race in the seventh Round. Yet he has all these
principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law
that the Fifth principle (Manas), should receive its complete development
before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the
spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we call the
"Fifth-Rounders." Even in the coming seventh Race, at the close of
this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed,
that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers
solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane,
was reached during the Fourth Root-Race. Thus, those who were "half
ready," who received "but a spark," constitute the average
humanity which has to acquire its intellectuality during the present
Manvantaric evolution,
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after which they will be ready in the
next for the full reception of the "Sons of Wisdom." While those
which "were not ready" at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly
evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the
Third Round, remained the "narrow-brained" of the Stanza. This
explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the
various races of men -- the savage Bushman and the European -- even now. Those
tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of
the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the unfavoured, as some may
think -- nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the
human Monads, which were not ready: which have to evolve during the present
Round, as on the three remaining globes (hence on four different planes of
being) so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth
Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this
connection. The MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the
"narrow-brained"* savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the
Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more
favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only
now; the latter are burdened with past, present, and future Karma. In this
respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilised
countries.
Let us pause before giving any more
such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how far any ancient Scriptures,
and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate,
such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis.
Recapitulating that which has been
said we find:-- That the Secret Doctrine claims for man, (1) a polygenetic
origin. (2) A variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell into the
ordinary method of generation. (3) That the evolution of animals -- of the
mammalians at any rate -- follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this
is diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution
and the descent of man from an animal ancestor.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 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.
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Let us, by giving to Caesar what is
Caesar's, examine, first of all, the chances for the polygenetic theory among
the men of science.
Now the majority of the Darwinian
evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of the origin of Races. On
this particular question, however, scientists are, as in many other cases, at
sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree.
"Does man descend from one
single couple or from several groups -- monogenism or polygenism? As far as one
can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses (?) will never be
known (?), the second hypothesis is far the most probable."* Abel
Hovelacque, in his "Science of Language," comes to a similar
conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
In an address delivered before the
British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked on this question:--
"The view which appears best to
accord with what is now known of the characters and distribution of the races
of man . . . . is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis (!). Without
entering into the difficult question of the method of man's first appearance
upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as
measured by any historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palaeontological
record, the history of Man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is
forthcoming."
Such an admission must be regarded as
fatal to the dogmatism of the physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide
margin to occult speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and
still remain, polygenists. Such "intellectual giants" as John
Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in
their day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this
theory. It is only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of
unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphai.
As regards that other question, of
the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as
promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the
teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man
becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a
physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral -- which is light
itself, crystallised and immetallised -- from plants to the creatures which
preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical
structures by means of the "cast-off dust" of those minerals, and the
refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Lefevre, "Philosophy,"
p. 498.
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bodies, on which they fed and which
gave them their outer bodies. In his turn, man grew more physical, by
re-absorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became
transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing
to Nature's alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of
which our modern naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became
physical material man, the giants of those times, the more powerful were his
emanations. Once that Androgyne "humanity" separated into sexes,
transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its
like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But while man was
still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane, (before his Fall,
as a believer in Adam would say,) all this vital energy, scattered far and wide
from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal
forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and nature
never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in
Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal
Force are directed towards one point -- MAN. The progress in the succession of
beings, says Agassiz, "consists in an increasing similarity of the living
fauna, and, among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance to
man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from the first
appearance of the first palaeozoic fishes."*
Just so; but "the palaeozoic
fishes" being at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of forms,
this Round began with astral man, the reflection of the Dhyan 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."**
Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent naturalist above quoted, is
one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of the
evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern
theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
But in citing the passage from
Agassiz' work with approval, it must not be understood that the occultists are
making any concession to the theory, which derives man from the animal kingdom.
The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned
by the consideration that the latter (mammalia) follow in the wake of man.
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Principles of Zoology,"
p. 206.
** Vol. I, p. 154.
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25. HOW DID THE MANASA, THE SONS OF
WISDOM ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF-BORN, (the boneless). THEY ARE NOT READY.
THEY SPURNED THE (First) SWEAT-BORN.* THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT
ENTER THE (First) EGG-BORN.**
To a Theist or a Christian this verse
would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through
Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to
incarnate in half-ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with
physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were
sufficiently ready. The incarnating powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned
the rest.***
By a curious coincidence, when
selecting a familiar name for the continent on which the first androgynes, the
Third Root-Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical considerations,
that of "Lemuria," invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It is only later,
that reading Haeckel's "Pedigree of Man," it was found that the
German "Animalist" had chosen the name for his late continent. He
traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution to "Lemuria,"
but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that "cradle of
mankind," he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal
into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America Man sprang from a
branch of the platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African
and Asian root-stocks from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as
usual, at loggerheads on this question, as on many others. We shall examine
this claim in the light of esoteric philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let
us give a few moments of attention to the various consecutive modes of
procreation according to the laws of Evolution.
Let us begin by the mode of
reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third human race, by those who found
themselves endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then
independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the
lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That
Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is explained in the section
which follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from the Puranas
concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlocha, the nymph alleged to have
hypnotised him, (Vide § Il., Commentary after St.I.), a suggestive allegory,
scientifically, as the drops of perspiration, which she exuded, are the symbols
of the spores of science (Vide infra).
** This will be explained as we
proceed. This unwillingness to fashion men, or create, is symbolized in the
Puranas by Daksha having to deal with his opponent Narada, the
"strife-making ascetic."
*** Vide Verse 24.
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as, "towering giants of godly
strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the mysteries of Heaven and
Earth." Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the Fall?
Of this presently. The only thing now
to be noted of these is, that the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth
Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third.
The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have
equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the
dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their
highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were the
pre-Adamite and the divine Races, with which even theology, in whose sight they
are all "the accursed Cainite Races," now begins to busy itself.
But the action of "spiritual
progenitors" of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very difficult
and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Stanzas 26 and 27. These
say:--
-------
26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE
EGG-BORN, THE TWO-FOLD (androgyne Third Race*), THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH
BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: "NOW SHALL WE CREATE" (a).
Why "now" -- and not
earlier? This the following sloka explains.
-------
27. (Then) THE THIRD (race) BECAME
THE VAHAN (vehicle) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT CREATED SONS OF "WILL AND
YOGA," BY KRIYASAKTI (b), IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF
THE ARHATS. . . .
(a) How did they create, since the
"Lords of Wisdom" are identical with the Hindu Devas, who refuse
"to create"? Clearly they are the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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." Such indeed is the incontestable
evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. (Cf., his
"Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 159.) 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.
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Kumaras of the Hindu Pantheon and
Puranas, those elder sons of Brahma, "Sanandana and the other sons of
Vedhas," who, previously created by him "without desire or passion,
remained chaste, full of holy wisdom and undesirous of progeny?"*
The power, by which they first
created, is just that which has since caused them to be degraded from their
high status to the position of evil spirits, of Satan and his Host, created in
their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyasakti, that
mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not
called to life, quickened and developed by Yogi-training, remains dormant in
999,999 men out of a million, and gets atrophied. This power is explained in
the "Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,"** as follows:--
(b) "Kriyasakti -- 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 Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti (Will-power) and
Kriyasakti."
The Third Race had thus created the
so-called SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, or the "ancestors" (the spiritual
forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, in a truly
immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren
of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes,
the Fall of Man. For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal
matter, the calling forth out of it the primordial divine Light and eternal
Life. They were the "holy seed-grain" of the future Saviours of
Humanity.
Here we have to make again a break,
in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is
almost impossible to avoid such interruptions. 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 Kriyasakti, the
reader is referred to the chapters on "The Fallen Angels" and
"The Mystic Dragons," in Part II. of this Volume.
The order of the evolution of the
human Races stands thus in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and was already
given:--
The First men were Chhayas (1); the
second, the "Sweat-born" (2), the Third, "Egg-born," and
the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyasakti (3); the Fourth were the
children of the Padmapani (Chenresi) (4).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Vishnu Purana," Book
I., ch. 7, para. 1.
** See "Five Years of
Theosophy," p. 777.
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Of course such primeval modes of
procreation -- by the evolution of one's image, through drops of perspiration,
after that by Yoga, and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyasakti)
-- are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, beginning
with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in
them, nor anything which could not be shown natural. This must be proven.
1. Chhaya-birth, or that primeval
mode of sexless procreation, the first Race having oozed out, so to say, from
the bodies of the Pitris, is hinted at in a Cosmic allegory in the Puranas.* It
is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjna, the daughter of Viswakarman -- married
to the Sun, who, "unable to endure the fervours of her lord," gave
him her chhaya (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to
the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the
"chhaya" to be his wife begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith
-- an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female
monster millions of years ago.
But, perhaps, this instance proves
little except the exuberant fancy of the Puranic authors. We have another proof
ready. If the materialised forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the
bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid
-- the creation of the first Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind
of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery
nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater -- while it is
far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker - than the
mystery of the conception of the foetus, its gestation and birth as a child, as
we now know it.
Now to the curious and little
understood corroboration in the Puranas about the "Sweat-born."
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogi,
eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, finally, awaken the
jealousy of the gods, who are represented in the Hindu Scriptures as being in
never-ending strife with the ascetics. Indra, the "King of the
Gods,"** finally sends one of his female Apsarasas to tempt the sage. This
is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham's wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but
in truth it is those gods (and god), who are ever trying to disturb ascetics
and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be
regarded as "tempting demons," instead of applying the term to the
Rudras, Kumaras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing
reproach to the Don Juanic gods of the Pantheon. But it is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide "Vishnu-Purana,"
Book III., chap. 2.
** In the oldest MS. of
"Vishnu-Purana" in the possession of an Initiate in Southern India,
the god is not Indra, but Kama, the god of love and desire. See text further
on.
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the reverse that we find in all the
Puranic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
The king of the gods (or Indra) sends
a beautiful Apsarasas (nymph) named Pramlocha to seduce Kandu and disturb his
penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and "907 years six months and
three days"* spent in her company seem to the sage as one day. When this
psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni curses bitterly the creature who
seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. "Depart, begone!" he
cries, "vile bundle of illusions!" . . . And Pramlocha, terrified,
flies away, wiping the perspiration from her body with the leaves of the trees
as she passes through the air. She 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 Marisha."**
Now Kandu stands here for the First
Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one devoid of mind, which is hinted at
by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one
day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a
variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which
the "Lord-god" breathes the breath of life but not of intellect and
discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first
development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect
is of the Earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and
the divine Soul. Pramlocha is the Hindu Lilith of the Aryan Adam; and Marisha,
the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the
"sweat-born," and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of Mankind.
As remarked in the foot note (vide
supra) it is not Indra, who now figures in the Puranas, but Kamadeva, the god
of love and desire, who sends Pramlocha on Earth. Logic, besides the esoteric
doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kama is the king and lord of the
Apsarasas, of whom Pramlocha is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, in cursing
her,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Puranas that has not a
special esoteric meaning.
** "Vishnu Purana," Book
I., ch. 15. Cf. also Vivien's temptation of Merlin (Tennyson), the same legend
in Irish tradition.
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exclaims "Thou hast performed
the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!" he must mean by that
monarch Kama and not Indra, to whom the Apsarasas are not subservient. For
Kama, again, is in the Rig Veda (x. 129) the personification of that feeling
which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the
ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create,
"Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which
sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which
connects Entity with Non-Entity." A hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kama
into a supreme God and Creator, and says: "Kama was born the first. Him,
neither gods nor fathers (Pitara) nor men have equalled." . . . . The
Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that god. The
Taittariya Brahmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious
duty, piety and justice) and of Sraddha (faith). Elsewhere Kama is born from
the heart of Brahma; therefore he is Atma-Bhu "Self-Existent," and
Aja, the "unborn." His sending Promlocha has a deep philosophical
meaning; sent by Indra -- the narrative has none. As Eros was connected in
early Greek mythology with the world's creation, and only afterwards became the
sexual Cupid, so was Kama in his original Vedic character, (Harivansa making
him a son of Lakshmi, who is Venus). The allegory, as said, shows the psychic
element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha, the
progenitor of real physical men, made to be born from Marisha and before whose
time living beings and men were procreated "by the will, by sight, by
touch and by Yoga," as will be shown.
This, then, is the allegory built on
the mode of procreation of the Second or the "Sweat-born." The same
for the Third Race in its final development.
Marisha, through the exertions of
Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetasas, the production of the
"Mind-born" sons of Brahma also*, from whom they beget the Patriarch
Daksha, a son of Brahma
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The text has:-- "From Brahma
were born mind-engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his
corporeal nature, embodied spirits produced from the limbs (gatra) of Dhimat
(all-wise deity). These beings were the abode of the three qualities of
deva-sarga (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, Brahma created "other mind-born sons like
himself," namely, the Brahma-rishis, or the Prajapati (ten and seven).
Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahma) 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" (Book
I, ch. 7). These Sanandana and other Kumaras 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 the facts given.
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also, in a former Kalpa or life,
explain and add the Puranas, in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.
(3.) The early Third Race, then, is
formed from drops of "sweat," which, after many a transformation,
grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realise than
the growth of the foetus from an imperceptible germ, which foetus develops into
a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But this race again changes its
mode of procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated
a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops,
which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies -- huge eggs. In these the human
foetus gestated for several years. In the Puranas, Marisha, the daughter of
Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetasas and the mother of Daksha.
Now Daksha is the father of the first human-like progenitors, having been born
in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is
analogous to that of the Universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between
that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a
macrocosm.
Then the race becomes:--
(4.) The androgyne, or hermaphrodite.
This process of men-bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes* describes the
nature of the old race as androgynous, the form of every individual being
rounded, "having the back and sides as in a circle," whose
"manner of running was circular . . . . terrible in force and strength and
with prodigious ambition." Therefore, to make them weaker, "Zeus
divided them (in the Third Root-Race) into two, and Apollo (the Sun), under his
direction, closed up the skin." The Madagascans (the island belonged to
Lemuria) have a tradition about the first man, who lived at first without
eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this
bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race.
Truly . . . "We have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis,
showing that the field is yet open. . . . . The polyps . . . . produce their
offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree. . . .
" Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium
passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction.
Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces
gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is
utterly dissimilar to its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces
itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia
once more put in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Plato's "Banquet."
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an appearance. This striking fact may
assist many to understand that a form may be evolved -- as in the sexual
Lemurians from Hermaphrodite parentage -- quite unlike its immediate
progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations
the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of
"Heredity," its servant.
The meaning of the last sentence in
the above-quoted Commentary on Stanza 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the
children of Padmapani, may find its explanation in a certain letter from the
Inspirer of "Esoteric Buddhism" quoted on p. 68. "The majority
of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race -- the
above-mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets. (Malayans,
Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all
remnants of this last offshoot.)"
Padmapani, or Avalokiteswara in
Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteswara is the great Logos in
its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he
is, like Daksha, the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men.
Padmapani-Avalokiteswara is called esoterically Bhodhisatva (or Dhyan Chohan)
Chenresi Vanchug, "the powerful and all-seeing." He is considered now
as the greatest protector of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In
order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great
Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself
from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith
begins to die out in the world, Padmapani Chenresi, the
"lotus-bearer," emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith
incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas -- the Dalai and Teschu Lamas;
finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as "the most perfect
Buddha" in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great
Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no
longer. Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyani Chenresi is suggestive of the
esoteric teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the
preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third, the
first complete one, and thus is represented as the culmination of the four
primeval races in his eleven-faced form. It is a column built in four rows,
each series having three faces or heads of different complexions: the three
faces for each race being typical of its three fundamental physiological
transformations. The first is white (moon-coloured); the second is yellow; the
third, red-brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces -- the third face
being left a blank -- (a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans) is
brown-black. Padmapani (Daksha) is seated on the column, and forms the apex. In
this reference
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compare Stanza 39. The Dhyan Chohan
is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four races. For while
two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus (Padmapani, "the
lotus-bearer"), this flower symbolizing generation, and the fourth holds a
serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his
head the sign of water [[diagram]] -- matter, deluge -- while on his brow rests
the third eye (Siva's eye, that of spiritual insight). His name is
"Protector" (of Tibet), "Saviour of Humanity." On other
occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi, the Dhyani and Bhodisatva,
Chakna-padmakarpo, "he who holds a lotus." His other name is
Chantong, "he of the 1,000 eyes," when he is endowed with a thousand
arms and hands, on the palm of each of which is represented an eye of Wisdom,
these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays. Another of his names
is Lokapati and Lokanatha (Sanskrit) "Lord of the World"; and
Jigtengonpo (Tibetan), "Protector and Saviour against evil" of any
kind.
Padmapani, however, is the
"lotus-bearer" symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, it
means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which, the present Maha-Kalpa
(the Varaha), is called Padma, and represents one half of the life of Brahma.
Though a minor Kalpa, it is called Maha, "great," because it
comprises the age in which Brahma sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the
Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and sub-divided in Space
and Time, each division -- down to the smallest -- having its own Dhyani as
patron or regent. Padmapani (Avalokiteshwara) becomes, in China, in his female
aspect, Kwan-yin, "who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save
mankind." The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations
on the respective "birth-days" of these Dhyanis -- Amitabha (the
O-mi-to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 19th day of the second month, on
the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of the third month,
etc., etc. -- gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing what
are called "magic" feats. The future of an individual is seen, with
all its coming events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the
ray of certain constellations. But -- beware of the reverse of the medal,
SORCERY.
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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 (a); FROM
THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL
BEFORE (previous, Third Round); AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST; THE FIRST ANIMALS (of
this Round) WERE PRODUCED.
(a) The Occult doctrine maintains
that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work of evolution than man.
Evolution proceeds in cycles. The great Manvantaric cycle of Seven Rounds,
beginning in the First Round with mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its
evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the
Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our
Earth, then, (the Fourth sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that
this middle point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its "first
inmetallization" on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal
worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last degree of
the third or solid state, which it reached only at the "mid-point of
evolution" it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the
Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his
frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity.
To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through
the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily
to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the sphere as a man also. On the
descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually transformed into the material.
On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On
the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly re-asserting itself at the expense of the
physical, or matter, so that, at the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh
Round, the Monad will find itself as
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free from matter and all its
qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience
and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and
temptations.
This order of evolution is found also
in Genesis (ch. 1 and 2) if one reads it in its true esoteric sense, for
chapter i. contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of
the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to that moment when Man is called to
conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In the first chapter, animals, whales
and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.* In the second,
Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the
state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two races, and of the first
half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the
deep sleep of Adam. It was the dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber
of the Soul and Mind, which was meant by that "sleep," and not at all
the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French
theorist (M. Naudin) imagined.
The Puranas, the Chaldean and
Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an agreement with
the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them
the corroboration of almost all our teaching. For instance: the statement
concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint
at a less innocent mode of the procreation of the first mammal forms,
"gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were," says the
Commentary. Study the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious
progeny; e.g., Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nagas -- the
oviparous brood; Kasyapa was grandsire, through his wife Tamra, of the birds
and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was
the parent of cows and buffaloes, etc., etc.
In the Secret Doctrine, the first
Nagas -- 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** produced by the power (Kriyasakti) of the holy
sages" of the early Third Race.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An allegorical reference to the
"Sacred Animals" of the Zodiac and other heavenly bodies. Some
Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals.
** 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."
*** There is a notable difference esoterically
between the words Sarpa and Naga, though [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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". . . . . In these were
incarnated the Lords of the three (upper) worlds, the various classes of
Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Adityas;" for,
as explained by Parasara, "There are a hundred appellations of the
immeasurably mighty Rudras."
Some of the descendants of the
primitive Nagas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its continent
arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis, (America being the Patala or
Antipodes of Jambu-Dwipa, not of Bharata-Varsha). Otherwise, whence the
traditions and legends -- the latter always more true than history, as says
Augustin Thierry -- and even the identity in the names of certain "medicine
men" and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say
something of the Nargals and the Nagals and also of Nagalism, called
"devil-worship" by the Missionaries.
In almost all the Puranas, the story
of the "Sacrifice of Daksha" is given, the oldest account of which is
to be found in Vayu Purana. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and
biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific
vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.
Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief
Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of physical man in the
"fable," which makes him lose his head from his body in the general
strife between the gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is
replaced by the head of a ram (Kasi-Khanda). Now the ram's head and horns are
ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic.
As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by
sexual intercourse. But this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one
may think, and required long ages before it became the one "natural"
way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is shown as interfered with by Siva,
the destroying deity, evolution and PROGRESS personified, who is the
regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall
them to life under another more perfect type. Siva-Rudra creates the terrible
Virabhadra (born of his breath) the "thousand-headed, thousand-armed"
(etc.) monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by
Daksha. Then Virabhadra, "abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal
men) . . . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa (serpent) is from the root
Srip, serpo to creep; and they are called "Ahi," from Ha, to abandon.
"The sarpa was produced from Brahma'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). But the
Nagas, their serpent's tail notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk,
run and fight in the allegories.
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created from the pores of the skin
(Romakupas), powerful Raumas,* (or Raumyas)." Now, however mythical the
allegory, the Mahabharata, which is history as much as is the Iliad, shows**
the Raumyas and other races, as springing in the same manner from the
Romakupas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of the
"sacrifice" is full of significance to the students of the Secret
Doctrine who know of the "Sweat-born."
In the Vayu Purana's account of
Daksha's sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of
creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin,
and, finally only, from the womb.
Daksha typifies the early Third Race,
holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, and having merely the passive
capacities. Brahma, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts);
when, obeying the command, he made "inferior and superior" (avara and
vara) progeny (putra), bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to
females . . . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of the Fourth Race), the
snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Danavas (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 Yoga-power."*** And now comes the simply zoological
teaching.
-------
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF
THE DEEP AND FLYING SARPAS (serpents) 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 (a).
(a) This is a point on which the
teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing
links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are
apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the ornithoscelidae, hesperornis,
and the archaeopteryx of Vogt.
-------
30. DURING THE THIRD (Race), THE
BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED: THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES (a), THEIR
CHHAYAS BECAME SOLID (also).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Wilson translates the word as
"demigods" (See his Vishnu Purana, p. 130); but Raumas or Raumyas are
simply a race, a tribe.
** xii. 10308.
*** "Vishnu Purana"
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31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST
(into mate and female) (b) . . . .
(a) Vertebrates, and after that
mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto-organisms, just as
man was.
(b) The fact of former hermaphrodite
mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now indisputable, even from
the stand-point 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, 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 primeval form of mankind. . . . The
tenacity with which the 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
born by their unknown ancestry, no one can say how long ago."*
-------
31. . . . . THEY (the animals) BEGAN
TO BREED. THE TWO-FOLD MAN (then) SEPARATED ALSO. HE (man), SAID "LET US
AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES." THEY DID. . . .
-------
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK (the
"narrow-brained"** TOOK HUGE SHE-ANIMALS UNTO THEM (a). THEY BEGAT
UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY WERE (the "narrow-brained")
THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED (b). THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED
STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED, RED-HAIR-COVERED MONSTERS, GOING
ON ALL FOURS.*** A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.****
(a) The animals "separated the
first," says Stanza 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were
different, even physiologically, from what
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Doctrine of Descent and
Darwinism," pp. 186-7. The "Unknown Ancestry" referred to are
the primeval astral prototypes. Cf. § II., p. 260 (a).
** See verse 24.
*** 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; see infra.
**** The shame of their animal origin
which our modern scientists would emphasize if they could.
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they are now, having passed the
middle point of the Fifth Race. We are not told what the "huge
she-animals" were; but they certainly were as different from any we know
now, as were the men.
This was the first physical
"fall into matter" of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear
in mind Stanza 24. The "Sons of Wisdom" had spurned the early Third
Race, i.e., the non-developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby
endowing with intellect, the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or
"mindless" Races, who had no "spark" and were
irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty.
(b) See later on concerning the
beginning of human speech.
-------
WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE
FOREGOING.
Thus Occultism rejects the idea that
Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an ancestor common to both, but
traces, on the contrary, some of the most anthropoid species to the Third Race
man of the early Atlantean period. As this proposition will be maintained and
defended elsewhere, a few words more are all that are needed at present. For
greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously
in Book I., Stanza VI.
Our teachings show that, while it is
quite correct to say that nature had built, at one time, around the human
astral form an ape-like external shape, yet it is as correct that this shape
was no more that of the "missing link," than were the coverings of
that astral form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the
kingdoms of nature. Nor was it, as shown in the proper place, on this Fourth
Round planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second,
and Third Rounds, when MAN was, in turn, "a stone, a plant, and an
animal" until he became what he was in the First Root-Race of present
humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two
systems are irreconcilable, except when the latter is divorced from the dogma
of "Natural Selection" and the like. Indeed, between the Monera of
Haeckel and the Sarisripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape
of the Jiva; for the "human" Monad, whether immetallized in the
stone-atom, or invegetallized in the plant, or inanimalized in the animal, is
still and ever a divine, hence also a HUMAN Monad. It ceases to be human only
when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms "mineral,"
"vegetable" and "animal" monad are meant to create a
superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad (jiva)
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other than divine, and consequently
having been, or having to become, human. And the latter term has to remain
meaningless unless the difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out
of the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane of primeval
differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition --
the adjectives "higher" and "lower" being used for lack of
better words -- and a monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvanic state,
under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects
the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the manifested Universe reflects itself in
each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it, repeating an Eastern teaching, so the
MONAD has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every
root-form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that
"MAN becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a Spirit, and finally
God. Thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from
which he had started as the heavenly MAN." But by "Man" the
divine Monad is meant, and not the thinking Entity, much less his physical
body. While rejecting the immortal Soul, the men of Science now try to trace
the latter through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest;
whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those
primordial monsters of which the Stanzas speak. The animals -- the creeping
beasts and those in the waters that preceded man in this Fourth Round, as well
as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are
posterior to the Third and Fourth Races -- all are either directly or
indirectly the mutual and correlative product (physically) of man. It is
correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, i.e., during the three
preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of nature. That he was
"a stone, a plant, an animal." But (a) these stones, plants, and
animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth Round;
and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows
of the present, as the Occultists express it. And finally the forms and genera
of neither man, animal, nor plant were what they became later. Thus the astral
prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which
preceded (the chhayas of) Men, were the consolidated, though still very
ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms or models produced at the
close of the Third Round on Globe D.* "Produced from the residue of the
substance matter; from dead bodies of men and (other extinct) animals of the
wheel before," or the previous Third Round -- as Stanza 24 tells us.
Hence, while the nondescript "animals"
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Vide "Esoteric Buddhism."
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that preceded the astral man at the
beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny
of the man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their
existence, in a great measure, to man again. Moreover, the "ancestor"
of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet
mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on
the level of an animal.
The above accounts for some of the
alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the anthropologists as a
demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.
The point most insisted upon by the
Evolutionists is that, "The history of the embryo is an epitome of that of
the race." That "every organism, in its development from the egg, runs
through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors
have passed in the long course of Earth's history.* 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."**
This modern theory was known as a
fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists
from the remotest ages. A passage from "Isis Unveiled" may here be
cited to furnish a few points of comparison. In Vol. I., pp. 388-9, it was
asked why, with all their great learning, physiologists were unable to explain
teratological phenomena? Any anatomist who has made the development and growth
of the embryo "a subject of special study," can tell, without much
brain-work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him,
viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is facsimile of a young
batrachian in its first remove from the spawn -- tadpole. But no physiologist
or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the
human being -- from the first
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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 branchiae, a mammal with a tail, lastly a primate (?) and a biped?
It is scarcely possible not to recognise in the embryonic evolution a rapid
sketch, a faithful summary, of the entire organic series." (Lefevre,
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 Haeckel 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?
** "The Proofs of
Evolution," a lecture by Haeckel.
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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
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 analysed -- 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 laminae or coats, enclosing a
liquid. The laminae 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 at first
nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming
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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 Kosmos,
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 . . . thus runs
their philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that of Haeckel:--
"All are but parts of one
stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm)
the soul . . ."
These are the proofs of Occultism,
and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the mind of man
and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and Homo
primigenius had, argumenti gratia, a common ancestor (in the way modern
speculation puts it), did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as
regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case
Occultism does what Science repeats; it gives a common ancestor to ape and man,
since it makes the former issue from primeval man. Ay, but that "primeval
man" was man only in external form. He was mindless and soulless at the
time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes.
This speculation -- if speculation it be -- is at least logical, and fills the
chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the
hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact that, in the present stage of
evolution, Science is almost certain that no issue can follow from the union of
man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.
Now what is the fundamental
difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions, as enunciated in
"The Pedigree of Man," viz., that man and ape have a common ancestor;
and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact
that all things and all living beings have originated from one common source?
Materialistic science makes man evolve gradually to what he is now, and,
starting from the first protoplasmic speck called Moneron (which we are told
has, like the rest, "originated in the course of immeasurable ages from a
few, or from one simple, spontaneously arising original form, that has obeyed
one law of evolution"), pass through "unknown and unknowable"
types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional
shapes are discoverable we are not told; for the simple reason that no
"missing links" between man and the apes have ever yet been found,
though this fact in no way prevents men like Haeckel from inventing them ad
libitum.
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Nor will they ever be met with;
simply, again, because that link which unites man with his real ancestry is
searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, whereas
it is safely hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife within the animal
tabernacle of man himself. We repeat what we have said in Isis Unveiled:--
". . . . . . . All things had
their origin in spirit -- evolution having originally begun from above and
proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory.
In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed
ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of
modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at
this period we will find it easier to understand Haeckel'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 Professor Huxley's exposition. We may believe the man
(of the Third Round) evolved 'by gradual modification of an (astral) mammal of
ape-like organization' still easier when we remember that (though in a more
condensed and less elegant, but still as comprehensible, phraseology) the same
theory 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* (though
on somewhat modified lines).
"But what lies back of the
Darwinian line of descent? So far as he 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.'** He does not attempt to show us who these 'few beings' were.
But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the admission of their
existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of
the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation. . . . "
Truly, as also said in our first
work: "If we accept Darwin's theory of the development of species, we find
that his starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty
with him, to either remain within, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies
the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our
mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the
great 'Beyond' -- while on this earth -- it must realize it at some point in
the timeless Eternity." But what lies "beyond" Haeckel's theory?
Why Bathybius Haeckelii, and no more!
A further answer is given in Part
III. Addenda.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cory: "Ancient
Fragments."
** "Origin of Species," pp.
448, 489, first edition.
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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 (the sin committed
with the animals), THE LHAS (the spirits, the "Sons of Wisdom") WHO
HAD NOT BUILT MEN (who had refused to create), WEPT, SAYING:--
-------
34. "THE AMANASA (the
'mindless') HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES (a). THIS IS KARMA. LET US DWELL IN
THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD HAPPEN." THEY DID.
. . .
-------
35. THEN ALL BECAME ENDOWED WITH
MANAS (minds). THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS.
But they had already separated before
the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark region of their hitherto
slumbering minds, and had sinned. That is to say, they had committed evil
unconsciously, by producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other
six primitive brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth
degenerated race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on
account of the sin committed, -- even this race will find itself on the last
day on one of the seven paths. For "the wise* guard the home of nature's
order, they assume excellent forms in secret."** But we must see whether
the "animals" tampered with, were of the same kind as those known to
zoology.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This verse in the Veda (X. 5-6),
"The seven wise ones (rays of wisdom, Dhyanis) fashion seven paths (or
lines as also Races in another sense). To one of these may the distressed
mortal come" -- which is interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic
aspect -- is one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The "paths"
may mean lines (maryadah), 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.
** "Rig Veda," X. 10, 5, 2.
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(a) The "Fall" occurred,
according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as
Daksha (the reincarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race)
disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind which had
"separated." This is how the Commentary explains the details that
preceded the "Fall":--
"In the initial period of man's
Fourth evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and various
directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the
vehicles (the egg-like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man
gestated) were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of
species now unknown, and which belonged to the tentative efforts of Nature. The
result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were
produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and
live, though the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over physical nature
being yet very weak, and hardly established, the 'Egg-Born' Sons had taken
several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human
monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming gradually
equilibrized, they separated and mated no longer. Man created no more -- he
begot. But he also begot animals, as well as men in days of old. Therefore the
Sages (or wise men), who speak of males who had no more will-begotten
offspring, but begat various animals along with Danavas (giants) on females of
other species -- animals being as (or in a manner of) Sons putative to them;
and they (the human males) refusing in time to be regarded as (putative)
fathers of dumb creatures -- spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this
(state of things), the kings and Lords of the Last Races (of the Third and the
Fourth) placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It
interfered with Karma, it developed new (Karma).* They (the divine Kings)
struck the culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races.**
In another we find:--
"There were blue and red-faced
animal-men even in later times; not from actual intercourse (between the human
and animal species), but by descent."
And still another passage mentions:--
"Red-haired, swarthy men going
on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their hands again)
who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant
fore-mothers."
Perchance in these specimens,
Haeckelians might recognize, not the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Rudra, as a Kumara, is Lilalohita
-- red and blue.
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Homo primigenius, but some of the
lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even
these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and
semi-human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters -- those
"failures" mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids,
Haeckel's Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of
Atlantis. The orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and cynocephalus are
the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians.
They have a spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand,
has not one drop of pithecoid* blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and
universal tradition.
How was the separation of sexes
effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the rib of
Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the
descent of man from the Quadrumana without any reservation; as the former hides
an esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper
fact than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is
bone, and when we read in Genesis that Eve was made out of the rib, it only
means that the Race with bones was produced out of a previous Race and Races,
which were "boneless." This is an esoteric tenet spread far and wide,
as it is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states
that man was created out of Araea, "red
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 palaeolithic 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).
Haeckel holds fast to Lemuria, which
with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the
primitive Ape-men; and so 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.
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Earth." Taaroa, the creative
power, the chief god, "put man to sleep for long years, for several
lives," which means racial periods, and is a reference to his mental
sleep, as shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out
of man and she became a woman.*
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory
may mean, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a divine Builder of man --
"a Progenitor." Do we then believe in such "supernatural"
beings? We say, No. Occultism has never believed in anything, whether animate
or inanimate, outside nature. Nor are we Cosmolators or Polytheists for believing
in "Heavenly Man" and divine men, for we have the accumulated
testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to
support us in this; the Wisdom of the Ancients and UNIVERSAL tradition. We
reject, however, every groundless and baseless tradition, which, having
outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, has found acceptance in exoteric
creeds. But that which is preserved in unanimous traditions, only the wilfully
blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of beings other than our own in
far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following incorporeal,
"Arupa," men, with form but no solid substance, giants who preceded
us pigmies; in dynasties of divine beings, those Kings and Instructors of the
Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little modern science
stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with geometry.
No, certainly not. We do not believe
in the supernatural but only in the superhuman, or rather interhuman,
intelligences. One may easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an
educated person would have to being classed with the superstitious and
ignorant; and even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that:
"The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that every
one seems ashamed of -- even those most religious persons who refuse in our day
to accept even 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."**
But the "supernatural" of
Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its Spirit
nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If theology asks us to believe that
four or five thousand years ago men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of
mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of
giants
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Polynesian Researches,"
Ellis. Vol.II., p. 38.
Missionaries seem to have pounced
upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve. But, as shown by Professor Max Muller,
Eve is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of [[hebrew]],
chavah, "life," or mother of all living; "while the Tahitian Ivi
and the Maori Wheva meant bone and bone only." ("False
Analogies.")
** Chaire d'Hebreu au college de
France, p. 20.
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and monsters, we decline to believe
that such a thing existed in Nature 5,000 years back. For Nature never proceeds
by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides geology, anthropology
and ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if that same
theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969
years -- the age of Methuselah -- five million years ago, we would have nothing
to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of men was,
compared to the present human body, as that of a megalosaurus to a common
lizard.
A naturalist suggests another
difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races,
can breed together. "There is no question of selection between human
races," say the anti-Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny the argument
-- one which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism
insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females
of another, only semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the hybrids
resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of
the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric science replies to this that it was in the
very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and
sterility is the only result of the crime of man's bestiality. But we have to
this day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of
mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were
a few years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes or races, both of
remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians
(now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians
can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his
being able to make anything of it. This fact deserves notice.
Now de Quatrefages and other
naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every race of mankind
being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations
exceptions, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have
been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that
other law may assert itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as
between two animal species of various kinds, in those rare cases when a
European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to
chose a member of such mixed tribes.* Darwin notes such
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose
women were suddenly struck with sterility, en masse, some time after the
arrival among them of the European colonists. The great naturalist tried to
explain this fact by change of diet, food, conditions, etc., but finally gave
up the solution of the mystery. For the Occultist it is a very evident one.
"Crossing," as it is called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women --
i.e., the representatives of a race, whose progenitors were a
"soulless"* and mindless monster and a real human, though still as
mindless a man -- brought on sterility. This, not alone as a consequence of a
physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of
further survival of the abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science
prepared to believe as yet -- but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric
philosophy, let us remember, only fills the gaps made by science and corrects
her false premises.
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 -- co-existing as he does with an
archaic fauna and flora -- must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole
environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin ethnology is silent, is
a testimony to the truth of the esoteric position.
"It is a very curious
fact," says Jukes,** "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 0olitic (Jurassic) period, less change has
taken place in Australia than elsewhere, and that the Australian flora and
fauna consequently retain some-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo,
the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), 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 Haeckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a
Lemurian relic. (Cf. "Esoteric Buddhism," p.55.)
* In calling the animal
"Soulless," it is not depriving 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 reincarnates in
a like man. The animal has an astral body, that survives the physical form for
a short period; but its (animal) Monad does not re-incarnate 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.
** "Manual of Geology," p.
302.
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thing of the Oolitic type, while it
had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest of the Globe." (!
!)
Now why has less change taken place
in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the raison d'etre for such a "curse
of retardation"? It is simply because the nature of the environment
develops pari passu with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every
quarter. The survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of
their fellows when the main continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a
portion of the present native tribes. Being a very low sub-race, begotten
originally of animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles
under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly
subjected to the law of retardation. Australia is one of the oldest lands now
above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its "virgin
soil" notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new
and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.
To return, however, once more to the
history of the Third Race, the "Sweat-Born," the
"Egg-bearing," and the "Androgyne." Almost sexless, in its early
beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of course. The
passage from the former to the latter transformation required numberless
generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the earliest parent
(the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being; and then the cell,
becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third-Race-mankind
is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races. The mystery of
the "How" of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be
very obscure here, as it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist,
the present work giving only faint outlines of the process. But it is evident
that the units of the Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre-natal
shells, or eggs,* and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes,
ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on its
geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal
capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub-race, the babe lost its faculty of
walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end of the fifth,
mankind was born under the same conditions and by the same identical process as
our historical generations. This required, of course, millions of years. The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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reader has been made acquainted with
the approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations, in Stanza II.
We are approaching the turning-point
of the evolution of the Races. Let us see what occult philosophy says on the
origin of language.
-------
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.
The Commentaries explain that the
first Race -- the ethereal or astral Sons of Yoga, also called
"Self-born" -- was, in our sense, speechless, as it was devoid of
mind on our plane. The Second Race had a "Sound-language," to wit,
chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed in the
beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on the various
sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the first animals,
which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the "Sweat-born"
(the early Third Race). In its second half, when the "Sweat-born"
gave birth to the "Egg-born," (the middle Third Race); and when
these, instead of "hatching out" (may the reader pardon the rather
ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age) as androgynous
beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and when the same law
of evolution led them to reproduce their kind sexually, an act which forced the
creative gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in mindless men; then only
was speech developed. But even then it was still no better than a tentative
effort. The whole human race was at that time of "one language and of one
lip." This did not prevent the last two Sub-Races of the Third Race* from
building cities, and sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under
the guidance of their divine instructors,** and their own already awakened
minds. Let the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven races is
divided into four ages -- the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age -- so is
every smallest division of such races.*** Speech then developed, according to
occult teaching, in the following order:--
I. Monosyllabic speech; that of the
first approximately fully developed human beings at the close of the Third
Root-race, the "golden-coloured," yellow-complexioned men, after
their separation into sexes, and the full
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** In the Section on the Divine
Dynasties, the nature of these "Instructors" is explained.
*** Vide Section attached to the
"Divisions into Yugas."
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awakening of their minds. Before
that, they communicated through what would now be called
"thought-transference," though, with the exception of the Race called
the "Sons of Will and Yoga" -- the first in whom the "Sons of
Wisdom" had incarnated -- thought was but very little developed in nascent
physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their physical
bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher plane
altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full acquisition
and development of their reasoning faculties. This monosyllabic speech was the
vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard
consonants, still in use amongst the yellow races which are known to the
anthropologist.*
II. These linguistic characteristics
developed into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some
Atlantean races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the
mother-language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood,
purity, growth, fall into matter, admixture with other languages, maturity,
decay and finally death,** so the primitive speech of the most civilized
Atlantean races -- that language, which is referred to as "Rakshasi Bhasa,"
in old Sanskrit works -- decayed and almost died out. While the
"cream" of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex
of physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the
nascent Fifth (the Aryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages,
the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered
now, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Language is certainly coeval 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
manasic element dormant in primitive man. For, as Professor Max Muller tells us
in his "Science of Thought," "Thought and language are identical."
Yet to add to this the reflection that thoughts which are too deep for words,
do not really exist at all, is rather risky, as 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 Sanscrit Vach, "the immortal (intellectual) ray of
spirit." And the fact that Vach (as Devasena, an aspect of Saraswati, the
goddess of hidden Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate Kumara, unveils
a suggestive, though veiled, reference to the Kumaras, 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.
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III. The inflectional speech -- the
root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called "the elder sister" of
the Greek, instead of its mother -- was the first language (now the mystery
tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race). At any rate, the
"Semitic" languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic
corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The occult doctrine
admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite, accepting even the
Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later
Aryans -- degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these
belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the
Tchandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge
in Chaldea, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father
A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the
descendants of those Aryans who would not go into India at the time of the
dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in
Afghanistan and Kabul,* and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and
invaded Arabia.
But this was when Africa had already
been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited
space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is
in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and
violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding,
truly analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the
anthropoids.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth
table of the Kabolitae (Kabul tribes), calls them [[Aristophuloi]], the
aristocratic or noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issrael (children
of Is(sa)rael), from Issa, "woman and also earth," Sons of Mother
Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The subject
is fully treated elsewhere. The names of the supposed twelve tribes and the
names of the real tribes, the same in number, of the Afghans, are the same. The
Afghans being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the Israelites,
no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among them as Youssoufzic,
"Sons of Joseph" in Punjcaure and Boonere; the Zablistanee (Zebulon);
Ben-manasseh (sons of Manasseh) among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar
(now Ashnagor in Afghanistan), etc., etc. The whole twelve names of the
so-called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well
proven. At any rate, the names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated,
yield the names of the zodiacal signs and of the mythical sons of Jacob
likewise. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there
is a trace, and a good one, that the Jews have tried to deceive people with the
help of those 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 "Horae Biblicae," Josephus, and Philo Judaeus.
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In these red-haired and hair-covered
monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection between men and animals, the
"Lords of Wisdom" did not incarnate, as we see. Thus by a long series
of transformations due to unnatural cross-breeding (unnatural "sexual
selection"), originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of
humanity; while further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts
of reproduction begat a species which developed into mammalian apes ages
later.*
As to the separation of sexes, it did
not occur suddenly, as one may think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she
does.
-------
37. THE ONE (androgyne) BECAME TWO; ALSO
ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS, THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT-FISH, BIRDS, AND
SERPENTS WITH SHELL-HEADS (a).
This relates evidently to the
so-called age of the amphibious reptiles, during which ages science maintains
that no man existed! But what could the ancients know of antediluvian
prehistoric animals and monsters! Nevertheless, in Book VI. of the Commentaries
is found a passage which says, freely translated:--
"When the Third separated and
fell into sin by breeding men-animals, these (the animals) became ferocious,
and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no life
taken. After (the separation) the Satya (Yuga) was at an end. The eternal
spring became constant change and seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build
shelters and devise clothing. Then man appealed to the superior Fathers (the
higher gods or angels). The Nirmanakaya of the Nagas, the wise Serpents and
Dragons of Light came, and the precursors of the Enlightened (Buddhas). Divine
Kings descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer
in the first land (Adi-Varsha, the Eden of the first Races), which had turned
into a white frozen corpse."
The above is suggestive. We will see
what can be inferred from this brief statement. Some may incline to think that
there is more in it than is apparent at first sight.
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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EDENS, SERPENTS, AND DRAGONS.
Whence the idea, and the true meaning
of the term "Eden"? Christians will maintain that the Garden of Eden
is the holy Paradise, the place desecrated by the sin of Adam and Eve; the
Occultist will deny this dead-letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One
need not believe and see in the Bible divine revelation in order to say that
this ancient book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal
traditions. What Eden was is partially shown in Isis Unveiled.*
It was 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]] 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 Erythraean sea." (A.
Wilder says that Gan-duniyas is a name of Babylonia.) In the Chaldean
"Book of Numbers," the 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 Ganduniyas.
"Behold," says the [[hebrew]] (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]] 'Chitonuth our.' " The first Hebrew word,
"chiton," is the Greek [[Chiton]], Chiton. 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 Chaldeans and the
Akkadians, the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the former. It is strongly
contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria were in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vol. I., pp. 575, et seq.
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any way cognate with the Brahmans of
Hindostan; 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 ethnologists and philologists, 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. Halevy 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 Brahminical
Hindus."
And now, ten years after this was
written, we find ourselves corroborated by Professor Sayce, who says in his
first Hibbert lecture that the culture of the Babylonian city Eridu was of
foreign importation. It came from India.
"Much of the theology was
borrowed by the Semites from the non-Semitic Akkadians or proto-Chaldeans, whom
they supplanted, and whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power
to uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races, Semites and
Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and worship of the gods blending
insensibly together."
Here, the Akkadians are called
"non-Semitic," as we had insisted they were in "Isis,"
which is another corroboration. And we are no less right in always maintaining
that the Jewish Biblical history was a compilation of historical facts,
arranged from other people's history in Jewish garb -- Genesis excluded, which
is esotericism pure and simple. But it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir and
beyond, that science has to search for the cradle -- or rather one of the chief
cradles -- of mankind and the sons of Ad-ah; and especially in after times,
when the Garden of Ed-en on the Euphrates became the college of the astrologers
and magi, the Aleim.
But this "college" and this
Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence of the
Adi-varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological meaning of the
word Eden? In Greek it is [hedone], signifying voluptuousness. In this aspect
it is no better than the Olympus of the Greeks, Indra's heaven (Swarga) on
Mount Meru, and even the paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the
faithful. The Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews; for China,
which can hardly be suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C.,
has such a primitive garden in Central Asia inhabited by the "Dragons of
Wisdom," the Initiates. And according to Klaproth,
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the hieroglyphical chart copied from
a Japanese Cyclopaedia in the book of Fo-kone-ky, places its "Garden of
Wisdom" on the plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the Himalayan
ranges; and describing it as the culminating point of Central Asia, shows the
four rivers -- Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo -- flowing from a common source,
the "Lake of the Dragons."
But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor
is it the Kabalistical Garden of Eden. For the former -- Eden Illa-ah -- means
in one sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvana, 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 Barthelemy St. Hilaire,
basing themselves "on the most solid inductions," think it impossible
to doubt any longer, and both place the cradle of humanity "on the region
of the Timaus." Finally, the Asiatic Journal* 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 Aryans (Zoroastrians)
established their Airyana-vaego or the Meru (?). They are hemmed in to the
North by the countries which join the lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan,
or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the abode of that
primitive humanity to which we have to be traced."
That "primitive humanity"
was in its Fifth Race, when the "four-mouthed Dragon," the lake, of
which very few traces are now left, was the abode of the "Sons of
Wisdom," the first mind-born sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither
the only one nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was the copy of
the cradle, verily, of the first thinking divine man. It was the Paradesa, 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 Chaldeans, for the latter was only the reminiscence of it; and also
because it was not there that the Fall of Man occurred after the
"separation." The Eden of the Jews was copied from the Chaldean copy.
That the Fall of man into generation
occurred during the earliest portion of what science calls the Mesozoic times,
or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the Bible phraseology concerning
the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the Zohar. The question is not
whether Eve's incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for
no one can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the
symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not only a Jewish but an
universal idea.
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Journal Asiatique,"
seventh year, 1855.
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Now we find in the Zohar a very
strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry
laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was
used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve, was a kind of flying camel
[[kamelomorphon]].
A "flying camel" is indeed
too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can
hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its
description:* for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which
in the Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall "its nature and
its name," and is described as a huge serpent with a camel's neck.
"There are no winged serpents,
nor veritable dragons," asserts Salverte,** " . . . grasshoppers are called
by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created several
narratives on the existence of winged serpents."
There are none now; but there is no
reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic age; and Cuvier,
who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to "flying
camels." Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the
great naturalist has written, that, "if anything can justify the Hydra and
other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediaeval historians,
it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus."***
We are unaware if Cuvier had added
anything in the way of a further mea culpa. But we may well imagine his
confusion, for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself
in the presence of a flying saurian, "the Pterodactyl" (found in
Germany), "78 feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its
reptilian body." That fossil is described as a reptile, the little fingers
of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then,
the "flying camel" of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between
the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl,
or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability to build
a "flying camel," or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of
Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged
serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebrae, which indicate
union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is
well known that Antiquity has never claimed palaeontography and paleontology
among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian
tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest
Pagodas
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See Moses Maimonides, "More
Nevochim."
** "Science Occulte," p.
646.
*** "Revolution du Globe,"
vol. v., p. 464.
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and monuments, and in the Imperial
library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognised perfect
representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese
dragons.* Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery
serpents,** and Job mentions the Leviathan.*** Now the following questions are
put very directly:--
I. How could the ancient nations know
anything of the extinct monsters of the carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and
even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either
seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of them in their
traditions, which descriptions necessitate living and intelligent
eye-witnesses?
II. And if such eye-witnesses are
once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity
and the first palaeolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the
tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will not
allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out
completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals,
which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described
by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have
begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time
has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the
contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not stand to reason, because
the Occultists believe in and defend ancient wisdom and science, even though
winged saurians are called "flying camels" in the translations of the
Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories which the middle ages give
us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We read in the "Memoire a
l'Academie" of the "naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, when
M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles
dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in
Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . .
till his own day."
** See Isaiah, xxx. 6: "The
viper and the flying serpent unto the land of trouble and anguish," and
the fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
*** The fossils reconstructed by
science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of
even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah's flying serpents, or saraph mehophep, which
words 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." But the word Dracon has 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, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o'-the-wisps
are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith), the castle of
Drogheda in Ireland meaning the devil's castle.
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of the Third Race. When, therefore,
we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer's
and Father Kircher's cock-and-bull stories of their having seen with their own
eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be
allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs.* Nor shall we
regard otherwise than as a poetical license that other story told of Petrarch,
who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is
credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger
and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart.**
We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of
Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their
existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite
another. The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives in
the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only
when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and
still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above
description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature
contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The ultramontane writers accept the
whole series of draconian stories given by Father Kircher (Edipus AEgyptiacus,
"De Genere 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 itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the
other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck
very extended. 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.
** As a convincing proof of the
reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to the picture of that
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 and rubbed
out the work of art, but has not weakened its tradition." 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
Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either in Naples or Bologna,
"was there still in 1700, but is there no more." (Vol. 2, p. 427,
"Pneumatologie.")
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The reader may inquire why we speak
of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, because the knowledge of such animals is
a proof of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and secondly, to show the
difference between the zoological real meaning of the words "dragon,"
"Naga," and "Serpent," and the metaphorical one, when used
symbolically. The profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery language, is
likely, whenever he finds one of these words mentioned, to accept it literally.
Hence, the quid pro quos and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will
suffice.
Sed et serpens? aye: but what was the
nature of the serpent? Mystics intuitionally see in the serpent of Genesis an
animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force superintelligent, a
"great fallen light," a spirit sidereal, aerial and tellurian at the
same time, "whose influence circumambulates the globe (qui circumambulat
terram), as a Christian fanatic of the dead-letter (de Mirville) has it, and
which only manifested itself under the physical emblem, which was the most
convenient "with respect to its moral and intellectual coils": i.e.
under the ophidian form.
But what will Christians make of the
Brazen Serpent, the "DIVINE HEALER," if the serpent is to be regarded
as the emblem of cunning and evil? The "Evil One" itself? How can the
line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily in a
sectarian theological spirit. For, if the followers of the Roman Church are
taught that Mercury and AEsculapius, or Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are
"devils and sons of devils," and the wand and serpent of the latter
were "the devil's wand"; how about the "brazen serpent" of
Moses? Every scholar knows that both the heathen wand and the Jewish
"serpent" are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son
of APOLLO-PYTHON. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian
shape for their "seducer." With them it was purely physiological and
phallic; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on the part of the Roman Catholic
Church can give it another meaning, once that the mystery language is well
studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists know
that the serpent, the Naga, and the dragon have each a septenary meaning; that
the Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two
contrasted lights, and the two serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil
one; they also know that, when generalised, the conclusions of both science and
theology present two most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us
that it is sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal
source, the astrological legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun,
conqueror of Python, and the celestial virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the
devouring dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent religious
dogmas; it is easy to perceive that, instead of
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generalising, the author simply has
his eye on Christian religion and Revelation. We call this one extreme. The
other we see in this: when, repeating the famous decision of the Council of
Trent, theology 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 dominationem et potestatem super homines habere et jure
cos possidere)." To this Occult philosophy answers: Prove first the
existence of the devil as an entity, and then we may believe in such congenital
possession. A very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature
may be sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had SATAN any
reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical
sense), it is the poor devil who would find himself chronically obsessed and
even possessed by the wicked -- hence by the bulk of mankind. It is humanity
itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and
intolerant Roman Church, which have begotten, given birth to, and reared in
love the evil one; but this is a digression.
"The whole world of thought is
reproached by the Church with having adored the serpent. The whole of humanity
'incensed and at the same time stoned it.' The Zend Avesta speaks of it as the
Kings and Vedas do, as the Edda and the Bible. . . . Everywhere the sacred
serpent, the naga, and its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who
prepares its meal with the same care as she bestows on the sacred fire. In
Greece, AEsculapius cannot cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his
powers. Everyone 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 oracularly, not a necromancer whose
tomb is 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
its personification.' "*
Yes, the author is right, and if one
would have a complete idea of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own
day, one ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed
about, and still attributed to, the Nagas (Cobras) in that country; one should
also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port-au-Prince and Jamaica,
the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pa, or men-serpents of China, &c. But why
wonder that the serpent is "adored" and at the same time cursed,
since we
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Sacred Serpents" on p.
432 of de Mirville's "Memoire."
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know that from the beginning it was a
symbol?* In every ancient language the word dragon signified what it now does
in Chinese -- (lang) i.e., "the being who excels in intelligence" and
in Greek [[drakon]], or "he who sees and watches." And is it to the
animal of that name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident,
wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led
savages now, that the said qualifications were intended to apply to the human
originals, who were symbolized by serpents and dragons? These
"originals" -- called to this day in China "the Dragons of
Wisdom" -- were the first disciples of the Dhyanis, who were their
instructors; in short, the primitive adepts of the Third Race, and later, of
the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before
the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.
The symbol of Chnouphis, or the soul
of the world, writes Champollion, "is among others that of an enormous
serpent standing on human legs; this reptile, the emblem of the good genius, is
a veritable Agathodaemon. It is often represented bearded. . . . . That 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 [[CHNOUBIS]]."** Agathodaemon
was endowed "with the knowledge of good and evil," i.e., with divine
Wisdom, as without the former the latter is impossible.*** Repeating
Iamblichus, Champollion shows him to be "the deity called [[Eichton]] (or
the fire of the celestial gods -- the great **** Thot-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is about as just as though --
a few millenniums hence -- a fanatic of some future new creed, who was bent on
glorifying his religion at the expense of ancient Christianity, were to say:
"Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored. The nun placed it, calling it
the Agnus, 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.
** "Pantheon," 3.
*** The solar Chnouphis, or
Agathodaemon, 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 Martanda, 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 Chaldeans.
**** Hermes, or rather Thot, was a
generic name. Abul Teda shows in "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.
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Hermes), to whom Hermes Trismegistus
attributes the invention of magic."*
The "invention of magic!" A
strange term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal and actual
mysteries of nature could be invented! As well attribute, millenniums hence,
the invention instead of the discovery of radiant matter to Prof. Crookes.
Hermes was not the inventor, or even the discoverer, for, as said in the
foot-note, Thot-Hermes is a generic name, as is Enoch (Enoichion, the
"inner, spiritual eye"), Nebo, the prophet and seer, etc. It is not
the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many adepts.
Their connection in symbolic allegories with the serpent is due to their
enlightenment by the solar and planetary gods during the earliest intellectual
Race, the Third. They are all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom.
Asclepios is the son of the Sun-god Apollo -- and he is Mercury; Nebo is the
son of Bel-Merodach; Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivisvat
-- the Sun or Surya, etc., etc. And while, astronomically, the Nagas along with
the Rishis, the Gandharvas, Apsarasas, Gramanis (or Yakshas, minor gods)
Yatudhanas and Devas, are the Sun's attendants throughout the twelve solar
months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are gods and
men -- when incarnated in the nether world. Let the reader be reminded, in this
connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist Nagas -- which
are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nagas ethnologically, but
"wise men."
The Bible, from Genesis to
Revelations, is but a series of historical records of the great struggle
between white and black Magic, between the Adepts of the right path, the
Prophets, and those of the left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses.
Even the students of Occultism, though some of them have more archaic MSS. and
direct teaching to rely upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation
between the Sodales of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism
that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples
and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of "the Sons
of God," is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two schools
of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is
shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well to
quote a few sentences from "Isis Unveiled."
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; instru-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Pantheon," text 15.
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ments of cruelty are in their
habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their
assembly."* Now in the original, the words "their secret" really
are "their SOD."** 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.*** It is to the mysteries that the original
meaning of the "Dragon-Slayers" has to be traced, and the question is
fully treated of hereafter.
Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses
was the chief of the Mysteries, he was the Hierophant thereof, and further, if,
at the same time, we find the prophets thundering against the
"abominations" of the people of Israel, that there were two schools.
"Fiery serpents" was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites
of the priestly caste, after they had departed from the good law, the
traditional teachings of Moses: and to all those who followed Black Magic.
Isaiah, when referring to the "rebellious children" who will have to
carry their riches into the land whence come "the viper and fiery flying serpent"
(xxx. 6), or Chaldea and Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated
in his day (700 B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those lands.**** But these must
be carefully distinguished from the "Fiery Dragons of Wisdom" and the
"Sons of the Fire Mist."
In the "Great Book of the
Mysteries" we are told that: "Seven Lords created Seven men; three
Lords (Dhyan Chohans or Pitris) were holy and good, four less heavenly and full
of passion. . . . The chhayas (phantoms) of the Fathers were as they."
This accounts for the differences in
human nature, which is divided into seven gradations of good and evil. There
were seven tabernacles ready to be inhabited by Monads under seven different
Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of
evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Genesis," ch. xlix.
** Dunlap, in his introduction to
"Sod, the Mysteries of Adonis," explains the word "Sod" as
arcanum, religious mystery, on the authority of Schindler's
"Penteglott." "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" (Dunlap, "Mysteries of Adonis," xi). "Al (El) is
terrible in the great Sod of the Kadeshim (the priests, the holy, the
Initiated), Psalm lxxxix, 7" (ibid.). The Kadeshim were very far from
holy. (Vide Part II., "The Holy of Holies.")
*** "The members of the
priest-Colleges were called Sodales," says Freund's "Latin
Lexicon" (iv. 448). "Sodalities were constituted in the Idaean
Mysteries of the MIGHTY MOTHER," writes Cicero in de Senectute.
("Mysteries of Adonis.")
**** The priests of Baal who jumped
over the fires. But this was a Hebrew term and a local one. "Saraph"
-- "fiery or flaming venom."
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philosophers ignored the seven in
their genetical accounts and gave only four. Thus the Mexican local Genesis has
"four good men" described as the four real ancestors of the human
race, "who were neither begotten by the gods nor born of woman"; but
whose creation was a wonder wrought by the creative Powers, and who were made
only after "three attempts at manufacturing men had failed." The
Egyptians had in their theology only "four sons of God," whereas in Pymander
seven are given -- thus avoiding any mention of the evil nature of man; though
when Seth from a god sank into Set-Typhon, he began to be called "the
seventh son." Whence probably arose the belief that "the seventh son
of the seventh son" is always a natural-born magician, though, at first,
only a sorcerer was meant. APAP, the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by
Aker, Set's serpent;* therefore Set-Typhon could not be that evil. In the
"Book of the Dead" it is commanded (v. 13) that chapter clxiii.
should be read "in the presence of a serpent on two legs," which
means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram's horns** that
adorn his "serpent's" head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the
said chapter denote this. Over the "serpent" are represented the two
mystic eyes of Ammon,*** the hidden "mystery god." This passage
corroborates our assertion, and shows what the word "serpent" meant
in antiquity.
But as to the Nagals and Nargals,
whence came the similarity of names between the Indian Nagas and the American
Nagals?
"The Nargal was the Chaldean 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 Hindu Nagas. Both have the same faculties and the power to have an
attendant daemon, with whom they identify themselves completely. The Chaldean
and Assyrian Nargal kept his daemon, 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."****
Such similarity cannot be attributed
to coincidence. A new world is discovered, and we find that, for our
forefathers of the Fourth Race,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of the Dead" xxxix.
** The same ram's horns are found on
the heads of Moses which were on some old medals seen by the writer in
Palestine, one of which is in her possession. The horns, made to form part of
the shining aureole on the statue of Moses in Rome (Michael Angelo), are
vertical instead of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem is the same;
hence the Brazen Serpent.
*** But see Harris's "Magic
Papyrus" No. v.; and the ram-headed Ammon manufacturing men on a potter's
wheel.
**** Brasseur de Bourbourg:
"Mexique," pp. 135 and 574.
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it was already an old one. That
Arjuna, Krishna's companion and chela, is said to have descended into Patala,
the "antipodes," and therein married Ulupi,* a Naga (or Nagini
rather), the daughter of the king of the Nagas, Kauravya.**
And now it may be hoped the full
meaning of the serpent emblem is proven. It is neither that of evil, nor, least
of all, that of the devil; but is, indeed, the [[SEMES EILAM ABRASAX]]
("the eternal Sun-Abrasax"), the central spiritual sun of all the
Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the circle of Tiphereth.
And here, again, we may quote from
our earlier volumes and enter into further explanations.
"From this region of
unfathomable depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah, the veil of the unknown) issues
forth a circle formed of spirals. This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of
symbolism, means a grand cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as
to follow the spirals, lies the serpent -- emblem of Wisdom and Eternity -- the
dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the divine mind (a power
which does not create but which must assimilate), and the serpent, the
Agathodaemon, 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."
Were it light alone, inactive and
absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realise it. Shadow is
that which enables light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality.
Therefore, shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary
which completes Light or Good: it is its creator on Earth.
According to the views of the
Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow, Good and Evil
being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever
continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds.
This symbol accounts for the
adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either around 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 Life (spiritual), the other,
the Tree
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ulupi has an entirely Atlantean
ring about it. Like Atlantis, it is neither a Greek nor a Sanskrit name, but
reminds one of Mexican names.
** "Mahabharata," Adiparva,
Sloka, 7788, 7789. The "Bhagavata Purana," ix., xx., 31, as explained
by Sridhera, the commentator, makes Ulupi the daughter of the king of Manipura;
but the late Pundit Dayanand Saraswati, certainly the greatest Sanskrit and
Puranic authority in India on such questions, personally corroborated that
Ulupi was daughter of the king of the Nagas at Patala, or America, 5000 years
ago, and that the Nagas were Initiates.
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of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human couple -- the material
production of Ilda-Baoth, but which owed 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 Hindus (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 Chaldean tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become
like one of them. To the present day Foh-tchou,* who lives in his Foh-Maeyu, or
temple of Buddha, on the top of the "Kouin-long-sang,"** 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.
Now it may become comprehensible why
the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or the "Wise Men," for whom it is
claimed that they were initiated into the mysteries of nature by the UNIVERSAL
MIND, represented by the highest angels, were named the "Serpents of
Wisdom" and "Dragons;" as also how the first physiologically
complete couples -- after being initiated into the mystery of human creation
through Ophis, the manifested Logos and the androgyne, by eating of the fruit
of knowledge -- gradually began to be accused by the material spirit of
posterity of having committed Sin, of having disobeyed the "Lord God,"
and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
So little have the first Christians
(who despoiled the Jews of their Bible) understood the first four chapters of
Genesis in their esoteric meaning, that they never perceived that not only was
no sin intended in this disobedience, but that actually the "Serpent"
was "the Lord God" himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the
bearer of divine creative wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their
turn.*** They
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Foh-tchou, literally, in Chinese
meaning Buddha's lord, or the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha-Foh.
** This mountain is situated
south-west of China, almost between China and Tibet.
*** Let the reader be reminded that
in the Zohar, and also in all the Kabalistic works, it is maintained that
"Metatron united to Shekinah" (or Shekinah as the veil (grace)
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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never realised that the Cross was an
evolution from the "tree and the serpent," and thus became the
salvation of mankind. By this it would become the very first fundamental symbol
of Creative cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to astronomy, to measure
and to animal reproduction. According to the Kabala the curse on man came with
the formation of woman.* 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 reunion 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 reunion 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."** (Vide "Cross and
Circle," Part II.)
The allegory of Adam being driven
away from the "Tree of Life" means, esoterically, that the newly
separated Race abused and dragged the mystery of Life down into the region of
animalism and bestiality. For, as the Zohar shows, that Matronethah (Shekinah,
the wife of Metatron symbolically) "is the way to the great Tree of Life,
the Mighty Tree," and Shekinah is divine grace. As explained: This Tree reaches
the heavenly vale and is hidden between three mountains (the upper triad of
principles, in man). From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the
adept's knowledge aspires heavenward) and then redescends below (into the
adept's Ego on Earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden
during the night, i.e., revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to
Ignorance, which is night. (See Zohar I., 172, a and b.) "The Tree of the
Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of
Life." (Comm.) But then also: "In the Kabala it is plainly to be
found that "the 'Tree of Life' was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of Ain-Soph), representing the Logos, is that very Tree of Knowledge;
while Shamael -- the dark aspect of the Logos -- occupies only the rind of that
tree, and has the knowledge of EVIL alone. As Lacour, who saw in the scene of
the Fall (chap. iii., Genesis) 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
the symbologists under the name JEHOVAH.
* 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 for breaking the law (See supra).
** "By which (human) nature
lives," not even the animal -- but the misguided, sensual and vicious
nature, which men, not nature, created.
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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 ( [[diagram]]), tree, are 7 and 9,
the seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of the phallic
or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of the Egyptian female-male,
Isis-Osiris, the germinal principle in all forms, based on the primal
manifestation applicable in all directions and in all senses."*
This is the Kabalistic view of the
Western Occultists, and it differs from the more philosophical Eastern or Aryan
views upon this subject.** The separation of the sexes was in the programme of
nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female
was a gift of Divine wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of
antiquity, from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined
plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that the
relative truth of such legends, if not their absolute exactness -- vouched for
by such giants of intellect as were Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others --
begins to dawn upon more than one modern scientist. He is perplexed; he stands
startled and confused before proofs that are being daily accumulated before
him; he feels that there is no way of solving the many historical problems that
stare him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions.
Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and
universal legends, we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer,
for other and far more learned writers, among those who belong to the modern
scientific school, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do: e.g., in
"Dragons," not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence
at one time.
"It would have indeed been a
bold step for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the
public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming
for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
tales, believed to be time-honoured 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 . . . . . "
Thus opens the introduction to a
recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called
"Mythical Monsters." He boldly states his belief in most of these
monsters. He submits that:-- "Many of the so-called mythical animals,
which, throughout long ages and in all nations, have been the fertile subjects
of fiction and fable, come
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Source of Measures."
** Vide infra, "The
Septenary," in Part II.
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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 co-existing 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 an Aryan
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* . . . 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 unrecognisable, 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."**
It is shown by the same geologist
that man, "successively traced to periods variously estimated from thirty
thousand to one million years . . . . ., co-existed with animals which have
long since become extinct (p. 20)." These animals, "weird and
terrible," were, to give a few instances -- (1) "Of the genus
Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebrae show them to have attained a length of
nearly two hundred feet . . . . . . " The remains of such monsters, no
less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres
of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching
fifty or sixty feet in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds of
the Rocky Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; (4) the
Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and
which would be thus over one hundred feet in length! But even yet the line has
not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic
proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length (p. 37). Then
we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himalayas, the four-horned stag, as
large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic
Megatherium: of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Unicorn: a Mythological
Investigation," Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A.
** Pp. 3 and 4, Introduction to
"Mythical Monsters."
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crocodile jaws on a duck's head,
etc., etc. All these were co-existent with man, most probably attacked man, as
man attacked them; and we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger
then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with
such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have
survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that
he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always
bear in mind that at least one great man of science, de Quatrefages, sees no
good scientific reasons why man should not have been "contemporaneous with
the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the Secondary Period."*
"It appears," writes the
very conservative Professor Jukes, "that the flying dragons of romance had
something like a real existence in former ages of the world."** "Does
the written history of man," the author goes on to ask, "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 Chaldea 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;" (p. 17).
The few remaining giant animals, such
as elephants, themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons, and
Hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely
with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of their future
genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men did. For the
remains of a pigmy elephant were found (E. Falconeri) in the cave deposits of
Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains
of pigmy Hippopotami, the former being "only two feet six inches high; or
the still-existing Hippopotamus (Choeropsis) Liberiensis, which M.
Milne-Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height."***
Sceptics may smile and denounce our
work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the
wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that "the things that
men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that
are unknown";**** and thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Human Species," p.
52.
** "Manual of Geology," p.
301.
*** "Recherches sur les
Mammiferes," plate I.
**** Preface to "Wonders by Land
and Sea," (Shan Hai King).
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THE "SONS OF GOD" AND THE
"SACRED ISLAND."
The legend given in Isis in relation
to a portion of the globe which science now concedes to have been the cradle of
humanity -- though it is but one of the seven cradles, in truth -- ran,
condensed, and now explained, as follows:--
"Tradition says, and the records
of the Great Book (the Book of Dzyan) explain, that long before the days of Ad-am,
and his inquisitive wife, He-va, where now are found but salt lakes and
desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over
Middle Asia, north of the proud Himalayan range, and its western prolongation.
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" meant
the "Sons of Will and Yoga," who, with a few tribes, survived the
great cataclysm. For it is the Third Race which inhabited the great Lemurian
continent, that preceded the veritable and complete human races -- the fourth
and the fifth. Therefore it was said in Isis 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 Kabala 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; now, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful
wildernesses of the great Desert, the Gobi -- whose sands "no foot hath
crossed in the memory of man."
"This word, which is no word,
has travelled once around 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 (Maha 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 classic 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."*
Tradition asserts, and archaeology
accepts the truth of the legend that there is more than one city now
flourishing in India, which is built on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There are archaeologists, who, like
Mr. James Fergusson, deny the great antiquity of even one single monument in
India. In his work, "Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India,"
the author 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 anterior
to the reign of Asoka, 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 Maghada, in the
beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim perfectly arbitrary.
Further discoveries will show that it is erroneous and unwarranted.
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several other cities, making thus a
subterranean city of six or seven stories high. Delhi is one of them; Allahabad
another -- examples of this being found even in Europe; e.g., in Florence,
which is built on several defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could
not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajunta have been built on subterranean
labyrinths and passages, as claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves
which are known to every European, whether de visu or through hearsay, notwithstanding
their enormous antiquity, though that is so disputed by modern archaeology. But
it is a fact, known to the Initiated Brahmins of India and especially to Yogis,
that there is not a cave-temple in the country but has its subterranean
passages running in every direction, and that those underground caves and
endless corridors have in their turn their caves and corridors.
"Who can tell that the lost
Atlantis -- which is also mentioned in the Secret Book, but, again, under
another name, pronounced in the sacred language -- did not exist yet in those
days?" --
we went on to ask. It did exist most
assuredly, as it was fast approaching its greatest days of glory and
civilization when the last of the Lemurian continents went down.
"The great lost continent might
have, perhaps, been situated south of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania?*
If the hypothesis (now so much doubted, and positively denied by some learned
authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato's) is ever verified, then, perhaps,
will the scientists believe that the description of the god-inhabited continent
was not altogether a fable.** 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, by cleverly
combining truth and fiction, so 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:*** 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, (born sexually but of divine parents), were born with a sight,
which embraced all living 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* America when discovered, was called
Atlanta by some native tribes.
** Since then Donnelly's Atlantis has
appeared, and soon its actual existence will have become a scientific fact.
*** 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.
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a dynasty of Spirit-Kings, not of
Manes, or "ghosts," as some believe (See "Pneumatologie"),
but of actual living Devas (or demi-gods or Angels, again) who had assumed
bodies to rule over them, and who, in their turn, instructed them in arts and sciences.
Only, as they were rupa or material Spirits, these Dhyanis were not always
good. Their King Thevetata was one of the latter, and it is under the evil
influence of this King-Demon that . . . . the Atlantis-race became a nation of
wicked magicians.
"In consequence of this, war was
declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be
found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of
Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of
the 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 Thhnkithians in the Popol-Vuh, or the sacred book of
the Guatemaleans, which also tells of his escaping in a large boat like the
Hindu 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, sprang up a mixed race of righteous and wicked. 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 the "Histoire des Vierges:
Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus," the author 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 Hindustan
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 Brahmans, this country had attained a high civilization,
and the peninsula of Hindustan, 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 Sanscrit. . . . . And the Indo-Hellenic tradition,
preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of
India, equally 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 moun-
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tainous surface of the Azores, the
Canaries and Cape de Verdes, 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, 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"
(pp. 13-15).
This last tradition corroborates the
one given from the "Records of the Secret Doctrine." The war
mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between
the "sons of God" and the "sons of giants," or the inhabitants
and magicians of Atlantis.
The final conclusion of the author,
who personally visited all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the
study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is
as follows:
"As to the Polynesian continent
which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence
rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
"The three summits of this
continent, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from
each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of
intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, the Marquesas,
Tahiti, Poumoutou, 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
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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"
(Ibid., p. 308).
Geographically, this description
clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but it shows the
existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is
no smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth.
In its proper place we will show
modern Science fully corroborating the above and the traditions of the Secret
Doctrine with regard to the two lost continents. The Easter Island relics are,
for instance, the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval
giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine
the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken on that island,
to recognise in them at a glance the features of the type and character
attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem of one cast though different in
features -- that of a distinctly sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the
Daityas and "Atalantians") are represented to have in the esoteric
Hindu books. Compare these with the faces of some other colossal statues in
Central Asia -- those near Bamian for instance -- the portrait-statues,
tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to previous Manvantaras; of those
Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in the Buddhist and Hindu works, as men of
fabulous size,* the good and holy brothers of their wicked co-uterine brothers
generally, as Ravana, the giant King of Lanka was the brother of Kumbhakarna;
all descendants of the gods through the Rishis, and thus, like "Titan and
his enormous brood," all "heaven's first born." These "Buddhas,"
though often spoilt by the symbolical representation of the great pendent ears,
show a suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, between the expression of
their faces and that of the Easter Isle statues. They may be of one race -- but
the former are "Sons of Gods"; the latter the brood of mighty
sorcerers. All these are re-incarnations, however, and apart from unavoidable
exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are historical characters.**
When did they live? How long ago lived the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Even Wilson admits that Rama and
Ravana were personages founded on historical facts:--"The traditions of
Southern India uniformly ascribing its civilization and the settlement of
civilized Hindus (the Fifth Race) to the conquest of Lanka by Rama"
(Vishnu Purana, iii., p. 318) -- the victory of the "Sons of God"
over the Atlantean sorcerers, says the true tradition.
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two races, the Third and Fourth, and
how long after did the various tribes of the Fifth begin their strife, the wars
between Good and Evil? We are assured by the Orientalists that chronology is
both hopelessly mixed and absurdly exaggerated in the Puranas and other Hindu
Scriptures. We feel quite prepared to agree with the accusation. Yet, if Aryan
writers did allow their chronological pendulum to swing too far one way
occasionally, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the
distance of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists'
deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the
Brahminical side. It is the Pundit who will in the long run be found more
truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. Surely, it is not because the
curtailing of the latter -- even when proven to have been resorted to in order
to fit a personal hobby -- is regarded by Western public opinion as "a
cautious acceptance of facts," whereas the Pundit is brutally treated in
print as a liar, that everyone has to see this in the same light. An impartial
observer may judge it otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous
historians, or justify both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindu
Aryans wrote for their Initiates, who read truth between the lines, not for the
masses. If they did mix up events and confuse Ages intentionally, it was not in
view of deceiving any one, but to preserve their knowledge from the prying eye
of the foreigner. Otherwise, to him who can count the generations from the
Manus, and the series of incarnations specified in the cases of some heroes,*
the meaning and chronological order are very clear in the Puranas. As for the
Western Orientalist, he must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance
of the methods used by archaic Esotericism.
But such existing prejudices will
have to give way and disappear very soon before the light of new discoveries.
Already Dr. Weber's and Mr. Max Muller's favourite theories -- namely, that
writing was not known in India, even in the days of Panini (!); that the Hindus
had all their arts and sciences -- even to the Zodiac and their architecture
(Ferguson) -- from the Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock-and-bull
hypotheses, are threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldea that comes
to the rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thus we are shown one hero, to give
an instance, first born as the "unrighteous but valiant monarch"
(Purusha) of the Daityas, Hiranyakasipu, slain by the Avatar Nara-Sinha
(Man-lion). Then he was born as Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, and killed by
Rama; after which he is reborn as Sisupala, the son of Rajarishi (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 men, may seem
meaningless, yet it gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama
and Krishna but even to a certain psychological mystery.
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lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of
Oxford, speaking of newly-discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders,
referred at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes, of
Berosus, the half-man, half-fish, who taught the Babylonians culture and the
art of writing. This Oannes, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical Deluge, an
antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is now spoken of in
these terms:--
"His city 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 Chaldean 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 Chaldea 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 Mazan -- 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 'muslins,' explained as 'vegetable cloth.' "
Muslin, best known now as Dacca
muslin, known in Chaldea as Hindu (Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years
B.C.; and yet the Hindus, to whom Chaldea owes its civilization (as well proven
by Colonel vans Kennedy), were ignorant of the art of writing before the Greeks
taught them their alphabet -- if we have to believe Orientalists!
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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 (Race men). THE GODS BECAME
NO-GODS (Sura became a-Sura) (a).
-------
39. THE FIRST (Race) ON EVERY ZONE
WAS MOON-COLOURED (yellow-white); THE SECOND, YELLOW, LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD,
RED; THE FOURTH, BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN.* THE FIRST SEVEN (human) SHOOTS
WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION IN THE BEGINNING. THE NEXT (seven, the sub-races)
BEGAN MIXING THEIR COLOURS (b).
(a) To understand this verse 38, it
must be read together with the three verses of Stanza IX. Up to this point of
evolution man belongs more to metaphysical than physical nature. It is only
after the so-called FALL, that the races began to develop rapidly into a purely
human shape. And, in order that he may correctly comprehend the full meaning of
the Fall, so mystic and transcendental is it in its real significance, the
student must be told at once the details which preceded
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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"
(by two chelas), all that is said of the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is
chiefly that race which became "black with sin" that brought the
divine names of the Asuras, the Rakshasas 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 Rakshasas were given to the Atlanteans; which names, owing to their
incessant conflicts with the last remnants of the Third Race and the "Sons
of Will and Yoga," have led to the later allegories about them in the Puranas.
"Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans who were the
enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Aryans (gods)." ("Man,"
p. 97.)
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this event; of which event modern
theology has formed a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and
beliefs are made to turn.
The archaic commentaries explain, as
the reader must remember, that, of the Host of Dhyanis, whose turn it was to
incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but, on this plane, senseless monads --
that some "obeyed" (the law of evolution) immediately when the men of
the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, i.e., when they had
separated into sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding
conscious knowledge and will to their inherent Divine purity, created by
Kriyasakti the semi-Divine man, who became the seed on earth for future adepts.
Those, on the other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom
(unfettered as it then was by the bonds of matter), said:-- "We can choose
. . . we have wisdom" (See verse 24), and incarnated far later -- these
had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies
(physiologically) inferior to their astral models, because their chhayas had
belonged to progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven classes. As to those
"Sons of Wisdom" who had "deferred" their incarnation till
the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and
impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on
them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers
of that seed of iniquity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to
inform had become defiled through their own procrastination. (See verses 32,
36.)
This was the "Fall of the
angels," because of their rebellion against Karmic Law. The "fall of
man" was no fall, for he was irresponsible. But "Creation"
having been invented on the dualistic system as the "prerogative of God
alone," the legitimate attribute patented by theology in the name of an
infinite deity of their own making, this power had to be regarded as "Satanic,"
and as an usurpation of divine rights. Thus, the foregoing, in the light of
such narrow views, must naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man,
"created in the image of God," a still more dreadful blasphemy in the
face of the dead-letter dogma. "Your doctrine," the Occultists were
already told, "makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his
God, a vehicle of the Devil, from the first." "Why did you make of
your god a devil -- both, moreover, created in your own image?" is our
reply. The esoteric interpretation of the Bible, however, sufficiently refutes
this slanderous invention of theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become
the just Karma of the Churches -- more anti-Christian than the representative
assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
The old doctrine about the true
meaning of the "Fallen Angels," in its anthropological and
evolutionary sense, is contained in the Kabala,
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and explains the Bible. It is found
pre-eminent in Genesis when the latter is read in a spirit of research for
truth, with no eye to dogma, and in no mood of preconception. This is easily
proven. In Genesis (vi.) the "Sons of God" -- B'ne Aleim -- become
enamoured of the daughters of men, marry, and reveal to their wives the
mysteries unlawfully learnt by them in heaven, according to Enoch; and this is
the "Fall of Angels."* But what is, in reality, the "Book of
Enoch" itself, from which the author of Revelation and even the St. John
of the Fourth Gospel have so profusely quoted? (e.g., verse 8, in chapter 10,
about all who have come before Jesus, being "thieves and robbers.")
Simply a Book of Initiation, giving out in allegory and cautious phraseology
the programme of certain archaic mysteries performed in the inner temples. The
author of the "Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches" very
justly suggests that the so-called "Visions" of Enoch relate to his
(Enoch's) experience at initiation, and what he learned in the mysteries; while
he very erroneously states his opinion that Enoch had learned them before being
converted
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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
various character as to details, and all from the pen of educated lay authors,
"University graduates" of the present quarter of our century. Thus,
the author of "Earth's Earliest Ages," J. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a
thick volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Metaphysicians, Agnostics,
Mystics, 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" (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 the VIth ch. of Genesis, and the Giants.
He ought to note his own descent from them also, as the present Secret Doctrine
endeavours to show -- unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity.
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to Christianity (!!); furthermore, he
believes that this book was written "at the beginning of the Christian
era, when . . . the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into
decadency"! This is hardly possible, since Jude quotes in his epistle from
the "Book of Enoch" (verse 14); and, therefore, as Archbishop
Laurence, the translator of the Book of Enoch from the Ethiopic version, remarks,
it "could not have been the production of a writer who lived after . . .
or was even coeval with" the writers of the New Testament: unless, indeed,
Jude and the Gospels, and all that follows, was also a production of the
already established Church -- which, some critics say, is not impossible. But
we are now concerned with the "fallen Angels" of Enoch, rather than
with Enoch himself.
In Indian exotericism, these angels
(Asuras) are also denounced as "the enemies of the gods;" those who
oppose sacrificial worship offered to the latter. In Christian theology they
are broadly referred to as the "Fallen Spirits," the heroes of
various conflicting and contradictory legends about them, gathered from Pagan
sources. The coluber tortuosus "the tortuous snake," a qualification
said to have originated with the Jews, had quite another meaning before the
Roman Church distorted it:-- among others, a purely astronomical meaning.
The "Serpent" fallen from
on high, "deorsum fluens," was credited with the possession of the
Keys of the Empire of the Dead, [[tou thanatus arche]] to that day, when Jesus
saw it "falling like lightning from heaven" (Luke x. 17, 18), the
Roman Catholic interpretation of cadebat ut fulgur to the contrary,
notwithstanding; and it means indeed that even "the devils are
subject" to the Logos -- who is WISDOM, but who, as the opponent of
ignorance, is Satan or Lucifer at the same time. This remark refers to divine
Wisdom falling like lightning on, and quickening the intellects of those who
fight the devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in
the shape of the incarnating Spirits of MAHAT, descended from on high to
animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life, humanity -- if it can
be so called in its animal, senseless state --was of course doomed to -- moral
as well as to physical death. The Angels fallen into generation are referred to
metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the other hand, regarded
in the light of the LOGOS, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man
or logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the secret teachings
from "eternal death," to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or
Hell, as every Initiate does. This in the human, terrestrial form of the
Initiates, and also because the logos is Christos, that principle of our inner
nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego -- the Higher-Self -- being
formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi (the sixth) and the spiritual
efflorescence of Manas, the
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fifth principle.* "The Logos is
passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active Wisdom on Earth," we
are taught. It is the Marriage of "Heavenly man" with the
"Virgin of the World" --Nature, as described in Pymander; the result
of which is their progeny -- immortal man. It is this which is called in St.
John's Revelation the marriage of the lamb with his bride. (xix. 7.) That
"wife" is now identified with the Church of Rome owing to the
arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to forget that her
linen may be fine and white outwardly (like the "whitened
sepulchre"), but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with, is not
"the righteousness of Saints" (v. 8. ibid), but rather the blood of
the Saints she has "slain upon the earth" (chap. xviii. 24.) Thus the
remark made by the great Initiate (in Luke x. 18) -- one that referred
allegorically to the ray of Enlightenment and reason, falling like lightning
from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts to that old
wisdom-religion then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adeptt** --
was distorted out of recognition (as was his own personality), and made to fit
in with one of the most cruel as the most pernicious of all theological dogmas.
(Vide at the end of Stanza XI. "SATANIC MYTHS.")
But if Western theology alone holds
the patent for, and copyright of SATAN -- in all the dogmatic horror of that
fiction -- other nationalities
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not correct to refer to
Christ -- as some theosophists do -- as the sixth principle in man -- Buddhi.
The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of
Atman, 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.
** To make it plainer, any one who
reads that 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 to this that he has "beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven," it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers, notifying 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 (Ibid v. 22) -- the Church "of Christ" less than any one else.
The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the term "Father and
the 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
the initiation. They were never intended for the masses, for Jesus forbade the
twelve to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matt. x. 8), and repeated to his
disciples that the "mysteries of Heaven" were for them alone, not for
the multitudes (Mark iv. 11).
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and religions have committed equal
errors in their misinterpretation of this tenet, which is one of the most
profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. For they
have both disfigured and hinted at the correct meaning of it in their numerous
allegories touching the subject. Nor have the
semi-esoteric dogmas of Puranic
Hinduism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and allegories concerning the
rebellious and fallen gods. The Puranas teem with them; and we find a direct
hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Parasara (Vishnu Purana), to all
those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumaras and Munis, having to be born in every
age, to re-incarnate in every Manvantara. This (esoterically) is equivalent to
saying that the FLAMES born of the Universal Mind (Mahat), owing to the
mysterious workings of Karmic Will and an impulse of Evolutionary Law, had, as
in Pymander -- without any gradual transition -- landed on this Earth, having
broken through the seven Circles of fire, or the seven intermediate Worlds, in
short.
There is an eternal cyclic law of
re-births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric dawn by those who
had enjoyed their rest from re-incarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable
AEons -- by the highest and the earliest Nirvanees. It was the turn of those
"Gods" to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence
on Earth, and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the
original meaning.* 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
Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahomedan religions was ever intended under
those thousand and one Aryan allegories.** (See "The Fallen Angels"
and "The Mystic Dragons" in Part II.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So, for instance, in the Puranas,
"Pulastya," a Prajapati, or son of Brahma -- the progenitor of the
Rakshasas, and the grandfather of Ravana, the Great King of Lanka (see
Ramayana) -- had, in a former birth, a son named Dattoli, "who is now known
as the sage Agastya" -- says Vishnu Purana. This name of Dattoli alone,
has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called respectively,
Dattoi, Dattali, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri, Dambhobhi and Dambholi -- which
seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in the esoteric comments to
various ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and
anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Rakshasas
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. Vasishta
is a warrant to this, if his words addressed to Parasara, who attempted a bit
of JADOO (sorcery), which he calls "sacrifice," for the destruction
of the Rakshasas, mean anything. For he says, "Let no more of these
unoffending 'Spirits Darkness' be destroyed." (see for details Adiparvan,
s. 176, Mahabharata; also the Linga Purana "Purvardha," s. 64.)
** We have a passage from a Master's
letter which has a direct bearing upon these [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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The true esoteric view about
"Satan," the opinion held on this subject by the whole 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." No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to
the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length:--
"1. And on the seventh day
(seventh creation of the Hindus),* 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.**
2. "Eternity brought forth Time;
the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into generation."***
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,**** the fall of nations, the birth of churches, the triumph
of Time."
For, as is said in Hermes,
"Satan is the door-keeper of the Temple of the King; he standeth in
Solomon's porch; he holdeth the key of the Sanctuary, that no man enter
therein, save the Anointed having the arcanum of Hermes" (v. 20 and 21).
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, Brahma,
Ahura-Mazda, etc., etc., as primeval manifestations of the ever-unmanifested
Principle, e.g., Ain-Soph, Parabrahm, or Zeruana Akerne-- Boundless Time --
Kala), but the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] incarnating angels. Says the letter: "Now there are, and there must
be, failures in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dhyan-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 Dhyan-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 Dhyan-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, and endow
man with his Self-conscious mind, or Manas.
* When the earth with its planetary
chain and man were to appear.
** Our earth and the physical plane
of consciousness.
*** When the pure, celestial Being
(Dhyan Chohan) and the great Pitris of various classes were commissioned -- the
one to evolve their images (Chhaya), 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.
**** The "dynasties of the
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.
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meaning is now degraded in the
Kabala. The "Anointed," who has the secrets and mysteries of Hermes
(Buddha, Wisdom), and who alone is entrusted with the key to the
"Sanctuary," the Womb of nature, in order to fructify it and call to
active life and being the whole Kosmos, has become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the
"God of generation" on the lunar mountain (Sinai, the mountain of the
moon, "Sin"). The "Sanctuary" has become the "Holy of
Holies," and the arcanum has been anthropomorphised and phallicised and
dragged down into matter, indeed. Hence arose the necessity of making of the
"Dragon of Wisdom," the Serpent of Genesis: of the conscious god who
needed a body to clothe his too subjective divinity, Satan. But the
"innumerable incarnations of Spirit," and "the ceaseless pulse
and current of desire" refer, the first one, to our doctrine of Karmic and
cyclic rebirths, the second -- to EROS, not the later god of material,
physiological love, but to the divine desire in the gods, as well as in all
nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the Rays of the one
"dark," because invisible and incomprehensible, FLAME could achieve
only by themselves descending into matter. Therefore, as continued in the
APPENDIX:
12. "Many names hath God given
him (Satan), names of mystery, secret and terrible."
13. "The Adversary, because
matter opposeth Spirit. Time accuseth even the Saints of the Lord."
28, 29, 31. "Stand in awe of him, and sin
not; speak his name with trembling . . . . For Satan is the magistrate of the
justice of God (Karma); he beareth the balance and the sword . . . . For to him
are committed Weight and Measure and Number."
Compare the last sentence with what
the Rabbi, who explains the Kabala to Prince Al-Chazari in the Book of that
name, says; and it will be found that the Weight and Measure and Number are, in
Sepher Jezirah, the attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures,
ciphers) covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are
the collective Adam Kadmon, the "Heavenly Man" or the Logos. Thus
Satan and the anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore,
33. "Satan is the minister of
God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades" . . . .
The seven or Saptaloka of the Earth
with the Hindus; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, of which theology makes a
region bordering on Hell, is simply our globe, the Earth, and thus Satan is
called --
33 ". . . . the angel of the manifest
Worlds."
It is "Satan who is the god of
our planet and the only god," and this without any allusive metaphor to
its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, "the first
son, eldest of the gods," in the order
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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 he whose planet was Saturn.
34. "And God hath put a girdle
about his loins (the rings of Saturn), and the name of the girdle is
Death."
In anthropogony this
"girdle" is the human body with its two lower principles, which three
die, while the innermost man is immortal. And now we approach the "Secret
of Satan."
37, 38, 39. " . . . Upon Satan
only is the shame of generation. He hath lost his virginal estate (so hath the
Kumara by incarnating): uncovering heavenly secrets, he hath entered into
bondage. . . . He compasseth with bonds and limits all things. . . ."
42, 43, 44. "Twain are the
armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael; in the abyss (the manifested
world) the legions of Satan. These are the unmanifest and the manifest; the
free and the bound (in matter): the virginal and the fallen. And both are the
Ministers of the Father, fulfilling the word Divine. . . ." Therefore --
55. "Holy is the Sabbath of god:
blessed and sanctified is the name of the Angel of Havas" -- SATAN.
For, "The glory of Satan is the
shadow of the Lord": God in the manifested world; "the throne of
Satan is the footstool of Adonai" -- that footstool being the whole
Kosmos. (Vide Part II., "Is Pleroma Satan's Lair?")
When the Church, therefore, curses
Satan, it curses the cosmic reflection of God; it anathematizes God made
manifest in matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the
ever-incomprehensible WISDOM, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, good and
evil in nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of
MAN.
This is the true philosophical and
metaphysical interpretation of Samael, or Satan, the adversary in the Kabala;
the same tenets and spirit being found in the allegorical interpretations of
every other ancient religion. This philosophical view does not interfere,
however, with the historical records connected with it. We say
"historical," because allegory and a mythical ornamentation around
the kernel of tradition, in no wise prevent that kernel being a record of real
events. Thus, the Kabala, repeating the time-honoured revelations of the once
universal history of our globe and the evolution of its races, has presented it
under the legendary form of the various records which have formed the Bible.
Its historical foundation is now offered, in however imperfect a form, on these
pages from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus
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the allegorical and symbolical
meaning of the Serpent of Genesis is found explained by the "Sons of
Wisdom" (or angels from higher spheres, though all and each pertain to the
kingdom of Satan, or Matter) revealing to men the mysteries of Heaven. Hence,
also, all the so-called myths of the Hindu, Grecian, Chaldean, and Jewish
Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth. The giants of Genesis are
the historical Atlanteans of Lanka, and the Greek Titans.
Who can forget that Troy was once
upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer a non-existing personage, while the
existence of such cities as Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed
to mere fairy legends? Yet Schliemann proved that Troy had really existed, and the
two cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had their
resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the earth. How many more
cities and localities called "fabulous" are on the list of future
discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical* will one day become
historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees of Fate in the astral
light.
As the tenets of the Eastern
doctrine, however, have always been kept secret, and as the reader can hardly
hope to be shown the original texts unless he becomes an accepted disciple, let
the Greek and Latin scholar turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature.
Let him, for one thing, read carefully the opening pages of the Pymander of
Hermes Trismegistus; and then he will see our doctrines corroborated in it,
however veiled its text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe,
of our Earth (called "Nature" in Pymander) as of everything else,
from the "Moyst Principle" -- or the great Deep, FATHER-MOTHER -- the
first differentiation in the manifested Kosmos. First the "Universal
Mind," which the hand of the Christian translator has metamorphosed in the
earliest renderings into God, the Father: then the "Heavenly Man,"**
which is the great Total of that Host of Angels, which was too pure for the
creation of the inferior worlds or of the men of our globe, but which fell
nevertheless into matter by virtue of that same evolution, as the second logos
of the "Father."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the "Primeval Manus of
Humanity."
** The "Heavenly Man" --
please mark again the word -- is "the LOGOS" or the "Son"
esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied to Christ (declared
God and the very God himself) Christian theology had no choice. In order to
support its dogma of the personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it does, that
the Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of other
religions were false, and only the masquerading Evil Principles, SATAN. Now see
where this led Western theology to.
*** "For the Mind, a deity
abounding in both sexes, being Life 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 [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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Synthetically every Creative Logos,
or "the Son who is one with the Father," is the Host of the Rectores
Mundi in itself. Even Christian theology makes of the seven "Angels of the
Presence" the Virtues, or the personified attributes of God, which, being created
by him, as the Manus were by Brahma, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic
theodice itself recognising, in its creative Verbum Princeps, the head of those
angels -- caput angelorum -- and the magni consilii Angelus (the Angel of the
great Counsel), thus recognizes the identity of Christ and those Angels.
"The Gods became no-Gods, the
Sura -- A-sura," says the text; i.e., gods became fiends -- SATAN, when
read literally. But Satan will now be shown, in the teaching of the Secret
Doctrine, allegorized as Good, and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different
names.
The Kabala teaches that Pride and
Presumption -- the two chief prompters of Selfishness and Egotism -- are the
causes that emptied heaven of one third of its divine denizens -- mystically, and
of one third of the stars -- astronomically; in other words, the two statements
are -- the first an allegory, and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless,
as shown, is intimately connected with humanity.
In their turn the Rosicrucians, who
were well acquainted with the secret meaning of the tradition, kept it to
themselves, teaching merely that the whole of creation was due to, and the
result of, that legendary "War in Heaven" brought on by the rebellion
of the angels* against creative law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct,
but the inner meaning is to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of
the difficulty by appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its
policy -- is to say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Phenomenal World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny."
(Section 9, ch. I, 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.
* 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 unto our Earth, to live as man.
The Hindu Lucifer, the Mahasura, 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 Brahma; for which Siva hurled him down to
Patala. But, as philosophy goes hand in hand with allegorical fiction in Hindu
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., etc. The Christian Church alone creates eternal torment
for the devil and the damned, that she has invented.
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believers in the Pope's
infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the truth,
although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told by any of
their number. One and all, Kabalists and symbologists, showed 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
could, during the Mediaeval Ages, utter that* which in the sight of orthodox
theology was a terrible blasphemy, for it would have led them directly through
the "Holy" office of the Inquisition, to stake and rack. But for our modern
Kabalists and Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it
is merely human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected and as ineradicable
superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manichaeism, invented the
devil, and by placing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Why should, for instance, Eliphas
Levi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the
mystery of the Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact and 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 Eliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in
his previous works, says in his latest "Histoire de la Magie," p. 220
. . . "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). . . .
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 (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 -- qualities are of no sex -- this archangel,
St. Michael, is the invincible, sexless, celestial 'Energy' -- to dignify him
by his grand characteristics -- the invisible 'Virgin Combatant,' clothed . . .
and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic 'refusal to
create.' This is another . . . 'myth within myths' . . . a stupendous 'mystery
of mysteries,' because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as
the Apocalypse. Unrevealable as the 'Revelation' "(p. 213).
Nevertheless, this unexplainable and
unrevealable mystery will now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the
East. But as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of
"Phallicism" gives it, of course, no uninitiated mortal would ever
understand the real drift of his remarks.
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a theological extinguisher on the
radiant star-god, Lucifer, the "Son of the Morning," thus created the
most gigantic of all her paradoxes -- a black and tenebrous light -- the myth
has struck its roots too deep in the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age,
even those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas and laugh at her horned and
cloven-footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the
oldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi-exoterically,
the "First-born" of the Almighty -- Fiat Lux, -- or the angels of
primordial light, were commanded to create; one third of them rebelled and
refused; while those who "obeyed as Fetahil did -- failed" most
signally.
To realise the refusal and failure in
their correct physical meaning, one must study and understand Eastern
philosophy; one has to be acquainted with the fundamental mystical tenets of
the Vedantins, with regard to the utter fallacy of attributing functional
activity to the infinite and absolute deity. Esoteric philosophy maintains that
during the Sandhyas, the "Central Sun" emits creative light --
passively so to say. Causality is latent. It is only during the active periods
of being that it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless energy, whose vibrating
currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic
ladder of Being which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the
process of creating, or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all
its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent beings -- who became
collectively a Being or creative God -- differentiated already from the one
absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned creation.*
Now the Vatican MSS. of the Kabala --
a single copy of which (in Europe) is said to have been in the possession of
Count St. Germain -- contains the most complete exposition of the doctrine,
including the peculiar version accepted by the Luciferians** and other Gnostics;
and in that parchment the Seven Suns of Life are given in the order they are
found in the Saptasurya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the
editions of the Kabala which are procurable in the public libraries, and that
even in a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced
number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to the
quaternary group of the Dhyan-Chohans, and proves the speculation to have had
its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Aryans.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Creation" -- out of
pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance,
according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.
** The Luciferians -- the 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 that other religious and still
earlier sect of the second century A.D., the Lucianists, who taught all this,
and further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the
grounds of the real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.
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As is well known, the Kabala never
originated with the Jews, who got their ideas from the Chaldeans and the
Egyptians.
Thus even the now exoteric Kabalistic
teachings speak of a Central Sun, and of three secondary suns in each solar
system -- our own included. As shown in that able though too materialistic
work, "New Aspects of Life and Religion," which is a synopsis of the
views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought out and assimilated:--
"The Central Sun . . . was to
them (as much as to the Aryans) 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" (p. 287). . . . "The radiant energy flowing
from the central sun* 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" . . . (p. 289).
This Kabalistic view is here quoted,
to show its perfect identity in spirit with the Eastern doctrine. Explain, or
complete the teaching of the seven Suns with the seven systems of planes of
being, of which the "Suns" are the central bodies, and you have the
seven angelic planes,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This "central sun" of the
Occultists, which 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 -- 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 supradivine 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.
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whose "Host" are gods
thereof, collectively. (See Comm. to Stanza VII Book I.) They are the
Head-group divided into four classes from the incorporeal down to the
semi-corporeal, which classes are directly connected -- though in very
different ways as regards voluntary connection and functions -- with our
mankind. They are three, synthesized by the fourth (the first and highest),
which is called the "Central Sun" in the Kabalistic doctrine just
quoted. This is the great difference between the Semitic and the Aryan
Cosmogony; one materializing, humanizes the mysteries of nature; the other
spiritualizes matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics.
Thus, though the seventh principle reaches man through all the phases of being,
pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes through (the
Kabala teaches from) the Central Spiritual Sun and Group the second (the polar
Sun), which two radiate on man his Atma. Group Three (the equatorial Sun)
cement the Buddhi to Atman and the higher attributes of Manas, while group Four
(the spirit of our visible sun) endows him with his Manas and its vehicle --
the Kama rupa, or body of passions and desires, the two elements of Ahamkara
which evolve individualized consciousness -- the personal ego. Finally, it is
the spirit of the Earth in its triple unity that builds the physical body,
attracting to it the Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sarira.
Now, as everything proceeds
cyclically, the evolution of man like everything else, the order in which he is
generated is described fully in the Eastern teachings, whereas it is only
hinted at in the Kabala. Says the Book of Dzyan with regard to primeval man
when first projected by the "Boneless," the incorporeal Creator:
"First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow-Son (the Body) were
'CREATED.' But where was the pivot (the middle principle, Manas)? Man is
doomed. When alone, the indiscrete (undifferentiated Element) and the Vahan
(Buddhi) -- the cause of the causeless -- break asunder from manifested
life" -- "unless cemented and held together by the middle principle,
the vehicle of the personal consciousness of JIVA"; explains the
Commentary. In other words, the two higher principles can have no individuality
on Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to
cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false personality, or the body of
egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a pivot
(which it is, truly), to the physical form of man. It is the Fifth and the
Fourth principles* -- Manas and Kama rupa -- that contain the dual personality:
the real immortal Ego (if it assimilates itself to the two higher) and the
false and transitory personality, the mayavi or astral body, so-called, or the
animal-human Soul -- the two hav-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Fourth, and the Fifth from
below beginning by the physical body; the Third and the Fourth, if we reckon
from Atma.
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ing to be closely blended for
purposes of a full terrestrial existence. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a
Newton grafted on that of the greatest saint on earth -- in a physical body the
most perfect you can think of -- i.e., in a two or even a three-principled body
composed of its Sthula Sarira, prana (life principle), and linga sarira -- and,
if it lacks its middle and fifth principles, you will have created an idiot --
at best a beautiful, soul-less, empty and unconscious appearance. "Cogito
-- ergo sum" -- can find no room in the brain of such a creature, not on
this plane, at any rate.
There are students, however, who have
long ago understood the philosophical meaning underlying the allegory -- so
tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church -- of the Fallen Angels. "The
Kingdom of Spirits and spiritual action which flows from and is the product of
Spirit Volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the
Kingdom of (divine) Souls and divine action."* As said in the text:--
"Like produces like and no more at
the genesis of being, and evolution with its limited conditioned laws comes
later. The Self-Existentt are called CREATIONS, for they appear in the Spirit
Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its UNBORN Nature, which is
beyond time and (limited or conditioned) Space. Terrene products, animate and
inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures: they
are the development (evolution) of the discrete elements." (Com. xiv.)
Again:--
"The Heavenly rupa (Dhyan
Chohan) creates (man) in his own form; it is a spiritual ideation consequent on
the first differentiation and awakening of the universal (manifested)
Substance; that form is the ideal shadow of Itself: and this is THE MAN OF THE
FIRST RACE."
To express it in still clearer form,
limiting the explanation to this earth only, it was the duty of the first
"differentiated Egos" -- the Church calls them Archangels -- to imbue
primordial matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers
in the fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the
sentences both in the Eastern and Western tradition --"the Angels were
commanded to create." After the Earth had been made ready by the lower and
more material powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be
"fruitful and multiply," the higher powers, the Archangels or
Dhyanis, were compelled by the evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order
to construct the crown of its evolution -- MAN. Thus the
"Self-created"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "New Aspects of Life."
** Angelic, Spiritual Essences,
immortal in their being because unconditioned in Eternity; periodical and
conditioned in their Manvantaric manifestations.
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and the "Self-existent"
projected their pale shadows; but group the Third, the Fire-Angels, rebelled
and refused to join their Fellow Devas.
Hindu exotericism represents them all
as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse creating, as they desired to
remain eternally Kumaras, "Virgin Youths," in order to, if possible,
anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvana -- the final liberation.
But, agreeably to esoteric interpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the
benefit of mankind. The "Rebels" would not create will-less
irresponsible men, as the "obedient" angels did; nor could they endow
human beings with only the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for
even the latter, belonging to another and a so-much higher plane of
consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any
possibility of a higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is
possible on earth -- the lowest and most material plane -- for one who on that
plane, at all events, is inherently perfect and cannot accumulate either merit
or demerit. Man remaining the pale shadow of the inert, immutable, and
motionless perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real I am
that I am, would have been doomed to pass through life on earth as in a heavy
dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being,
collectively called Elohim, who first (if ever) pronounced the cruel words,
"Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now,
lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live
for ever . . . " must have been indeed the Ilda-baoth, the Demiurge of the
Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, whose reflection
created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural -- even from the dead
letter standpoint -- to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator
and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the
"Harbinger of Light," bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of
the automaton created by Jehovah, as alleged; and he who was the first to whisper:
"in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and
evil" -- can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An
"adversary" to Jehovah the "personating spirit," he still
remains in esoteric truth the ever-loving "Messenger" (the angel),
the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and loved still more, and who
conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality -- the latter a kind
of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying
"Wandering Jew."
As narrated in King's
"Gnostics," "Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God
of Moses, was not a pure spirit, he was ambitious and proud, and rejecting the
spiritual light of the middle space offered him by his mother Sophia-Achamoth,
he set himself to create a world of his own. Aided by his sons, the six
planetary genii, he fabricated man,
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but this one proved a failure. It was
a monster, soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all fours on the ground like a
material beast. Ilda-Baoth was forced to implore the help of his spiritual
mother. She communicated to him a ray of her divine light, and so animated man
and endowed him with a soul. And now began the animosity of Ilda-Baoth toward
his own creature. Following the impulse of the divine light, man soared higher
and higher in his aspirations; very soon he began presenting not the image of his
creator Ilda-Baoth but rather that of the Supreme Being, the 'primitive man,'
Ennoia. Then the Demiurgos was filled with rage and envy; and fixing his
jealous eye on the abyss of matter, his looks envenomed with passion were
suddenly reflected as in a mirror; the reflection became animate, and there
arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent, Ophiomorphos -- 'the embodiment of envy
and cunning. He is the union of all that is most base in matter, with the hate,
envy, and craft of a spiritual intelligence.' " This is the exoteric
rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is
suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from the dead
letter text of chapter iii. of Genesis.
Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who
steals the divine fire so as to allow men to proceed consciously on the path of
spiritual evolution, thus transforming the most perfect of animals on earth
into a potential god, and making him free to "take the kingdom of heaven
by violence." Hence also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus,
and by Jehovah-Il-da-Baoth against his "rebellious son," Satan. The
cold, pure snows of the Caucasian mountain and the never-dying, singeing fire
and flames of an extinguishable hell. Two poles, yet the same idea; the dual
aspect of a refined torture: a fire producer -- the personified emblem of
[[Phosphoros]] of the astral fire and light in the anima mundi -- (that element
of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: "ohne
phosphor kein gedanke," i.e., without phosphorus no thought), burning in
the fierce flames of his terrestrial passions; the conflagration fired by his
Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the
passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full
consciousness gnawing at its heart -- a Prometheus indeed, because a conscious,
hence a responsible entity.* The curse of life is great, yet how few are those
men, outside some Hindu and Sufi mystics, who would exchange all the tortures
of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the
unconscious perfection of a passive (objectively) incorporeal being, or even
the universal static Inertia personified in Brahma during his
"night's" rest. For, to quote from an able article by one**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The history of Prometheus, Karma,
and human consciousness, is found further on.
** By an Englishman whose erratic
genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, he became a Mahomedan,
then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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who, confusing the planes of
existence and consciousness, fell a victim to it:--
"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 Re-action 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
nebulae 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. Fitly is
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 (disintegrated) and churned up to re-arrange
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. . . ." To demonstrate furthermore 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 the 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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 chelas
who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of
the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India.
* The author talks of the active,
fighting, damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym of Parabrahm! 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.
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former) is in fact what Theosophy
calls Nirvana. But then Theosophy teaches that separation from the Primal
Source having once occurred, Re-union can only be achieved by Will -- Effort --
which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay."
It is "Satanic" from the
standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype of that which
became in time the Christian Devil -- to the Radiant Archangels,
Dhyans-Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his
own creator and an immortal god -- that men can reach Nirvana 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 Kumaras,
the "Virgin-Angels," (to whom Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels,
both belong), the divine "Rebels" -- called by the all-materializing
and positive Jews, the Nahash or "Deprived" -- preferred the curse of
incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to
seeing the misery (even if unconscious) of the beings (evolved as shadows out
of their Brethren) through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual
Creators. If "man's uses of life should be such as neither to animalize
nor to spiritualize, but to humanize Self,"* before he can do so, he must
be born human not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogis offering
themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity -- created god-like
and perfect at first -- and to endow him with human affections and aspirations.
To do this they had to give up their natural status and, descending on our
globe, take up their abode on it for the whole cycle of the Mahayuga, thus
exchanging their impersonal individualities for individual personalities -- the
bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life. This voluntary
sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, was
construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows "the
rebel angels hurled down from heaven into the darkness of Hell" -- our
Earth. Hindu philosophy hints at the truth by teaching that the Asuras hurled
down by Siva, are only in an intermediate state in which they prepare for
higher degrees of purification and redemption from their
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. 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 -- men
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," 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 ([[diagram]]) -- the poetical ideograph of Jehovah
in the Kabala -- the god of the male symbol of generation.
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wretched condition; but Christian
theology, claiming to be based on the rock of divine love, charity, and justice
of him it appeals to as its Saviour -- has invented, to enforce that claim
paradoxically, the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman
Catholic philosophy.
As to Rabbinical Wisdom -- than which
there is none more positive, materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it
brings everything down to physiological mysteries -- it calls these Beings, the
"Evil One;" and the Kabalists -- Nahash, "Deprived," as
just said, and the Souls, that have thrown themselves, after having been
alienated in Heaven from the Holy One, into an abyss at the dawn of their very existence,
and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth. (Zohar iii.,
61, C.)
And let me explain at once that our
quarrel is not with the Zohar and the Kabala in their right interpretation --
for the latter is ours -- but only with the gross, pseudo-esoteric explanations
of the later, and especially those of the Christian Kabalists.
"Our earth and man," says
the Commentary, "being the products of the three Fires" -- whose
three names answer, in Sanskrit, to "the electric fire, the Solar fire,
and the fire produced by friction," -- these three fires, explained on the
Cosmic and human planes, are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three great Root
groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with the Schools, and
become -- according to their applications -- the upadhis and the vehicles, or
the noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are personified by the
"three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour" of Agni
Abhimanin, the eldest son of Brahma, the Cosmic LOGOS, by Swaha, one of
Daksha's* daughters. In the metaphysical sense the "Fire of friction"
means the Union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth, principles,
which thus are united or cemented together; the fifth merging partially into
and becoming part of the monad; in the physical, it relates to the creative
spark, or germ, which fructifies and generates the human being. The three
Fires, it is said (whose names are Pavaka, Pavamana and Suchi) were condemned
by a curse of Vasishta, the great sage, "to be born over and over
again." (Bhagavata-Purana iv. 24, 4.) This is clear enough.
Therefore, the FLAMES, whose
functions are confused in the exoteric books, and who are called indifferently
Prajapati, Pitris, Manus, Asuras,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Daksha, the "intelligent, the
competent." "This name generally carries with it the idea of creative
power." He is a son of Brahma, 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 Prajapati -- the Lords or Creators of Being. In
Vishnu Purana, Parasara 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.
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Rishis, Kumaras,* etc. 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 the Asuras, or the Asu-ra Devata or Pitar-devata (gods) for, as
said, they were first Gods -- and the highest -- before they became
"no-gods," and had from Spirits of Heaven fallen into Spirits of the
Earth** -- exoterically, note well, in orthodox dogma.
No Theologian, any more than an
Orientalist, can ever understand the genealogies of the Prajapati, the Manus,
and the Rishis, nor the direct connection of these -- or their correlation
rather -- with the Gods, unless he has the key to the old primitive Cosmogony
and Theogony, which all the Nations originally had in common. All these gods
and demi-gods are found reborn on earth, in various Kalpas and in as various
characters; each, moreover, having his Karma distinctly traced, and every
effect assigned to its cause.
Before other Stanzas could be
explained, it was, as seen, absolutely necessary to show that the sons of
"Dark Wisdom," though identical with the Archangels which Theology
has chosen to call the "Fallen," are as divine and as pure and more
so than all the Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the churches. The
"old Book" goes into various details of Astral life, which at this
juncture would be quite incomprehensible to the reader. It may, therefore, be
left for later explanations, and the First and Second Races can now only
receive bare notice. Not so for the Third Race -- the Root-Race which separated
into sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason. Men evolving
pari passu with the globe, and the latter having "incrustated" more
than a hundred million of years before -- the first human sub-race had already
begun to materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:
"the inner man (the conscious Entity) was not." This "Conscious
Entity" Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases is, the very entire
essence and esse of the high Intelligences condemned, by the undeviating law of
Karmic evolution, to reincarnate in this manvantara.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, Adityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas," or "this is
an everlasting Vedic text" in another translation.
** As now discovered by the late G.
Smith in the Babylonian cylinder literature, it was the same in Chaldean
theogony. Ishtar, "eldest of Heaven and of Earth." Below him the
Igaga or Angels of Heaven, and the Anunnaki, 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 "Babylonian
Mythology.")
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(b) This verse (thirty-ninth) relates
exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly speaking, esoteric philosophy
teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while it assigns to humanity a oneness of
origin, in so far that its forefathers or "Creators" were all divine
beings -- though of different classes or degrees of perfection in their
hierarchy -- men were nevertheless born on seven different centres of the continent
of that period. Though all of one common origin, yet for reasons given their
potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms, and future
characteristics, were very different.* As to their complexions, there is a
suggestive allegory told in Linga Purana. The Kumdra -- the Rudra gods, so
called (see further), are described as incarnations of Siva, the destroyer (of
outward forms), named also Vamadeva. The latter, as a Kumara, the "Eternal
Celibate," the chaste Virgin youth, springs from Brahma in each great
Manvantara, and "again becomes four"; a reference to the four great
divisions of the human races, as regards complexion and type -- and three chief
variations of these. Thus in the 29th Kalpa -- in this case a reference to the
transformation and evolution of the human form which Siva ever destroys and
remodels periodically, down to the manvantaric great turning point about the
middle of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race -- in the 29th Kalpa, Siva, as
Swetalohita, the root Kumara, becomes, from moon-coloured, white; in his next
transformation -- he is red (and in this the exoteric version differs from the
Esoteric teaching); in the third -- yellow; in the fourth -- black.
Esotericism now classes these seven
variations, with their four great divisions, into only three distinct primeval
races -- as it does not take into consideration the First Race, which had
neither type nor colour, and hardly an objective, though colossal form. The evolution
of these races, their formation and development, went pari passu and on
parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three
geological strata, from which the human complexion was as much derived as it
was determined by the climates of those zones. It names three great divisions,
namely, the RED-YELLOW, the BLACK, and the BROWN-WHITE.** The Aryan races, for
instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to
the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth
Root-Race -- and spring
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Some superior, others inferior, to
suit the Karma of the various reincarnating Monads which could not be all 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.
** "There are," says
Topinard (English edition of "Anthropology," with 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 unintentionally
supporting Occultism again.
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from one single progenitor, called in
Hindu exotericism by the generic name of Vaivasvata Manu: the latter, remember,
being that generic personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over
18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking
of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis* (See the Root and Seed
Manus further on), and who is said to live even now in his mankind. (Vide at
the end of this Stanza, "THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY.") The light
yellow is the colour of the first SOLID human race, which appeared after the
middle of the Third Root Race (after its fall into generation -- as just
explained), bringing on the final changes. For, it is only at that period that
the last transformation took place, which brought forth man as he is now, only
on a magnified scale. This Race gave birth to the Fourth Race; "Siva"
gradually transforming that portion of Humanity which became "black with
sin" into red-yellow (the red Indians and the Mongolians being the
descendants of these) and finally into Brown-white races -- which now, together
with the yellow Races, form the great bulk of Humanity. The allegory in Linga
Purana is curious, as showing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.
When reading of "the last
transformation," let the reader consider at this juncture, if that took
place 18,000,000 years ago, how many millions more it must have required to
reach that final stage? And if man, in his gradual consolidation, developed
pari passu with the earth, how many millions of years must have elapsed during
the First, Second, and the first half of the Third Race? For the Earth was in a
comparatively ethereal condition before it reached its last consolidated state;
the archaic teachings, moreover, telling us that, during the middle period of
the Lemuro-Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after the Genesis of man, the
Earth, man, and everything on the Globe was of a still grosser and more
material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were still in a
semi-gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that intervened since then, have
already carried us onward, on the opposite ascending arc, some steps toward our
dematerialization, as the spiritualists would say. The Earth, ourselves, and
all things have softened since then -- aye, even our brains. But it has been
objected by some theosophists that an ethereal Earth even some 15, or
20,000,000 years ago, does not square with Geology, which teaches us that winds
blew, rains fell, waves broke on the shore, sands shifted and accumulated,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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" was, for instance, 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."
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etc., etc., that, in short, all
natural causes now in operation were then in force, "in the very earliest
ages of geological time, aye, that of the oldest palaeozoic rocks." To
this the following answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by
geology to those "oldest palaezoic rocks"? And secondly, why could
not the winds blow, rain fall, and waves (of carbonic acid apparently, as
science seems to imply) break on the shore, on an Earth semi-astral, i.e.,
viscid? The word "astral" does not necessarily mean as thin as smoke,
in occult phraseology, but rather "starry," shining or pellucid, in
various and numerous degrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just
observed. But it is further objected: How could an astral Earth have affected
the other planets in this system? Would not the whole process get out of gear
now if the attraction of one planet was suddenly removed? The objection is
evidently invalid, since our system is composed of older and younger planets,
some dead (like the moon), others in process of formation, for all astronomy
knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so far as we know,
that all the bodies of our system have sprung into existence and developed
simultaneously. The Cis-Himalayan secret teachings differ from those of India
in this respect. Hindu Occultism teaches that the Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is eighteen
million and odd years old. We say, yes; but only so far as physical, or
approximately physical, man is concerned, who dates from the close of the Third
Root-Race. Beyond that period MAN, or his filmy image, may have existed for 300
million years, for all we know; since we are not taught figures which are and
will remain secret with the Masters of Occult Science, as justly stated in
"Esoteric Buddhism." Moreover, whereas the Hindu Puranas speak of one
Vaivasvata Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic
one. (Vide supra).
We must now say a few more words on
the physical evolution of man.
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ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND
GENESIS.
PHYSICAL EVOLUTION.
The writer cannot give too much proof
that the system of Cosmogony and Anthropogony as described actually existed,
that its records are preserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the
modern versions of ancient Scriptures.
The Puranas on the one hand, and the
Jewish Scriptures on the other, are based on the same scheme of evolution,
which, read esoterically and expressed in modern language, would be found to be
quite as scientific as much of what now passes current as the final word of recent
discovery. The only difference between the two schemes is, that
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the Puranas, giving as much, and
perhaps more attention to the causes than to the effects, allude to the
pre-Cosmic and pre-Genetic periods rather than to those of so-called Creation,
whereas the Bible, saying only a few words of the former period, plunges
forthwith into material genesis, and, while nearly skipping the pre-Adamic
races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the Fifth Race.
Now, whatever the onslaught made on
the Order of creation in Genesis, and its dead letter account certainly lends
itself admirably to criticism,* he who reads the Hindu Puranas -- its
allegorical exaggerations notwithstanding -- will find them quite in accordance
with physical Science.
Even what appears to be the, on the
face of it, perfectly nonsensical allegory of Brahma assuming the form of a
Boar to rescue the Earth from under the waters, finds in the Secret
Commentaries a perfectly scientific explanation, relating as it does to the
many risings and sinkings, and the constant alternation of water and land from
the earliest to the latest geological periods of our globe; for Science teaches
us now that nine-tenths of the stratified formations of the earth's crust have
been gradually constructed beneath water, at the bottom of the seas. The
ancient Aryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of natural
history, geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, proclaimed
even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the Bible, (See
"Modern Science and Modern Thought," p. 337), to have the merit of having
conceived the idea of monotheism "earlier, and retained it more firmly,
than any of the less philosophical and more immoral religions (! !) of the
ancient world." Only, while we find in Biblical esotericism physiological
sexual mysteries symbolised, and very little
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate attempt
to reconcile the Genetic account with science (see Nineteenth Century,
"Dawn of Creation" and the "Proem to Genesis," 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 instead. Mr. Gladstone 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,
shows only their ignorance; and shows the great ingenuity and constructive
ability of the initiated Rabbis, who have built the two accounts -- the
Elohistic and the Jehovistic -- esoterically, and have 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
that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and 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 crib, evening twilight -- which
have esoterically the same meaning as sandhya, twilight, in Sanskrit -- have
led to a charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.
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more (something for which very little
real philosophy is requisite), in the Puranas one may find the most scientific
and philosophical "dawn of creation," which, if impartially analyzed
and rendered into plain language from its fairy tale-like allegories, would
show that modern zoology, geology, astronomy, and nearly all the branches of
modern knowledge, have been anticipated in the ancient Science, and were known
to the philosophers in their general features, if not in such detail as at
present!
Puranic astronomy, with all its
deliberate concealment and confusion for the purpose of leading the profane off
the real track, was shown even by Bentley to be a real science; and those who
are versed in the mysteries of Hindu astronomical treatises, will prove that
the modern theories of the progressive condensation of nebulae, nebulous stars
and suns, with the most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms
-- far more correct than Europeans have even now -- for chronological and other
purposes, were known in India to perfection.
If we turn to geology and zoology we
find the same. What are all the myths and endless genealogies of the seven
Prajapati, and their sons, the seven Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons
and progeny, but a vast detailed account of the progressive development and
evolution of animal creation, one species after the other? Were the highly
philosophical and metaphysical Aryans -- the authors of the most perfect
philosophical systems of transcendental psychology, of Codes of Ethics, and
such a grammar as Panini's, of the Sankhya and Vedanta systems, and a moral
code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Muller the most perfect on earth -- such
fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing fairy-tales; such tales as
the Puranas now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the remotest idea
of their secret meaning? What is the fable, the genealogy and origin of
Kasyapa, with his twelve wives, by whom he had a numerous and diversified
progeny of nagas (serpents), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things,
and who was thus the father of all kinds of animals, but a veiled record of the
order of evolution in this round? So far, we do not see that any Orientalist
ever had the remotest conception of the truths concealed under the allegories
and personifications. "The Satapatha Brahmana," says one, "gives
a not very intelligible account of Kasyapa's origin. . . . He was the son of
Marichi, the Son of Brahma, the father of Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the
progenitor of mankind. . . . Having assumed the form of a tortoise, Prajapati
created offspring. That which he created he made akarot, hence the word kurma
(tortoise). Kasyapa means tortoise; hence men say: 'All creatures are
descendants of Kasyapa,' etc., etc. (Hindu Class. Dict.)
He was all this; he was also the
father of Garuda, the bird, the "King
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of the feathered tribe," who
descends from, and is of one stock with the reptiles, the nagas; and who
becomes their mortal enemy subsequently as he is also a cycle, a period of
time, when in the course of evolution the birds which developed from reptiles in
their "struggle for life," -- "survival of the fittest,"
etc., etc., turned in preference on those they issued from, to devour them, --
perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to make room for other and more
perfect species. (Vide Part II., "Symbolism.")
In that admirable epitome of
"Modern Science and Modern Thought," a lesson in natural history is
offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance with it of the Bible. The
author remarks that Geology, commencing with --
" . . . the earliest known
fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of the Laurentian, 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 (or frog family); 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 Pre-historic
periods, and at positive proof of the existence of man."
The same order, plus the description
of animals unknown to modern science, is found in the commentaries on the
Puranas in general, and in the Book of Dzyan -- especially. The only
difference, a grave one, no doubt, -- as implying a spiritual and divine nature
of man independent of his physical body in this illusionary world, in which the
false personality and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox psychology
-- is as follows. Having been in all the so-called "Seven creations,"
allegorizing the seven evolutionary changes, or the sub-races, we may call
them, of the First Root-race of Mankind -- MAN was on earth in this Round from
the beginning. Having passed through all the kingdoms of nature in the previous
three Rounds,* his physical frame -- one adapted to the thermal conditions of
those early periods -- was ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first
dawn of human life, i.e., 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Follow the law of
analogy" -- the Masters teach. Atma-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 Atma-Buddhi, and
follows, in its lower nature, Kama, 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 Atma-Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and
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 Kama.
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mid-point of the 3rd Root Race that
man was endowed with Manas. Once united, the two and then the three made one;
for though the lower animals, from the amoeba to man, received their monads, in
which all the higher qualities are potential, all have to remain dormant till
each reaches its human form, before which stage manas (mind) has no development
in them.* In the animals every principle is paralysed, and in a foetus-like
state, save the second (vital) and the third (the astral), and the rudiments of
the fourth (Kama, which is desire, instinct) whose intensity and development
varies and changes with the species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian
theory, this will read like a fairy-tale, a mystification; to the believer in
the inner, spiritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.
Now the writer is certain to meet
what will be termed insuperable objections. We shall be told that the line of
embryology, the gradual development of every individual life, and the progress
of what is known to take place in the order of progressive stages of specialization
-- that all this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins as
the humblest and most primitive vermiform creature, "from the primitive
speck of protoplasm and the nucleated cell in which all life originates,"
and "is developed through stages undistinguishable from those of fish,
reptile and mammal, until the cell finally attains the highly specialized
development of the quadrumanous, and last of all, of the human type."
(Laing, 335.)
This is perfectly scientific, and we
have nothing against that; for all this relates to the shell of man -- his
body, which in its growth is subject, of course, like every other (once called)
morphological unit, to such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the
transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization -- which is the same
function, and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or
basis) as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect
and animal into man -- it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will
finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in nature, ever-present
and as ever invisible, and unknowable, and of intra-Cosmic gods, who all were
men.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Men are made complete only
during their third, toward the fourth cycle (race). They are made 'gods' for
good and evil, and responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 31/2 rounds
towards the fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmanakaya (spiritual or
astral remains) of the Rudra-Kumaras, 'cursed to be reborn on earth again;
meaning -- doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher
ascending arc of the terrestrial cycle.' (Commentary IX.)
** 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 purposes.
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But we would ask, what does science
and its exact and now axiomatic discoveries prove against our Occult theory?
Those who believe in the law of Evolution and gradual progressive development
from a cell (which from a vital has become a morphological cell, until it awoke
as protoplasm pure and simple) -- these can surely never limit their belief to
one line of evolution. The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of
evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of species. The
constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age -- we mean
"primordial" matter of science -- is the same in every essential
particular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial living
matter of to-day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if the now
orthodox theory of Evolution were quite correct, namely, a constant, ever-flowing
progress in every species of being. Instead of that, what does one see? While
the intermediate groups of animal being all tend toward a higher type, and
while specializations, now of one type and now of another, develop through the
geological ages, change forms, assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a
kaleidoscopic rapidity in the description of paleontologists from one period to
another, the two solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two
opposite poles of life and type, namely -- MAN and the lower genera of being!
"Certain well-marked forms of
living beings have existed through enormous epochs, surviving not only the
changes of physical conditions, but persisting comparatively unaltered, while
other forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be termed
'persistent types' of life; and examples of them are abundant enough in both
the animal and the vegetable worlds" (Huxley, "Proceed. of Roy.
Inst.," vol. iii., p. 151).
Nevertheless, we are not given any good
reason why Darwin links together reptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca,
etc., etc., as off-shoots of a moneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether
reptiles, for instance, are direct descendants of the amphibian, the latter of
fishes, and fishes of lower forms -- which they certainly are. For the Monads
have passed through all these forms of being up to man, on every planet, in the
Three preceding Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A
to G, having been, and still having to be the arena of the same evolution, only
repeated each time on a more solid material basis. Therefore the question:--
"What relation is there between the Third Round astral prototypes and
ordinary physical development in the course of the origination of pre-mammalian
organic species?" -- is easily answered. One is the shadowy prototype of
the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and evanescent sketch on the
canvas, of objects, which are destined to receive the final and vivid
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form under the brush of the painter.
The fish evolved into an amphibian -- a frog -- in the shadows of ponds, and
man passed through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he
did in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the
formation of the types in this one. On strict analogy, the cycle of Seven
Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through every kingdom of
Nature, are repeated on a microscopical scale in the first seven months of
gestation of a future human being. Let the student think over and work out this
analogy. As the seven months' old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs
two months more in which to acquire strength and consolidate; so man, having
perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the
womb of mother-Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyani, still more
perfect than he was before he launched forth as a Monad on the newly built
chain of worlds. Let the student ponder over this mystery, and then he will
easily convince himself that, as there are also physical links between many
classes, so there are precise domains wherein the astral merges into physical
evolution. Of this Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from
the monkey, it says. But now see the contradiction.
Huxley proceeds to point out plants,
ferns, club mosses, some of them generically identical with those now living,
which are met with in the carboniferous epoch, for:-- "The cone of the
oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from that of existing species. . .
. . Subkingdoms 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 only from its living
congeners only in . . . the eyes," etc., etc.; all of which may be closed
with Dr. Carpenter's authoritative statement about the Foraminifera.
"There is no evidence," he says, "of any fundamental
modification or advance in the Foraminiferous type from the palaeozoic period
to the present time. . . . The Forminiferous 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."
("Introduction to the study of the Forminifera," p. xi.)
Now, if there is no indication of
change in the Forminifera, a protozoon of the lowest type of life, mouthless
and eyeless, except its greater variety now than before, man, who is on the
uppermost rung of the ladder of being, indicates still less change, as we have
seen; the skeleton of his Palaeolithic ancestor being even found
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superior in some respects to his
present frame. Where is, then, the claimed uniformity of law, the absolute rule
for one species shading off into another, and, by insensible gradations, into
higher types? We see Sir William Thomson admitting as much as 400,000,000 of
years in the earth's history, since the surface of the globe became sufficiently
cool to permit of the presence of living things;" and during that enormous
lapse of time in the Oolitic period alone, the so-called "age of
reptiles," we find a most extraordinary variety and abundance of Saurian
forms, the Amphibian type reaching its highest developments. We learn of
Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the lakes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles
or lizards flying in the air. After which, in the Tertiary period "we find
the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from previously existing
forms . . . . Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other unwieldy denizens of the
ancient forests and plains; and subsequently," 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." ("The Beginnings of Life.")
He may; but no one, except
materialists, can see why he should; as there is not the slightest necessity
for it, nor is such an evolution warranted by facts, for those most interested
in the proofs thereof confess their utter failure to find one single fact to
support their theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to
represent the members of one progressive series. They are "the products of
various and different evolutional divergences, taking place now in one
direction and now in another." Therefore it is far more justifiable to say
that the monkey evolved into the Quadrumanous order, than that primeval man,
who has remained stationary in his human specialization ever since his fossil
is found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save in colour
and facial type -- has developed from a common ancestor together with the ape.
That man originates like other
animals in a cell and develops "through stages undistinguishable from
those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the cell attains the highly
specialized development of the quadrumanous and at last the human type,"
is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The Kabalistic axiom: "A stone
becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man; a man a God," holds good
throughout the ages. Haeckel, in his Shopfungsgeschichte, shows a double
drawing representing two embryos -- that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a
man, eight weeks. The two, except the slight difference in the head, larger and
wider about the brain in the man, are
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Trans. of Geolog. Soc. of
Glasgow," vol. iii. Very strangely, however, he has just changed his
opinion. The sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 old.
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undistinguishable. "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 . .
. 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"
("Modern Science," etc., p. 171).
Why, then, not make man and dog
evolve from a common ancestor, or from a reptile -- a Naga, instead of coupling
man with the quadrumana? This would be just as logical as the other, and more
so. The shape and the stages of the human embryo have not changed since
historical times, and these metamorphoses were known to AEsculapius and
Hippocrates as well as to Mr. Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had
remarked it since prehistoric times, it is no new discovery. In
"Isis," Vol. I., 389, it is noticed and half explained.
As the embryo of man has no more of
the ape in it than of any other mammal, but contains in itself the totality of
the kingdoms of nature, and since it seems to be "a persistent type"
of life, far more so than even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make
him evolve from the ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the
dog. Both Occult and Eastern philosophies believe in evolution, which Manu and
Kapila* give with far more clearness than any scientist does at present. No
need to repeat that which was fully debated in Isis Unveiled, as the reader may
find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all the
Eastern doctrines of Evolution rested, in our earlier books.** But no Occultist
can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now existing forms,
"from the structureless Amoeba to man," are the direct lineal
descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years before the
birth of man, in the pre-Silurian epochs, in the sea or land-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hence the philosophy in the
allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21 Prajapati, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all
are made the fathers of various things and beings. The order of the seven
classes or orders of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at
random in the Puranas, 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. Kasyapa
is the father of all the reptiles, snakes, demons, etc., etc.
** See Vol. I. 152, et seq., about
the tree of evolution -- The "Mundane Tree."
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mud. The Occultists believe in an
inherent law of progressive development.* Mr. Darwin never did, and says so
himself.
On page 145 of the "Origin of
Species" we find him stating that, since there can be no advantage
"to the infusorian animalcule or an intestinal worm . . . to become highly
organized," therefore, "natural selection," not including
necessarily progressive development -- leaves the animalcule and the worm (the
"persistent types") quiet.
There does not appear much uniform law in such
behaviour of Nature; and it looks more like the discriminative action of some
Super-Natural selection; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern
Occultists would call the "Law of Retardation," may have something to
do with it.
But there is every reason to doubt
whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave such an importance to his law -- as is
given to it now by his atheistic followers. The knowledge of the various living
forms in the geological periods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons
given for this by Dr. Bastian are very suggestive: (1) On account of the
imperfect manner in which the several forms may be represented in the strata
pertaining to the period; (2) on account of the extremely limited nature of the
explorations which have been made in these imperfectly representative strata;
and (3) because so many parts of the record are absolutely inaccessible to us
-- 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 himself:--
"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."
It is not on such meagre data,
certainly, that the last word of Science can be said. Nor is it on any ground
of human pride or unreasonable belief in man's representing even here on earth
-- (in our period, perhaps) -- the highest type of life, that Occultism denies
that all the preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our
own, for it is not so. But simply because the "missing link," such as
to prove the existing theory undeniably, will never be found by palaeontologists.
Believing as we do that man has evolved from, and passed through, (during the
preceding Rounds) the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and animal, on
earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having the orangoutang as
an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse; as it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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would forward the Occult doctrine
with regard to the final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into
man, most irresistibly. One may even enquire how it is that biologists and
anthropologists, having once firmly accepted the theory of the descent of man
from the ape -- how it is that they have hitherto left untouched the future
evolution of the existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the
first theory, unless Science would make of man a privileged being, and his
evolution a non-precedent in nature, quite a special and unique case. And that
is what all this leads physical Science to. The reason, however, why the
Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Haeckelian, hypothesis is
because it is the ape which is, in sober truth, a special and unique instance,
not man. The pithecoid is an accidental creation, a forced growth, the result
of an unnatural process.
The occult doctrine, is, we think,
more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never varying law in nature, the latter
having no personal, "special design," but acting on a uniform plan
that prevails through the whole manvantaric period and deals with the land worm
as it deals with man. Neither the one nor the other have sought to come into
being, hence both are under the same evolutionary law, and both have to
progress according to Karmic law. Both have started from the same neutral
centre of Life and both have to re-merge into it at the consummation of the
cycle.
It is not denied that in the
preceding Round man was a gigantic apelike creature; and when we say
"man" we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould that was developing
for the use of man in this Round only -- the middle, or the transition point of
which we have hardly reached. Nor was man what he is now during the first two
and a half Root-races. That point he reached, as said before, only 18,000,000
years ago, during the secondary period, as we claim.
Till then he was, according to
tradition and Occult teaching, "a god on earth who had fallen into
matter," or generation. This may or may not be accepted, since the Secret
Doctrine does not impose itself as an infallible dogma; and since, whether its
prehistoric records are accepted or rejected, it has nothing to do with the
question of the actual man and his inner nature, the Fall mentioned above
having left no original sin on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently
dealt with.
Furthermore, we are taught that the
transformations through which man passed on the descending arc -- which is
centrifugal for spirit and centripetal for matter -- and those he prepares to
go through, henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the
direction of the two forces -- viz., matter will become centrifugal and spirit
centripetal -- that all such transformations are next in store for the anthropoid
ape also, all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove next to man in
this
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Round -- and these will all be men in
the Fifth Round, as present men inhabited ape-like forms in the Third, the
preceding Round.
Behold, then, in the modern denizens
of the great forests of Sumatra the degraded and dwarfed examples --
"blurred copies," as Mr. Huxley has it -- of ourselves, as we (the
majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub-races of the Fourth Root-race
during the period of what is called the "Fall into generation." The
ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but an accident, a
cross-breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As has been shown in the
present volume (anthropogenesis), it is the speechless animal that first
started sexual connection, having been the first to separate into males and
females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow the bestial
example -- as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species
by the animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the woman.
The Ape is, indeed, as remarked in Isis Unveiled (Vol. II 278) "a
transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family
-- a hybrid branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of
the latter" -- or man. The apes are millions of years later than the speaking
human being, and are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is
most important to remember that the Egos of the apes are entities compelled by
their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the
bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are
entities who had already reached the "human stage" before this Round.
Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless
traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal
men. The animal "Eves" were their foremothers, and the human
"Adams" their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or
Lilatu, Adam's first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a charming woman, with
long wavy hair, i.e.-- a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still
a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the
female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or man-animal united, a being
called Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural
union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly "speechless
men," and will become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the
Fifth Round, while the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of
the apes of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth
Root-race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form
means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal,
its crown -- man, change and vary according to the environments and climatic
variations, not only with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as
after every geological
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cataclysm that puts an end to, or
produces a turning point in the latter. In the Sixth Root-Race the fossils of
the Orang, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous
mammals; and new forms -- though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and
the close of the Manvantara approaches -- will develop from the "cast
off" types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of
the mire of physical, life. There were none before man, and they will be
extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the monads of the
unprogressed men of our race and lodge them in the newly evolved human frames
of the thus physiologically regenerated baboon. (But see Part III., Addenda.)
This will take place, of course,
millions of years hence. But the picture of this cyclic precession of all that
lives and breathes now on earth, of each species in its turn, is a true one,
and needs no "special creation" or miraculous formation of man,
beast, and plant ex nihilo.
This is how Occult Science explains
the absence of any link between ape and man, and shows the former evolving from
the latter.
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A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES.
There is a period of a few millions
of years to cover between the first "mindless" race and the highly
intelligent and intellectual later "Lemurians"; there is another
between the earliest civilization of the Atlanteans and the historic period.
As witnesses to the Lemurians but a
few silent records in the shape of half a dozen broken colossi and old
cyclopean ruins are left. These are not allowed a hearing, as they are
"productions of blind natural forces," we are assured by some;
"quite modern" we are told by others. Tradition is left
contemptuously unnoticed by sceptic and materialist, and made subservient to
the Bible in every case by the too zealous Churchman. Whenever a legend,
however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian "deluge theory," it is
declared by the Christian clergy "the insanely delirious voice of old
superstition." Atlantis is denied, when not confused with Lemuria and
other departed continents, because, perhaps, Lemuria is half the creation of
modern science, and has, therefore, to be believed in; while Plato's Atlantis
is regarded by most of the scientists as a dream.
Atlantis is often described by
believers in Plato as a prolongation of Africa. An old continent is also
suspected to have existed on the Eastern coast. Only 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
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Puranas, nor anywhere else. But with
simply one of the esoteric keys in hand it becomes an easy task to identify
these departed lands in the numberless "lands of the gods," Devas and
Munis described in the Puranas, in their Varshas, Dwipas, and zones. Their
Sweta-Dwipa, during the early day of Lemuria, stood out like a giant-peak from
the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by
the waters till about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of
Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was
half-sunk.
It is of course impossible to
attempt, within the compass of even several volumes, a consecutive and detailed
account of the evolution and progress of the first three races -- except so far
as to give a general view of it, as will be done presently. Race the first had
no history of its own. Of race the second the same may be said. We shall have,
therefore, to pay careful attention only to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans
before the history of our own race (the Fifth) can be attempted.
What is known of other continents,
besides our own, and what does history know or accept of the early races?
Everything outside the repulsive speculations of materialistic science is
daubed with the contemptuous term "Superstition." The wise men of
to-day will believe nothing. Plato's "winged" and hermaphrodite
races, and his golden age, under the reign of Saturn and the gods, are quietly
brought back by Haeckel to their new place in nature: our divine races are
shown to be the descendants of Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of
sea slime.
Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber,
"the fictions of ancient poetry . . . . will be found to comprehend some
portion of historical truth." However one-sided the efforts of the learned
author of the "Mysteries of the Kabiri," -- efforts directed
throughout his two volumes to constrain the classical myths and symbols of old
paganism, "to bear testimony to the truth of Scripture," -- time and
further research have avenged, partially at least, that "truth" by
showing it unveiled. Thus it is the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the
contrary, which are made to bear evidence to the great wisdom of archaic
paganism. This, notwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth
about the Kabiri -- the most mysterious gods of antiquity -- was thrown by the
wild and contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford,
Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., etc., and finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all, from
first to last, of these scholars had to come to a certain conclusion framed by
the latter. "We have no reason to think," he writes, "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
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the first (the fourth in esoteric
teachings) Race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge." (Chap. I. p. 9).
To this, Faber adds:--
"I am persuaded that the
tradition of the sinking of the Phlegian 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 Scriptural chronology, labours to prove that the Atlanteans were a very
ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the Phoenicians, and the
Egyptians." ("A Dissertation on the Kabiri," p. 284.)
In this Faber is in agreement with
Bailly, who shows himself more learned and intuitional than those who accept
Biblical chronology. Nor is the latter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans
were the same as the Titans and the giants. (See "Lettres sur
l'Atlantide.") Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his French
confrere, as Bailly mentions Cosmas Indico-Pleustes, who preserved an ancient
tradition about Noah -- that he "formerly inhabited the island
Atlantis" (ibid). This island, whether it was the "Poseidonis"
mentioned in "Esoteric Buddhism," or the Continent of Atlantis, does
not much matter. The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian.
No Occultist would ever think of
dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives, if he is claimed to be an Atlantean;
for this would simply show that the Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata
Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many others, and that they only changed the name, to do
which they had the same right as any other nation or tribe. What we object to
is the literal acceptation of Biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in
accord with neither geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an
Atlantean, then he was a Titan, a giant, as Faber shows; and if a giant, then
why is he not shown as such in Genesis?*
Bailly's mistake was to reject the
submersion of Atlantis, and to call the Atlanteans simply a Northern and post
diluvian nation, which, however, as he says, certainly "flourished before
the foundation of the Hindu, the Egyptian, and the Phoenician empires." In
this, had
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is shown by Faber, again a
pious Christian, who says that "the Noetic family also . . . bore the
appellations of Atlanteans and Titans, and the great patriarch himself was
called by way of eminence Atlas and Titan." (Vol. II. p. 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, chap. 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?
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he only known of the existence of
what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have again been right. For the
Atlanteans were post diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria was not submerged
as Atlantis was, but was sunk under the waves, owing to earthquakes and
subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be one day. It is the
ignorance of our men of science, who will accept neither the tradition that
several continents have already sunk, nor the periodical law which acts
throughout the Manvantaric cycle -- it is this ignorance that is the chief
cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly wrong again in assuring us that the
Hindus, Egyptians, and Phoenicians came after the Atlanteans, for the latter
belonged to the Fourth, while the Aryans and their Semitic Branch are of the
Fifth Race. Plato, while repeating the story as narrated to Solon by the
priests of Egypt, intentionally confuses (as every Initiate would) the two
continents, and assigns to the small island which sunk last all the events
pertaining to the two enormous continents, the prehistoric and traditional.
Therefore, he describes the first couple, from whom the whole island was
peopled, as being formed of the Earth. In saying so, he means neither Adam and Eve,
nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical, and
by alluding to "Earth," he means "matter," as the
Atlanteans were really the first purely human and terrestrial race -- those
that preceded it being more divine and ethereal than human and solid.
Yet Plato must have known, as would
any other initiated adept, about the history of the Third Race after its
"Fall," though as one pledged to silence and secrecy he never showed
his knowledge in so many words. Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after
acquainting oneself with even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations
-- all of which was based upon, and followed the early Aryan calculations -- to
realize the immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation
of the sexes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root-Races. As
these must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western thought,
it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second, and even of the
Third Race in its earliest stage.* One has to begin with the latter, when it
reached its full human period, lest the uninitiated reader should find himself
hopelessly bewildered.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In that wonderful volume of
Donnelly's "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World," the author, speaking
of the Aryan 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.
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The THIRD RACE FELL -- and created no
longer: it begot its progeny. Being still mindless at the period of separation
it begot, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature had
adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the "lords the
gods" of the Bible ' the "Sons of Wisdom," the Dhyan-Chohans,
had warned them to leave alone the fruit forbidden by Nature: but the warning
proved of no value. Men realized the unfitness -- we must not say sin -- of
what they had done, only when too late: after the angelic monads from higher
spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day
they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated from them. For
what is the distinction? The doctrine teaches that the only difference between
animate and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame, is
that in some the various "fires" are latent, and in others they are
active. The vital fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them.
But no animal has the three higher principles awakened in him; they are simply
potential, latent, and thus non-existing. And so would the animal frames of men
be to this day, had they been left as they came out from the bodies of their
Progenitors, whose shadows they were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and
forces immanent in matter. But as said in PYMANDER:--
"This is a Mystery that to this
day was sealed and hidden. Nature* being mingled with Man** brought forth a
wondrous miracle; the harmonious commingling of the essence of the Seven
(Pitris, 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." (Divine Pymander, Chap. I., Sect. 16.)
Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great
Initiate,*** "the Power of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nature is the natural body, the
shadow of the Progenitors; and --
** MAN is the "Heavenly
man," as already stated.
*** The "Pymander" of our
museums and libraries is an abridgement 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
Kadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the seven
primordial sages (incarnated Dhyan 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 dies but
still lives, and they are the first Initiators into, and Founders of the
Mysteries. The Genesis of Enoch disappeared only very lately among the Kabalists.
Guillaume [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Thought Divine." St. Paul,
another Initiate, called our world "the enigmatical mirror of pure
truth," and St. Gregory, of Nazianzen, corroborated Hermes by stating that
"things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that we
cannot see." It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from
the higher rung of the ladder of being down to the lower. The "Fall of the
Angels," and the "War in Heaven" are repeated on every plane,
the lower "mirror" disfiguring the image of the superior mirror, and
each repeating it in its own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the
reminiscences of the paradigms of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously,
as every Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few sentences of
the Desatir:--
"All that is on Earth, saith the
Lord (Ormazd), is the shadow of something that is in the superior spheres. This
luminous 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, and in the
Zohar pre-eminently, the idea that everything objective on earth or in this
Universe is the Shadow -- Dyooknah -- of the eternal Light or Deity, is very
strong.
The Third Race was pre-eminently the
bright shadow, at first, of the gods, whom tradition exiles on Earth after the
allegorical war in Heaven; which became still more allegorical on Earth, for it
was the war between spirit and matter. This war will last till the inner and
divine man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till
then the dark and fierce passions of the former will be at eternal feud with
his master, the Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day, because its
nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more between the two as
before the "Fall," when even mortal man was created by the Elements
and was not born.
The above is made clear in all the
great theogonies, principally in the Grecian (see Hesiod and Theogony). The
mutilation of Uranos by his son Kronos, who thus condemns him to impotency, has
never been understood by the modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very plain; and
having been universal* (vide foot note infra), it must have contained a great
abstract
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 Eliphas
Levi tells his readers.
* Uranos 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 Adityas 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 Uranos,
and, like him, he fell into generation, his functions, "the grandest
cosmical functions," as Muir calls them, having been lowered down from
heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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and philosophical idea, now lost to
our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory marks, indeed "a new
period, a second phase in the development of creation," as justly remarked
by Decharme (Mythologie de la Grece Antique, p. 7), who, however, renounces the
attempt to explain it. Uranos has tried to oppose an impediment to that
development, or natural evolution, by destroying all his children as soon as
born. Uranos, who personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos (Space,
or the unmanifested Deity) is thus made to pay the penalty; for it is those
powers which cause the Pitris to evolve primordial men from themselves -- as,
later on, these men evolve their progeny -- without any sense or desire for
procreation. The work of generation, suspended during a moment, passes into the
hands of Kronos,* time, who unites himself with Rhea (the earth in esotericism
-- matter in general), and thus produces, after celestial -- terrestrial
Titans. The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries of Evolution.
This allegory is the exoteric version
of the esoteric doctrine given in this part of our work. For in Kronos we see
the same story repeated again. As Uranos destroyed his children from Gaia (one,
in the world of manifestation, with Aditi or the Great Cosmic Deep) by
confining them in the bosom of the Earth, Tythea, so Kronos at this second
stage of creation destroyed his children from Rhea -- by devouring them. This
is an allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth or Nature alone to create real
human men. (See our Stanzas III. -- X., et seq., and also Berosus' account of
primeval creation.) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus --
Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.** Jupiter the Titan, is
Prometheus, in one sense,*** and varies from Zeus, the Great
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Orientalist says, "The attributes 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 that of Uranos, 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 Vasishta. Only . . .
"his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the
foolish."
* Kronos is not only [[Chronos]],
time, but also, as Breal showed in his Hercule et Cacus (p. 57), comes from the
root Kar, "to make, to create." Whether Breal and Decharme, who
quotes him, are as right in saying that in the Vedas Kronan is a creative god,
we have our doubts. Breal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the
creative god, the "Omnificent" and the "great Architect of the
world."
** The Titanic struggle, in theogony
at least, is the fight for supremacy between the children of Uranos and Gaia
(or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children
of Kronos, 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.
*** 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
Chochmah in the first Sephirothal Triad.
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"Father of the Gods." He is
the "disrespectful son" in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the
"Heavenly man" (Pymander); and even in the Bible he is found again
under the name of Adam, and, later on -- by transmutation -- under that of Ham.
Yet these are all personifications of the "sons of Wisdom." The
necessary corroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely human Atlantean
cycle -- if Uranus and Kronos who precede him are found insufficient -- may be
found in Hesiod, who tells us that the Immortals have made men and created the
Golden and the Silver age (First and Second Races); while Jupiter created the
generations of Bronze (an admixture of two elements), of Heroes, and the men of
the age of Iron. After this he sends his fatal present, by Pandora, to
Epimetheus,* which present Hesiod calls "a fatal gift," or the first
woman. It was a punishment, he explains, sent to man "for the theft of
divine creative fire." Her apparition on earth is the signal of every kind
of evil. Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from
sickness and suffering -- as the same races are made to live under Yima's rule,
in the Mazdean Vendidad.
Two deluges may also be traced in
universal tradition by carefully comparing Hesiod, the Rig Veda, the
Zend-Avesta, etc., while no first man is ever mentioned in any of the
theogonies save the Bible.** Everywhere the man of our race appears after a
cataclysm of water, after which tradition mentions only the several
designations of continents and islands which sink under the ocean waves in due
time.*** "Gods and mortals have one common origin" says Hesiod (ibid.
v. 108); and Pindar echoes the statement (Nem. VI., 1). Deucalion and Pyrrha,
who escape the Deluge by constructing an ark like Noah's (see Apollod., 1, 7,
2, and Ovid, Metam. I, 260, 899.), ask Jupiter to re-animate the human race
whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the Slavonian
Mythology (Lithuanian legend, in Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 1, 545), all men were
drowned, and two old people, a man and his wife, alone remained. Then
Pram-gimas (the "master of all") advised them to jump seven times on
the rocks of the earth, and seven new races (couples) were born, from which
came the nine Lithuanian tribes. As well understood by the author of the
Mythologie de la Grece Antique -- the four ages
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Egyptian legend, translated
by M. Maspero (the ex-director of the Bulaq Museum), called the "two
Brothers," the original of Pandora is given. Noum, the famous heavenly
artist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to Batoo, after which
the happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl Eve, of
course. (See Maspero's Egyptian Legends, and also Decharme's "Mythologie
de la Grece Antique.")
** Yima is not the "first
man" in the Vendidad, but only in the theories of the Orientalists. -- See
further on.
*** Boeotia, then ancient Athens, and
Eleusis were submerged.
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signify periods of time, and are also
an allegorical allusion to the races. "The successive races, destroyed and
replaced by others," he says, "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 purity . . . .
qualifies the first race. . . . . The men of the second race, those of the age
of Silver, are already 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" (Op. at D.,
143-155). The fourth generation (race) is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes who
fell before Thebes (see "The Seven Against Thebes," by AEschylus), or
under the walls of Troy.
Thus, the four races being found
mentioned by the oldest Greek poets, though very much confused
anachronistically, our doctrines are once more corroborated by the classics.
But this is all "Mythology" and poetry. What can modern science have
to say to such an euhemerization of old fictions? The verdict is not difficult
to foresee. Therefore an attempt must be made to answer by anticipation, and
prove that fictions and empirical speculations are so much of the domain of
that same science, that none of the men of learning have the slightest right,
with such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the speck in the eye of
the Occultist, even if that speck be not a figment of our opponents'
imagination.
---------
STANZA X. -- (Continued.)
40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH (races)
BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. WE ARE THE KINGS, WE ARE THE GODS (a).
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK AT.
WIVES FROM THE "MINDLESS," THE NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS,
WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE. ALSO KHADO (Dakini) WITH LITTLE MINDS (b).
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR HUMAN
BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED (c). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER
(d).
(a) Such were the first truly
physical men, whose first characteristic was -- pride! It is the Third Race and
the gigantic Atlanteans, the
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memory of whom lingered from one
generation and race to another generation and race down to the days of Moses,
and which found an objective form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible
sorcerers and magicians, of whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid and
at the same time distorted legends. One who has read and studied the Commentaries
on the archaic doctrine, will easily recognise in some Atlanteans, the
prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the Hamites, and
all these tutti quanti of "accursed memory," as theological
literature expresses it: of those, in short, who have furnished posterity with
the orthodox types of Satan. And this leads us naturally to inquire into the
religious ethics of these early races, mythical as these may be.
What was the religion of the Third
and Fourth Races? In the common acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians,
nor yet their progeny, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any, as they knew no dogma,
nor had they to believe on faith. No sooner had the mental eye of man been
opened to understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the
ever-present as the ever to be unknown and invisible ALL, the One Universal
Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his inner God, each
felt he was a Man-God in his nature, though an animal in his physical Self. The
struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of the fruit of
the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual and the psychic,
the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the lower principles by
obtaining mastery over the body, joined the "Sons of Light." Those
who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. From
"Sons of Light and Wisdom" they ended by becoming the "Sons of
Darkness." They had fallen in the battle of mortal life with Life
immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future generations of
Atlanteans.*
At the dawn of his consciousness, the
man of the Third Root Race had thus no beliefs that could be called religion.
That is to say, he was equally as ignorant of "gay religions, full of pomp
and gold" as of any system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is
to be defined as the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence
paid to those we feel higher than ourselves, of piety -- as a feeling expressed
by a child toward a loved parent -- then even the earliest Lemurians had a
religion -- and a most beautiful one -- from the very beginning of their
intellectual life. Had they not their bright gods of the elements around
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is used here in the sense
of, and as a synonym of "sorcerers." The Atlantean races were many,
and lasted in their evolution for millions of years: all were not bad. They
became so toward their end, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.
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them, and even within themselves?*
Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and tendered by those who had given
them life and called them forth to intelligent, conscious life? We are assured
it was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into matter could
never have been achieved; nor would it have received its first impulse, had not
the bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal essences to
animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner principles with a
portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. The Dhyanis of the Seven
Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the NOUMENOI of the actual and the
future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of nature - the grosser
effects of which are perceived by us in what Science is pleased to call the
"modes of motion" -- the imponderable forces and what not -- are the
still higher noumenoi of still higher Hierarchies.
It was the "Golden Age" in
those days of old, the age when the "gods walked the earth, and mixed
freely with the mortals." Since then, the gods departed (i.e., became
invisible), and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms -- the
Elements.
It was the Atlanteans, the first
progeny of semi-divine man after his separation into sexes -- hence the first-begotten
and humanly-born mortals -- who became the first "Sacrificers" to the
god of matter. They stand in the far-away dim past, in ages more than
prehistoric, as the prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,** as
the first anthropomorphists who worshipped form and matter. That worship
degenerated very soon into self-worship, thence led to phallicism, or that
which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolisms of every exoteric religion
of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve became matter, or furnished the soil,
Cain and Abel -- the latter the life-bearing soil, the former "the tiller
of that ground or field."
Thus the first Atlantean races, born
on the Lemurian Continent, separated from their earliest tribes into the
righteous and the unrighteous; into those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit
of Nature, the ray of which man feels within himself -- or the Pantheists, and
those who offered fanatical worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark
Cosmic, anthropomorphic Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the
earliest Gibborim, "the mighty men of renown in those
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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. . . . .
** Cain was the sacrificer, as shown
at first in chap. iv. of Genesis, of "the fruit of the ground," of
which he was 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. (See
"The Mystery of Cain and Abel.") The "murdering" is
blood-shedding, but not taking life.
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days" (Gen. vi.); who become
with the Fifth Race the Kabirim: Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phoenicians,
Titans with the Greeks, and Rakshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.
Such was the secret and mysterious
origin of all the subsequent and modern religions, especially of the worship of
the later Hebrews for their tribal god. At the same time this sexual religion
was closely allied to, based upon and blended, so to say, with astronomical
phenomena. The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of
their Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the
Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially -- whence breathe the hot
passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The
two poles were denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents -- hence good
and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the "Sons of
God" (Sons of Spirit and Matter): the good and bad Magicians. This is the
origin of this dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the "Fallen
Angels" in its esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold
contradictions of human character; it points to the secret of man's
self-consciousness; it is the angle-iron on which hinges his entire life-cycle;
-- the history of his evolution and growth.
On a firm grasp of this doctrine
depends the correct understanding of esoteric anthropogenesis. It gives a clue
to the vexed question of the Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the
separator of the ONE into various contrasted aspects.
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised
if so considerable space is devoted in each case to an attempt to elucidate
this difficult and obscure subject. A good deal must necessarily be said on its
symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the thoughtful
student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be suggested than
it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more formal,
philosophical exposition. The "Fallen Angels," so-called, are
Humanity itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, has never had
any being before the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has
begotten, nurtured, and allowed the fiend to develop in his heart; he, again,
who has contaminated the indwelling god in himself, by linking the pure spirit
with the impure demon of matter. And, if the Kabalistic saying, "Demon est
Deus inversus" finds its metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in
dual manifested nature, its practical application is found in Mankind alone.
Thus it has now become self-evident
that postulating as we do (a) the appearance of man before that of other
mammalia, and even before the ages of the huge reptiles; (b) periodical deluges
and glacial periods owing to the karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly
(c) the birth of man
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from a Superior Being, or what
materialism would call a supernatural Being, though it is only super-human --
it is evident that our teachings have very few chances of an impartial hearing.
Add to it the claim that a portion of the Mankind in the Third Race -- all
those Monads of men who had reached the highest point of Merit and Karma in the
preceding Manvantara -- owed their psychic and rational natures to divine
Beings hypostasizing into their fifth principles, and the Secret Doctrine must
lose caste in the eyes of not only Materialism but even of dogmatic
Christianity. For, no sooner will the latter have learned that those angels are
identical with their "Fallen" Spirits, than the esoteric tenet will
be proclaimed most terribly heretical and pernicious.* The divine man dwelt in
the animal, and, therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the
natural course of evolution -- when also "all the animal creation was
untied," and males were attracted to females -- that race fell: not
because they had eaten of the fruit of Knowledge and knew good from evil, but
because they knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the
early sub-races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the
Stanzas, the higher Dhyan-Chohans had incarnated.** "When we have
ascertained the extent of the Universe and learnt to know all that there is in
it, we will multiply our race," answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their
brethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means that
the great Adepts and Initiated ascetics will "multiply," i.e., once
more produce Mind-born immaculate Sons -- in the Seventh Root-Race.
It is so stated in the Puranas; in
Adi Parvan (p. 115) and Brahma Purana, etc. In one portion of the Pushkara
Mahatmya, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized by Daksha, who,
seeing that his will-born progeny (the "Sons of passive Yoga"), will
not create men, "converts half himself into a female by whom he begets
daughters," the future females of the Third Race which begat the giants of
Atlantis,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 that "this Wisdom
(psuche in the original) descended not from above, but is earthly, sensual,
devilish"; and Psuche is Manas, the "human soul," the Spiritual
Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi. Yet Buddhi per se, being so near the Absolute, is
only latent consciousness.
** This is the "undying
race" as it is called in Esotericism, and exoterically the fruitless
generation of the first progeny of Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi,
alleged to have dissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalaswas, 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
Narada, the representative of that race of fruitless ascetics, is said, as soon
as he dies in one body, to be reborn in another.
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the Fourth Race, so called. In the
Vishnu Purana it is simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established
sexual intercourse as the means of peopling the world.
Happily for the human race the
"Elect Race" had already become the vehicle of incarnation of the
(intellectually and spiritually) highest Dhyanis before Humanity had become
quite material. When the last sub-races -- save some lowest -- of the Third
Race had perished with the great Lemurian Continent, "the seeds of the
Trinity of Wisdom" had already acquired the secret of immortality on
Earth, that gift which allows the same great personality to step ad libitum
from one worn-out body into another.
(b) The first war that earth knew,
the first human gore shed, was the result of man's eyes and senses being
opened; which made him see that the daughters of his Brethren were fairer than
his own, and their wives also. There were rapes committed before that of the
Sabines, and Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born.
Titans or giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This took
place during the Fourth Race -- that of the giants.
For "there were giants" in
the days of old, indeed* and the evolutionary series of the animal world is a
warrant that the same thing took place within the human races. Lower still in
the order of creation we find witnesses for the same in the flora going pari
passu with the fauna in respect of size. The pretty ferns we collect and dry
among the leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic
ferns which grew during the carboniferous period.
Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical
and scientific works -- in short, almost every record that has come down to us
from antiquity -- contain references to giants. No one can fail to recognize
the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Rakshasas of Lanka -- the
opponents conquered by Rama. Are these accounts no better than the production
of empty fancy? Let us give the subject a few moments of attention.
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The traditions of every country and
nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from Father Duran's Historia Antigua
de la Nueva Espana of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian,
accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by saying 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.)
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ARE GIANTS A FICTION?
Here, again, we come into collision
with Science. The latter denies, so far, that man has ever been much larger
than the average of the tall and powerful men one meets with occasionally now.
Dr. Henry Gregor denounces such traditions as resting upon ill-digested facts.
Instances of mistaken judgments are brought forward. Thus, in 1613, in a locality
called from time immemorial the "Field of Giants" in the Lower
Dauphine (France, four miles from St. Romans) enormous bones were found deeply
buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human remains, and even to
Teutobochus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But Cuvier's later research
proved them to be the fossil remains of the Dinotherium giganteum of the family
of tapirs, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as an evidence that
our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, the entrance doors
being of no larger size then than they are now. The tallest man of antiquity
known to us was the Roman Emperor Maximus, we are told, whose height was only
seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern day we see every year men taller
than this. The Hungarian who exhibited himself in the London Pavilion was
nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant was shown 9 1/2 feet tall; the
Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees
men in the lower classes above 7 feet. And as the ape-theorists are told by Mr.
Darwin that the species of animals which result from cross breeding
"always betray a tendency to revert to the original type," they ought
to apply the same law to men. Had there been no giants as a rule in ancient
days, there would be none now.
All this applies only to the historic
period. And if the skeletons of the prehistoric ages have failed so far (which
is positively denied) to prove undeniably in the opinion of science the claim
here advanced, it is but a question of time. Moreover, as already stated, human
stature is little changed since the last racial cycle. The Giants of old are
all buried under the Oceans, and hundreds of thousands of years of constant
friction by water would reduce to dust and pulverize a brazen, far more a human
skeleton. But whence the testimony of well-known classical writers, of
philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation for lying? Let us
bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847, when Boucher de Perthes
forced it upon the attention of Science, almost nothing was known of fossil
man, for archaeology complacently ignored his existence. Of Giants who were
"in the earth in those days" of old, the Bible alone had spoken to
the wise men of the West, the Zodiac being the solitary witness called upon to
corroborate the statement in the persons of Atlas or Orion, whose mighty
shoulders are said to support the world.
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Nevertheless, even the
"Giants" have not been left without their witnesses, and one may as
well examine both sides of the question. The three Sciences -- Geological, Sidereal
and Scriptural (the latter in its Universal character) -- may furnish us with
the needed proofs. To begin with geology; it has already confessed that the
older the excavated skeletons, the larger, taller and the more powerful their
structure. This is already a certain proof in hand. "All those bones"
writes Frederic de Rougemont -- who, though believing too piously in Noah's ark
and the Bible, is none the less a Scientific witness -- "all those
skeletons found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria, Liege, etc., etc. .
. those skulls which remind all of the negro type. . . and which by reason of
that type might be mistaken for animals, have all belonged to men of very high
stature" . . . ("Histoire de la Terre," p. 154) The same is
repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a tall stature to those who
were submerged in the deluge (not necessarily "Noah's") and a smaller
stature to the races which lived subsequently.
As for the evidence furnished by
ancient writers, we need not stop at that of Tertullian, who assures us that in
his day a number of giants were found at Carthage -- for, before his testimony
can be accepted, his own identity* and actual existence would have to be
proven. But we may turn to the scientific journals of 1858, which spoke of a
sarcophagus of giants found that year on the site of that same city. As to the
ancient pagan writers -- we have the evidence of Philostratus, who speaks of a
giant skeleton twenty-two cubits long, as well as of another of twelve cubits,
seen by himself at Sigeus. This skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as
believed by Protesilaus, to the giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy;
nevertheless, it was that of a giant, as well as that other one discovered by
Messecrates of Stire, at Lemnos -- "horrible to behold," according to
Philostratus (Heroica, p. 35). Is it possible that prejudice would carry
Science so far as to class all these men as either fools or liars?
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he
thought he recognised Orion, the son of Ephialtes (Nat. Hist., vol. VII, ch.
xvi.). Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the tomb of Antaeus, the giant; and
Pausanias vouches for the actual existence of the tombs of Asterius and of
Geryon, or Hillus, son of Hercules -- all giants, Titans and mighty men.
Finally the Abbe Pegues (cited in de Mirville's Pneumatologie) affirms in his
curious work on "The Volcanoes of Greece" 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 must
have necessi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There are critics who, finding no
evidence about the existence of Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius
"the veracious," are inclined to doubt it.
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tated everywhere the use of titanic
powers, and which tradition associates in all countries with the ideas about
giants, volcanoes and magic." (Page 48.)
In the same work above cited of the
Abbe Pegues, the author wonders why in Bible and tradition the Gibborim,
(Giants, the mighty ones) the Rephaim, or the spectres (Phantoms), the
Nephilim, or the fallen ones -- (irruentes) -- are shown "as if identical,
though they are all men, since the Bible calls them the primitive and the
mighty ones" -- e.g., Nimrod. The "Doctrine" explains the
secret. These names, which belong by right only to the four preceding races and
the earliest beginning of the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two
Phantom (astral) races; to the fallen one -- the Third; and to the race of the
Atlantean Giants -- the Fourth, after which "men began to decrease in
stature."
Bossuet (Elevations p. 56) sees the
cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the "original sin."
"Ye shall be as gods," says the serpent of Genesis to Eve, thus
laying the first germ of the worship of false divinities. Hence, he thinks,
came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of images, of anthropomorphized or
human figures. But, if it is the latter that idolatry is made to rest upon,
then the two Churches, the Greek and the Latin especially, are as idolatrous
and pagan as any other religion.* It is only in the Fourth Race that men, who
had lost all right to be considered divine, resorted to body worship, in other
words to phallicism. Till then, they had been truly gods, as pure and as divine
as their progenitors, and the expression of the allegorical serpent does not,
as sufficiently shown in the preceding pages, refer at all to the physiological
fall of men, but to their acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, which knowledge
comes to them prior to their fall. It must not be forgotten that it is only
after his forced expulsion from Eden that "Adam knew Eve his wife"
(Genesis iv.). It is not, however, by the dead-letter of the Hebrew Bible that
we shall check the tenets of the Secret Doctrine; but point out, rather, the
great similarities between the two in their esoteric meaning.
It is only after his defection from
the Neo-Platonists, that Clement
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
had similarly prohibited "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 Nicaea (787) brought this idolatry back, while that of Rome
(883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for his showing
himself a declared enemy of image worship.
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of Alexandria began to translate
gigantes by serpentes, explaining that "Serpents and Giants signify
Demons." (Genesis, chapter v.)*
We may be told that, before we draw
parallels between our tenets and those of the Bible, we have to show better
evidence of the existence of the giants of the Fourth Race than the reference
to them found in Genesis. We answer, that the proofs we give are more
satisfactory, at any rate they belong to a more literary and scientific
evidence, than those of Noah's Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works
of China are full of such reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In Shoo-King
(4th part, chap. XXVII, p. 291), anyone can read in the French translation,
"When the Mao-tse" ("that antediluvian and perverted race,"
explains the Annotator, "which had 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"),**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Treating of the Chinese Dragon and
the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his "Mythical
Monsters" on p. 212:-- "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, actual Adept, the
master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere,
that the great "magicians" of the Fourth and Fifth Races were
generally called the "Serpents" and the "Dragons" after
their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy of the so-called "Fiery
Dragons of Wisdom," the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the Agnishwatta
Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father,
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 Agathodaemon, 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.
** "What would you say to our
affirmation that the Chinese -- I speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, 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 translated correctly, 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 archaeologists only have been able
to procure such priceless works.
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"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) saw that his people had lost the last vestiges of virtue. Then
he commanded Tehong and Lhy (two lower Dhyan Chohans) to cut away every
communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there was no more going up
and down!"**
"Going up and down" means
an untrammelled communication and intercourse between the two worlds. Not being
in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the Third and Fourth
Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are permitted must be now
collated together; especially those corroborated by direct as well as by
inferential evidence found in ancient literature and history. As the
"coats of skin" of men thickened, and they fell more and more into
physical sin, the intercourse between physical and ethereal divine man was
stopped. The veil of matter between the two planes became too dense for even
the inner man to penetrate. The mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the
Third Race by their celestial teachers in the days of their purity, became a
great focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they
were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the
masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric
religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and man-, or hero-worship. Alone
a handful of primitive men -- in whom the spark of divine Wisdom burnt bright,
and only strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every
age in those who turned it to bad purposes -- remained the elect custodians of
the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. There were those
among them, who remained in their Kumaric condition from the beginning; and
tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect
were the germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period:--
"The inner man of the first * *
* only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither
rest nor Nirvana, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the
salvation of mankind. . . . . ." "Out of the seven virgin-men
(Kumara**) four sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the
instruction of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Vide supra the Commentary on the
Four Races -- and on the "Sons of Will and Yoga," the immaculate
progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.
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the ignorant, to remain till the end
of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When people
say of one of them, "He is dead"; behold, he is alive and under
another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of undying
knowledge (Gnyana). Thou shalt never speak, O Lanoo, of these great ones (Maha
. . .) before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will
understand." . . . * (Catechism of the inner Schools.)
It is these sacred "Four"
who have been allegorized and symbolized in the "Linga Purana," which
states that Vamadeva (Siva) as Kumara is reborn in each Kalpa (Race in this
instance), as four youths -- four, white; four, red; four, yellow; and four,
dark or brown. Let us remember that Siva is pre-eminently and chiefly an
ascetic, the patron of all Yogis and Adepts, and the allegory will become quite
comprehensible. It is the spirit of Divine Wisdom and chaste asceticism itself
which incarnates in these Elect. It is only after getting married and being
dragged by the gods from his terrible ascetic life, that Rudra becomes Siva, a
god, and not one of a very virtuous or merciful type, in the Hindu Pantheon.
Higher than the "Four" is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens -- that
still more mysterious and solitary Being described in Book 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 on the tile, which George Smith calls "the
Curse after the Fall" (see p. 81 of his "Chaldean Account of
Genesis"), are of course allegorical; yet they corroborate that which is
taught of the true nature of the fall of the angels in our Books. Thus, it is
said in line 12 that the "Lord of the earth his name called out, the
father Elu" (Elohim), and pronounced his curse, which "The God Hea
heard, and his liver was angry, because his man (Angelic man) had corrupted his
purity (14 and 15)," for which Hea expresses the desire that "
'Wisdom and knowledge' hostilely may they injure him (man)."
The latter sentence points to the
direct connection of the Chaldean with the Genetic account. While Hea tries to
bring to nought the wisdom and knowledge gained by man, through his
newly-acquired intellectual and conscious capacity of creating in his turn
(thus taking the monopoly of creation out of the hands of God (the Gods)), the
Elohim do the same in the third chapter of Genesis. Therefore the Elohim sent
him out of Eden.
But this was of no avail. For the
spirit of divine Wisdom being
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Kabala the pronunciation of
the four-lettered ineffable name is "a most secret arcanum" ---
"a secret of secrets."
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upon and in man -- verily the Serpent
of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Manasic spirit, which made him learn the
secret of creation on the Kriyasaktic, and of procreation on the earthly planes
-- led him as naturally to discover his way to immortality, notwithstanding the
jealousy of all the Gods.
The early Atlanto-Lemurians are
charged with taking unto themselves (divine incarnations) wives of a lower
race, namely, the race of the hitherto mindless men. Every ancient Scripture
has the same, more or less disfigured legend. Primarily, the angelic Fall,
which has transformed the "first-born" of God into the Asuras, or
into the Ahriman and Typhon of the "pagans" (i.e., if the accounts
given in the Book of Enoch,* and in Hermes, in Puranas and Bible are taken
literally), when read esoterically means simply this:--
Sentences such as: "In his
(Satan's) ambition he raises his hand against the Sanctuary of the God of
Heaven" etc., ought to read: "Prompted by the law of eternal
evolution and Karma, the angel incarnated on earth in man; and as his Wisdom
and Knowledge are still divine, although his body is earthly, he is
(allegorically) accused of divulging the mysteries of Heaven." He combines
and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of super-human, procreation.
Henceforth, "man will beget, not create."** But as, by so doing, he
has to use
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Returning once more to the most
important subject in the archaic Cosmogony, it may be said that even in the
Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the goddess Saga, we find Loki, the
brother by blood of Odin (as Typhon, Ahriman, and others are brothers of Osiris
and Ormazd), becoming evil only later, when he has mixed 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 accepted in the destructive sense
of "fire." The name Loki, we learn ("Asgard and the Gods,"
p. 250), has been derived from the old word "liechan," to enlighten.
It has, therefore, the same origin as the Latin "lux, light." Hence
Loki is identical with Lucifer (light-bringer). This title, given to the Prince
of Darkness, is very suggestive and is a vindication in itself against theological
slander. But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, as he is shown
chained to a sharp rock, while Lucifer, identified with Satan, was chained down
in hell; a circumstance, however, which prevented neither of them from acting
in all freedom on Earth, if we accept the theological paradox in its fulness.
Loki is a beneficent, generous and powerful god in the beginning of times, and
the principle of good, not of evil, in early Scandinavian theogony.
** The Greek mythos just alluded to a few pages
back, namely the mutilation of Uranos by his son Kronos in the Greek theogony,
is an allusion to this theft by the Son of the Earth and Heavens of the divine
creative fire. If Uranos, the personification of the celestial Powers, has to
stop creating (he is made impotent by Kronos, 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 Uranos is by
Kronos (see "Book of the Dead" ch. XVII. V. 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 (see
pp. 115 and 116 Chaldean Account). For, in the fragment K. 3454 (British
Museum) it is said very clearly, that Zu having stripped the "venerable
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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his weak body as the means of
procreation, that body will pay the penalty for this wisdom, carried from
heaven down to the earth; hence the corruption of physical purity will become a
temporary curse.
The mediaeval Kabalists knew this
well, since one of them did not fear to write: "The Kabala 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"
(Quoted by Christian Ginsburg from the Kabala). This shows how the event -- of
the Sons of God, marrying and imparting the divine Secrets of Heaven to the
daughters of men -- allegorically told by Enoch and in the sixth chapter of
Genesis was interpreted by the Christian Kabalists. The whole of this period
may be regarded as the pre-human period, that of divine man, or as plastic
Protestant theology now has it -- the pre-adamite period. But even Genesis
begins its real history (chap. vi.) by the giants of "those days" and
the "Sons of god" marrying and teaching their wives -- the daughters
of man.
This period is the one described in
the Puranas; and relating as it does to days lost in archaic ages, hence
pre-historic, how can any anthropologist feel certain whether the mankind of
that period was or was not as he knows it now? The whole personnel of the
Brahmanas and Puranas -- the Rishis, Prajapatis, Manus, their wives and progeny
-- belong to that pre-human period. All these are the Seed of Humanity, so to
speak. It is around these "Sons of God," the "Mind born"
astral children of Brahma, that our physical frames have grown and developed to
what they are now. For, the Puranic histories of all those men are those of our
Monads, in their various and numberless incarnations on this and other spheres,
events perceived by the "Siva eye" of the ancient Seers, (the
"third eye" of our Stanzas) and described allegorically. Later on,
they were disfigured for Sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a
considerable ground-work of truth in them. Nor is the philosophy less profound
in such allegories for being so thickly veiled by the overgrowth of fancy.
But with the Fourth Race we reach the
purely human period. Those who were hitherto semi-divine Beings,
self-imprisoned in bodies which were human only in appearance, became
physiologically changed and took unto themselves wives who were entirely human
and fair to look
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of Heaven" of his desire, he carried away the umsimi of the gods,
and burnt thereby the teroti (the power) of all the other gods, thus
"governing the seed of all the angels" (15). 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 Chaldean Zu, and both are cursed for the same allegorically
described crime.
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at, but in whom lower, more material,
though sidereal, beings had incarnated. These beings in female forms (Lilith is
the prototype of these in the Jewish traditions) are called in the esoteric
accounts "Khado" (Dakini, in Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the
chief of these Liliths, Sangye Khado, (Buddha Dakini, in Sanskrit); all are
credited with the art of "walking in the air," and the greatest
kindness to mortals; but no mind -- only animal instinct.*
(c) This is the beginning of a
worship which, ages later, was doomed to degenerate into phallicism and sexual
worship. It began by the worship of the human body -- that "miracle of
miracles," as an English author calls it -- and ended by that of its
respective sexes. The worshippers were giants in stature; but they were giants
in knowledge and learning, though it came to them more easily than it does to
the men of our modern times. Their Science was innate in them. The
Lemuro-Atlantean had no need of discovering and fixing in his memory that which
his informing PRINCIPLE knew at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and
the ever-growing obtuseness of the matter in which the Principles had clothed
themselves, could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre-natal knowledge, the
other, blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in
them. Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal
natures and bred "monsters" -- i.e., men of distinct varieties from
themselves.
Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer
describes them well 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 one
has to deal, when reading of them, not with men as we are but with Spirits of
the Elements sprung from the bosom of Nature and having full sway over her. . .
. All these beings are marked with a character of MAGIC and SORCERY. . . .
"
And so they were, those (now)
legendary heroes of the pre-historic, still, once really existing races.
Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he did not charge with deliberate
deceit, or dullness and superstition, an endless series of recognized
philosophers, who mention these races and assert that, even in their own time,
they saw their fossils. There were sceptics in days of old -- no fewer and as
great as they are now. But even a Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus yielded
to the evidence of facts and showed the discriminative capacity of really
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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great intellects, which can
distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud. Ancient
writers were no more fools than our modern wise men are; for, as well remarked
by the author of some "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 4th 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 that, which, if believed, would put an end to the difficulties of science
with regard to the origin of man, or rather, his anatomical similarities to the
Anthropoid Ape. It accuses them of having committed the (to us) abominable
crime of breeding with so-called "animals," and thus producing a
truly pithecoid species, now extinct. Of course, as in the question of spontaneous
generation -- in which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches -- the
possibility of such a cross-breed between man and an animal of any kind will be
denied. But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already
remarked, neither the human Atlantean giants, nor yet the "animals,"
were the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us,
the modern notions upon this subject -- those of the physiologists included --
are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute denial a priori of
such a fact.
A careful perusal of the Commentaries
would make one think that the Being that the new "incarnate" bred
with, was called an "animal," not because he was no human being, but
rather because he was so dissimilar physically and mentally to the more perfect
races, which had developed physiologically at an earlier period. Remember
Stanza VII. and what is said in its first verse (24th):-- that when the
"Sons of Wisdom" came to incarnate the first time, some of them
incarnated fully, others projected into the forms only a spark, while some of
the shadows were left over from being filled and perfected, till the Fourth
Race. Those races, then, which "remained destitute of knowledge," or
those again which were left "mindless," remained as they were, even
after the natural separation of the sexes. It is these who committed the first
cross-breeding, so to speak, and bred monsters; and it is from the descendants
of these that the Atlanteans chose their wives. Adam and Eve were supposed,
with Cain and Abel, to be the only human family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going
to the land of Nod and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was
supposed perfect enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the
Singhalese
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regard the Veddhas of their jungles
as speaking animals and no more, some British people believe firmly, in their
arrogance, that every other human family -- especially the dark Indians -- is
an inferior race. Moreover there are naturalists who have sincerely considered
the problem whether some savage tribes -- like the Bushmen for instance -- can
be regarded as men at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or
race) of animals "fair to look at" as a biped:-- "Having human
shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist down, covered with hair."
Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.
If men existed two million years ago,
they must have been -- just as the animals were -- quite different physically
and anatomically from what they have become; and they were nearer then to the
type of pure mammalian animal than they are now. Anyhow, we learn that the
animal world breeds strictly inter se, i.e., in accordance with genus and
species -- only since the appearance on this earth of the Atlantean race. As
demonstrated by the author of that able work, "Modern Science and Modern
Thought," this idea of the refusal to breed with another species, or that
sterility is the only result of such breeding, "appears to be a prima
facie deduction rather than an absolute law" even now. He shows that
"different species, do, in fact, often breed together, as may be 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 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 that
of several other domestic animals (p. 101); "like foxes and dogs again,
and the modern Swiss cattle shown by Rutimeyer as descended from three distinct
species of fossil-oxen, the Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos
frontosus." Yet some of those species, as the ape family, which so clearly
resembles man in physical structure, contain, we are told, "numerous
branches, which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ
more widely than man does from the highest of the ape series" -- the
gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance (see Addenda).
Thus Mr. Darwin's remark -- or shall
we say the remark of Linnaeus? -- natura non facit saltum, is not only
corroborated by Esoteric Science but would -- were there any chance of the real
doctrine being accepted by any others than its direct votaries -- reconcile in
more than one way, if not entirely, the modern Evolution theory with facts, as
also with the absolute failure of the Anthropologists to meet with the
"missing link" in our Fourth Round geological formations.
We will show elsewhere that, however
unconsciously to itself, modern Science pleads our case upon its own
admissions, and that de Quatrefages is perfectly right, when he suggests in his
last work, that it is far more likely that the anthropoid ape should be
discovered to be
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the descendant of man, than that
these two types should have a common, fantastic and nowhere-to-be-found
ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old Stanzas is vindicated by
at least one eminent man of Science, and the Occultist prefers to believe as he
ever did that --
"Man was the first and highest
(mammalian) animal that appeared in this (Fourth Round) creation. Then came
still huger animals; and last of all the dumb man who walks on all fours."
For, "the Rakshasas (giant-demons) and Daityas (Titans) of the "White
Dwipa" (continent) spoiled his (the dumb man's) Sires." (Commentary.)
Furthermore, as we see, there are
anthropologists who have traced man back to an epoch which goes far to break
down the apparent barrier that exists between the chronologies of modern
science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is true that English scientists generally
have declined to commit themselves to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a
Tertiary Man. They, each and all, measure the antiquity of Homo primigenius by
their own lights and prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a
possible Pliocene or Miocene Man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have
relegated his advent to the Eocene, but, speaking generally, English scientists
consider that we cannot safely go beyond the quaternary. Unfortunately, the
facts do not accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French
school of anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l'Abbe
Bourgeois, Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the
doctrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the
Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary-Age Man.
Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in the
Brahminical exoteric books which approximate to the esoteric teaching.
(d) . . . . Then, "the third eye
acted no longer," says the Stanza, because MAN had sunk too deep into the
mire of matter.
What is the meaning of this strange
and weird statement in Verse 42, concerning the "third eye of the Third
Race which had died and acted no longer"?
A few more occult teachings must now
be given with reference to this point as well as some others. The history of
the Third and Fourth Races must be amplified, in order that it may throw some
more light on the development of our present humanity; and show how the
faculties, called into activity by occult training, restore man to the position
he previously occupied in reference to spiritual perception and consciousness.
But the phenomenon of the third Eye has to be first explained.
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THE RACES WITH THE "THIRD
EYE."
The subject is so unusual, the paths
pursued so intricate, so full of dangerous pitfalls prepared by adverse
theories and criticism, that good reasons have to be given for every step taken.
While turning the light of the bull's eye called esotericism on almost every
inch of the occult grounds travelled over, we have also to use its lens to
throw into stronger objectivity the regions explored by exact science; this,
not only in order to contrast the two, but to defend our position.*
It may be complained by some that too
little is said of the physical, human side of the extinct races, in this
history of their growth and evolution. Much more might be said assuredly, if
simple prudence did not make us hesitate at the threshold of every new
revelation. That, which finds its possibility and landmarks in the discoveries
of modern science, is given; all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing
and upon which it is unable to speculate -- and therefore denies as facts in
nature -- is withheld.
But even such statements as these --
e.g., that of all the mammalians, man was the earliest; that it is man who is
the indirect ancestor of the Ape; and that he was a kind of a Cyclops in days
of old -- will all be contested, yet, scientists will never be able to prove --
except to their own satisfaction -- that it was not so. Nor can they admit that
the first two races of men were too ethereal and phantom-like in their
constitution, organism, and shape, even to be called physical men. For, if they
do, it will be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never
be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is
maintained. Man was the store-house, so to speak, of all the seeds of life
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For suggestiveness, we would
recommend a short article in the Theosophist of August, 1887, "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" (666), i.e., "with decrease of the vis
formativa." 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
Simiadae in its variety? Might not the monkey-kingdom of Ramayana fame rest on
some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or
rather aspect, of man?" . . . and 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, art. by Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S.).
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for this Round, vegetable and animal
alike.* As En-Soph is "One, notwithstanding the innumerable forms which
are in him" (Zohar," i. 2la), so is man, on Earth the microcosm of
the macrocosm. "As soon as man appeared, everything was complete. . . .
for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms (Ibid., iii.
48a)." "The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the
Heavenly Man" (ii. 76a). The human form -- so called, because it is the
vehicle (under whatever shape) of the divine man -- is, as so intuitionally
remarked by the author of "Esoteric Studies,"** the new type, at the
beginning of every Round, "as man never can be, so he never has been,
manifested in a shape belonging to the animal kingdom in esse." The author
proceeds, "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."
If the idea is what we understand it
to mean -- for the "rings" spoken of throw some confusion upon it --
then it is the correct esoteric teaching. Having appeared at the very
beginning, and at the head of sentient and conscious life, man (the astral, or
the "Soul," for the Zohar, repeating the archaic teaching, distinctly
says that "the real man is the Soul, and his material frame no part of
him") -- man became the living and animal UNIT, from which the
"cast-off clothes" determined the shape of every life and animal in
this Round.***
Thus, he "created" for ages
the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals, unconsciously to himself, from his
remains and relics from the Third and the Fourth Rounds. The same idea and
teaching are as distinctly given in the Vendidad of the Mazdeans, as they are
in the Chaldean and the Mosaic allegory of the Ark, all of which are the many
national versions of the original legend given in the Hindu Scriptures. It is
found in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu and his Ark with the Seven Rishis, as
in that of the Rishis, each of whom is shown the father and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 than 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 inter-dependent in their physical and achieved forms.
** "Visconde de Figaniere,
F.T.S." (The Theosophist, Aug. 1887, page 676.)
*** 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."
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progenitor of specified animals,
reptiles, and even monsters (See Vishnu and other Puranas). Open the Mazdean
Vendidad, at Fargard ii., at verse 27 (73) and read the command of Ormazd to
Yima, a Spirit of the Earth, who symbolizes the three races, after telling him
to build a vara ("an enclosure," an argua 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., etc.; and v. 28 (74) . . . ."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." Those "men" in the "Vara"
are the "Progenitors," the heavenly men or Dhyani, the future Egos
who are commissioned to inform mankind. For "Vara," or the
"Ark" (or again the Vehicle) simply means MAN.* Verse 30 says: . . .
. "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. And when Yima inquires 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" (31).
The Egyptian ram-headed god makes man
of clay on a potter's wheel, and so in Genesis do the Elohim fashion him out of
the same material.
When the "Maker of the material
world" (Ahura Mazda) is asked, furthermore, what is to give light "to
the Vara which Yima made," he is told that "There are uncreated
lights and created lights" and that "there" (in Airyana Vaego,
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) a
clear reference to the "land of the Gods" or the (now) polar regions.
Moreover another hint is contained in this verse: a distinct allusion to the
"uncreated lights" which enlighten man within -- his principles.
Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura Mazda's answer (V. 40),
which is forthwith followed by Verse 41 saying that "Every fortieth year,
to every couple (hermaphrodite) two are born, a male and female,"** the
latter being a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which says --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Vendidad Sadah, See also Bund.
XV.; and J. Darmesteter's translation of the Vendidad. "Sacred Books of
the East."
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"At the expiration of every
forty (annual) Suns, at the end of every fortieth Day, the double one becomes
four; male and female in one, in the first and second and the third. . . . .
."
Which is clear, since "every
sun" meant a whole year, the latter being composed of one day then, as in
the arctic circle it is now composed of six months. According to the old
teaching, the axis of the earth gradually changes its inclination to the
ecliptic, and at the period referred to, this inclination was such that a polar
day lasted during the whole period of the earth's revolution about the sun,
when a kind of twilight of very short duration intervened; after which the
polar land resumed its position directly under the solar rays. This may be
contrary to astronomy as now taught and understood: but who can say that
changes in the motion of the earth, which do not take place now, did not occur
millions of years back?
Returning once more to the statement
that Vara meant the MAN of the Fourth Round, as much as the Earth of those days,
the moon, and even Noah's ark, if one will so have it -- this is again shown in
the dialogue between Ahura Mazda and Zarathustra. Thus when the latter asks --
V. 42. "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 Zarathustra.' . . . ."
"The bird Karshipta dwells in
the heavens: were he living on the earth he would be king of birds. He brought
into the var of Yima, and recites the Avesta in the language of birds."
(Bund. xix and xxiv.)
This again is an allegory and a
symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists only, who see in this bird "an
incarnation of lightning," and say its song was "often thought to be
the utterance of a god and a revelation," and what not. Karshipta is the
human mind-soul, and the deity thereof, symbolized in ancient Magianism by a
bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta
entered the Vara or man, than he understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom.
In the "Book of Concealed Mystery" it is said of the tree, which is
the tree of knowledge of good and evil: "In its branches (of the tree) the
birds lodge and build their nests," or the Souls and the Angels have their
place!.* Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. "Bird"
was a Chaldean, and has become a Hebrew synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a
Spirit, or Deva; and the "Bird's Nest" was with both Heaven, and is
God's bosom in the Zohar. The perfect Messiah enters Eden "into that place
which is called the Bird's Nest" (Zohar, ii., 8b).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Kabbalah Unveiled"
by S. McGregor Mathers, p. 104.
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"Like a bird that is flying from
its nest, and that is the Soul from which the Shekeenah (divine wisdom or
grace) does not move away" (Zohar, iii., 278a; Myer's Qabbalah, 217).
"The Nest of the eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life,
is boundless space," says the Commentary, meaning Hansa, the bird of
Wisdom.
It is Adam Kadmon who is the
(Sephirothal) tree, and it is he who becomes the "Tree of knowledge of
good and evil" esoterically. And that "tree hath around it seven
columns (seven pillars) of the world, or Rectores"; the same
"Progenitors" or "Sephiroth" again "operating through
the respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets,"
etc., one of which orders begets giants (Nephilim) on Earth.
It was the belief of entire
antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest mankind was a race of giants.
Certain excavations in America in mounds and in caves, have already yielded in
isolated cases groups of skeletons of nine and twelve feet high.* These belong
to tribes of the early Fifth Race, now degenerated to an average size of between
five and six feet. But we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of
old really belonged to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent
legends and allegories found in the Hindu Puranas and the Greek Hesiod and
Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans -- men of a
superhuman tremendous physical power, which enabled them to defend themselves,
and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times
-- and of actual Cyclopes -- three-eyed mortals.
It has been often remarked by
observant writers, that the "origin of nearly every popular myth and
legend could be traced invariably to a fact in Nature."
In these fantastic creations of an
exuberant subjectivism, there is always an element of the objective and real.
The imagination of the masses, disorderly and ill-regulated as it may be, could
never have conceived and fabricated ex nihilo so many monstrous figures, such a
wealth of extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central
nucleus, those floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the
broken links of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream
foundation of our collective consciousness.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
inquire 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.
** See "Mythical Monsters,"
by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and scientific volume a few passages are
quoted further on. See in Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," the
description of a cavern in the Himalayas filled with relics of human and animal
giant bones.
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The evidence for the Cyclopes -- a
race of giants -- will be pointed out in forthcoming Sections, in the Cyclopean
remnants, so called to this day. An indication that, during its evolution and
before the final adjustment of the human organism -- which became perfect and
symmetrical only in the Fifth Race -- the early Fourth Race may have been
three-eyed, without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow,
like the legendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.
To the Occultists who believe that
spiritual and psychic involution proceeds on parallel lines with physical
evolution; that the inner senses -- innate in the first human races --
atrophied during racial growth and the material development of the outer
senses; to the student of Esoteric symbology, finally, this statement is no
conjecture or possibility, but simply a phase of the law of growth, a proven
fact, in short. They understand the meaning of this passage in the Commentaries
which says:--
"There were four-armed human
creatures in those early days of the male-females (hermaphrodites); with one
head, yet three eyes. They could see before them and behind them.* A KALPA
later (after the separation of the sexes) men having fallen into matter, their
spiritual vision became dim; and coordinately the third eye commenced to lose
its power. . . . When the Fourth (Race) arrived at its middle age, the inner
vision had to be awakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of
which was known to the old sages.** . . . The third eye, likewise, getting
gradually PETRIFIED,*** soon disappeared. The double-faced became the
one-faced, and the eye was drawn deep into the head and is now buried under the
hair. During the activity of the inner man (during trances and spiritual
visions) the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels it, and regulates
his action accordingly. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Viz., 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 [[Zoanon]], a rudely carved wooden statue (attributed to
Daedalus), representing a three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus
Triopas (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).
** The Inner sight 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.
*** This expression
"petrified" instead of "ossified" is curious. The
"back eye," which is of course the pineal gland, now 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." (Vide Infra.)
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The undefiled Lanoo (disciple, chela)
need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in purity (who is not chaste)
will receive no help from the 'deva eye.' "
Unfortunately not. The "deva-eye"
exists no more for the majority of mankind. The third eye is dead, and acts no
longer; but it has left behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now
the PINEAL GLAND. As for the "four-armed" men, it is they who become
the prototypes of the four-armed Hindu gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.
Such is the mystery of the human eye
that, in their vain endeavours to explain and account for all the difficulties
surrounding its action, some scientists have been forced to resort to occult explanations.
The development of the Human eye gives more support to the occult anthropology
than to that of the materialistic physiologists. "The eyes in the human
embryo grow from within without" out of the brain, instead of being part
of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor Lankester, thinking
the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to explain the phenomenon
on Darwinian lines, suggests the curious view that "our" earliest
vertebrate ancestor was a transparent creature and hence did not mind where the
eye was! And so was man "a transparent creature" once upon a time, we
are taught, hence our theory holds good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis
square with the Haeckelian view that the vertebrate eye originated by changes
in the epidermis? If it started inside, the theory goes into the waste-basket.
This seems to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester's
extraordinary suggestion -- or shall we say admission? -- is rendered perhaps
necessary by evolutionist necessities. Occultism with its teaching as to the
gradual development of senses "FROM WITHIN WITHOUT," from astral
prototypes, is far more satisfactory: The third eye retreated inwards when its
course was run -- another point in favour of Occultism.
The allegorical expression of the
Hindu mystics when speaking of the "eye of Siva," the Tri-bochana
("three-eyed"), thus receives its justification and raison d'etre --
the transference of the pineal gland (once that "third eye") to the
forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light on the mystery --
incomprehensible to some -- of the connection between abnormal, or Spiritual
Seership, and the physiological purity of the Seer. The question is often
asked, "Why should celibacy and chastity be a sine qua non rule and
condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and occult
powers" The answer is contained in the Commentary. When we learn that the
"third eye" was once a physiological organ, and that later on, owing
to the gradual
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disappearance of spirituality and
increase of materiality (Spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical),
it became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by physiologists as the
spleen is -- when we learn this, the connection will become clear. During human
life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially
to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses.
Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and
the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation. Of
course, the normal and abnormal state of the brain, and the degree of active
work in the medulla oblongata, reacts powerfully on the pineal gland, for,
owing to the number of "centres" in that region, which controls by
far the greater majority of the physiological actions of the animal economy,
and also owing to the close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, there must
be exerted a very powerful "inductive" action by the medulla on the
pineal gland.
All this is quite plain to the
Occultist, but is very vague in the sight of the general reader. The latter
must then be shown the possibility of a three-eyed man in nature, in those
periods when his formation was yet in a comparatively chaotic state. Such a
possibility may be inferred from anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of
all; then it may rest on the assumptions of materialistic science itself.
It is asserted upon the authority of
Science, and upon evidence, which is not merely a fiction of theoretical
speculation this time, that many of the animals -- especially among the lower
orders of the vertebrata -- have a third eye, now atrophied, but necessarily
active in its origin.* The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia,
recently discovered in New Zealand (a part of ancient Lemuria so called, mark
well), presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and not only
the Hatteria punctata, but the chameleon, certain reptiles, and even fishes. It
was thought, at first, that it was no more than the prolongation of the brain
ending with a small protuberance, called epiphysis, a little bone separated
from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it was soon
found to be more than this. It offered -- as its development and anatomical
structure showed -- such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found
impossible to see in it any-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Deeply placed within the
head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that cannot see are found in
certain animals," also, says Haeckel: "Vertebrate . . . blind moles
and field mice, blind snakes and lizards. . . . They shun 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." ("Sense Organs," Haeckel.) 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?
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thing else. There were and are
paleontologists who feel convinced to this day that this "third eye"
has functioned in its origin, and they are certainly right. For this is what is
said of the pineal gland in Quain's Anatomy (Vol. II. ninth edit., pp. 830-851.
"Thalamencephalon" Interbrain):--
"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 recognised 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."
The above is specially interesting
when it is remembered that, were it not for the development of the hinder part
of the cerebral hemispheres backwards, the pineal gland would be perfectly
visible on the removal of the parietal bones. It is very interesting also to
note the obvious connection to be traced between the (originally) hollow optic
tracts and the eyes anteriorly, the pineal gland and its peduncles behind, and
all
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of these with the optic thalami. So
that the recent discoveries in connection with the third eye of Hatteria
punctata have a very important bearing on the developmental history of the
human senses, and on the occult assertions in the text.
It is well known, (and also regarded
as a fiction now, by those who have ceased to believe in the existence of an
immortal principle in man,) that Descartes saw in the pineal gland the Seat of
the Soul. Although it is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is
one special portion of it in which the Soul exercises its functions more
specially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain could
be that "special" locality, he concluded that it was that little
gland tied to the brain, yet having an action independent of it, as it could
easily be put into a kind of swinging motion "by the animal Spirits* which
cross the cavities of the skull in every sense."
Unscientific as this may appear in
our day of exact learning, Descartes was yet far nearer the occult truth than
is any Haeckel. For the pineal gland, as shown, is far more connected with Soul
and Spirit than with the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists
a glimmer of the real processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the
winding cyclic course of this great law, they would know instead of
conjecturing; and feel as certain of the future physical transformations of the
human kind by the knowledge of its past forms. Then, would they see the fallacy
and all the absurdity of their modern "blind-force" and mechanical
processes of nature; realizing, in consequence of such knowledge, that the said
pineal gland, for instance, could not but be disabled for physical use at this
stage of our cycle. If the odd "eye" in man is now atrophied, it is a
proof that, as in the lower animal, it has once been active; for nature never
creates the smallest, the most insignificant form without some definite purpose
and use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution when the
spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent intellectual
and psychic elements. And, as the cycle ran down toward that point when the
physiological senses were developed by, and went pari passu with, the growth
and consolidation of the physical man, the interminable and complex
vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development, that median
"eye" ended by atrophying along with the early spiritual and purely
psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the window of
the soul, says popular wisdom,** and Vox populi Vox Dei.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Let us remember that the First
Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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In the beginning, every class and
family of living species was hermaphrodite and objectively one-eyed. In the
animal, whose form was as ethereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies
of both began to evolve their coats of skin, viz., to evolve from within
without the thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal
physiological mechanism -- the third eye was primarily, as in man, the only
seeing organ. The two physical front eyes developed* later on in both brute and
man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement of the Third Race,
in the same position as that of some of the blind vertebrata, in our day, i.e.,
beneath an opaque skin.** Only the stages of the odd, or primeval eye, in man
and brute, are now inverted, as the former has already passed that animal
non-rational stage in the Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a
whole plane of consciousness. Therefore, while the "Cyclopean" eye
was, and still is, in man the organ of spiritual sight, in the animal it was
that of objective vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was
replaced, in the course of physical evolution from the simple to the complex,
by two eyes, and thus was stored and laid aside by nature for further use in
AEons to come.
This explains why the pineal gland
reached its highest development proportionately with the lowest physical
development. It is the vertebrata in which it is the most prominent and
objective, and in man it is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] and ethereal without; the second, psycho-spiritual mentally, and
ethero-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 interfered with as yet 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."
* But in a very different manner to
that pictured by Haeckel as an "evolution by natural selection in the
struggle for existence" ("Pedigree of Man." "Sense
Organs," p. 335). The mere "thermal sensibility of the skin," to
hypothetical light-waves, is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful
combination of adaptations present in the eye. It has, moreover, been
previously shown that "natural Selection" is a pure myth when
credited with the origination of variations (vide infra, Part III., on
Darwinian mechanical causation); 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.
** Palaeontology has ascertained that
in the animals of the Cenozoic 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.
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most carefully hidden and
inaccessible, except to the anatomist. No less light is thrown thereby on the
future physical, spiritual, and intellectual state of mankind, in periods
corresponding on parallel lines with other past periods, and always on the
lines of ascending and descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few
centuries before the Kali yuga -- the black age which began nearly 5,000 years
ago -- it was said (paraphrased into comprehensible sentences):
"We (the Fifth Root-Race) in our
first half (of duration) onward (on the now ASCENDING arc of the cycle) are on
the mid point of (or between) the First and the Second Races -- falling
downward (i.e., the races were then on the descending arc of the cycle). . . .
. Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see." (Commentary xx.).
Calculating as advised, we find that
during that transitional period -- namely, in the second half of the First
Spiritual ethero-astral race -- nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual
brain element. As it was on its descending line, and as we are parallel to it,
on the ascending, we are,
EVOLUTION OF ROOT RACES IN THE FOURTH
ROUND
[[diagram]]
DOWNWARD CYCLE.
Evolution of physical and
intellectual nature and the gradual regression of Spirituality.
1st R. Race
II R. R.
III R. R.
MERIDIAN OF RACES.
3 1/2
ASCENDING CYCLE.
Re-evolution or reversion of
Spirituality and the gradual decrease of materiality and mere brain
intellectuality.
IV R. R.
4 1/2
V R. R.
5 1/2
VI R. R.
6 1/2
VII ROOT RACE
therefore devoid of the Spiritual element,
which is now replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the
manasa period of our cycle of races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore,
crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and Matter -- or
that equilibrium between brain intellect and Spiritual perception. One
important point has, however, to be borne in mind.
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We are only in the Fourth Round, and
it is in the Fifth that the full development of Manas, as a direct ray from the
Universal MAHAT -- a ray unimpeded by matter -- will be finally reached.
Nevertheless, as every sub-race and nation have their cycles and stages of
developmental evolution repeated on a smaller scale, it must be the more so in
the case of a Root-Race. Our race then has, as a Root-race, crossed the
equatorial line and is cycling onward on the Spiritual side; but some of our
sub-races still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their
respective national cycles; while others again -- the oldest -- having crossed
their crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe
will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races.
It becomes comprehensible now why the
"odd eye" has been gradually transformed into a simple gland, after
the physical Fall of those we have agreed to call the "Lemurians."
It is a curious fact that it is
especially in human beings that the cerebral hemispheres and the lateral
ventricles have been developed, and that the optic thalami, corpora
quadrigemina, and corpora striata are the principal parts which are developed
in the mammalian brain. Moreover it is asserted that the intellect of any man
may to some extent be gauged by the development of the central convolutions and
the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres. It would seem a natural corollary
that if the development and increased size of the pineal gland may be
considered to be an index of the astral capacities and spiritual proclivities
of any man, there will be a corresponding development of that part of the
cranium, or an increase in the size of the pineal gland at the expense of the
hinder part of the cerebral hemispheres. It is a curious speculation which
would receive a confirmation in this case. We should see, below and behind, the
cerebellum which has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of
a human being, and which is allowed by science to be the great centre for all
the physiologically co-ordinated movements of the body, such as walking,
eating, etc., etc.; in front, the fore-part of the brain -- the cerebral
hemispheres -- the part especially connected with the development of the
intellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, and
especially the animal functions, the developed pineal gland, in connection with
the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.
It must be remembered that these are
only physical correspondences; just as the ordinary human brain is the
registering organ of memory, but not memory itself.
This is, then, the organ which gave
rise to so many legends and traditions, among others to that of man with one
head but two faces. These may be found in several Chinese works, besides being
referred to in the
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Chaldean fragments. Apart from the
work already cited -- the Shan Hai King, compiled by King Chia from engravings on
nine urns made 2,255 B.C., by the Emperor Yu, they may be found in another
work, called the "Bamboo Books," and in a third one, the "Rh
Ya" -- "initiated according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu
Wang, the first Emperor of the Chow Dynasty, B.C., 1,122":-- says Mr. Ch.
Gould in his "Mythical Monsters." The Bamboo Books contain the
ancient annals of China, found A.D. 279 at the opening of the grave of King
Seang of Wai, who died B.C. 295. Both these works mention men with two faces on
one head -- one in front and one behind (p. 27).
Now that which the students of
Occultism ought to know is that THE "THIRD EYE" IS INDISSOLUBLY
CONNECTED WITH KARMA. The tenet is so mysterious that very few have heard of
it.
The "eye of Siva" did not
become entirely atrophied before the close of the Fourth Race. When
spirituality and all the divine powers and attributes of the deva-man of the
Third had been made the hand-maidens of the newly-awakened physiological and
psychic passions of the physical man, instead of the reverse, the eye lost its
powers. But such was the law of Evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no
FALL. The sin was not in using those newly-developed powers, but in misusing
them; in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a god, the fane of every
spiritual iniquity. And if we say "sin" it is merely that everyone
should understand our meaning; as the term Karma* would be the right one to use
in this case; while the reader who would feel perplexed at the use of the term
"spiritual" instead of "physical" iniquity, is reminded of
the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is simply the
irresponsible organ, the tool of the psychic, if not of the "Spiritual
man." While in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the Spiritual
being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the "Master"
principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest
Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.
As this sentence may again be found
puzzling, it is better that it should be explained for the benefit of those who
are ignorant of the theosophical teachings.
Questions with regard to Karma and
re-births are constantly offered, and a great confusion seems to exist upon
this subject. Those who are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been
trained in the idea
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Karma is a word of many meanings,
and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects. It means, as a
synonym of sin, 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. Karman is action, the Cause; and Karma again is "the law of ethical
causation"; the effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great
law of harmony depends on altruism.
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that a new soul is created by God for
every newly-born infant, are among the most perplexed. They ask whether in such
case the number of incarnating Monads on earth is limited; to which they are
answered in the affirmative. For, however countless, in our conceptions, the
number of the incarnating monads -- even if we take into account the fact that
ever since the Second Race, when their respective seven groups were furnished
with bodies, several births and deaths may be allowed for every second of time
in the aeons already passed -- still, there must be a limit. It was stated that
Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted everything in the most
harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new
Monads, had ceased as soon as Humanity had reached its full physical
development. No fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle-point of the
Atlanteans. Hence, remembering that, save in the case of young children, and of
individuals whose lives were violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual
Entity can re-incarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, such
gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and
limited. Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their
evolutionary progress.
Hence the assertion that many of us
are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in
Atlantean bodies. The Law of KARMA is inextricably interwoven with that of
Re-incarnation.
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 Dhyan-Chohans, or the
"Gods" themselves -- have to pass through the "Circle of
Necessity," rewarded or punished by such rebirth for the suffering endured
or crimes committed in the former life; that those very Monads, which entered
the empty, senseless shells, or astral figures of the First Race emanated by
the Pitris, are the same who are now amongst us -- nay, ourselves, perchance;
it is only this doctrine, we say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem
of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of
life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For,
when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes
the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one
sees honour paid fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours
by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect
and noble virtues ---far more deserving in every way --perishing of want and
for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to
relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the
cries of
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pain around him -- that blessed
knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as
their supposed Creator.*
Of all the terrible blasphemies and
accusations virtually thrown on their God by the Monotheists, none is greater
or more unpardonable than that (almost always) false humility which makes the
presumably "pious" Christian assert, in connection with every evil
and undeserved blow, that "such is the will of God."
Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and
impious Pharisees, who speak in the same breath of the endless merciful love
and care of their God and creator for helpless man, and of that God scourging
the good, the very best of his creatures, bleeding them to death like an
insatiable Moloch! Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve's words:--
"But who shall dare to tax Eternal
Justice?" Logic and simple common sense, we answer: if we are made to
believe in the "original Sin," in one life, on this Earth only, for
every Soul, and in an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men
only for the pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire (and this whether
they are good or bad, says the Predestinarian),** why should not every man
endowed with reasoning powers condemn in his turn such a villainous Deity? Life
would become unbearable, if one had to believe in the God created by man's
unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human dogmas, and in the unhealthy
imagination of some poets, who believe they have solved the problem by
addressing him as --
"Thou great Mysterious Power,
who hast involved
The pride of human wisdom, to
confound
The daring scrutiny and prove the
faith
Of thy presuming creatures! . . .
."
Truly a robust "faith" is
required to believe that it is "presumption" to question the justice
of one, who creates helpless little man but to "perplex" him, and to
test a "faith" with which that "Power," moreover, may have
forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.
Compare this blind faith with the
philosophical belief, based on every reasonable evidence and life-experience,
in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law -- whether Conscious or
Uncon-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** The doctrine and theology of 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 pre-assignment or allotment of men to everlasting
happiness or misery" (Catechism). A noble and encouraging Doctrine this!
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scious -- predestines nothing and no
one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as
such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for
it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the personal
action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the
impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean's motion. Karma creates
nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic
law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony,
tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down
too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the
arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is
the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief?
Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the
God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness
purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinise its
mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its
intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which
so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is
working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in
the World of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One
eternal ever present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists
or materialists -- still less as fatalists:"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Some theosophists, in order to make
Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind, as being better acquainted with
the Greek than with Aryan philosophy, have made an attempt to translate it by
Nemesis. Had the latter 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, it has been too much anthropomorphised 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, it has to be done in the triple character of
the latter, viz., as Nemesis, Adrasteia and Themis. For, while the latter 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 Dike, is the equitable goddess reserving her wrath for those
alone who are maddened with pride, egoism, and impiety. (See Mesomed. Hymn.
Nemes., V. 2. Brunck, Analecta II. p. 292; Mythol. de la Grece Antique, p.
304.) In short, while Nemesis is a mythological, exoteric goddess, or Power,
personified and anthropomorphised in its various aspects, Karma is a highly
philosophical truth, a most divine noble expression of the primitive intuition
of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which explains the origin of Evil,
and [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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for Karma is one with the Unknowable,
of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly,
connected with Karma, then, is the law of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of
the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of
personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played
by the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is
identified by the public, for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real man,
who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the
brief space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human
illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before,
King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier
preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of
the fact. In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real.
Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though,
through the atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in the physical body, that
knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false
personality.
The possession of a physical third
eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root-Race down to nearly
the middle period of Third SUB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the
consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the
outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and
visual perceptions lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its
functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out
altogether before the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent. And
now we may return to the Deluges and their many "Noahs."
The student has to bear in mind that
there were many such deluges as that mentioned in Genesis, and three far more
important ones, which will be mentioned and described in the Section devoted to
the subject of pre-historic continents. To avoid erroneous conjectures,
however, with regard to the claim that the esoteric doctrine has much in it of
the legends contained in the Hindu Scriptures; that, again, the chronology of
the latter is almost that of the former -- only explained and made clear; and
that finally the belief that "Vaivasvata Manu" -- a generic name
indeed! -- was the Noah of the Aryans and his prototype, all this, which is
also the belief of the Occultists, necessitates at this juncture a new
explanation. (Vide Part III. "Submerged Continents.")
-------
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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.
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THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY.
Those who are aware that the "great
Flood," which was connected with the sinking of an entire continent --
save what became a few islands -- could not have happened so far back as
18,000,000 years ago; and that Vaivasvata Manu is the Indian Noah connected
with the Matsya (or the fish) Avatar of Vishnu -- may feel perplexed at this
discrepancy between facts stated and the chronology previously given. But there
is no discrepancy in truth. The reader is asked to turn to the Theosophist of
July, 1883, and after studying the article therein, "The Septenary
Principle in Esotericism," the whole question can be explained to him. It
is in this explanation, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the
Brahmins.
For the benefit of those, however,
who may not have "The Theosophist" of that month and year to hand, a
passage or two may now be quoted from it:
"Who was Manu, the son of
Swayambhuva? 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
Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first round. But we are told in
his Laws (Book I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa -- or
interval from creation to creation (read interval from one minor 'Pralaya' to
another*) -- 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pralaya -- a word already explained
-- is not a term that applies only to every "Night of Brahma," or the
world's dissolution following every Manvantara, equal to 71 Maha-yugas. 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 term like that of "Manu" -- the generic name for the
Sishtas, who, under the appellation of "King," are shown in the
Puranas as preserved "with the seed of all things in an ark from the waters
of that flood" (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
one) . . . . which in the season of a pralaya overspreads the world" (the
Earth). (See Preface, p. lxxxi., to Wilson's "Vishnu Purana.") Time
is only a form of "Vishnu" -- truly, as Parasara says in that Purana.
In the Hindu Yuga Kalpa, 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, a "Day" of Brahma, or a
sidereal Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. Those calculations are found in all
the Puranas, 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
Purana," which are again esoteric, and which do represent actual (secret)
chronology. As said in the Brahma Vaivarta: "Chronologers compute a Kalpa
by the life of Brahma. 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" (Vishnu Purana, p. 54, vol. I.).
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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 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 the seed-Manus -- the
seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (or the Sishtas -- the
surviving fittest*; a mystery divulged only to those who have passed their
third degree in initiation) -- those who have learned all that will be better
prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Sacred
Hindu scriptures that the first Manu produced six other Manus (seven primary
Manus in all), and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus**
(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,*** 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' (Dhyan 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.**** It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement
that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An intuition and a presentiment of
the Sishtas may be found in Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism," Fifth
Edition. See in it Annotations -- the "Noah's Ark Theory" pp. 146,
147.
** The fact that Manu himself is made
to declare that he was created by Viraj, and that he then produced the ten
Prajapatis, 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-Himalayan Secret Teachings, and
Brahmanical esoteric philosophy may now differ in form as the Kabala does. But
they were identical in hoary antiquity.
*** There is another esoteric reason
besides this one 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.
**** The interval that precedes each
Yuga is called a Sandhya, composed of as many hundreds of years as there are
thousands in the yuga; and that which follows the latter is named Sandhyamsa,
and is of similar duration, we are told in Vishnu Purana. "The interval
between the Sandhya and the Sandhyamsa is the yuga denominated Krita, Treta,
etc., etc. The (four) Krita, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali constitute a great age,
or aggregate of four ages: a 1000 such aggregates are a Day of Brahma; and 14
Manus reign within that term." Now had we to accept this literally then
there would be only one Manu for every 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are taught
that it took 300,000,000 of 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
us about the 14 being each multiplied by 49.
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appearance of two Manus or Dhyan
Chohans; and hence a minor Manvantara is the duration of the seven races on any
particular planet, and a major manvantara is the period of one human round
along the Planetary chain. Moreover, that, 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 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 represents in India 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
(Atlantis) -- 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 relation to
each Round:--
1st Round
1st (Root) Manu on Planet A --
Swayambhuva.
1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G -- Swarochi
(or) Swarotisha.
2nd Round
2nd (R) M. on Planet A -- Uttama.
2nd (S) M. " G -- Thamasa.
3rd Round
3rd (R) M. " A -- Raivata.
3rd (S) M. " G -- Chackchuska.
4th Round
4th (R) M. " A -- Vaivasvata
(our progenitor)
4th (S) M. " G -- Savarna
5th Round
5th (R) M. " A -- Daksha
Savarna.
5th (S) M. " G -- Brahma
Savarna.
6th Round
6th (R) M. " A -- Dharma
Savarna.
6th (S) M. " G -- Rudra Savarna.
7th Round
7th (R) M. " A -- Rouchya.
7th (S) M. " G -- Bhoutya.
"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. 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 Hindu ideal embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus,
Deukalion, Noah and by 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."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The words "creation,"
"dissolution," etc., do not render correctly the right meaning of
either Manvantara or Pralaya. The Vishnu Purana enumerates several: The
dissolution of all things is of four kinds, Parasara is made to say:--
Naimittika (occasional), when Brahma slumbers (his night, when, "At the
end of this day occurs a re-coalescence of the Universe, called Brahma's
contingent re-coalescence," because Brahma is this universe itself);
"Prakritika (elemental), when the return of this universe to its original
nature is partial and physical; Atyantika (absolute), identification of the
embodied with the incorporeal Supreme spirit -- Mahatmic state, whether
temporary or until the following Maha Kalpa: also absolute obscuration -- as of
a whole [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Thus it is shown that there is no
real discrepancy in speaking of the Vaivasvata Manvantara (Manu-antara, lit.
"between two Manus") 18,000,000 odd years ago, when physical, or the
truly human man first appeared in his Fourth Round on this earth; and of the
other Vaivasvatas, e.g., the Manu of the Great Cosmic or sidereal Flood (a
mystery), or again the Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the
racial Vaivasvata saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter
destruction. As the several (and quite different) events are purposely blended
in the Vishnu and other Puranas in one narrative, there may yet be a great deal
of perplexity left in the profane reader's mind. Therefore, as constant
elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven unavoidable repetitions. The blinds
which conceal the real mysteries of Esoteric philosophy are great and puzzling,
and even now the last word cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a little
more removed and some explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the
earnest student.
As somebody -- Colonel Vans Kennedy,
if we do not mistake -- remarked, "the first principle in Hindu religious
philosophy is Unity in diversity." If all those Manus and Rishis are
called by one generic name, this is due to the fact that they are one and all
the manifested Energies of one and the same LOGOS, the celestial, as well as
the terrestrial messengers and permutations of that Principle which is ever in
a state of activity; conscious during the period of Cosmic evolution,
unconscious (from our point of view) during Cosmic rest, as the Logos sleepeth
in the bosom of THAT which "sleepeth not," nor is it ever awake --
for it is SAT or Be-ness, not a Being. It is from IT that issues the great
unseen Logos, who evolves all the other logoi, the primeval MANU who gives
being to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively,
and who represent in their aggregate the manifested Logos.* Hence we learn in
the "Commentaries" that while no Dhyan Chohan, not even the highest,
can realise completely "the condition of the preceding Cosmic
evolution," "the Manus retain a knowledge of their experiences of all
the Cosmic evolutions throughout Eternity." This is very plain: the first
Manu is called Swayambhuva,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] planetary chain, etc.; and Nitya (perpetual) Mahapralaya 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. . . . This is
Samyama" (production, existence, and dissolution) (Vishnu Purana, Book I.,
ch. vii.) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our
statements.
* But see the superb definitions of
Parabrahmam and the Logos in Mr. Subba Row's Lectures on the Bhagavat Gita in
the early numbers of the Theosophist of 1887, Feb., March, April, and May.
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"the Self-manifested," the
Son of the unmanifested FATHER. The Manus are the creators of the creators of
our First Race -- the Spirit of mankind -- which does not prevent the seven
Manus from having been the first "pre-Adamic" men on Earth.
Manu declares himself created by
Viraj,* or Vaiswanara, (the Spirit of Humanity),** 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) that radiates from
within himself all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity --
progenitors of the numberless Solar systems as well as of the yet
undifferentiated human monads of planetary chains as well as of every being
thereon. Each Cosmic Monad is "Swayambhuva," the SELF-BORN, which
becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a planetary chain (of
which chains there are seven in our system), and whose radiations become again
so many Manus Swayambhuva (a generic name, mysterious and meaning far more than
appears), each of these becoming, as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity.
(See "The Manus and the Manvantaras Explained by a Western Mystic and
Mathematician.")
As to the question of the four
distinct races of mankind that preceded our Fifth Race, there is nothing
mystical in it, except the ethereal bodies of the first races; and it is a
matter of legendary, nevertheless, very correct history. That legend is
universal. And if the Western savant pleases to see in it only a myth, it does
not make the slightest difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the
tradition of the fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as
the Egyptians had, and the Hindus have, to this day.
Trying to account for the community
of legends in the remote antiquity -- held by Chinese, Chaldean, Egyptians,
Indians and Greeks -- and for the absence of any certain vestige of
civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the author of "Mythical
Monsters," remarks, that "we must not be surprised if we do not
immediately discover the vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty
thousand years ago. With an ephemeral architecture (as in China), the sites of
vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a few thousands of
years from natural decay . . . and how much more . . . if . . . minor
cataclysms have intervened, such as local inundations, earthquakes, deposition
of volcanic ashes, the spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See preceding foot-note.
** See Manu I., 32, 33. Vaiswanara
is, in another sense, the living magnetic fire that pervades the manifested
solar system. It is the most objective (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.
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deadly pestilence, by miasma, or by
the outpour of sulphurous fumes." ("Mythical Monsters," by Ch.
Gould, p. 134.)
And how many of such cataclysms have
changed the whole surface of the earth may be inferred from this Stanza:
"During the first seven crores
of the Kalpa (70,000,000 years) the Earth and its two Kingdoms (mineral and
vegetable), one already having achieved its seventh circle, the other, hardly
nascent, are luminous and semi-ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the
eleventh crore* the mother (Earth) grows opaque, and in the FOURTEENTH** the
throes of adolescence take place. These convulsions of nature (geological
changes) last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after which
they become periodical, and at long intervals."
The last change took place nearly
twelve crores of years ago (120,000,000). But the Earth with everything on her
face had become cool, hard and settled ages earlier. (Commentary, xxii.)
Thus, if we are to believe esoteric
teaching, there have been no more universal geological disturbances and changes
for the last 120 millions of years, and the Earth was, even before that time,
ready to receive her human stock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its
full physical development, as already stated, took place only about eighteen
millions of years ago, after the first great failure of nature to create beings
alone, without the help of the divine "Fashioners," had been followed
by the successive evolution of the first three races (See above Stanzas III. et
seq.). The actual duration of the first two and a-half Races is withheld from
all but the higher Initiates. The History of the Races begins at the separation
of the Sexes, when the preceding egg-bearing androgynous race perished rapidly,
and the subsequent sub-races of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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,
unless one is a great seer, or naturally intuitional, he will be unable to
realise that which can never be expressed in any existing terms.
** 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 (Shakespeare), for "As the moon changes her phases
every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings," and even
the Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the
seventh month and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins,
at three times seven all our 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., etc. Thus 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 Tetraktis. Therefore, the number seven
has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the Kabala "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."
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Third Root-Race appeared as an
entirely new race physiologically. It is this "destruction" which is
called allegorically the great "Vaivasvata Manu Deluge," when the
account shows Vaivasvata Manu (or "Humanity") remaining alone on
Earth in the Ark of Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish,
and the Seven Rishis "with him." The allegory is very plain:--
In the Symbolism of every nation, the
"Deluge" stands for Chaotic unsettled matter -- Chaos itself: and the
Water for the feminine principle -- the "Great Deep." As the Greek
Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it -- "Arche (ark) 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." Ark is also the mystic name of the
divine spirit of life which broods over chaos. Now Vishnu is the divine Spirit,
as an abstract principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of
life -- the third person of the Trimurti (composed of Brahma, the Creator,
Siva, the Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver). Vishnu is shown in the
allegory as guiding, under the form of a fish, the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu clean
across the waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the
esoteric meaning of the word fish. (See Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey,
etc.) Its theological meanings is phallic, but the metaphysical, divine. Jesus
is called the "Fish," and so were Vishnu and Bacchus: [[Ies]], the
"Saviour" of mankind, being but the monogram of the god Bacchus
called [[Ichthus]], the fish.* As to the Seven Rishis in the Ark, they
symbolised the seven principles, which became complete in man only after he had
separated, and become a human, and no longer a divine creature. (See for
further details, "The Seventh Manu.")
Nor have we many details about the submersion
of the continent inhabited by the Second Root Race. But the history of the
Third, "Lemuria," is given, as is that of Atlantis, the others being
only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before
the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene),** and it
is during this Deluge also -- an actual geological deluge this time -- that
Vaivasvata Manu is again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind,
or a portion of it, the Fourth Race, which is saved); so also he saves the
Fifth Race during the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says St. Augustin of Jesus,
"For 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.
** "Esoteric Buddhism," p.
55.
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remnants that perished 850,000 years
ago,* after which there was no great submersion until the day of Plato's
Atlantis, or Poseidonis, 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. It is of this cataclysm that the old
records (See the "Book of Enoch") say that "the ends of the
Earth got loose;" and upon which the legends and allegories of Vaivasvata,
Xisuthrus, Noah, Deukalion and all the tutti quanti of the Elect saved, have
been built. Tradition, taking into no account the difference between sidereal
and geological phenomena, calls both indifferently "deluges." Yet
there is a great difference. The cataclysm which destroyed the huge continent
of which Australia is the largest relic, was due to a series of subterranean
convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end
to its successor -- the fourth continent -- was brought on by successive
disturbances in the axial rotation. It began during the earliest tertiary
periods, and, continuing for long ages, carried away successively the last
vestige of Atlantis, with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion
of what is now Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its
flourishing continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, remained
in the annals of history, save in the Sacred records of the East.
Hence, Modern Science denies Atlantis
and its existence. It even denies any violent shiftings of the Earth's axis,
and would attribute the reason for the change of climates to other causes. But
this question is still an open one. If Dr. Croll will have it that all such
alterations can be accounted for by the effects of nutation and the precession
of the equinoxes, there are other men of Science, such as Sir H. James
(Athenaeum, Aug. 25, 1860), and Sir John Lubbock (ibid), who feel more inclined
to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the axis of
rotation. Against this the majority of the astronomers are again arrayed. But
then, what have they not denied before now, and what have they not denounced --
only to accept it later on whenever the hypothesis became undeniable fact?
How far our figures agree, or rather
disagree with modern Science will be seen further in the Addenda to this Book,
where the geology and anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared
with the same in Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned in the
Secret Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This event, the destruction of the
famous island of Ruta and the smaller one 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
place the Miocene only so short a way back as 850,000 years; whatever they do,
it is several million years ago that the main Atlantis perished.
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very much with the calculations of
Modern Science, which calls Atlantis "Lemuria," however, whenever it
accepts such a submerged continent. With regard to the pre-human period, all
that can be said, at present, is, that even up to the appearance of the
"Mindless" First Race, the Earth was not without its inhabitants.
More may be said: that which Science -- recognizing only physical man -- has a
right to regard as the prehuman period, may be conceded to have extended from
the First Race down to the first half of the Atlantean race, since it is only
then that man became the "complete organic being he is now." And this
would make Adamic man no older than a few million of years.*
The author of the Qabbalah remarks
truly that "Man to-day, as an individual, is only a concatenation of the
being-hood of precedent human life," or lives, rather. "According to
the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam (Rishoun), went into three principal
classes corresponding to his three sons, viz.: Hesed, Habel, Ge-boor-ah,
Qai-yin and Ra'hmin Seth. These three were divided into 70 species, called: the
principal roots of the human race." (p. 422.)
"Said Rabbi Jehudah: 'How many
garments (of the incorporeal man) are these which are crowned' (from the day
man was 'created')? Said R. El'eazar: '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." (Zohar I., 119b. col. 475; Qabbalah, 412.)
This relates to the races (their
"garments," or degree of materiality) and to the three principles of
man in their three vehicles.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Huxley divides those races into
the quintuple group of Australioids, 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.)
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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)
Their 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 (the Lemurians) BUILT HUGE
CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT OF THE FIRES (lava) VOMITED.
OUT OF THE WHITE STONE OF THE MOUNTAINS (marble) AND THE BLACK STONE (of the
subterranean fires) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND
WORSHIPPED THEM (a).
(a) As the History of the first two
human races -- the last of the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans
-- proceeds, we have at this point to blend the two, and speak of them for a
time collectively.
Here reference is also made to the
divine Dynasties, such as were claimed by the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks,
etc., to have preceded their human kings; they are still believed in by the
modern Hindus, and are enumerated in their sacred books. But of these we shall
treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern
geologists are now being driven into admitting the evident existence of
submerged continents. But to confess their presence is not to accept that there
were men on them during the early geological periods;* --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the reason why, perhaps,
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 the modern Encyclopaedias. Its mention is carefully avoided except
in some books of Travels; modem science has an undeniable predilection for
forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, 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 -- pre-eminent among such specialists being Haeckel 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.
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ay, men and civilized nations, not
Palaeolithic 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. This primeval civilization did not,
as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation.
Between the final evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of
years had passed. Yet, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building
their first rock-cities out of stone and lava.* One of such great cities of
primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from
where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was
entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of
Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last
sub-races; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the
stone relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain
Cook, are "very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the
Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru," ("The Countries of the World," by
Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43); and that they are in the CYCLOPEAN STYLE. The
first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is
now known as the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages
in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Our best modern novelists, who are
neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to have, nevertheless, very
psychological and suggestively Occult dreams: witness Mr. Louis Stephenson and
his 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 living men sailed
northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out
in its general outlines 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.
The 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," but (which) "were PROBABLY akin to the
gorilla and orang of the present day" (Haeckel). In answer to whose
"probably," occultists point to another and a greater probability --
the one given in our text. (See above.)
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those days as there are now.
Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, and Karma -- its
work of destruction on the latter. The Australians and their like are the
descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by
the "Flames," extinguished it by long generations of bestiality.* The
Aryan nations could trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more
spiritual races of the Lemurians, in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had
personally incarnated.**
It is with the advent of the divine
Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And while, in some regions
of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal
life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to
protect himself against the Elements, his brothers -- more favoured than he by
their Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them -- built
cities, and cultivated arts and sciences. Nevertheless, and civilization
notwithstand-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Stanza II, ante. This would
account for the great difference and variation between the intellectual
capacities of races, nations, and individual men. While incarnating, and in
other cases only informing the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless
(manasless) race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to make their
choice between, and take into account, the past Karmas of the Monads, between
which and their bodies they had to become the connecting link. Besides which,
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."
** It is said by Krishna, the Logos
incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gita, "The seven great Rishis, the four
preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them
sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world," (Chap. X.
Verse 6.)
Here, by the seven great Rishis, the
seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us
bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven
stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the
planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on
earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, "the four preceding
Manus" are the four classes of the originally arupa gods -- the Kumaras,
the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are
not the Prajapatis, as the first are, 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 same to all
beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual
divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of
Manas) are in me, and I am in them." (Ibid, 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 recognised, the true meaning
of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent lecture on
the Bhagavatgita, ("Theosophist," April 1887, p. 444.)
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ing, while their pastoral brethren
enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, they, the builders, could now
obtain theirs only gradually; even these being generally used for power over
physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever
developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and
spiritual. The command and the guidance over his own psychic nature, which
foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity
innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking.
"There is no such thing as magic" philosophises "SHE," the
author forgetting that "magic" in her early day still meant the great
SCIENCE of WIDOM, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the
modern perversion of thought -- "though there is such a thing as knowledge
of the Secrets of Nature." (p. 152). But they have become "Secrets"
only in our race, and were public property with the Third.
Gradually, mankind went down in
stature, for, even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean race, the
majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save the hierarchy of the
"Elect," the followers and disciples of the "Sons of Will and
Yoga" -- called later the "Sons of the Fire Mist."
Then came the Atlanteans; the giants
whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with
evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race. But, as
said in the Commentary:--
The last survivors of the fair child
of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had perished ages before. Their
(Lemuria's) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now the
"fabled" Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of their
accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and
underground ("cave-men"), when the golden yellow race (the Fourth)
became in its turn "black with sin." From pole to pole the Earth had
changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of
Sveta-dwipa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya, east and west, the first, the one and
the pure, had become corrupted. . . . The demi-gods of the Third had made room
for the semi-demons of the Fourth Race. Sveta-dwipa, whose northern parts of
the Toyambudhi the seven Kumaras (Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, Sanatkumara, Jata,
Vodhu, and Panchasikha) had visited, agreeably with exoteric tradition (See the
Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purana; Asiat. Researches also, Vol. XI., pp. 99,
100); the White Island had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black
land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dwipa (Pushkara) and
Rakshasas from the seventh
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climate replaced the Saddhus and the
ascetics of the Third age, who "had descended to them from other and higher
regions." . . . .
It is evident that, taken in their
dead letter, the Puranas read as an absurd tissue of fairy tales and no better.
But if one reads chapters I., II. and III. from Book II. (Vol. II.) of Vishnu
Purana and accepts verbatim its geography, geodesy, and ethnology, in the
matter of Priyavrata's seven sons, among whom the father divides the seven
Dwipas (Continental Islands); and then proceeds to study how the eldest son,
the King of Jambu-dwipa, Agnidhra, apportioned Jambu-dwipa among his nine sons;
and then how Nabhi his son, who had a hundred sons and apportioned all these in
his turn -- then the reader is likely to throw the book away and pronounce it a
farrago of nonsense. But the esoteric student will understand that, in the days
when the Puranas were written, the true meaning was clear only to the Initiated
Brahmins, who wrote those works allegorically and would not give the whole
truth to the masses. And he will explain to the Orientalists who, beginning
with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, made and still are making
such a mess of it, that the first three chapters (See Wilson's trans. of Vishnu
Purana Book II et seq.) purposely confuse the following subjects and events:--
I. The series of Kalpas or Ages (also
of Races) are never taken into account; e.g., events which have happened in one
being allowed to stand along with those which took place in another. The
chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the
Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and
calculations in saying -- "Whenever any contradictions in different
Puranas are observed, they are ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the
like" (Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas).
II. The several meanings of the words
"Manvantara" and "Kalpa" or age, are withheld, and the
general one only given.
III. In the genealogy and geography
of the Kings and their Varshas (countries) and Dwipas, they are all allowed to
be regarded as terrestrial regions.
Now, the truth is that, without
entering into too minute details, it is easy and permissible to show that:--
(a) The Seven Dwipas apportioned to
Priyavrata's septenary progeny refer to several localities: first of all to our
planetary chain. Jambu-dwipa alone representing our globe, the six others are
the (to us) invisible companion globes of this earth. This is shown by the very
nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu (dwipa) "is in
the centre of all these (the so-called insular continents) and is surrounded"
by a sea of salt water (lavana), whereas Plaksha, Salmalia,
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Kusa, Krauncha, Saka and Pushkara,
are "surrounded severally -- by great seas of sugar-cane juice, of wine,
of clarified butter, of curds, of milk," etc., etc., and such like
metaphorical names. (Chap. II, Book II) This is shown furthermore by --
(b) Bhaskara Acharya, who uses
expressions from the Secret Doctrine and its books, in his description of the
sidereal position of all these dwipas:-- "the sea of milk and the sea of
curds" etc., meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of nebulae;
the more so, since he names "the country to the south of the equator
Bhur-loka, that to the north Bhuva-loka, Swar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya
lokas"; and says: "Those lokas are gradually attained by increasing
religious merits," i.e., they are various paradises. (See Bibliotheca
Indica. Trans. of the Goladhyaya of the Siddhanta-siromani III., 21-44).
(c) That this geographical division
of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does
not belong only to our Round nor even to our races (the name of Bharata Varsha
(India) notwithstanding), is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator
of Vishnu Purana. For he closes the first chapter by saying: "Bharata (the
son of Nabhi, who gave his name to Bharata-Varsha or India) consigned the
Kingdom to his son Sumati . . . . and abandoned his life at Salagrama. He was
afterwards born again as a religious Brahman, in a distinguished family of
ascetics . . . . under these princes (Bharata's descendants) Bharata Varsha was
divided into nine portions, and their descendants held successively possession
of the country for seventy-one periods of the aggregate of the four ages,"
or the reign of a Manu, representing a Mahayuga of 4,320,000 years.
But having said so much, Parasara
suddenly explains that "this was the creation of Swayambhuva Manu, by
which the earth was peopled when he presided over the first Manvantara, in the
Kalpa of Varaha," i.e., the boar incarnation, or Avatar. Now every Brahmin
knows that it is only with Vaivasvata Manu that our Humanity began on this
Earth (or Round). And if the Western reader turns to the sub-section on
"The Primeval Manus of Humanity," he will see that Vaivasvata is the
seventh of the fourteen Manus who preside over our planetary chain during its
life cycle: i.e., that representing or standing in every Round for two Manus of
the same name (a Root and a Seed Manu), he is the Root Manu of the Fourth
Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only "an incongruity"
(see his Vishnu Purana, vol. II., p. 108, footnote), 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.
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But as Orientalists know nothing of
the secret teaching, they will take everything literally, and then turn round
and abuse the writers of that which they do not comprehend!
These genealogies embrace a period of
three and a half Rounds; they speak of pre-human periods, and explain the
descent into generation of every Manu -- the first manifested sparks of the ONE
Unity -- and show, furthermore, each of these human sparks dividing into, and
multiplying by, first, the Pitars, the human ancestors, then by human Races. No
being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human cycles.
Therefore the Sloka says, "Happy are those who are born, even from the
(latent) condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-varsha; as that is the way to .
. . final liberation." In Jambu-dwipa, Bharata is considered the best of
its divisions, because IT IS THE LAND OF WORKS. In it alone "it is that
the succession of four Yugas (ages), the Krita, the Treta, the Dwapara, and
Kali take place"; when, therefore, Parasara, asked by Maitreya "to
give him the descriptions of the Earth," returns again to the enumeration
of the same Dwipas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the
Swayambhuva Manvantara -- it is simply a blind, yet, to him who reads between
the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their
sub-divisions, islands, and continents, some of which were called by the names
of celestial lokas, and by those of other globes. Hence the confusion.
All these are called by the
Orientalists "mythical" and "fabulous" islands and lands.*
Very true, some are not of this earth, but they still exist. The "White
Island" and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since the latter was the
name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the
land of Sin -- Atlantis, in general, not to Plato's island alone; and since the
former was (a) the Sveta-dwipa of theogony, and (b) Saka-dwipa, or Atlantis
(its earliest portions) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its
"seven holy rivers that washed away all sin," and its "seven
districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no
deviation from virtue," as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas
-- that caste which even the Brahmins acknowledged as not inferior to their own
-- and which was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In a lecture, Professor Pengelly,
F.R.S., quoting Professor Oliver, makes him say "that the present Atlantic
islands' Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication
with the mainland of the New World," but himself adds 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. Moreover, surely the argument for the existence
of Atlantis does not rest on Botany alone.
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the nursery of the first Zaratushta.
The Brahmins are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Narada's advice, who told
them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun in the temple built by Samba
(the reputed) son of Krishna, who in reality had none. In this the Puranas are
historical --allegory notwithstanding -- and Occultism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in Bhavishya
Purana. It is stated that, having been cured by Surya (the Sun) of leprosy,
Samba, having built a temple dedicated to the Sun, was looking for pious
Brahmins to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to
the God. But Narada (this virgin ascetic whom one finds in every age in the
Puranas) advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brahmins to receive
emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Samba
to Gauramukha (white face), the Purohita or family priest of Hgrasena, King of
Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best employ. The priest directed
Samba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Surya, to discharge the duty.
Ignorant of the place they lived in, it is Surya, the Sun himself, who directs
Samba to Sakadwipa beyond the salt water. Then Samba performs the journey,
using Garuda (Vishnu's and Krishna's vehicle, the great Bird) who lands him
among the Magas, etc.
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years
ago, and Narada, who is found reborn in every cycle (or race), besides Garuda
-- the symbol esoterically of the great cycle -- show the allegory; yet the
Magas are the Magi of Chaldea, and their class and worship were born on the
earlier Atlantis, in Saka-dwipa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed
that the Magas of Saka-dwipa are the forefathers of the fire-worshipping
Parsis. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing hundreds of
thousands to a few centuries this time: they carry the event -- Narada and
Samba notwithstanding -- to the days of the flight of the Parsis to Gujerat,
which is simply absurd, as that was in the VIIIth cent. of our era. Though the
Magas in the Bhavishya Purana are credited with still living in Saka-dwipa in
the day of Krishna's Son, yet the last of it -- Plato's "Atlantis" --
had perished 6000 years before. They were Mag "late of" Saka-Dwipa,
and lived in those days in Chaldea. This is an intentional confusion, again.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth
Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet the human Asuras and the Rakshasas which they
became later. In those days large portions of the future continent of Atlantis
were yet part and parcel of the Ocean floors. "Lemuria," as we have
called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.* It covered
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As shown in the Introduction, it
stands to reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even Atlantis are the
real archaic names of the lost continents, but have been adopted by us for the
sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given to those [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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the whole area of space from the foot
of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over
what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi); from
Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it
stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and
Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right
hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few
degrees of the Antarctic Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the
Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not
only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26
S., and longitude 110 W. (See Addenda to this Book II., Section, "Proofs
of the Submerged Continents.") This statement seems corroborated by
Science, -- even if only partially; as, when discussing continental trends, and
showing the infra-Arctic masses trending generally with the Meridian, several
ancient continents are generally mentioned, though inferentially. Among such
the "Mascarene continent," which included Madagascar, stretching
north and south, is spoken of, and the existence of another ancient continent
running "from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other
parts of Europe were sea bottom," is taught.* The latter corroborates,
then, the Occult teaching which shows the (now) polar regions as the earliest
of the seven cradles of Humanity, and as the tomb of the bulk of the mankind of
that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic continent of Lemuria began
separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation
in the Commentary, to a decrease of velocity in the earth's rotation:--
"When the Wheel runs at the
usual rate, its extremities (the poles) agree with its middle circle (equator),
when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance
on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 the
"Poseidon" (another substitute or rather a translation of the real
name) -- was the last of it some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of
the countries and islands of both continents are given in the Puranas; but to
mention them specially, as found in other more ancient works, such as the Surya
Siddhanta, would necessitate too lengthy explanations. If, in earlier writings,
the two seem to have been too faintly disconnected, this must be due to
careless reading and want of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred
to as Aryans, and a reader confuses them with the Hindus and the latter with
the Fourth Race, as they live (some of them) in ancient Lanka -- the blame will
not fall on the writer.
* See Professor Dana's article,
"American Journal of Science," III, v. 442-3; Prof. Winchell's
"World Life"; and other geological works.
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the two ends, and new lands arise in
the middle belt (equatorial lands), while those at the ends are subject to
pralayas by submersion . . . ."
And again:--
. . . "Thus the wheel (the
Earth) is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath
of its waters (tides). Toward the close of the age (Kalpa) of a great (root)
race, the regents of the moon (the Pitar fathers, or Pitris) begin drawing
harder, and thus flatten the wheel about its belt, when it goes down in some
places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities
(poles) new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in."
We have but to read astronomical and
geological works, to see the meaning of the above very clearly. Scientists
(modern Specialists) have ascertained the influence of the tides on the
geological distribution of land and water on the planets, and the shifting of
the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new
lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.*
Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the
periods of the earth's first incrustation. (See "American
Naturalist," XVIII., 15 et seq.); therefore it seems easy for Science to
verify the Esoteric statements. We propose to treat of this at greater length
in the Addenda. (Vide § § V. and VI.)
It is asked by some Theosophists:
"What will Atlantis be like when raised?" they understanding from a
few words in "Esoteric Buddhism" that "old continents" that
have been submerged will reappear. Here, again, there is a slight
misconception. Were the same identical lands of Atlantis that were submerged to
be raised again, then they would, indeed, be barren for ages. Because the
Atlantic sea-bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and
more is forming -- a new "cretaceous formation" of strata, in fact --
is no reason why, when the time for a new continent to appear arrives, a
geological convulsion and upraising of the sea bottom should not dispose of
these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more
come to the surface. The racial cataclysms are not a Noah's deluge of forty
days -- a kind of Bombay monsoon.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Speaking on periodical elevation
and subsidence of the equatorial and polar regions, and ensuing changes of
climate, Mr. Winchell (professor of Geology at 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' 're-apparitions' and other
faunal dislocations in the vertical and horizontal distributions of fossil
remains. These phenomena are well known to the student of geology."
("Effects of Astronomical Changes.")
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That the periodical sinking and
re-appearance of the mighty continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by the
modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all
the proofs of the same have been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit
and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred
Islands (Dwipas) are mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta, the oldest astronomical
work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean
astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out re-incarnated in Ptolemy. Yet, it
is a mistake to call these "sacred islands" Atlantean -- as done by
us; for, like everything else in the Hindu Sacred Books, they are made to refer
to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Swayambhuva
Manu, to his seven sons -- was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these
islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages
later, to Atlanteans, whose continent had been submerged in its turn. When
originally mentioned by Parasara (Vishnu Purana) the seven refer to an esoteric
doctrine which is explained further on. Of all the seven islands, Jambu-dwipa
is the only one that is terrestrial, for it is our globe. In the Puranas every
reference to the North of Meru is connected with that primeval Eldorado, now
the North Polar region; which, when the magnolia blossomed there where now we
see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a continent again. Science
speaks of an ancient continent which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the
Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological
periods, these regions formed a horse-shoe-like continent, whose one end, the
Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the
other contained Behring Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended
southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days
must have been right under the lower curve of the semi-circle. This continent
was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of
Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains re-appeared again on the face
of the Oceans. Therefore, though it can be said without departing from truth
that Atlantis is included in the Seven great insular continents, since the
Fourth Race Atlanteans got some of the Lemurian relics, and, settling on the islands,
included them among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made
and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is
attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of
in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the cataclysm which
befell their own land, settled on that remnant of Lemuria only to perish
thereon, when destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava. This may be
regarded as fiction by certain geographers and geologists; to the Occul-
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tists it is history. What does
Science know to the contrary? "Until the appearance of a map, published at
Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the
latter was believed to be part of India . . . . . Science also refuses to
sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at
one end of the line, and South America at the other, were 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 'Brahmans of Upper India' stretched from
Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. 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." (But see "Five
years of Theosophy," art. "Leaflets from Esoteric History," pp.
338 and 340.) This was written from the words of a MASTER -- a rather doubtful
authority for the materialists and the sceptics. But here we have one of their
own flock, and a bird of the same feather -- Ernest Haeckel, who, in his
distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost verbatim: . . . .
"It would seem that the region on the earth's surface where the evolution
of these primitive men from the CLOSELY RELATED CATARRHINE APES (! !) took
place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the
bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished -- H.P.B.] 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." (See supra and compare "The Pedigree
of Man," p. 80-81.)
In the epoch we are treating of, the
Continent of "Lemuria," had already broken asunder in many places,
and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor
the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the
Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions
were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the "lotus leaves"
of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia,
etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the
Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were
gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed
the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest
civilisation of the Third
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Race. Submerged with the rest, a
volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the
Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain
epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of
Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of
the last descendants of the Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to
a degree by materialistic Science. Haeckel, 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." ("Pedigree of Man," p. 82. But see footnote supra
and the Addenda.)
It certainly was, since it stretched,
during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie,
and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few
surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a
large bit of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Haeckel, 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 northwards 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 . . . " (p. 81). "Behold," writes a MASTER, "the
relics of that once great nation (Lemuria of the Third Race) in some of the
flat-headed aborigines of your Australia" ("Esoteric Buddhism,"
p. 65). But they belong to the last remnants of the Seventh Sub-race of the Third.
Prof. Haeckel must also have dreamt a dream and seen for once a true vision!
It is to this period that we have to
look for the first appearance of the Ancestors of those, who are termed by us
the most ancient peoples of the world -- now called respectively the Aryan Hindus,
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 had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was
then, but who were Beings from spheres higher and more celestial than our own
sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is useless of course to attempt to
force their existence on sceptics. Their greatest pride consists in proving
their patronymic denomination as catarrhinides; which fact they try to
demonstrate on the alleged
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authority of the Coccyx appended to
their os sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if they only had it long enough,
they would wag in joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These
will remain as faithful to their ape-ancestors as Christians will to tailless
Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets right on this point theosophists and
students of Occult Sciences.
If we regard the Second portion of
the Third Race as the first representatives of the really human race with solid
bones, then Haeckel's surmise that "the evolution of the primitive men
took place . . . . in either Southern Asia or . . . . Lemuria" -- Africa,
whether Eastern or Western being out of question -- is correct enough, if not
entirely so. To be accurate, however, in the same way that the evolution of the
First Race (from the bodies of the pitars) took place on seven distinctly
separated regions of the (then) only Earth at the arctic pole -- so did the
ultimate transformation of the Third occur: it began in those northern regions,
which have just been described a few pages back as including Behring's Straits,
and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was
semi-tropical even in the Arctic regions and most adapted to the primitive
wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once
frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The commentary tells
us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development
when:--
"The axle of the Wheel tilted.
The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the SWEAT
BORN; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were
dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish REMAINED AS HALF-GROWN
BABES* IN SIZE AND INTELLECT. This was the third pralaya of the races.**
Which means again, that our globe is
subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races.
For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven
terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the
earth's axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all
blindly, as science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic
law. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as "the great
ADJUSTER." Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic
vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, which are always followed
by these vicissitudes; nor does it seem so sure of the axial changes. And being
unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial phenomena
altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Half-grown babes" in
comparison with their giant Brethren on other zones. So would we now.
** Relates to Lemuria.
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law which alone could reasonably explain
such sudden changes and their results. It has tried to account for them by
various more or less fantastic speculations; one of which would be the sudden,
and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De Boucheporn's
hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer
holding to our esoteric explanation, since FOHAT is as good as any comet,
having, in addition, universal intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu's
Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial
disturbances; when the old continents -- save the first one -- were sucked in
by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there
had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time;
the survival of the fittest nations and races was secured through timely help;
and the unfit ones -- the failures -- were disposed of by being swept off the
earth. Such sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as
one may think, but requires several thousands of years before the new house is
set in order.
The Sub-races are subject to the same
cleansing process, as also the side-branchlets (the family-Races). Let one,
well-acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance
into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe, take notes of what
he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective
rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles -- especially with the
Sidereal year, equal to 25,868 of our solar years.* If the observer is gifted
with the faintest intuition, then will he find how the weal and woe of nations
is intimately connected with the beginning and close of this sidereal cycle.
True, the non-occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant
times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place
nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge or -- if
he so prefers -- speculation on the fate of every one of the modern nations he
knows of -- about 16,000 years hence.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There are other cycles, of course,
cycles within cycles -- and this is just that 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 fifty minutes ten seconds, 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 eleven minutes twenty-four seconds, annually,"
(see the article on Astronomy in Encyclopaedia Britannica), "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, sixty-one minutes thirty-four seconds, and hence the equinox
returns to the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years." We
have mentioned this cycle in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., in relation to other
cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race.
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Our meaning is very clear. Every
sidereal year the tropics recede from the pole four degrees in each revolution
from the equinoctial points, as the equator rounds through the Zodiacal
constellations. Now, as every astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only
twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator.
Hence it has still 2 1/2 degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal year;
which gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a
reprieve of about 16,000 years.*
After the Great Flood of the Third
Race (the Lemurians) --
"Men decreased considerably in
stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in
godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and
Pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles) . . . Many acquired DIVINE, more --
UNLAWFUL knowledge, and followed willingly the LEFT PATH." (Commentary
xxxiii.)
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching
destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish
this fourth destruction? Who can tell. . . . But we are told that --
-------
(44.) THEY (the Atlanteans) BUILT
GREAT IMAGES, NINE YATIS HIGH (27 feet) -- THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES (a). LUNAR
FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS (the Lemurians). WATER THREATENED
THE FOURTH (Race) (b).
(a) It is well worth noticing that
most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an
undeniably submerged continent -- as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi,
a region which had been submerged for untold ages -- are all between 20 and 30
feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all
twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders. (See §
"Stones, Witnesses to Giants," at the end of this Stanza.) The writer
is well aware that the modern archaeologists have decided now that "these
statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials of the
British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary
decisions of modern science which does not carry much weight.
We are told that it is after the
destruction of "Lemuria" by subterranean fires that men went on
steadily decreasing in stature -- a process already commenced after their
physical FALL -- and that finally, some millions of years after, they reached
between six and seven feet, and are now dwindling down (as the older Asiatic
races) to nearer five than
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See at the end of this Stanza
"On the Duration of Ages and Cycles."
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six feet. As Pickering shows, there
is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth Root Race) a singular diversity
of stature; the members of the Polynesian family (Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga
islanders) are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind; but the Indian
tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below
the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the
very earliest of the surviving sub-races, the others to the very last and
transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the
Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow.
(b) Now, how could those records have
been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac is denied to
the Hindus by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Aryan
Hindus knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This
uncalled-for slander was so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more,
by the clear evidence of facts, as not to need very much additional refutation.
While the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs (See Denon's "Voyage en
Egypte" Vol. II.) irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than
three-and-a-half sidereal years -- or about 87,000 years -- the Hindu
calculations cover nearly thirty-three such years, or 850,000 years. The
Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of
the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the
Sphinxiad, "These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of
Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the (last local) Flood (in Asia), or
Age of Horror," in the latitude of India. And they possess recorded
observations from the date of the first Great Flood within the Aryan historical
memory -- that which submerged the last portions of Atlantis, 850,000 years
ago. The floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical.
The sinking and transformation of
Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended
its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans.
The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient
Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the
gigantic continent described a few pages back. As a MASTER says (See
"Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65):-- "Why should not your geologists
bear in mind that under the continents explored and fathomed by them . . . .
there may be hidden, deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds,
other and far older continents whose strata have never been geologically
explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why
not admit that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis,
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been several times already submerged,
and had the time to re-appear again and bear their new groups of mankind and
civilisations; and that at the first great geological upheaval at the next
cataclysm, in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning
to the end of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down and
the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again?"
Not the same identical continents, of
course.
But here an explanation is needed. No
confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a Northern
"Lemuria." The prolongation of that great continent into the North
Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the
site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted
that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only
embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the
shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round "South Africa" (then a
mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The
great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden -- which every geologist
regards as the mouth of a former great river -- is the bed of the main stream
which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age. The former reality of this
river is a fact of science -- will its votaries acknowledge the necessity of
accepting the Secondary-age Northern Lemuria, which their data demand?
Professor Berthold Seeman not only accepted the reality of such a mighty
continent, but regarded Australia and Europe as formerly portions of one
continent -- thus corroborating the whole "horse-shoe" doctrine
already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could be
given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet
in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a
point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts
almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African
coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d'Acunha. This ridge is a remnant
of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the
reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian
Ocean. (Cf. chart adapted from the "Challenger" and
"Dolphin" soundings in Mr. Donnelly's, "Atlantis, the
Antediluvian World," p. 47.)
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was
the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter,
indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation
of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special
requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so
in that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast
line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in
natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth Race
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Atlanteans were developed from a
nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward
a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Their continent was
formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in
the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the true home of the great
Race known as the Atlanteans. After this consummation was once attained it
follows, as stated on the highest "occult" authority, that
"Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than
Europe with America." ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 58.)
The above, coming from quarters so
discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be regarded by it as a more
or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is
put aside, notwithstanding that its statements are all confined within a frame
of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. Discoveries in this
direction will vindicate the claims of the Asiatic philosophers, who maintain
that Sciences -- Geology, Ethnology, and History included --were pursued by the
Antediluvian nations who lived an untold number of ages ago. Future finds will
justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H.
A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic
nations as the Egyptians, Aryans of India, Chaldeans, Chinese, and Assyrians
are the result of preceding civilizations during "myriads of
centuries";* 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."** 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 ("Pre-Adamites," p.
120), 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 have to
believe the statements of Herodotus, who records in Euterpe (cxlii.), that the
written history of the Egyptian priests dated from about 12,000 years before
his time. But what are 12,000 or even 120,000 years compared with the millions
of years elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been
left without witnesses, its tremendous antiquity, notwithstanding. The complete
records of the growth, development, social, and even political life of the
Lemurians, have been preserved in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "History of English
Literature," p. 23.
** Quoted in "Atlantis,"
etc., p. 132.
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secret annals. Unfortunately, few are
those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to
understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its
symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of the
seven sciences; which sciences find their expression in the seven different
applications of the secret records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal
with modes of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every
text relates to, and has to be rendered from, one of the following standpoints
--
1. The Realistic plane of thought;
2. The Idealistic;
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend
the average consciousness, especially of the materialistic mind, to admit of
their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no
purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of
thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely
adhered to during the process of interpretation. For, it is either symbolical
(archaic mode of thought), emblematical (a later though very ancient mode of
thought), parabolical (allegory), hieroglyphical, or again logo-grammical --
the most difficult method of all, as every letter, as in the Chinese language,
represents a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the Vedas,
the "Book of the Dead," or the Bible (to a degree), is composed of
such logograms. No one who is not initiated into the mystery of the occult
religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment
means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How
is it to be expected that the merely profane thinker, however great his
erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to say -- i.e., in that symbolism which can
never get out of the old grooves of Solar-myth and sexual-worship -- shall
penetrate into the arcana. behind the veil. One who deals with the husk or
shell of the dead letter, and devotes himself to the kaleidoscopic
transformation of barren word-symbols, can never expect to get beyond the
vagaries of modern mythologists.
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus,
Deukalion, Noah, etc., etc. -- all the head-figures of the world-deluges,
universal and partial, astronomical or geological -- all furnish in their very
names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can
but read them fully. All such deluges are based on events that took place in
nature, and stand as historical records, therefore, whether they were sidereal,
geological, or even simply allegorical, of a moral event on other and higher
planes of being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during
the long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
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To speak of a race nine yatis, or 27
feet high, in a work claiming a more scientific character than "Jack the
Giant-Killer," is a somewhat unusual proceeding. "Where are your
proofs?" the writer will be asked. In History and tradition, is the
answer. Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they
exist in oral and written lore. India had her Danavas and Daityas; Ceylon had
her Rakshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldea, her
Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with the
famous giants, Anakim (Numbers xiii. 33). Moses speaks of Og, a king who was
nine cubits high (15 ft. 4 in.) and four wide (Deut. iii. 11), and Goliath was
"six cubits and a span in height" (or 10 ft. 7 in.). The only
difference found between the "revealed Scripture" and the evidence
furnished to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus,
etc., etc., is this: While the pagans mention only the skeletons of giants,
dead untold ages before, relics that some of them had personally seen, the
Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that geology and archaeology should
believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the day of
Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed
in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the
way. Either the latter or the giants have to be given up. (But see Part III.,
Addenda, the closing chapter.)
Of still standing witnesses to the
submerged continents, and the colossal men that inhabited them, there are still
a few. Archaeology claims several such on this globe, though beyond wondering
"what these may be" -- it never made any serious attempt to solve the
mystery. Besides the Easter Island statues mentioned already, to what epoch do
the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian, belong? Archaeology
assigns them to the first centuries of Christianity (as usual), and errs in
this as it does in many other speculations. A few words of description will
show the readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will
first examine what is known of them to orthodox Science. In "The Countries
of the World," by Robert Brown, in Vol. IV., page 43, it is stated that --
"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. . . .
" . . . But who made the great
stone images (p. 44, etc.) which are now the chief attraction of the island to
visitors? No one knows" -- says the reviewer. "It is more than likely
that they were here when the present inhabitants (a handful of Polynesian
savages) arrived. . . . Their workmanship is
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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 27 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-Huanuco in Peru" (vol.
iii., pp. 310, 311).
"THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE
THAT ANY OF THE STATUES HAVE BEEN BUILT UP, BIT BY BIT, BY SCAFFOLDING ERECTED
AROUND THEM" -- adds the journal very suggestively -- without explaining
how they could be built otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as
the statues themselves. One of the best of these colossal images is now in the
British Museum. The images at Ronororaka -- the only ones now found erect --
are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and one resting on the back
of its head like the head of a man asleep. Their types, though all are
long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the
noses, the mouths and chins differ greatly in form, their head-dress, moreover
-- a kind of flat cap with a back piece attached to it to cover the back
portion of the head --showing that the originals were no savages of the stone
period. Verily the question may be asked -- "Who made them?" -- but
it is not archaeology nor yet geology that is likely to answer, though the
latter recognizes in the Island a portion of a submerged continent.
But who cut the Bamian, still more
colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world, for
Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty" (now at New York) is a dwarf when
compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits
who have visited the place, speak of a mountain "all honeycombed with
gigantic cells," with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are
referred to as the modern Miaotse (vide supra, quotation from Shoo-King) the
last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had "troubled the earth";
the Jesuits are right, and the Archaeologists, who see Buddhas in the largest
of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins
discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of
colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains,
are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. "Masses
of enormous human bones" were found "in America, near Misorte,"
a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local
tradition points out as the landing
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spot of those giants who overran
America when it had hardly arisen from the waters (See "De La Vega,"
Vol. ix., ch. ix.).*
Central Asian traditions say the same
of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have
stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand
of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-warriors of
Nadir-Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia,
half-way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Kobhibaba, a huge mountain of
the Paropamisian (or Hindu-Kush) chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the
sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool,
ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the XIIIth century.
The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially
natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of
Buddhist monks who had established in them their viharas. Such viharas are to
be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock-cut temples of India and the
valleys of Jellalabad. It is at the entrance of some of these that five
enormous statues, of what is regarded as Buddha, have been discovered or rather
rediscovered in our century, as the famous Chinese traveller, Hiouen-Thsang,
speaks of, and saw them, when he visited Bamian in the VIIth century.
When it is maintained that no larger
statues exist on the whole globe, the fact is easily proven on the evidence of
all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus,
the largest is 173 feet high, or seventy feet higher than the "Statue of
Liberty" now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 metres
high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose limbs passed easily
the largest vessels of those days, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The
second statue, cut out in the rock like the first one, is only 120 feet (15
feet taller than the said "Liberty").** The third statue is only 60
feet high -- the two others still smaller, the last one being only a little
larger than the average tall man of our present race. The first and largest of
the Colossi represents a man draped in a kind of toga; M. de Nadeylac thinks
(See infra) that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head,
the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, point out undeniably that
Buddha was meant to be represented. But the above proves nothing.
Notwithstanding the fact
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See also "Pneumatologie des
Esprits" Vol. III., p. 55, de Mirville.
** The first and second have, in
common with Bartholdi's Statue, an entrance at the foot, leading by a winding
staircase cut in the rock up into the heads of the statues. The eminent French
archeologist and anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, justly remarks in his
work that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured human
figure more colossal than the first of the two.
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that most of the now existing figures
of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samadhi, have large drooping ears,
this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to
esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of
wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and hears
all, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can
escape. "The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the
smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its
deliverance":--says a Stanza. Gautama Buddha was an Aryan Hindu, and an
approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese,
who, as in Cochin, distort them artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned
the grottos of the Miaotse into Viharas and cells, came into Central Asia about
or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore Hiouen Thsang, speaking
of the colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation
that overlaid the statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but
of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The very drapery,
in contrast to the figure itself, cut out in the standing rock, is made of
plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most
careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The
statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than
Buddhism. Whom does it represent in such case, it may be asked?
Once more tradition, corroborated by
written records, answers the query, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist
Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to
dust, and as the three were found by them in colossal niches at the entrance of
their future abode, they covered the figures with plaster, and, over the old,
modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathagata. The interior walls of
the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and
the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and
ornaments -- which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting -- are all due
to the piety of the monk-ascetics, like some other minor figures and rock-cut
ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates
of the Fourth Race, who sought refuge, after the submersion of their continent,
in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains.
Moreover, the five statues are an imperishable record of the esoteric teaching
about the gradual evolution of the races.
The largest is made to represent the
First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard,
everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its
remembrance would otherwise never have
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survived the Atlantean Deluge. The
second -- 120 feet high -- represents the sweat-born; and the third --
measuring 60 feet -- immortalizes the race that fell, and thereby inaugurated
the first physical race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of
which are represented in the Statues found on Easter Isle; but they were only
from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it
had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller,
though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series
culminated finally in the latter. (See the following sub-section on
"Cyclopean Ruins, and Colossal Stones as Witnesses to Giants.")
These are, then, the
"Giants" of antiquity, the ante- and post-diluvian Gibborim of the
Bible. They lived and flourished one million rather than between three and four
thousand years ago. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as
"grasshoppers" in comparison with them, are thus a piece of Israelite
fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and
origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums
of their chronology into millions of years.
In everything that pertains to
prehistoric times the reader ought to bear the wise words of Montaigne in his
mind. 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
persuade 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 doe such 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." (Essays, chap. xxvi.)
A fair-minded scholar should, before
denying the possibility of our history and records, search modern History, as
well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modern
literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the
unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is found
scattered about and buried even in the British Museum alone. The
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reader is asked to throw one more
glance at the subject-matter treated of in the chapter which follows:--
-------
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES
AS WITNESSES TO GIANTS.
In his enormous works -- Memoires
addressees a l'Academie des Sciences -- de Mirville, carrying out the task of
proving the reality of the devil and showing his abode in every ancient and
modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of "historical
evidence" that in the days of miracle -- Pagan and Biblical -- the stones
walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sung. That finally,
"Christ-stone," or Christ-Rock, "the spiritual Rock" that
followed "Israel" (I Corinth. x. 4) "became a Jupiter
lapis," swallowed by his father Saturn, "under the shape of a
stone."* We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and
materialization of Biblical metaphors, simply for the sake of proving the
Satanism of idols, though a good deal might be said** on this subject. But
without claiming any such peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our
stones, we may collect, in our turn, every available evidence on hand, to show
that (a) had there been no giants to move about such colossal rocks, there
could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany) and other such
Cyclopean structures; and (b) were there no such thing as MAGIC, there could
never have been so many witnesses to oracular and speaking stones.
In the Achaica (p. 81) we find
Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as
mighty stupid "for worshipping stones." But, having reached Arcadia,
he adds: "I have changed my way of thinking." Therefore, without
worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same -- a crime
Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans with, as they do likewise -- one
may be allowed to believe in what so many great philosophers and holy men have
believed in, without deserving to be called an "idiot" by modern
Pausaniases.
The reader is referred to Volume VI.
of the Academie des Inscriptions (Memoires, p. 518, et seq.) if he would study
the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of Magic and
psychic powers. In a poem on Stones attributed to Orpheus, those stones are
divided into ophites and siderites, "serpent-stones" and
"star-stones." "The 'Ophite'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pierres Animees et parlantes., p.
283. Theologie de la Pierre, 270.
** Saturn is Kronos --
"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 Kronos is as sure "to swallow it" one
day, as he has swallowed Jupiter-lapis and still greater characters.
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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 Helanos
foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland . . " etc. (Falconnet.)
Sanchoniathon and Philo Byblius, in
referring to these betyles, call them "Animated Stones." Photius
repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius had
asserted before him. The latter (Eusebius) never parted with his ophites, which
he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from them, delivered in a small
voice resembling a low whistling.* Arnobius (a holy man who, "from a Pagan
had become one of the lights of the Church," Christians tell their readers)
confesses he could never meet on his passage with one of such stones without
putting it questions, "which is answered occasionally in a clear and sharp
small voice." Where is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan
ophites, we ask?
It is also known that the famous
stone at Westminster was called liafail -- "the speaking stone," --
which raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry
(Monuments Celtiques) says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:--**
"Ni fallat fatum, Scoti
quocumque locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur
ibidem."
Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain
Heraclius, who could distinguish at a glance the inanimate stones from those
which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which "ran away
when a hand approached them." (See Dictionnaire des Religions par l'abbe
Bertrand; art. on words Heraclius and Betyles.)
De Mirville -- who seeks to justify
the Bible -- inquires very pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge
were called in days of old chior-gaur (from Cor, "dance," whence
chorea, and gaur, a GIANT), or the dance of giants? And then he sends the
reader to receive his reply from the Bishop of St. Gildas. But the authors of
the Voyage dans le Comte
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The same, of course, as the
"small voice" heard by Elijah after the earthquake at the mouth of
the cave. (I Kings xix. 12.)
** The rocking, or Logan, stones bear
various names. The Celts had their clacha-brath, 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 in North America. (See Hodson's
"Letters from North America," Vol. II., p. 440.) Pliny speaks of several
in Asia (Hist. Nat. Lib. I., c. 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 and from a distance.
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de Cornouailles, sur les traces des
giants, and of various learned works on the ruins of Stonehenge,* Carnac and
West Hoadley, give far better and more reliable information upon this
particular subject. In those regions -- true forests of rocks -- immense monoliths
are found, "some weighing over 500,000 kilograms" (Cambry). These
"hinging stones" of Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of
a Druidical temple. But the Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, nor
giants. Who then, if not giants, could ever raise such masses (especially those
at Carnac and West Hoadley), range them in such symmetrical order that they
should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise
that they seem to hardly touch the ground, are set in motion at the slightest
touch of the finger, and would yet resist the efforts of twenty men who should
attempt to displace them.
We say, that most of these stones are
the relics of the last Atlanteans. We shall be answered that all the geologists
claim them to be of a natural origin. That, a rock when "weathering,"
i.e., losing flake after flake of its substance under influence of weather,
assumes this form. That, the "tors" in West England exhibit curious
forms, also produced by this cause. That, finally, as all scientists consider
the "rocking stones to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc.,
causing disintegration of rocks in layers" -- our statement will be justly
denied, especially as " we see this process of rock-modification in progress
around us to-day." Let us examine the case.
But read what Geology has to say, and
you will learn that often these gigantic masses do not even belong to the
countries wherein they are now fixed; that their geological congeners often
pertain to strata unknown in those regions and to be found only far beyond the
seas. Mr. William Tooke (French trans., Sepulture des Tartares. Arch. VII, p.
222), speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over
Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that there, where they now rest,
there are neither rocks nor mountains; and that they must have been brought
over "from immense distances and with prodigious efforts." Charton
(Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes, Vol. I., p. 230) 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, "most
probably African."
This is a strange coincidence, as
Irish tradition attributes the origin of her circular stones to a Sorcerer who
brought them from Africa. De Mirville sees in that sorcerer "an accursed
Hamite." We see in him a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See, among others, "History of
Paganism in Caledonia," by Dr. Th. A. Wise, F.R.A.S., etc.
** Ham was no more a Titan or Giant
than Shem and Japhet. They are either all Arkite Titans, as Faber shows them,
or myths.
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dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some
earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of the British Islands --
GIANTS in every and any case.*
"Men," says Cambry,
naively, "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" (!!) (p. 88). Nevertheless,
it is a human, though gigantic power, which has accomplished it, and no more
"nature" alone than god or devil.
"Science," having
undertaken to demonstrate that even the mind and Spirit of man are simply the
production of blind forces, is quite capable of accepting the task. It may come
out some fine morning, and seek to prove that nature alone has marshalled the
gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical
precision, given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of
the Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds flying from
Africa and Asia to England and Ireland!
It is true that Cambry recanted later
on. "I had believed for a long time," he says, "that Nature
alone could produce those wonders . . . . but I recant . . . . 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 "Antiquites Celtiques," p. 99, says, when speaking of the
moving rocks, or Rocking-Stones situated on the slope of Golcar (the
"Enchanter"): "The astonishing movement of those masses poised
in equilibrium made the Celts compare them to gods." . . . .
In "Stonehenge" (Flinders
Petrie) it is said that "Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district,
a red sandstone, or 'sarsen' stone, locally called 'grey wethers.' But some of
the stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to
astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably the North of
Ireland."
To close, the reflections of a man of
Science, in an article upon the subject published in 1850 in the Revue
Archeologique (p. 473), are worthy of being quoted. Says the paper, concerning the
rocking stones:--
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Diodorus Siculus asserts that in
the days of Isis, all men were of a vast stature, who were denominated by the
Hellenes Giants. [Gk chars] "[Oi d'en Aiguptoi muthologousi kata ten
Isidos helikian gegonenai tinas polusomatous]."
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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 after de La Vega that 'the
demons seem to have worked on them more than men.' "*
For once we agree with our friends
and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such prodigies of statics and
equilibrium, applied to masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of
Palaeolithic savages, of cave-men, taller than the average man in our century,
yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is no use for our purpose to refer to the
various traditions attached to the rocking-stones. Still, it may be as well to remind
the English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the
Isle of Mona, which returned to its place, every effort made to keep it
elsewhere notwithstanding. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II.,
a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the
fact, tied the Mona stone to a far bigger one and had them thrown into the sea.
On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. . . The learned
William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in the
wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. . . And this reminds one of what
Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans
had placed in the Prytanea "whence it ran away several times, which forced
them to lead it" (Nat. Hist., XXXVI., p. 592) . . . Here we have immense
stones stated by all antiquity to be "living, moving, speaking and
self-perambulating." They were also capable, it seems, of making people
run away, since they have been called routers ("to put to flight," to
rout) and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "It is difficult," writes
Creuzer, "not to suspect in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenae planetary
forces supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous
Dactyles." (Pelasges et Cyclopes). To this day Science is ignorant on the
subject of the Cyclopes. They are supposed to have built all the so-called
"Cyclopean" works whose erection necessitated several regiments of
Giants, and -- they were only seventy-seven in all (about one hundred, Creuzer
thinks). They are called "Builders," and Occultism calls them the
INITIATORS, who, 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. p. 54). Raoul Rochette found that Palaemonius, the
Cyclops, to whom a sanctuary was raised, "was the Tyrian Hercules."
Anyhow, he was the builder of the sacred columns of Gadir, covered with
mysterious characters to which Apollonius of Tyana was the only one in his age
to possess the key; and with figures which may still be found on the walls of
Ellora, the gigantic ruins of the temple of Viswakarma, "the builder and
artificer of the Gods."
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called mad stones (see his,
"Dieu et les Dieux," p. 587). "The rocking-stone is accepted in
Science. Why did it rock, why was it made to do so? One must be blind not to
see that this motion was one more means of divination, and that they were
called for this very reason 'the stones of truth.' " (de Mirville,
"Fetichisme")*
This is history, the Past of
prehistoric times, warranting the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to
the moon and the serpent, were the more ancient "Rocks of Destiny" of
older nations, whose motion, or rocking, was a code perfectly clear to the
initiated priests, who alone had the key to this ancient reading. Vormius and
Olaius Magnus show that it was according to the orders of the oracle,
"whose voice spoke through the immense rocks raised by the colossal powers
of ancient giants," that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. "In
India and Persia," says Pliny, "it is she (the Persian Oitzoe) whom
the magi had to consult for the election of their sovereigns" (Nat. Hist.,
lxxxvii., chap. LIV.); and he describes (in chap. XXXVIII., 1. ii.) a rock
overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that "a single
finger
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Messrs. Richardson and Barth are
said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of Sahara the same trilithic
and raised stones they had seen in Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the
North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished
Archaeologist, shows the same amazement in 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 betyles,
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 the
"Archaeological Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India,
etc.," will find in it the most primitive style of marking or recording;
something of the sort having been adopted by the American inventors of the
Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of the Ahgam writing, a
combination of Iong and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett-Carnac describes it
"cut on sandstone." Sweden, Norway, and Scandinavia are full of such
written records, the Runic characters having followed the cup-marks and long
and short strokes. In "Johannes Magnus' Infolio" one sees the
representation of the demi-god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of
Kroszharsgrani, the Magician) who holds under each arm a huge stone covered
with Runic characters; and 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.")
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can move it, while the weight of the
whole body makes it resist." Why then should not the rocking stones of
Ireland, or those of Brinham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of
divination or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the
relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller ones, such as Brinham Rocks, with some
revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had
not the bishops of the middle ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia
they could lay their hands on, Science would know more of these.* As it is, we
know that they were universally used during long prehistoric ages, and all for
the same purposes of prophecy and MAGIC. E. Biot, a member of the Institute of
France, published in his Antiquites de France, Vol. ix., an article showing the
Chatam peramba (the Field of Death, or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be
identical with the old tombs at Carnac -- "a prominence and a central
tomb." . . . "Bones are found in them (the tombs)," he says,
"and Mr. Hillwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives
(of Malabar) calling the tombs the dwellings of Rakshasas (giants)."
Several stone circles, "considered the work of the Panch Pandava (five
Pandus), as all such monuments are in India, so numerous in that country,"
when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, "were found to contain
human bones of a very large size." (T. A. Wise, in "History of
Paganism in Caledonia," p. 36).
Again, de Mirville is right in his
generalization, if not in his conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the
Dracontia are mostly witnesses to "great natural geological
commotions" (Charlton), and "are the work of Nature" (Cambry) is
now exploded, his remarks are very just. "Before the impossibility of such
a theory is asserted, 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 stones will oscillate on their basis
to the end of the world to help them to see clearer and realise once for all,
that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders
certified to by the whole of Antiquity" ("Fetichisme," p. 288).
It is just what we can never repeat
too often, though the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised
in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as
inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and
mediaeval theology in its interpretations of the so-called Revelation. Science
would have men descend from the pithecoid ape -- a transformation requiring
millions of years -- and yet fears to make mankind older than 100,000 years!
Science teaches the gradual transformation of species,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Charton, the Author of
"Voyageurs anciens et modernes," quoted by de Mirville.
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natural selection and evolution from
the lowest form to the highest; from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and
mammalian. Yet it refuses to man, who physiologically is only a higher mammal
and animal, such transformation of his external form. But if the monstrous
iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive iguana of
to-day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the
modern man -- the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more
unscientific in this "theory," than in that of refusing to man any
spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the
same time, as a distinct genus in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be
less scientific than the present exact Sciences, they are withal more logical
and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and natural affinities of
atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it
requires more than a mere interplay between certain material aggregates and
their environment, to call to life a fully conscious man; even though he were
no more indeed than a ramification between two "poor cousins" of the
Quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Haeckel that (objective) life on
our globe "is a logical postulate of Scientific natural history," but
add that the rejection of a like Spiritual involution, from within without, of
invisible subjective Spirit-life -- eternal and a Principle in Nature -- is
more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has
been gradually built by blind forces inherent in matter, without any external
help.
Suppose an Occultist were to claim
that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being in the
following manner. First, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in
Space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state
of matter named organic PROTEIN. Then, under the influence of incident forces,
those states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they
slowly and majestically evolved into and resulted in new combinations of carved
and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes
and bellows. After which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and
symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart's Requiem. This was
followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., ad infinitum; its keys playing of
themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and
fancy. . . . . What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in
such wise that the materialistic savants tell us that the Universe was formed,
with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown.
Whatever may have been the real inner
thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual
transformation of
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species, what he says in it applies
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
pre-existing kind of being." ("Essays on Physiology," Subj. p.
144.) Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a
modification on a pre-existent and pre-historical kind of man, even supposing
for argument's sake that there is nothing within him to last longer than, or
live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we
are told that "organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we
may literally call artificial evolution" (Appendix to "Principles of
Biology," p. 482), we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that
Alchemists and great adepts have done as much, and, indeed, far more, before
the chemists ever attempted to "build out of dissociated elements complex
combinations." The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will
become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein will
have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no chemist, or Alchemist either, will
ever endow such a "Frankenstein's Monster" with more than animal
instinct, unless indeed he does that which the "Progenitors" are
credited with, namely, if he leaves his own physical body, and incarnates in
the "empty form." But even this would be an artificial, not a natural
man, for our "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal evolution,
to become gods before they became men.
The above digression, if one, is an
attempt at justification before the few thinking men of the coming century who
may read this. But this accounts also for the reason why the best and most
spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science
or theology; and why they prefer any such "psychic craze" to the
dogmatic assertions of both, neither of the two having anything better to offer
than blind faith in their respective infallibility. Universal tradition is
indeed the far safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows primitive man
living for ages together with his Creators and first instructors -- the Elohim
-- in the World's "Garden of Eden," or "Delight." We shall
treat of the Divine Instructors in Stanza XII.
-------
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).
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(a) As this subject -- the fourth
great deluge on our globe in this Round -- is fully treated in the chapters
that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be mere
repetition. The seven great islands (Dwipas) belonged to the continent of
Atlantis. The secret teachings show that the "Deluge" overtook the
Fourth, giant Race, not on account of their depravity, or because they had
become "black with sin," but simply because such is the fate of every
continent, which -- like everything else under our Sun -- is born, lives,
becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.
(b) Thus the giants perished -- the
magicians and the sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition, but "all
holy saved," and alone the "unholy were destroyed." This was
due, however, as much to the prevision of the "holy" ones, who had
not lost the use of their "third eye," as to Karma and natural law.
Speaking of the subsequent race (our Fifth Humanity), the commentary says:--
"Alone the handful of those
Elect, whose divine instructors had gone to inhabit that Sacred Island -- 'from
whence the last Saviour will come' -- now kept mankind from becoming one-half
the exterminator of the other [as mankind does now -- H.P.B.]. It (mankind)
became divided. Two-thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits
of the earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one-third
remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race -- the divine
Incarnates. When the Poles moved (for the fourth time) this did not affect
those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the
Lemurians -- alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and 'were seen no more . .
. . ."
-------
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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 (men) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW,
SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED, REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED (of the
primitive Divine Stock) WERE GONE FOR EVER (a) . . . .
48. THE FIFTH RACE PRODUCED FROM THE
HOLY STOCK (remained). IT WAS RULED BY HER FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
49. THE "SERPENTS" WHO
RE-DESCENDED; WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH (Race), WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED
IT (b) . . . .
(a) This verse (47) relates to the
Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever-recurring
tradition does. History -- or what is called history -- does not go further
back than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a "few
thousands" of years. It is the sub-divisions of this first sub-race of the
Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the sentence, "Some yellow, some
brown and black, and some red, remained." The "moon coloured"
(i.e., the First and the Second Races) were gone for ever -- ay, without
leaving any traces whatever; and that, so far back as the third
"Deluge" of the Third Lemurian race, that "Great Dragon,"
whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye.
And this is the true meaning of the Verse in the COMMENTARY which says:
"The GREAT DRAGON has respect
but for the 'SERPENTS' of WISDOM, the Serpents whose holes are now under the
triangular stones," i.e., "the Pyramids, at the four corners of the
world."
(b) This tells us clearly that which
is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the
Adepts or "Wise" men of the three Races (the Third, Fourth and the
Fifth) dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal
structure, if not
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actually under a pyramid. For such
"pyramids" existed in the four corners of the world and were never
the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though until found scattered all over
the two Americas, under and over ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, as
in plain and vale, they were supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If
the true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European
regions, many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal
triangular, pyramidal and conical menhirs in the Morbihan, and Brittany
generally; many of the Danish tumuli and even of the "giant tombs" of
Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the nuraghi, are so many more or
less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first
settlers on the newly-born continent and isles of Europe, the -- "some yellow,
some brown and black, and some red" -- races that remained after the
submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands (850,000 years ago),
with the exception of Plato's Atlantean island, and before the arrival of the
great Aryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the
East. Those who can hardly accept the antiquity of the human race so far back
as the 57,000 years assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New
Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts.
But they may find themselves mistaken some day. It is the foolish
self-glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves [[proselenoi]] --
older than the moon -- and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed
before the sun appeared in heaven, that we may disparage, not their undeniable
antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant
ancestors. The fact that the bones of the mammoth and mastodon, and, in one
case, those of a gigantic salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does
not make away with the difficulty that, of all the mammalians, man is the only
one whom science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal
frames, from the giant homo diluvii to the creature between 5 and 6 feet that
he is now.
But the "Serpents of
Wisdom" have preserved their records well, and the history of the human
evolution is traced in heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity
and the stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the intelligences
that rule the latter.
Modern symbologists may scoff at this
and call it "fancy," but "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," writes Mr. Staniland Wake
("The Great Pyramid"). The "Old Dragon" is identical with
the "great Flood," says Mr. Proctor (in "Knowledge," Vol.
I., p. 243): "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
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uppermost or ruling constellation . .
. it is singular how closely the constellations . . . correspond in sequence
and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the
(Biblical) Flood."
The reasons for this singularity have
been made clear in this work. But it shows only that there were several Deluges
mixed up in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of the Fifth Race. The
first great "Flood" was astronomical and cosmical, while several
others were terrestrial. Yet, this did not prevent our very learned friend Mr.
Gerald Massey -- an Initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum,
still only a Self-initiate -- from declaring and insisting that the Atlantean
submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant
people; and that Atlantis was no better than an astronomical allegory.
Nevertheless, the great Zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and
one can hardly interfere with the other; and it stands also to reason that
every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory
means. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning
of it. 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 of rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac --
Aquarius, or the Waterman" (Nineteenth Century, 1882, p. 236). 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 Great Dragon (the constellation), the "Dragons of
Wisdom," or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the
Floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood.
The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had
their beginnings with the Third Sub-race of the Fourth Root-race or the
Atlanteans. When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the
regular establishment of the Zodiacal calculations in Egypt, the poles have
been thrice inverted.
We will presently return once more to this
statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac -- a fact
which offers a handle to materialists upon which to hang their one-sided
theories and opinions -- have too profound a signification, and their bearing
upon our Humanity is too important to suffer dismissal in a few words.
Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of that other statement which
mentions (verse 48) the first divine Kings, who are said to have
"redescended," guided and instructed our Fifth Race after the last
deluge!
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We shall consider this last claim
historically in the sections that follow, but must end with a few more details
on the subject of "Serpents."
The rough commentaries on the Archaic
Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from
ancient, mediaeval, and modern works that have treated of these subjects. All
such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in
better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of
historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird symbol -- so often
referred to and suggestive of the "tempter of man" in the orthodox
light of the church -- can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more
advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof at this juncture,
even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made
out by our theologians and some pious symbologists as indissolubly connected
with the grotesque personage called devil, and every proof to the contrary has
been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored; therefore, the occultist must
neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. It is
proposed to divide the subjects involved in these three last verses into
several groups, and examine them in this final chapter as carefully and as
fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general
evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the
Esoteric Doctrine -- the bulk of which will be found in Part II. on Symbology.
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SERPENTS AND DRAGONS UNDER DIFFERENT
SYMBOLISMS.
The name of the Dragon in Chaldea was
not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, probably
meaning, according to the Orientalists, "the scaly one." "This
description," very pertinently remarks G. Smith, "of course might
apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish," and we may add: "It
applies in one case to Makara, the tenth Zodiacal sign, meaning in Sanskrit a
non-descript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, and really
signifying something else. (Vide Part II., "The Mysteries of the
Hebdomad.") This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at
all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the "Dragon" in
ancient Chaldea, whence the Hebrews got their symbolism, only to be afterwards
robbed of it by the Christians, who made of the "Scaly one" a living
entity and a maleficent power.
A specimen of Dragons, "winged
and scaled," may be seen in the British Museum. Representing the events of
the Fall according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on
each side of a tree, and holding out their hands to the "apple,"
while at the back of the "Tree"
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is the Dragon-Serpent. Esoterically,
the two figures are two "Chaldees" ready for initiation, the Serpent
symbolising the "Initiator"; while the jealous gods, who curse the
three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal "Biblical
event" there, as any occultist can see.
"The Great Dragon has respect
but for the Serpents of Wisdom," says the Stanza; thus proving the
correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the "Serpent."
"The Serpents who redescended .
. . . who taught and instructed" the Fifth Race. What sane man is capable
of believing in our day that real serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough
guess, now become almost an axiom with the men of science, that those who wrote
in antiquity upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents either were superstitious
and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than
themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from
the profane.
"Terrible are the gods when they
manifest themselves" -- those gods whom men call Dragons. And AElianus,
treating in his "De Natura Animalium" of these Ophidean symbols,
makes certain remarks which show that he understood well the nature of this
most ancient of symbols. Thus he most pertinently explains with regard to the
above Homeric verse -- "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" (Book xi., ch. 17).
This "Dragon" having a
septenary meaning, the highest and the lowest may be given. The former is
identical with the "Self-born," the Logos (the Hindu Aja). He was the
second person of the Trinity, the SON, with the Christian Gnostics called the
Naasenians, or Serpent-Worshippers. His symbol was the constellation of the
Dragon.* Its seven "stars" are the seven stars held in the hand of
the "Alpha and Omega" in Revelation. In its most terrestrial meaning,
the term "Dragon" was applied to the Wise men.
This portion of the religious
symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain
incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian
ear that it can hardly escape, all civilization notwithstanding, being regarded
as a direct denunciation of the most cherished Christian dogmas, the subject of
which required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical
fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
Did the allegory of the Dragon and
his supposed conqueror in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As shown by H. Lizeray in the
"Trinite Chretienne Devoilee" -- placed between the immutable Father
(the Pole, a fixed Point) and mutable matter, the Dragon transmits to the
latter the influences received by him from the Pole, whence his name -- the
Verbum.
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Heaven originate with St. John, and
in his Revelation? Emphatically we answer -- No. His "Dragon" is
Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean magic.
To demonstrate the negation the
reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its
several aspects.
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THE SIDEREAL AND COSMIC GLYPHS.
Every astronomer -- besides
Occultists and Astrologers -- knows that, figuratively, the astral light, the
milky way, and also the path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn,
as well as the circles of the Sidereal or Tropical year, were always called
"Serpents" in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the adepts.
This, cosmically, as well as
metaphorically. Poseidon is a "Dragon": "Chozzar, called by the
profane Neptune" (Peratae Gnostics); the "Good and Perfect
Serpent," the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.
But one ought to discriminate between
the characters of this symbol. For instance: Zoroastrian Esotericism is
identical with that of the Secret Doctrine; and when, as an example, we read in
the Vendidad complaints uttered against the "Serpent," whose bites
have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana-Vaego, changing it
into winter, generating disease and death, at the same time as mental and
psychic consumption, every occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the
north pole, as also the pole of the heavens.* The latter produces the seasons
according to the angle at which it penetrates the centre of the earth. The two
axes were no more parallel; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaego by the
good river Daitya had disappeared, and "the Aryan Magi had to emigrate to
Sagdiani" -- say the exoteric accounts. But the esoteric teaching states
that the pole had passed through the equator, and that the "land of
bliss" of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become
the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible
proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo-Aryans of
the post-diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognise the mountains, on the
summits of which their forefathers had met before the Flood, and conversed with
the pure "Yazathas" (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life
and food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein (Revue Archeologique, 8th
year, 1885), "the Vendidad 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Symbolized by the Egyptians under
the form of a Serpent with a hawk's head.
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The Egyptians, according to Eusebius,
who for once (and for a wonder) wrote the truth, symbolised Kosmos by a large
fiery circle, representing a serpent with a hawk's head lying across its
diameter. "Here we have 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
reddened with the solar blaze, and each sign must have been vertical to the
polar region." (See Mackey's "Sphinxiad.")
Meru -- the abode of the gods -- was
placed, as before explained, in the North Pole, while Patala, the nether
region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric philosophy
has seven keys, geographically, Meru and Patala have one significance and
represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean
"the two poles," which meanings ended by their being often rendered
in exoteric sectarianism -- the "Mountain" and the "Pit,"
or Heaven and Hell. If we hold at present only to the astronomical and
geographical significance, it may be found that the ancients knew the
topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of
our modern astronomers; they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the
"Mountain" and the other the "Pit." As the author just
quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same: "Heli-on
is the Sun in the highest" (Helios, Heli-on, the "most high"); "and
Acheron is 32 deg. above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being
thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The
vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the
southern pole, being therefore called the PIT, while observing, toward the
Northern pole that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the
horizon -- they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods,
these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by which (astronomically)
the Zodiacal gods were meant, the passing of the original North Pole of the
Earth to the South Pole of the heaven." "In that age," adds the
author of that curious work, the "Sphinxiad" and of "Urania's
Key to the Revelations" -- "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." . . . .
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
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and especially theological character.
As just said, the Christian trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning,
which made Rutilius say -- of those who euhemerized it -- "Judaea gens,
radix stultorum."
But the profane, and especially the
Christian fanatics, ever in search of scientific corroboration for their
dead-letter texts, will persist in seeing in the celestial pole the true
Serpent of Genesis, Satan, the Enemy of mankind, instead of what it is -- a
cosmic metaphor. When the gods are said to forsake the earth, it does not only
mean the gods, protectors and instructors, but also the minor gods -- the
regents of the Zodiacal signs. Yet, the former, as actual and existing Entities
which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed mankind in its early youth, appear
in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as much as in the Hindu
Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura-Mazda, the "Lord of Wisdom," is the
synthesis of the Amshaspends (or Amesha-Spenta -- "Immortal
Benefactors"),* the "Word," however, or the Logos and its six
highest aspects in Mazdyanism. These "Immortal Benefactors" are
described in Zamyad yasht as the "Amesha-Spentas, the shining, having
efficacious eyes, great, helpful . . . . imperishable and pure which are all
seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike . . . . which are the
creators and destroyers of the creatures of Ahura-Mazda, their creators and
overseers, their protectors and rulers . . . ."
These few lines alone indicate the
dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspends, our Dhyan-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 Stary-azatas of the Zoroastrians -- or again the seven planets
(including the sun) of every religion.** The epithet -- "the shining
having efficacious eyes" -- proves it. This on the physical and sidereal
planes. On the spiritual, they are the divine powers of Ahura-Mazda; but on the
astral or psychic plane again, they are the "Builders," the
"watchers," the Pitar (fathers), and the first Preceptors of mankind.
When mortals shall have become
sufficiently spiritualised, there will be no more need of forcing them into a
correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will know then, that there never
yet was a great World-reformer, whose name has passed into our generation, who
(a) was not a direct emanation of the LOGOS (under whatever name known to us),
i.e., an essential incarnation of one of "the seven," of the
"divine Spirit who is sevenfold"; and (b) who had not appeared
before, during the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Also translated as "blissful
Immortals" by Dr. W. Geiger; but the first is more correct.
** 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.
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past Cycles. They will recognise,
then, the cause which produces in history and chronology certain riddles of the
ages; the reason why, for instance, it is impossible for them to assign any
reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in
the Dabistan; why the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up in their numbers and
individualities; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as re-incarnations,
i.e., Krishna is identified with the Rishi Narayana, and Gautama gives a series
of his previous births; and why the former, especially, being "the very
supreme Brahma," is yet called Amsamsavatara -- "a part of a
part" only of the Supreme on Earth. Finally, why Osiris is a great God,
and at the same time a "prince on Earth," who reappears in
Thoth-Hermes, and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognised,
cabalistically, in Joshua, the Son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The
esoteric doctrine explains it by saying that each of these (as many others) had
first appeared on earth as one of the seven powers of the LOGOS, individualized
as a God or "Angel" (messenger); then, mixed with matter, they had
re-appeared in turn as great sages and instructors who "taught the Fifth
Race," after having instructed the two preceding races, had ruled during
the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under
various circumstances for the good of mankind, and for its salvation at certain
critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only
"the parts of a part" on earth, though de facto the One Supreme in
Nature.
This is the metaphysics of Theogony.
And, as every "Power" among the SEVEN has (once individualized) in
his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it,* hence the many
meanings in every symbol, which, unless interpreted according to the esoteric
methods, generally lead to an inextricable confusion.
Does the Western Kabalist --
generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist -- require a proof? Let him open
Eliphas Levi's Histoire de la Magic," p. 53, and carefully examine his
"Grand Symbole Kabalistique" of the Zohar. He will find, on the
engraving given, a white man standing erect and a black woman upside down,
i.e., standing on her head, her legs passing under the extended arms of the
male figure, and protruding behind his shoulders, while their hands join at an
angle on each side. Eliphas Levi makes of it, God and Nature; or God,
"light," mirrored inversely in "Nature and Matter,"
darkness. Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as
emblematical cosmogony goes. Nor has he invented the symbol any more
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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than the Kabalists have: the two
figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time
immemorial -- agreeably to tradition; and historically -- ever since the day of
King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in
existence since nearly 2,500 years ago. This, at the very least, for that
Persian sovereign, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in
the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the opposite
poles. Herodotus (Thalia, No. 77) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered
the temple of the Kabirim, he went into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on
perceiving what he thought a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her
head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to
commemorate "the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the
South Pole of the Heaven," as perceived by Mackey.* But they represented
also the poles inverted, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis,
bringing each time as a result the displacement of the Oceans, the submersion
of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial
regions, and vice versa. These Kabirim were the "Deluge" gods.
This may help us to get at the key of
the seemingly hopeless confusion among the numbers of names and titles given to
one and the same gods, and classes of gods. Faber showed already, at the
beginning of this century, the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri,
Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,** Titans, and Aletae
with the KABIRI. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus,
the Rishis and our Dhyan Chohans, who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and
Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven great gods:
cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because,
perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Who adds that the Egyptians had
various ways of representing the angles of the Poles. Also 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, but they were also often
represented as serpents with heads of hawks, one at each end.
** Faber and Bishop Cumberland would
make them all the later pagan personifications, as the former writer has it, of
"the Noetic Ark, and no other than the Patriarch (Noah) and his
family" (!) See his "Kabiri," Vol. I., 136; because, we are
told, "after the Deluge in commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidae
had established a religious festival, which was, later on, corrupted by their
impious descendants; demons or hero-gods; and at length unblushing obscenity
usurped the name and garb of religion" (Vol. 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
explain after the words "Noah and his family" that what is meant by
that patriarch and family is simply the Jewish version of a Samothracian
mystery, of Saturn, or Kronos-Sadic and his Sons, and then we may say Amen.
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(a) with At-al-as "the divine
Sun," and (b) with tit "the deluge." But this, if true, is only
the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the
appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring great gods --
the Dioscuri,* the deities surrounded with the darkness of occult nature --
become the Idei (or Idaeic finger) with the adept-healer by metals. The true
etymology of the name lares (now signifying "ghosts") must be sought
in the Etruscan word "lars," "conductor,"
"leader." Sanchoniathon translates the word Aletae as fire
worshippers, and Tabor believes it derived from Al-Orit, "the god of
fire." Both are right, as in both cases it is a reference to the Sun (the
highest God), toward whom the planetary gods "gravitate"
(astronomically and allegorically) and whom they worship. As Lares, they are
truly the Solar Deities, though Faber's etymology, who says that
"lar" is a contraction of "El-Ar," the solar deity, is not
very correct. They are the "lares," the conductors and leaders of
men. As Aletae, they were the seven planets -- astronomically; and as Lares,
the regents of the same, our protectors and rulers -- mystically. For purposes
of exoteric or phallic worship, as also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, their
attributes being recognised in these two capacities by the name of the temples
to which they respectively belonged, and those of their priests. They all
belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyan
Chohans. The Sabeans, who worshipped the "regents of the Seven
planets" as the Hindus do their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes
(Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the planetary gods. Seth and Enos were
borrowed from the Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but
the truth can still be traced about them even in Genesis.** Seth is the
"progenitor" of those early men of the Third Race in whom the
"Planetary" angels had incarnated -- a Dhyan Chohan himself, who
belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said
to be his son -- because it was a generic name for all the early Seers
("Enoichion"). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that
the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabeanism; and
therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as
the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), (See Vyse,
"Operations," Vol. II., p. 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Who became later on, with the
Greeks, limited only to Castor and Pollux. But in the days of Lemuria, the
Dioscuri, the "Egg-born," were the Seven Dhyan Chohans
(Agnishwatta-Kumara) who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race.
** Clement of Alexandria recognized
the astronomical significance of chapter xxv. et seq. of Exodus. According to
the Mosaic doctrine, he says that the seven planets help in the generation of
terrestrial things. The two cherubs standing on the two sides of the sacred
tetragrammaton represent the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
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on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers
seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc.,
etc.) (See Palgrave, Vol. II., p. 264). Abd Allatif says curious things about
the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years
later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was consecrated to a
star" (a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us "that he had
read in Sabean books that one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other
of Hermes" (Vyse, Vol. II., p. 342). "Agathodaemon was none other
than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son," adds Mr.
Staniland Wake in "The Great Pyramid," p. 57.
Thus, while in Samothrace and the
oldest Egyptian temples they were the great Cosmic Gods (the seven and the
forty-nine Sacred Fires), in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly
phallic, therefore to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were 3 and
4, or 7 -- the male and female principles -- (the crux ansata); this division
showing why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others
named four. And these were -- the Kabiri -- Axieros (in his female aspect,
Demeter); Axio-Kersa (Persephone)*; Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or
Kadmilos (Hermes -- not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus (II. 51)
but "he of the sacred legend," explained only during the Samothracian
mysteries). This identification, due, according to the Scholiast Apollon (Rh.
I. 217), to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is none at all, as names alone do not
reveal much. There were still others again who maintained, being as right in
their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two
Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. The two
personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial, and the pole
of the heavens -- astronomically, as also the physical and the spiritual man.
The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, the Bimater, with all
the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically to
understand the allegory. The parts played in the event by the fire, water,
earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how "the father of the
gods"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is a curious idea -- yet one not
very far from the truth, perhaps -- that speculation of Mackey, the self-made
Adept of Norwich, found in his "Mythological Astronomy." He says that
the Kabiri named Axieros and Axiokersa derived their names (a) 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 aix; which has now settled . . . . into sex." And
he refers to "Encyclopaedia Londinus" at the word
"aspiration." Now if we give the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would
be Saxieros; and the other pole would be Saxiokersa. The two poles would thus
become the generators of the other powers of nature -- they would be the
parents: therefore the most powerful gods.
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and the "merry God of the
wine" were also made to personify the two terrestrial Poles. The telluric,
metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions
and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy.
In astronomy, the poles are indeed the "heavenly measure" (vide note
supra); and so are the Kabiri Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the
Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the invention of fire* and the art of
manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias shows that the original Kabiric deity
was Prometheus. (I. ix. p. 751.)
But the fact that, astronomically,
the Titans-Kabirim were also the generators and regulators of the seasons, and
cosmically the great Volcanic Energies, the gods presiding over all the metals
and terrestrial works, does not prevent them from being, in their original
divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus,
brought light to the world, and endowed humanity with intellect and reason.
They are pre-eminently in every theogony -- especially in the Hindu -- the
sacred divine fires, 3, 7, or 49, according as the allegory demands it. Their
very names prove it, as they are the Agni-putra (Sons of the Fire) in India,
and the genii of the fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere.
Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name Kabeiron meaning "the
powerful through fire," from the Greek word [[kaio]] "to burn."
The Semitic Kabirim, "the powerful, the mighty, and the great,"
answering to the Greek [[megaloi dunatoi]], are later epithets. They were
universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet
whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phoenicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily,
their cult was always connected with fire; their temples ever built in the most
volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to Chthonian
divinities. Therefore Christianity has made of them infernal gods.
They are truly "the great, beneficent
and powerful Gods," as Cassius Hermone calls them (See Macrob. Sat. I.,
iii., c. 4, p. 376). At Thebes, Kore and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuary
(Pausan. IX. 22; 5), and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that
none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter their holy precincts
(Herodotus I. ii., c. 37). But we must not lose sight, at the same time, of the
fact that the title of Kabiri was a generic one; that the Kabiri (the mighty
gods as well as mortals), were of both sexes, as also terrestrial, celestial
and kosmic. That, while in their later capacity of the Rulers of sidereal and
terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon (as it is now
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The word "guebra" comes
from Kabiri, gabiri, and means Persian ancient fire-worshippers, or Parsis.
Kabiri became gabiri and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in
Persia. (See Hyde's "De Religio Persarum," cap. 29.)
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regarded) was symbolized in the
persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the rulers
of mankind. When incarnated as Kings of the "divine Dynasties," they
gave the first impulse to civilizations, and directed the mind with which they
had endued men to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences.
Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as
such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To them -- the Kabiri or
Titans -- is ascribed the invention of letters (the Devanagari, or the alphabet
and language of the gods), of laws and legislature; of architecture, as of the
various modes of magic, so-called; and of the medical use of plants. Hermes,
Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those demi-gods and heroes, to whom is ascribed
the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland,
and so many other Christian writers -- too zealous for plain truth --would
force posterity to see only pagan copies of one and sole prototype, named Noah
-- are all generic names.
It is the Kabiri who are credited
with having revealed, by producing corn or wheat, the great boon of
agriculture. What Isis-Osiris, the once living Kabiria, has done in Egypt, that
Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class.
That the Serpents were ever the
emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the caduceus of Mercury, one
with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents,
entwined around the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other gods who
transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing goddesses -- but
only in the unclean fancies of profane symbologists. The serpent has ever been
the symbol of the adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge.
Mercury in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus
the souls of the dead to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is
simply a very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret
Wisdom: the black and the white magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding
the Soul after death, and its power to call to life that which is dead -- a
very deep metaphor if one thinks over its meaning. Every people of antiquity
reverenced this symbol, with the exception of Christians, who chose to forget
the brazen Serpent of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great
wisdom and prudence of the Serpent by Jesus himself, "Be ye wise as
serpents and harmless as doves." The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of
our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the
degenerate successors of the "Serpents" or Initiates, who ruled the
early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor's throne is the "Dragon's
Seat," and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the
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Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest
books of China, moreover, say plainly that the "Dragon" is a human,
albeit divine, Being. Speaking of the "Yellow Dragon," the chief of
the others, the Twan-ying-t'u, says: "His wisdom and virtue are
unfathomable . . . he does not go in company and does not live in herds (he is
an ascetic). He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes,
fulfilling the decree (Karma); at the proper seasons if there is perfection he
comes forth, if not he remains (invisible).". . . And Kon-fu-tyu is made
to say by Lu-lan, "The Dragon feeds in the pure water of Wisdom and sports
in the clear waters of Life."
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OUR DIVINE INSTRUCTORS.
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan isle
are not the only record that is left of the deluge. China has also her
tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls
Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kaempfer and Faber spell "Maurigosima," for
some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kaempfer, in his
"Japan" (Appendix, p. 13), gives the tradition: The island, owing to
the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiru-un, the
king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the
gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have
peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the divine dynasties of Kings as
much as those of any other nations.
At the same time there is not an old
fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution --
spiritual, psychic, intellectual and physical -- of human beings, just as given
in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races -- they all show -- have
sprung from divine races, by whatever name they are called. Whether we deal
with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy --
their "divine man" and demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and
Mul-lil -- the creative god and the "Gods of the ghost-world"; with
the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim, or again with Manco
Capac and his Peruvian progeny -- the story varies nowhere. Every nation has
Amshaspends* (six exoterically), ten and seven Chaldean Anedots,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Amshaspends 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.
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ten and seven Sephiroth, etc., etc.
One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyan-Chohans of the Esoteric
doctrine, or the "Builders" of the Stanzas (Book I.). From Manu,
Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato and Panadores, all
tell us of seven divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean
divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual gods who descend from
their celestial abode* and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy,
Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These
Beings appear first as "gods" and Creators; then they merge in
nascent man, to finally emerge as "divine-Kings and Rulers." But this
fact has been gradually forgotten. As Bosuage shows, the Egyptians themselves
confessed that science flourished in their country only since Isis-Osiris, whom
they continue to adore as gods, "though they had become Princes in human
form." And he adds of Osiris-Isis (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 says in his
"Historia Anteislamitica" (Fleisher, p. 16) that the Sabean language
was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch) -- he means by "Sabean
language" astronomy. In the "Melelwa Nohil" (MS. 47 in Nic.
Cat.) Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodaemon. And in another account
(See Col. Vyse's 2nd Vol. of the "Pyramids of Ghizeh," p. 364, MS.
785, Uri's Cat.) Agathodaemon is mentioned as a "King of Egypt."
Celepas Geraldinus gives curious traditions about Henoch. He calls him the
"divine giant." In the "Book of the various names of the
Nile," the same author (the historian Ahmed-Ben-Yusouf Eltiphas) tells us
of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth (become later the Egyptian
Typhon, Set), had been one of the seven angels (or Patriarchs in the Bible):
then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of
prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch.
But Henoch (Idris) "the author of thirty books, was Sabaean by
origin" (i.e., belonging to the Saba, "a Host"); "having
established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East,
where he constructed 140 cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then
returned to Egypt where he became its King." Thus, he is identified with
Hermes. But there were five Hermes -- or rather one, who appeared -- as some
Manus and Rishis did -- in several different characters. In the Burham-i-Kati
he is mentioned as "Hormig," a name of the planet Mercury or Budha;
and Wednes-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Purana it is identified with
Vishnu's or Brahma's Sveta Dwipa of Mount Meru.
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day was sacred both to Hermes and
Thot. The Hermes of Oriental tradition, worshipped at Phineata and said to have
fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, civilized it under the name of Thoth.
But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having
transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency, i.e., with having
been the first to teach magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna
Graecia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only Herodotus -- the
"father of History" -- tells us of the marvellous dynasties of gods
that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the dynasties of demi-gods,
Heroes, and finally men, but the whole series of classics support him;
Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., etc., repeat the same, and never
vary the order given.
"It is, indeed," as Creuzer
shows:--
"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, the genii, manes (souls), the whole
world, are conjointly developed in Space and duration. The pyramid may be
considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of Spirits. . . .
"*
There were more efforts made by the
modern historians (French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly) to suppress truth
by ignoring the ancient annals of divine Kings, than is strictly consistent
with honesty. But M. Renan could never be more unwilling than was Eratosthenes
260 years B.C. to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself
obliged to recognise its truth. For this, the great astronomer is treated with
great contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho became with them
"a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying
priests of Heliopolis" (Freret). "All those historians and
priests," justly remarks the demonologist, de Mirville, "so veracious
when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become extremely suspicious
no sooner do they go back to their gods." . . . But there is the
synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has
now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (Manetho's above all),
and that of Ptolemy. In the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all, in the
words of the Egyptologist, de Rouge:--
". . . Champollion, struck with
amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the whole truth. . . . It was
the remains of a list of dynasties embracing the furthest mythoic times, or the
REIGN OF THE GODS AND HEROES. . . . At the very outset of this curious
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ch. iv. of "Egypt," p.
441.
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papyrus we have to arrive at the
conviction that so far back already as the period of Ramses, those 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, Horus, Thoth-Hermes,
and the goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of
each of these." (Ann. de Philologie Chretienne, Vol. XXXII., p. 442).
The synchronistic tables of Manetho,
besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes,
had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the divine Kings and
Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the
priests, and was kept secret from the profane multitudes.
Africa, as a continent, it is said,
appeared before Europe did; nevertheless it appeared later than Lemuria and
even the earliest Atlantis. That the whole region of what is now Egypt and the
deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea, was known firstly through
Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and all the Greeks; and, secondly, through geology.
Abyssinia was once upon a time an island; and the Delta was the first country
occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their gods from the North-east.
When was it? History is silent upon
the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the
ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, which records the fact. This
Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between the Lion and Libra, has found
its OEdipus, who understood the riddle of these signs, and justified the
truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus that:-- (a) The poles of the
Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided; and (b) That even since their
first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within
the plane of the Ecliptic, as the Initiates taught.
Bailly had not sufficient words at
his command to express his surprise at the sameness of all such traditions
about the divine races. "What are finally," he exclaims, "all
those reigns of Indian Devas and Persian Peris? . . . . Or, those reigns and
dynasties of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven,
quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, the Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang the
King's men, a distinction which is in perfect accord with that other one made
by the Greeks and the Egyptians, in enumerating their dynasties of Gods, of
demi-gods, and of mortals."*
"Now," says Panadoras,
"it is before that time (Menes), 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne.
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men to calculate the course of the
sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic."
Nearly five hundred years before the
actual era, Herodotus was shown by the priests of Egypt the statues of their
human Kings and Pontiffs-piromis (the archi-prophets or Maha-Chohans of the
temples), born one from the other (without the intervention of woman) who had
reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were enormous
colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number, each of which had his
name, his history and his annals. And they assured Herodotus* (unless the most
truthful of historians, the "Father of History," is now accused of
fibbing, just in this instance) that no historian could ever understand or
write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned
the history of the three dynasties that preceded the human -- namely, the
DYNASTIES OF THE GODS, that of demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or giants. 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
Kimpurushas, and of Danavas and Daityas -- otherwise gods, celestial spirits,
and giants or Titans. "Happy are those who are born, even from the
condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-Varsha!" exclaim the incarnated gods
themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bharata is India, but in this case it
symbolized the chosen land in those days, and was considered the best of the
divisions of Jambu-dwipa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par
excellence; the land of initiation and of divine knowledge.
Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer
great powers of intuition, when, being almost unacquainted with the Aryan Hindu
philosophies, little known in his day, he wrote:--
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See also Memoires a l'Academie,
etc., of de Mirville, Vol. III., for a mass of evidence.
** In Vishnu-Purana, Book II., chap.
3, 4, et seq., may be found many corroborations of the same, if one reads
carefully. The reigns of gods, lower gods, and men are all enumerated in the
descriptions of the seven Islands, seven seas, seven mountains, etc., etc.,
ruled by Kings. Each king is said invariably to have seven sons, an allusion to
the seven sub-races. One instance will do. The King of Kusa dwipa had seven
sons (follow names) . . . "after whom the seven portions (Varsha) of the
island were called. There reside mankind along with Daityas and Danavas, as
well as with spirits of Heaven (Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kimpurushas, etc.) and
gods." (Chapter iv.) There is but one exception in the case of King
Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Swayambhuva -- who had ten sons. But of
these, three -- Medha, Agnibahu, and Putra -- became ascetics, and refused
their portions. Thus Priyavrata divided the earth again into seven continents.
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judgment of the ancient peoples,
quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon celestial mechanics and
physical sciences . . . could not see in the stars and planets only that which
we see: namely, simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in
sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; but
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 . . . " ("Egypte," pp. 450 to 455.)
It is such a conception only that can
lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of
everything in the universe -- of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living
link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no
science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the
analysis of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in
"spirits," because they feel (and some see) themselves surrounded on
every side by them.* Materialists do not. They live on this earth, just as, in
the world of insects and even of fishes, some creatures live surrounded by
myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.**
Plato is the first sage among the
classics who speaks at length of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As a general rule, now that the
very nature of the inner man has become as blind as his physical nature, man is
situated on this globe as the Amphioxus is in the Ocean. Surrounded by shoals
and millions of various other fishes and creatures that see 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.
** The Occultists have been accused
of worshipping gods or devils. We deny this. Among the numberless hosts of
spirits -- men that were, and those who will be men -- there are those
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, as some are far worse and inferior
to the lowest savage. It is the latter classes 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 in favour of such inter-communication unfortunately,
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 [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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divine Dynasties, and locates them on
a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Bailly was not the first nor last to
believe the same, and he had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by
Father Kircher. This learned Jesuit writes in "OEdipus AEgyptiacus"
(Vol. I., p. 70):--
"I confess, for a long time I
had regarded all this (dynasties and the 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. . . .
."
As de Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in
his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as the
priests of Sais did when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of
Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite
size, and containing two countries inhabited by two races -- a fighting,
warrior race, and a pious, meditative race,* which Theopompus symbolizes by two
cities.** The pious "city" was continually visited by the gods; the
belligerent "city" was inhabited by various beings invulnerable to
iron, liable to be mortally wounded only by stone and wood."*** De
Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus ("Peuple
Primitif," vol. iii. 157) and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the
assertion of the Saitic priests. This was denounced by the "Demonologists"
as illogical. In the words of De Mirville:-- "A supercherie which was
based on a belief, the product of faith of the whole antiquity; a supposition
which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (the Atlas); which specified
with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing some of its
lands at a small distance from Cadiz and the strait of Calpetus), which
prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great trans-oceanic land situated
beyond that Atlantis and which "is reached" it said -- "by the
islands not of the blessed, but of the good spirits [[eudaimonia]] (our 'Iles
Fortunees') -- such a supposition can never be an universal chimera." (A
word on "Atlantis," p. 29.)
It is certain that, whether
"chimera" or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one
and the same source: the universal tradition
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] modern Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients from
a more psychic standpoint, Science, and physiology especially, might be more
benefited than they are now, and truth have a wider field of fact in its
knowledge.
* These were the early Aryans and the
bulk of the Fourth Root Races -- the former pious and meditative (yoga-contemplation),
the latter -- a fighting race of sorcerers, who were rapidly degenerating owing
to their uncontrolled passions.
** The Northern and Southern
Divisions of Lemuria-Atlantis. The Hyperborean and the Equatorial lands of the
two continents. (See Sections about Lemuria and Atlantis in History.)
*** This is Occult and refers to the
property of iron which, attracted by magnetic elements, is repelled by others,
which are made, by an occult process, as impervious to it as water to a blow.
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about the third great continent which
perished some 850,000 years ago.* A continent inhabited by two distinct races;
distinct physically and especially morally; both deeply versed in primeval
wisdom and the secrets of nature; mutually antagonistic in their struggle,
during the course and progress of their double evolution. Whence even the Chinese
teachings upon the subject, if it is but a fiction? Have they not recorded the
existence once upon a time of a holy island beyond the sun (Tcheou), and beyond
which were situated the lands of the immortal men? (See de Rougemont, ibid.) Do
they not still believe that the remnants of those immortal men -- who survived
when the holy island had become black with sin and perished -- have found
refuge in the great desert of Gobi, where they still reside invisible to all,
and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
"If one has to lend ear to
traditions," writes the very unbelieving Boulanger, ("Regne des
Dieux," Introduction) . . . "the latter place before the reign of
Kings, that of the Heroes and demi-gods; and still earlier and 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 communicated by them were once
universally admitted and revered by all the peoples; 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 do not understand them
now, must have had motives for believing in them furnished by their greater
proximity to the first ages, and which the distance that separates us from them
refuses to us . . . . Plato in his fourth book of 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. 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 remained scattered about in human
memory; but one never hears anything of the EVIL which has
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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produced those 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.
. . ."
That evil, Plato seems to see in the
sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for
he says that long before man built his cities, in the golden age, there was
naught but happiness on earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn,
knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice filling forthwith the
universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain
power over his fellow creatures. To do this the god used the same means we use
ourselves with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over
our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a
species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. It is just
what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal King or
prince but -- "Spirits and genii [[daimones]] of a divine nature more
excellent than that of man."
It was god, the Logos (the synthesis
of the Host) who thus presiding over the genii, became the first shepherd and
leader of men.* When the world had ceased to be so governed and the gods
retired, "ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind." "Left
to their own resources and industry, inventors then appeared among them
successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified
them . . . ."("De Legibus" 1, iv.; in Crit. and in Politic).
And mankind was right, as fire by
friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of
matter that was revealed to man.
"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). . . " say the Commentaries. 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." ("Unity of
Nature," Argyll.)
This will be doubted and denied in
our proud generation. But if it is asserted that there are no grains and fruits
unknown to earth, then we may remind the reader that wheat has never been found
in the wild state: it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have
been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but
wheat has
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Secret Doctrine explains and
expounds that which Plato says, for it teaches that those "inventors"
were gods and demi-gods (Devas and Rishis) who had become -- some deliberately,
some forced to by Karma -- incarnated in man.
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hitherto defied the efforts of
botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this
connection, how sacred was that cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat being
placed even with their mummies, and found thousands of years later in their
coffins. Remember:-- "The servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field
of Aanroo. . . . wheat seven cubits high." ("Book of the Dead,"
chap. xcix., 33; and clvi., 4.)* The reader is referred to Stanza VII., Verse
3, Book I., wherein this verse is explained in another of its meanings, and
also to the "Book of the Dead," chap. cix., v. 4 and 5.
"I am the Queen of these
regions," says the Egyptian Isis; "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 . . . (Dog-star) . . . . Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my
nurse." (Book I., chap. XIV.**
Sirius was called the dog-star. It
was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great instructor of mankind,
before other Buddhas.
The book of the Chinese Y-King,
attributes the discovery of agriculture to "the instruction given to men
by celestial genii."
"Woe, woe to the men who know
nought, observe nought, nor will they see. . . . They are all blind*** since
they remain ignorant how much the world is full of various and invisible
creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places" (Zohar, Part I.,
col. 177.)
The "Sons of God" have
existed and do exist. From the Hindu Brahmaputras and Manasaputras (Sons of
Brahma and Mind-born sons) down to the B'ne-aleim of the Jewish Bible, the
faith of the centuries and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is a direct reference to the
esoteric division of man's principles symbolised by the divine wheat. The
legend which inscribes the third Registrar of the papyrus (Chap. cx. of the
"Book of the Dead") 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 represented
astrally in the Kama-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 shown to
be inhabited by Scheo, Tefnant, 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-Himalayan adepts, who, when buried,
have corn and wheat placed over them.
** There are Egyptologists who have
tried to identify Osiris with Menes, which is quite erroneous. Bunsen assigns
to Menes an antiquity of 5867 years B.C., and is denounced for it by
Christians. But "Isis-Osiris" reigned in Egypt before the Dendera
Zodiac was painted on the ceiling of that temple, and that is over 75,000 years
ago!
*** In the text, "corked
up" or "screwed up."
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universal tradition force reason to
yield to such evidence. Of what value is independent criticism so called, or
"internal evidence" (based usually on the respective hobbies of the
critics), in the face of the universal testimony, which never varied throughout
the historical cycles? Read esoterically the sixth chapter of Genesis, which
repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, only changing slightly its form,
and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the Zohar.
"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that when
'the Sons of God' (b'ne-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).*
What does this sentence "and
also after that" signify unless it means when explained: "There were
giants in the earth BEFORE, i.e., before the sinless sons of the Third Race;
and also after that when other sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual
connection on earth (as Daksha did, when he saw that his Manasaputras would not
people the earth)"? And then comes a long break in this chapter vi. of
Genesis, between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the
wickedness of the "mighty men" . . . . men of renown, among whom is
placed Nimrod the "mighty hunter before the Lord," that "god saw
that the wickedness of man was great," nor in the builders of Babel, for
this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the giants who produced
monstra quaedam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races
of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the
huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by
theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them
to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse was ever a dilemma, not
alone for the men of science and Biblical scholars, but also for priests. For,
as the Rev. Father Peronne puts it:-- "Either they (the B'ne-aleim) were
good angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (angels)
and in this case could not be called b'ne-aleim, the "sons of God."
(Praelectiones theol. ch. ii.) This Biblical riddle -- "the real sense of
which no author has ever understood," as candidly confessed by Fourmont**
-- can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the
Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the former says we have seen;
what the Zohar tells us is this: B'ne-aleim was a name common to the Malachim
(the good Messengers) and to the Ischin ("the lower angels") (Rabbi
Parcha).
We may add for the benefit of the
demonologists that their Satan,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Genesis vi., v. 4.
** Reflections critiques sur
l'origine des anciens peuples.
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"the adversary," is
included in Job among the sons of God or b'ne-aleim who visit their
father." (Chapter i.) But of this later on.
Now the Zohar says that the Ischin,
the beautiful B'ne-aleim, were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men
because they were sent on earth to do so. (Book of Ruth and Schadash; fol. 63,
col. 3; Amsterdam edition). Elsewhere the same volume shows these b'ne-aleim
belonging to the tenth sub-division of the "Thrones" (Zohar, part
iii., col. 113. But see also 1st vol. 184). It also explains that the Ischin,
"men-spirits," viri spirituales, now that men can see them no longer,
help magicians to produce, through their science, homunculi which are not small
men but "men smaller (in the sense of inferiority) than men." Both
show themselves under the form that the Ischin had then, i.e., gaseous and
ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma
will associate with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a mystery, as
explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed in Maimonides, "In More
Nevochim" (chapter xxvi., p. 8). "There is an impenetrable mystery in
the narrative concerning Azazel." And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian
to the Vatican and one who ought to know, says -- we have quoted him before --
that "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" (Sagra Scrittura). Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name
as Spencer does, from Ajal (separated) and El (god), hence "one separated
from God," the DEVIL. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the Sacrificial
victim than the "formal adversary of Jehovah," as Spencer would have
it (II., pp. 14, 29).
The amount of malicious fancy and
fiction bestowed on that "Host" by various fanatical writers is quite
extraordinary. Azazel and his "host" are simply the Hebrew
"Prometheus," and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The
Zohar shows the Ischin chained on the mountain in the desert, allegorically;
thus simply alluding to those "spirits" as being chained to the earth
during the cycle of incarnation. Azazel (or Azaziel) is one of the chiefs of
the "transgressing" angels in Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the
top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is
said that Azaziel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate
mirrors (?) to make one see what is behind him (viz., "magic mirrors").
Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the
solution of magic; Barkayal, astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and
signs; Tamial, astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the moon.
"These seven were the first instructors of the Fourth man" (i.e., of
the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning all
that its dead-letter expresses?
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It is the symbolical representation
of the great struggle between divine wisdom, nous, and its earthly reflection,
Psuche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven --because
the divine MONAD had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for
incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay
into an immortal god. For, as Eliphas Levi tells us, "the angels aspire to
become men; for the perfect man, the man-god, is above even angels." On
Earth -- because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the
coils of matter.
Strange to say, the Occult teaching
reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous archangel with the Christians,
and the man-like God with the Hindus, which represent matter in this case; and
the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the
mystery; theological symbolics conceal it still more. For the former explains
many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which have hitherto
remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and
his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite,
absolutely perfect god, and created the greatest evil and curse on earth --
belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is opened with the key to its
metaphysical symbolism now restored; while that of theological interpretation
shows the gods and the archangels standing as symbols for the dead letter or
dogmatic religions, and as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and
unadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in
this direction in "Isis Unveiled," and a still greater number of
references to this mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To
make the point clear once for all: that which the clergy of every dogmatic
religion -- pre-eminently the Christian -- points out as Satan, the enemy of
God, is in reality, the highest divine Spirit -- (occult Wisdom on Earth) -- in
its naturally antagonistic character to every worldly, evanescent illusion,
dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church,
intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves; the
Church which calls itself the bride of Christ, and the trustee at the same time
of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master "get thee behind me Satan"
was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling
itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old
"Law of Moses" which Christ openly repudiated: both these Churches
are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon
of esoteric (because divine) Wisdom. Whenever anathematizing the Gnostic Solar
Chnouphis -- the Agathodaemon -- Christos, or the theosophical Serpent of
Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis -- they
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are moved by the same Spirit of dark
fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus by saying to him "Say
we not well thou hast a devil?"
Read the account about Indra (Vayu)
in the Rig-Veda, the occult volume par excellence of Aryanism, and then compare
it with the same in the Puranas -- the exoteric version thereof, and the
purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom religion. In the Rig Veda Indra is
the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of
his highly spiritual nature. In the Puranas Indra becomes a profligate, and a
regular drunkard on the Soma juice, in the terrestrial way. He is the conqueror
of all the "enemies of the gods" -- the Daityas, Nagas (Serpents),
Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritri, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the
St. Michael of the Hindu Pantheon -- the chief of the militant Host. Turning to
the Bible, we find Satan, one of the "Sons of God" (Job. i. 6),
becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon in its infernal,
evil sense. But in the Kabala ("Book of Numbers") Samael, who is
Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the slayer of the Dragon. How
is this? For it is said that Tselem (the image) reflects alike Michael and
Samael who are one. Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neschamah
(Soul) and Nephesch (life). In the "Chaldean Book of Numbers" Samael
is the concealed (occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom,
both emanating from the same source but diverging after their issue from the
mundane soul, which on Earth is Mahat (intellectual understanding, or Manas
(the seat of Intellect). They diverge, because one (Michael) is influenced by
Neschamah, while the other (Samael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was
perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church; which, loathing independent
Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form (hence by dogma), forthwith made of
Samael-Satan (the most wise and spiritual spirit of all) -- the adversary of
its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the DEVIL!
--------
THE ORIGIN OF THE SATANIC MYTH.
Let us then fathom this creation of
the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The
origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon
and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and
semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations
among the profane, and was established universally through the once universal
heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were
covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon;
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but the cult is now preserved mostly
in China and the 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" ("Archaeology," Vol. xxv., p. 220, London). In
the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western
origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and
heliolatrous worship crossed over with its Sun-gods into the land of the
Pharaohs from India. In the gods of Stonehenge we recognise the divinities of
Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the devas of the Vedic nations.
Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kaliya, Osiris and Typhon
are all one under many names -- the latest of which are Michael and the Red
Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is "one as God," or
his "Double," for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the
fighting angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the Cosmic
or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the "War of
Heaven," its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation
and archaic crypts. The following are the proofs:--
We find (a) the priests assuming the
name of the gods they served; (b) the "Dragons" held throughout all
antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of
Eternity; and (c) the hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling
themselves generally the "Sons of the Dragon" and
"Serpents"; thus the teachings of the Secret Doctrine are thereby
corroborated.
There were numerous catacombs in
Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of
them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning
on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Lybian desert, and were
known as the Serpent's catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed
the sacred mysteries of the kuklos anagkes, the "Unavoidable Cycle,"
more generally known as "the circle of necessity"; the inexorable
doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and when it has been
judged in the Amenthian region.
In de Bourbourg's book, Votan, the
Mexican demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage
which ran underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that
this passage was a snake's hole, "un agujero de colubra"; and that he
was admitted to it because he was himself "a son of the snakes," or a
serpent. ("Die Phoinizier," 70.)
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for
his description of the snake's hole is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as
above mentioned. The hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of Babylon, generally
styled them-
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selves the "Sons of the
Serpent-god," or "Sons of the Dragon," during the mysteries.
"The Assyrian priest bore always
the name of his god," says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic
regions also called themselves snakes. "I am a Serpent, I am a
Druid," they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac
of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the serpent's mount. The Dracontia once
covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon,
only because it was the symbol of the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol
of the highest god -- the Phoenician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognised as
El Elion.* Besides the surname of serpents, they were called the
"builders," the "architects"; for the immense grandeur of
their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverised remains of
them "frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern
engineers," says Taliesin.**
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of
the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are
the descendants of Ham and Canaan. "I am Hivim," they say.
"Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake
myself, for I am a Hivim." ("Cartas," 51; "Isis
Unveiled," Vol. I., 553, et seq.)
Furthermore, the "War in
Heaven" is shown, in one of its significations, to have meant and referred
to those terrible struggles in store for the candidate for adeptship, between
himself and his (by magic) personified human passions, when the inner
enlightened man had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became
the "Dragon-Slayer," as having happily overcome all the temptations;
and a "Son of the Serpent" and a Serpent himself, having cast off his
old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality
in Eternity. (See Part II. on the Satanic Myth.)
Seth, the reputed forefather of
Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also
Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon -- the same as Apophis, the
Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the dark
side of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of
Ahura-mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials
of adeptship and initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and
Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India
and Ceylon, where any one can study the allegorical narratives and traditions
which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Sanchoniathon in
"Eusebius," Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv.
** "Society of Antiquaries of
London," vol. xxv. p. 220.
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Rahu, mythologically is a Daitya -- a
giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon or Serpent's
tail. During the churning of the Ocean, when the gods produced amrita -- the
water of Immortality -- he stole some of it, and drinking, became immortal. The
Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who
placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing
the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the
ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Rahu wreaks his vengeance on the
Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable had another mystic
meaning, since Rahu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the
mysteries of the Sun's (Vikarttana's) initiation, when the candidate and the
Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes
of Tiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nagas -- the
Hindu King-Snakes, who dwelled in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From
Sesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the
dragon serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we
find the fact mentioned in the earliest Puranas. The children of Surasa are the
"mighty Dragons." The Vayu Purana replacing "Surasa" (of
Vishnu Purana) by Danayas or Danavas -- the descendants of Danu by the sage
Kasyapa -- and those Danavas being the giants (or Titans) who warred against
the gods, they are thus shown identical with the "Dragons" and
"Serpents" of Wisdom.
By simply comparing the Sun-gods of
every country, one may find their allegories agreeing perfectly with one
another; and the more the allegorical symbol is occult the more its corresponding
symbol in other systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely
differing from each other in appearance -- the old Aryan, the ancient Greek,
and the modern Christian schemes -- we select several Sun-gods and dragons at
random, these will be found copied from each other.
Let us take Agni the fire-god, Indra
the firmament, and Karttikeya from the Hindus; the Greek Apollo; and Mikael,
the "Angel of the Sun," the first of the AEons, called by the
Gnostics "the saviour" -- and proceed in order.
(1) Agni -- the fire-god -- is called
in the Rig-Veda Vaiswanara. Now Vaisvanara is a Danava -- a giant-demon,* whose
daughters Puloma and Kalaka are the mothers of numberless Danavas (30
millions), by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* He is thus named and included in
the list of the Danavas in Vayu Purana; the Commentator of Bhagavata Purana
calls him a son of Danu, but the name means also "Spirit of
Humanity."
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Kasyapa,* and live in Hiranyapura,
"the golden city," floating in the air. Therefore, Indra is, in a
fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kasyapa; and Kasyapa is, in this
sense, identical with Agni, the fire-god, or Sun (Kasyapa-Aditya). To this same
group belongs Skanda or Karttikeya (god of War, the six-faced planet Mars
astronomically), a Kumara, or virgin-youth, born of Agni** for the purpose of
destroying Taraka, the Danava Demon, the grandson of Kasyapa by Hiranyaksha,
his son,*** whose (Taraka's) yogi austerities were so extraordinary that they
became formidable to the gods, who feared such a rival in power.**** 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 Brahma, for which he is entitled Jishnu, "leader of the celestial
Host." Karttikeya is found bearing the same titles. For killing Taraka,
the Danava, he is Taraka-Jit, "Vanquisher of Taraka,"*****
"Kumara Guha," "the mysterious Virgin-youth"
"Siddha-Sena" -- "the leader of the Siddhas"; and
Saktidhara -- "Spear-holder."
(2.) Now take Apollo, the Grecian
sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he
does not answer both
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Kasyapa is called the Son of
Brahma, 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
Marichi, the son of Brahma; while Atharva-veda says, "The Self-born Kasyapa
sprang from Time"; and esoterically -- Time and Space are forms of the One
incognizable Deity. As an Aditya, Indra is son of Kasyapa, as also Vaivasvata
Manu, our progenitor. In the instance given in the text, he is Kasyapa-Aditya,
the Sun, and the Sun-god, from whom all the "Cosmic" Demons, Dragons
(nagas), Serpent, or Snake-gods, and Danavas, the giants, are born. The meaning
of the allegories given above is purely astronomical and cosmical, but will
serve to prove the identity of all.
** All such stories differ in the
exoteric texts. In the Mahabharata, Karttikeya, "the six-faced Mars,"
is the son of Rudra or Siva, Self-born without a mother from the seed of Siva
cast into the fire. But Karttikeya is generally called Agnibhu, "fire
born."
*** Hiranyaksha is the ruler or king
of the fifth region of Patala, a Snake-god.
**** 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.
***** The story told is, that Taraka
(called also Kalabhana), owing to his extraordinary Yoga-powers, had obtained
all the divine knowledge of yoga-vidya and 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, Surgal 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 Karttikeya, and under the same circumstances. Both are "leaders of the
Celestial Host," both Virgins, both "leaders of Saints,"
"Spear-holders" (Saktidhara), etc., etc. Karttikeya is the original
of Michael and St. George, as surely as Indra is the prototype of Karttikeya.
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to Indra, Karttikeya, and even Kasyapa-Aditya,
and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the
"angel of the Sun," who is "like," and "one with,
God." Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated
though they be into not-to-be questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except
the abuse of human authority and power, perhaps.
Apollo is Helios (the Sun), Phoibus-Apollo
("the light of life and of the World"*) who arises out of the
golden-winged cup (the sun); hence he is the sun-god par excellence. At the
moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who
attacked his mother before his birth,** and whom he is divinely commissioned to
destroy -- like Karttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Taraka, the
too holy and wise demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria --
"the golden star island," the "earth which floats in the
air," which is the Hindu golden Hiranyapura; "he is called the pure,
[[agnos]], Agnus Dei (the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks), and in the
primal myth he is exempt "from all sensual love" ("Book of
God," p. 88). He is, therefore, a Kumara, like Karttikeya, and as Indra
was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the "red
Dragon," connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon,
who wants to attack the woman in child-birth (See Revelation xii.), as Python
attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding
of the spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric
meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey, he would have understood St. John's
"Revelation," and even the Pentateuch, better than he does. For the
way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is
through the Hindu and Chaldean religious symbols.
The repetition of this archaic
tradition is found in ch. xii. of St. John's Revelations, and comes from the
Babylonian legends without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story had
its origin in the allegories of the Aryans. The fragment read by the late
George Smith (See "The Chaldean account of Genesis," p. 304) is
sufficient to disclose the source of the xii. 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 joins
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "life and the light"
of the material physical world, the delight of the senses -- not of the soul.
Apollo is pre-eminently the human god, the god of emotional, pomp-loving and
theatrical Church ritualism, with lights and music.
** See chap. xii. in Revelation where
we find Apollo's mother persecuted by that Python, the Red Dragon, who is also
Porphyrion, the scarlet or red Titan.
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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."*
"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,** and Merodach (the archangel Michael in Revelation) undertakes to
lead the heavenly host against the dragons. The war, which is described with
spirit, ends, of course, in the triumph of the principles of Good. . . .
."***
This war of gods with the powers of
the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle
between the Aryan adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of
Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who
disappeared in the Deluge. (See the last pages of Vol. I., "Isis
Unveiled," Atlantis.)
The symbols of the dragons and
"War in Heaven" have, as already stated, more than one significance;
religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common
allegory. But it had also a Cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is
repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the Vedas
this Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind.
Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his
thunder and lightning the god compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth,
and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-Han or "the slayer
of Vritra," as Michael is called the Conqueror and "Slayer of the
Dragon." Both these "Enemies" are then the "Old
Dragon" precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Zend-Avestic Amshaspends are a
Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the
legions of Heaven, when one reads the Vendidad. Thus in Fargard XIX., ii. 13
(42), Zarathustra is told by Ahura Mazda to "invoke the Amesha Spenta who
rule over the seven Karshvares**** of the Earth"; which Karshvares in
their seven
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* No "god" who curses his
(supposed) own work, because he has made it imperfect, can be the one infinite
absolute wisdom, whether called Bel or Jehovah.
** In the Indian allegory of
Tarakamaya, the war between the gods and the Asuras headed by Soma (the moon,
the King of Plants), it is Viswa-Karma, the artificer of the gods, who forges,
like Vulcan (Tubal-Kain), their weapons for them.
*** We have said elsewhere that the
"woman with child" of Revelation (xii.) was Aime, the great mother,
or Binah, the third Sephiroth, "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, recognising the
non-separateness of the Universe and everything in it from the Absolute ALL,
sees in it no better than the great Illusion, Mahamaya, hence the cause of
misery and suffering.
**** The "Seven Karshvares of
the Earth" -- the seven spheres of our planetary chain, [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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applications refer equally to the
seven spheres of our planetary chain, to the seven planets, the seven heavens,
etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane,
or simply a sidereal world. In the same Fargard (ii. and iii.), in his
invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathustra appeals to them in
these words: "I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their
flocks" (42 Vendid. Saddh). The "Sravah" -- a word which the
Orientalists have given up as one "of unknown meaning" -- means the
same Amshaspends, but in their highest occult meaning. The "Sravah"
are the noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspends, the souls or spirits of those
manifested Powers; and "their sons and their flock" refers to the
planetary angels and their sidereal flock of stars and constellations.
"Amshaspend" is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations
and affairs only. Zarathustra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as "thou,
the maker of the material world." Ormazd is the father of our earth
(Spenta Armaiti), and she is referred to, when personified, as "the fair
daughter of Ahura Mazda" (Fargard, XIX. ii.), who is also the creator of
the Tree (of occult and spiritual knowledge and wisdom) from which the mystic and
mysterious Caresma is taken. But the occult name of the bright God was never
pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan, the seducing Serpent
of Genesis, and one of the primeval angels who rebelled, is the name of the
"Red Dragon." He is the Angel of Death, the Talmud saying that
"the Angel of Death and Satan are the same," and, killed by Michael,
he is once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer; but see the
transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of
the desert, or again with the Vedic demon of drought, as Vritra; "Simoom
is called Atabutos" or -- Diabolos, the devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Aphophis -- the
Accuser in the "Book of the Dead" -- is worsted by Horus, who pierces
his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the
desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set --
he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day
and the sun. Archaeology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,*
whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a
spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented
[[Footnote(s)]]
------------------------------------------------- §
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] the seven worlds -- also mentioned in the Rig-Veda -- are fully referred
to elsewhere. There are six rajamsi (worlds) above prithivi -- the earth, or
"this" (idam), 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. See § on Chronology.)
* Verse 62, chap. xvii., "Book
of the Dead": Anubis is Horus who melts in him who is eyeless.
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as slaying a dragon, that has the head and
tail of a serpent. (See Lenoir's "Du Dragon de Metz.")
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons
and Serpents conquered by their "Slayers" are, in their origin, the
turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods or
creative powers. In the "Book of the Dead" those principles are
called "the Sons of Rebellion." (See also "Egyptian
Pantheon," pp. 20, 23.) "In that night, the oppressor, the murderer
of Osiris, otherwise called the deceiving Serpent (Verse 54) . . . . calls the
Sons of Rebellion in Air, and when they arrive to the East of Heavens, then
there is War in Heaven and in the entire World" (v. 49, "Book of the
Dead," xvii.).
In the Scandinavian Eddas the
"War" of the Ases with the Hrim-thurses (frost-giants), and of
Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the "wolf" who
comes out of "Darkness" --- is the repetition of the same myth. The
"evil Spirits,"* having begun by being simply the emblems of Chaos,
became euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally
won the right of citizenship in the most civilized and learned races of this
globe -- since its creation as alleged -- and became a dogma with Christians.
As George Smith has it: "The evil principles (Spirits) emblems of
Chaos" (in Chaldea 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." ("Assyrian
Discoveries," p. 403.) This is only another version of the Hindu "War
in Heaven," between Soma, the moon, and the gods -- Indra being the
atmospheric Vul; which shows it plainly to be both a Cosmogonical and an
astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest theogony as
taught in the Mysteries.
It is in the religious doctrines of
the Gnostics that the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and
all those symbols of powers now called Evil, can be seen the best; as it is
they who divulged the esoteric nature of the Jewish Substitute for AIN-SOPH in
their teachings; of the true meaning of which, while the Rabbins concealed it,
the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing. Surely Jesus of Nazareth
would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as wise as the
serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil one; nor would the Ophites,
the learned Egyptian Gnostics of "the Brotherhood of the Serpent,"
have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of WISDOM, the
divine Sophia (and a type of the all-good, not the all-bad), were that reptile
so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it
has ever been a dual symbol; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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as a Dragon it had never been
anything else than a symbol of the manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The
Draco volans, the flying Dragon of the early painters, may be an exaggerated
picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal; but those who have faith in
the Occult teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures
as flying Dragons, or a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic
winged lizards that served as the prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his
great Brazen Serpent.* The Jews had worshipped the latter idol themselves, but,
after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, turned round, and called
that symbol of the great or Higher God of every other nation -- a Devil, and
their own usurper -- the "One God."**
The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew
satan, "an adversary" (from the verb shatana, "to be
adverse," to persecute) belongs by right to the first and cruelest
"adversary of all the other gods" -- Jehovah, not to the Serpent,
which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the
dogma, "the adversary of men." This dogma, based as it is on chapter
iii. of Genesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was
the first to create that original and hence-forward universal tempter of man --
the woman? Not the serpent surely, but the "Lord God" himself, who,
saying:-- "It is not good that the man should be alone" -- made
woman, and "brought her unto the man" (18-22). If the unpleasant
little incident that followed was and is still to be regarded as the
"original sin," then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a
poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam (of chap.
1.) to have been left either "male and female," or "alone."
It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the
"agent provocateur," and the Serpent -- only a prototype of Azazel,
"the scapegoat for the sin of (the God of) Israel," the poor Tragos
having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of
course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama
of humanity in Genesis in their dead-letter sense. Those who read them
esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 2 Kings
xviii., 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.
** And Satan stood up against Israel
and moved David to number Israel (Chron. xxi. 1.) "The anger of the Lord
Jehovah was kindled against Israel," and he moved David to say: "Go,
number Israel" (2 Samuel, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical.
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speculations and hypothesis; they
know how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.
There is at present no need to touch
upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense,
one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a blind
created purposely by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care
after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own
property.* But the following statement is made. The personage who is named in
the first four chapters of Genesis variously as "God," the "Lord
God," and "Lord" simply, is not one and the same person;
certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the
Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabala, Jehovah appearing only in chapter iv.,
in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into
mankind -- male and female, jah-veh.** The "Serpent," moreover, is
not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and
glory, who, promising the woman that if they ate of the forbidden fruit
"ye shall not surely die," kept his promise, and made man immortal in
his incorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the mysteries, the chief of the
Androgyne creators of men. Chapter iii. contains (esoterically) the withdrawal
of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made
in the image of the "Boneless" gods, and the opening of his
consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the bright Angel (Lucifer) in
the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the "Enlightener"; while
the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There,
Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from
Eve, creates in her "Abel," the first natural woman,* and sheds the
Virgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of
the correct reading of verse i. (chapter iv., Genesis), in the original Hebrew
text; and the Rabbins teaching that "Kin (Cain), the Evil, was the Son of
Eve by Samael, the devil who took Adam's place"; and the Talmud adding
that "the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the
same" --(Babba Battra, 16a) -- it becomes easy to see that Jehovah
(mankind, or "Jah-hovah") and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent)
are one and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
** In the above-mentioned work (p.
233 App.), verse 26 of the 4th chap. 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.
*** See for explanation the excellent
pages of appendix vii. of the same work.
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the same in every particular. There
is no Devil, no Evil, outside mankind to produce a Devil. Evil is a necessity
in, and one of the supporters of the manifested universe. It is a necessity for
progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of Day, and
Death for that of Life -- that man may live for ever.
Satan represents metaphysically
simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in nature.* He is the
"adversary," allegorically, the "murderer," and the great
Enemy of all, because there is nothing in the whole universe that has not two
sides -- the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness,
beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since
they are the adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the
philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects -- called
heretical and viewed as the abomination of the times -- will become more
comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of SATANIANS came to
be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future
day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the
CAINITES came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) ISCARIOTES; the true
character of the treacherous apostle having never been correctly presented
before the tribunal of Humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets
of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an
Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the
symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-Baoth was
regarded by most of them as the god of Moses, and was held as a proud,
ambitious, and impure spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of
the highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than
his brethren Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested
deity only in their collectivity, since they were the fashioners of the first
differentiations of the primary Cosmic substance for the creation of the
phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator
of, and one with Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or EVIL. (See "Isis Unveiled,"
II, 184). They taught that Turbo and Adonai were "names of Jao-Jehovah,
who is an emanation of Ilda Baoth" (Codex Nazaraeus). (See Part II.,
"The Fallen Angels.") This amounted in their language to saying what
the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that -- "Cain had
been generated by Samael or Satan."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
mediaeval demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But see
in the text the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat-headed Satan, one with
Azaziel, the scape goat of Israel. Nature is the god PAN.
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The fallen Angels are made in every
ancient system the prototypes of fallen men -- allegorically, and, those men
themselves -- esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the
"Beni-Elohim," the sons of God, among whom is Satan -- in the Semitic
traditions; war in heaven between Thraetaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying
Serpent, ends on earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men
against the power of Evil, "of the Iranians with the Aryan Brahmins of
India." And the conflict of the gods with the Asuras is repeated in the
Great War -- the Mahabharata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all
the Combatants, gods and demons, adversaries in both the camps, are now
transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect EVIL
personified with the Serpent of Genesis, and thus prove the new dogma.*
-------
NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE
BEEN A DEMON.
It matters little whether it is Isis,
or Ceres -- the "Kabiria" -- or again the Kabiri, who have taught men
agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolising all
the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth,
history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others,
or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught
in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or
Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and
research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or
pious Titans, etc. -- then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and
along with it all the patriarchs -- the antediluvian and pre-Atlantean Titans.
As now discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and generation,
and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.** Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, "an
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; or -- if this will
please better -- he is one with Hephaestos or Vulcan; Jabal is taken from the
Kabiri -- instructors in agriculture, "such as have cattle," and
Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, or they
who fabricated the harp for Kronos and the trident for Poseidon.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide for further details upon the
Satanic myth, Part II. on Symbolism, in this volume.
** As he is also Vulcan or Vul-cain,
the greatest god with the later Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The god of
time was Chium in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chium is the same as Cain.
*** See Strabo, comparing them to the
Cyclopes -- XIV. p. 653 et seq. (Callim in Del., 31 Stat. Silo. IV., 6, 47;
etc., etc.)
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The history or "fables"
about the mysterious Telchines -- fables echoing each and all the archaic
events of our esoteric teachings -- furnish us with a key to the origin of
Cain's genealogy (Genesis, ch. iii.); they give the reason why the Roman
Catholic Church identifies "the accursed blood" of Cain and Ham with
Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines -- it
is argued -- the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to
raise statues to the gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts?
And is it not they who were destroyed by a deluge at the command of Zeus, as
the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri
and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. "Like
Lemnos and Samothrace," says Decharme, "Rhodes, the birth-place of
the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation." (Genii of Fire, p.
271.) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been
previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like Samothrace (of the
Kabiri) it is connected in the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough
has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.
But we may add a few more words about
Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every pagan God in one or another
character. The Homeric songs contain, poetized, all the later fables about the
Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The
attempt to disconnect the two genealogies -- those of Seth and Cain* -- and the
further attempt, as futile, to show them real, historical men, has only led to
more serious inquiries into the history of the Past, and to discoveries which
have damaged for ever the supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of
Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or
Father Sadik, with Kronos-Saturn is proved also.
That it is so may be easily
demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant (See
"Analysis of Ancient Mythology," Vol. II., p. 760) concurs with all
those who are of opinion, that Sydic, or
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Hebrew unvowelled 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
MAHALEEL (a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to JARAD (or Irad); Jarad
to ENOCH (Number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally
Lamech closes the list. 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.
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Sadic, was the patriarch Noah (as
also Melchizedek); and that the name by which he is called, or Sadic,
corresponds to the character given of him in Genesis, chap. vi., 9. "He
was [[diagram]], 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." (See New Encyclopaedia by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.)
Now it is Sanchoniathon, who informs
the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchizedek). True
enough, this information, having descended to us through Eusebius (Preparatio
Evangelica), may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more
than likely that he dealt with Sanchoniathon's works as he has with Manetho's
Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic,
Kronos, or Saturn with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian
pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as
a just man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, King of
Salem, and priest of the high god, after "his own order" (See
Hebrews, ch. v. 6, and vii. 1, et seq.); and finally, having seen what they all
were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see
what they became rabbinically and KABALISTICALLY.
Speaking of Adam, Kain, Mars, etc.,
as personifications, we find the author of "The Source of Measures"
enunciating our very esoteric teachings in his Kabalistic researches. Thus he
says:--
"Now Mars was the lord of birth
and of death, of generation and of destruction, of ploughing, of building, of
sculpture or stone-cutting, of Architecture . . . . in fine, of all . . . .
ARTS. He was the primeval principle, disintegrating into the modification of
two opposites for production. Astronomically, too,* 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,** or Pater Sadic, or Melchizadek, he
was lord of the Ecliptic, or
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The AEolian name of Mars was
[[Areus]], and the Greek Ares, [[Ares]], 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 Muller connects both the
names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their
derivation, and from which, he says, the name of Maruts (the storm-gods) comes.
Welcker, however, offers more correct etymologies. (See Griech. Gotterlehre,
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.
** As the same author shows:
"The very name Vulcain appears in the reading; for in the first words (of
chap. iv. Genesis, 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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 Sadik, the Just or Right One, was
lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra. ("Source of Measures," p.
186-70.)
This makes their functions plain
enough after they had been degraded, and establishes the identity.
The Noachian Deluge, as described in
its dead letter and within the period of Biblical chronology, having been shown
to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary supposition of Bishop
Cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it
seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were
"two distinct races of Kabiri," the first consisting of Ham and
Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionysus of Mnaseas; the second, "of
the children of Shem, are the Kabiri of Sochoniston, while their father Sydyk
is consequently the Scriptural Shem." (Append. de Cabiris, ap. Orig. gent.
p. 364, 376, and the latter statement on p. 357.)
The Kabirim, "the mighty
ones," are identical with our primeval Dhyan-Chohans, with the corporeal
and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors of the
primeval races, which are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the divine
Dynasties.
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THE OLDEST PERSIAN TRADITIONS ABOUT
THE POLAR, AND THE SUBMERGED CONTINENTS.
Legendary lore could not distort
facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognisable shape. Between the
traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other -- a
country ever at war with the former -- there is too great a similarity of
figures and numbers to allow such coincidence to be due to simple chance. This
was well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these
traditions from every available source, to compare the better those of the Magi
with the so-called Grecian "fables."
Those legends have now passed into
popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way
into our universal History. The stories of King Arthur and his knights of the
Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on
facts, and pertain to the History of England. Why should not the folklore of
Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis?
That folklore says as follows:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] read as "and the god Cain," or Vulcain. If, however, anything
is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: [[hebrew]], Cain, the
iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and
smith work" (p. 278).
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Before the creation of Adam, two
races lived and succeeded each other on Earth; the Devs who reigned 7,000
years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, during the existence of
the former. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in
stature, but wiser and kinder.
Here we recognize the Atlantean
giants and the Aryans, or the Rakshasas of the Ramayana and the children of
Bharata Varsha, or India; the ante- and the post-diluvians of the Bible.
Gyan (or rather Gnan, true or occult
Wisdom and knowledge), also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom),
was the king of the Peris.* He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only
instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against
black magic, the sorcery of the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years
when Iblis, the devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Devs and scatter them
to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, produced on the
principles of astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could
not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate (or Karma).** They count
ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth,
Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten
antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.
Distorted as those legends are now
found, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek,
and even Hebrew traditions. The latter, disdaining in its exclusiveness to
speak of pre-adamite nations, yet allows these to be clearly inferred, by
sending out Cain -- one of the two only living men on earth -- into the land of
Nod, where he gets married and builds a city (Gen. iv.), etc.
Now if we compare the 9,000 years
mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years, which Plato declared had
passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made
apparent. Bailly remarked, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret
Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. "First of
all," we read in "Critias" that "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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Some derive the word from Paras
which produced Pars, Persia, Pars; but it may be equally derived from Pitar or
Pitris, the Hindu progenitors of the Fifth Race -- the Fathers of Wisdom or the
Sons of "Will and Yoga" -- who were called Pitar, as were the divine
Pitars of the First Race.
** See for these traditions the
"Collection of Persian Legends," in Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and
Persian; Herbelot's narrative Legendes Persanes, "Bibliotheque
Orientale," p. 298, 387, etc., and Danville's Memoires. 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.
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In "Timaeus" Plato says the
same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans
perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the
Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great "island" or
continent was submerged, there hardly seems any reconciliation possible between
the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the
veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldea and Persia,
through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and
passed to posterity. Thus, one finds the Hebrews calling a week "seven
days," and "a week of years" when each of its days represents
360 solar years, and the whole "week" is 2,520 years, in fact. They
had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., etc., and their Sabbath lasted
indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years -- in their secret calculations of the
Sods. We of the present times call an age a century. They of Plato's day, the
initiated writers, at any rate, meant by a millenium, not a thousand but
100,000 years; Hindus, more independent than any, never concealed their
chronology. Thus, when saying 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000
years, during which space of time -- i.e, from the first appearance of the
Aryan race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began
gradually sinking* and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the
final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis, the Aryan races had
never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war
lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yug, and was
the Mahabharatean war so famous in Indian History. Such blending of the events
and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of
years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that had 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
given. The latter event has never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of
the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because
isolated; for, being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left
untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.
History, for the first time, catches
a glimpse of Egypt and its great mysteries through Herodotus, if we do not take
into account the Bible, and its queer chronology.** And how little Herodotus
could tell is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The main continent perished in the
Miocene times, as already stated.
** 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).
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confessed by himself when speaking of
a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Sais, in the sacred precinct of Minerva.
There, 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 they call
Mysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with
the particulars of them, I must observe a discreet silence" (ii. 170).
On the other hand, it is well to know
that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the ancients, as that
of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was
held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure
of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was
plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books
were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them.
Sigalions (images of Harpocrates) were in every temple -- especially in those
of Isis and Serapis -- each pressing a finger to the lips; while the Hebrews
taught that to divulge, after initiation into the Rabbinical mysteries, the
secrets of Kabala, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: it
was punishable by death.
And yet, we Europeans accepted the
exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has influenced and
coloured ever since all our conceptions of science and the duration of things!
The Persian traditions, then, are
full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think; whereas,
they are only transformed. They are ever speaking of, and describing the
mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant
Argeak, wherein the statues of the ancient men under all their forms are
preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons), or the wise kings of the East,
and count seventy-two kings of that name.* Three among them reigned for 1,000
years each. (Herbelot, p. 829.)
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath
(Adam), their first king, died murdered by his giant brother. The father had a
perpetual fire preserved on the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence --
the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think.
Then came Huschenk, the prudent and
the wise. It was his dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones,
which had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the earth; how
to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is
Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thence King Solomon, whose traces
are nowhere to be found outside of the Bible, and the description of whose
magnificent palace and city dovetail with those of the Persian tales; though
they were unknown to all pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.
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"Eternal Wisdom," and even
with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though they were
built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so
these just-named cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an
immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.
In the same tradition that wise
prince is credited with having made war against the giants on a twelve-legged
horse, whose birth is attributed to the amours of a crocodile with a female
hippopotamus. This dodecaped was found on the "dry island" or new
continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful
animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy.
No giants could withstand his tremendous power. Notwithstanding, this king of
kings was killed by an enormous rock thrown at him by the giants from the great
mountains of Damavend.*
Tahmurath is the third king of
Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and who
kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelled
in the mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old
French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror
of the giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh,
Diarbek, etc., etc. Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had
his steed, only far more rare and rapid -- a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A
marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.
(See Orient. Collect. ii., 119.) What says that Persian Phoenix? It complains
of its old age, for it is born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (also
Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the
birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied
esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.** (Orient. Collect. ii., 119 et
seq.) Simorgh is born with the last deluge of the pre-Adamites, says the
"romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif"! (Tales of Derbent.)
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 3rd Race separated, and his three
sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which
uncovered the "nakedness" of the Parent Race, and of the
"Mindless," i.e., committed sin.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Orient. Trad., p. 454. See also
Bailly's "Lettres sur l'Atlantide."
** 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 7 Rounds, 7 Root-races, and sub-races, the truly occult figures,
though sorely confused.
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Tahmurath visits on his winged steed
(Ahriman) the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris
ill-treated by the giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he
liberates the good Peri, Mergiana*, whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and
takes her over to the dry island, i.e., the new continent of Europe.** After
him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700
years, and believes himself, in his great pride, immortal, and demands divine
honours. Fate punishes him, he wanders for 100 years in the world under the
name of Dhulkarnayn "the two horned." But this epithet has no
connection with the "two-horned" gentleman of the cloven foot. The
"two-horned" is the epithet given in Asia, uncivilized enough to know
nothing of the attributes of the devil, to those conquerors who have subdued
the world from the East to the West.
Then come the usurper Zohac, and
Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up
in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to
Kaikobad, who founded a new dynasty.
Such is the legendary history of
Persia, and we have to analyze it. What are the mountains of Kaf to begin with?
Whatever they may be in their
geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains,
it is far beyond these mountains to the North, that legend places the Devs and
Peris; the latter the remote ancestors of the Parses or Farses. Oriental
tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark
region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the Fortunate Islands, wherein
bubbles, from the beginning of life on earth, the fountain of life (Herbelot,
p. 593; Armenian Tales, p. 35). But the legend asserts, moreover, that a
portion of the first dry island (continent), having detached itself from the
main body, has remained, since then, beyond the mountains of Koh-kaf, "the
stony girdle that surrounds the world." A journey of seven months'
duration will bring him who is possessed of "Soliman's ring" to that
"fountain," if he keeps on journeying North straight before him as
the bird flies. Journeying therefore from Persia straight north, will bring one
along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the west, to Nova Zemblia;
and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic circle would land
one between 60 and 45 degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zemblia and
Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapedian horse of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy
sister of King Arthur, is thus shown of Oriental descent.
** 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 had passed into a legend?
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Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of
Tahmurath (or Taimuraz), upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.*
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters
of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the
snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, there is a great continent now
concealed from all. That it is reached by those who can secure the services of
the twelvelegged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose
legs become at will twelve wings**; or by those who have the patience to wait
for the good pleasure of Simorgh-anke, who promised that before she dies she
will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within
easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that
portion of the "dry island" and its severed parts.*** This relates,
of course, to the seventh race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric cycle.
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes,
who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was
born, and dwelt at first in a country beyond the Ocean, a proof of which had
been given him in India, by a learned Chaldean (Cosmas Indicopleustes in
Collect. nova Patrum, t. ii, p. 188; also see Journ. des Savants, Suppl. 1707,
p. 20.) 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." (Ibid.) The twelve-legged horse of Huschenk was found on that
continent named the dry island. (Supra, p. 154.)
The "Christian topography"
of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good
father repeats a universal tradition, now, moreover, corroborated by facts.
Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a "dry island" beyond
the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from
one of the Commentaries may become clearer.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To this day the aborigines of
Caucasus speak of their mountains as Kap-kaz, using the consonant p instead of
the usual v (Kavkaz 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.
** 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 held 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.
*** The severed parts must be Norway
and other lands in the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.
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"In the first beginnings of
(human) life, the only dry land was on the Right end* of the sphere, where it
(the globe) is motionless.** The whole earth was one vast watery desert, and
the waters were tepid . . . . There man was born on the seven zones of the
immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.*** There was eternal spring in
darkness. (But) that which is darkness to the man of today, was light to the
man of his dawn. There, the gods rested, and Fohat**** reigns ever since . . .
. Thus the wise fathers say that man is born in the head of his mother (earth),
and that her feet at the left end generated (begot) the evil winds that blow
from the mouth of the lower Dragon . . . . Between the first and second (races)
the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life.*****
"It flows around and animates
her (mother earth's) body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at
her feet (the Southern Pole). It gets purified (on its return) to her heart --
which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then (in the
beginnings) was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling (the
earth) that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and
breathes.****** During the first and second (races) the belt was covered with
the great waters. (But) the great mother travailed under the waves and a new
land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear (the
cap). She travailed harder for the third (race) and her waist and navel
appeared above the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** The more one approaches the poles
the less rotation is felt; at the poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite
neutralized. Thence the expression that the sphere is "motionless."
*** 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.
**** Bear in mind that the Vedic and
Avestian name of Fohat is Apam-Napat. 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
Ether -- the fiery waters of space. Fohat is the "Son of Ether" in
its highest aspect, Akasa, the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of
Sound or LOGOS. Fohat is the light of the latter. See Book I.
***** This "water" is the
blood or fluid of life which animates the earth, compared here to a living
body.
****** 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
electromagnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries; and which
is said to be found stored in the "navel" of the earth.
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water. It was the belt, the sacred
Himavat, which stretches around the world.* She broke toward the setting sun
from her neck** downward (to the south west), into many lands and islands, but
the eternal land (the cap) broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the
silent waters to the four sides of the world. All these perished (in their turn).
Then appeared the abode of the wicked (the Atlantis). The eternal land was now
hid, for the waters became solid (frozen) under the breath of her nostrils and
the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth," etc., etc.
This shows that Northern Asia is as
old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man,
since from the very beginnings of human life its root-continent, so to speak,
already existed; that part of the world now known as Asia being only cut off
from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.
If, then, the teaching is understood
correctly, the first continent which came into existence capped over the whole
North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that
inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few arctic travellers
who perceived it.
During the Second Race more land
emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the "head" from
the neck. Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most northern
part of Spitzbergen*** on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Occultism points to the Himalayan
chain as that "belt," and maintains that whether under the water or
above, it encircles the globe. The navel is described as situated to the
setting sun or to the west of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which
mountain is north of the Himalaya. Meru is not "the fabulous mountain in
the navel or centre of the earth," but its roots and foundations are in
that navel, though 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 Purana has it: "for the North of Meru there
is, therefore, always night during day in other regions; for Meru is north of
all the dwipas 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."
** 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 Parasara says: "is the
mother and nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprehender
of all the worlds."
*** 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 from the Surya-Sidhanta:
"Above this (the Siddha) goes
the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow
nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati, v. 42). In both directions from these
are two pole-stars (dhruvatara), fixed in the midst of the sky; [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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Mercator's Projection, on our side,
it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now
occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. There
it hardly reached, southward, the 70th degree of latitude; here -- it formed
the horse-shoe continent of which the commentary speaks; of the two ends of
which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the 50th degree
a little south west, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by
what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia.
This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race --
Lemuria was formed (Vide supra). When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis
appeared.
-------
WESTERN SPECULATIONS,
FOUNDED ON THE GREEK AND PURANIC
TRADITIONS.
Thus it becomes natural to find that,
on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a
Swedish scientist, tried to prove about two centuries ago that Sweden was the
Atlantis of Plato. He thought, even, that he had found in the configuration of
ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements given by the Greek sage of the
capital of "Atlantis." As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so
was Bailly likewise, and still more. For Sweden and Norway had formed part and
parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as
Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic.
Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying
the Puranas, if we will have nought to do with the Secret teachings.
Three quarters of a century have
already elapsed since Captain (now Colonel) Wilford brought forward his
fanciful theories about the British islands being the "White Island,"
the Atala of the Puranas. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven
dwipas, or islands, belonging to the nether lokas, one of the seven regions of
Patala (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford* shows, the Puranas place it
"on
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] to those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha) both these
have their place in the horizon. Hence there is (on that land) no elevation of
the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their degrees
of colatitude (lumbaka) are 90; at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha) are of
the same number." (43 and 44.)
* Wilford makes many mistakes. He
identifies, for instance, Sveta-dwipa (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 former is the abode of
Vishnu, exoterically, and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the Euxine or
Icshu (Black) Sea, and then seems to connect it, in another place, with Africa
and Atlas.
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the seventh zone or seventh climate,"
-- rather, on the seventh measure of heat: which thus locates it between the
latitudes of 24 and 28 degrees north. It is then to be sought on the same
degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the 50th and 60th
degrees of latitude. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the white island.
And in vol. viii. of Journal of Asiatic Researches, p. 280, its enemy is called
the "White Devil," the demon of terror. For he says: "In their
(the Hindu and Mahomedan) romances, we see Kai-caus going to the mountain of
'As-burj, at the foot of which the Sun sets,' to fight the Dev-Sefid, or white
devil, the Taradaitya of the Puranas, whose abode was on the seventh stage of
the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Buddhists, or the White Island."
Now here the Orientalists have been,
and are still, facing the Sphinx's riddle, the wrong solution of which will
ever destroy their authority, if not their persons, in the eyes of every Hindu
scholar, even those who are not initiates. For there is not a statement in the
Puranas -- on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations
-- which has not several meanings, and does not apply to both the physical and
the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindus divided the face of the globe
geographically into seven zones, climates, dwipas, and into seven hells and
seven heavens, allegorically, that measure of seven did not apply in both cases
to the same localities. 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, for it represents the region
of Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh
zone, or dwipa, which encompasses the Kshira Ocean, or Ocean of milk (the
ever-frozen white region) in the Vishnu (and other) Puranas (Book II ch. iv.).
And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it
is said that "the two countries north and south of Meru are shaped like a
bow," . . and that "one half of the surface of the earth is on the
south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru -- beyond which is half
of Pushkara" (Vishnu Purana, Asiatic Researches, etc.). Geographically,
then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the
prolongation of Jambu-dwipa* in the middle of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Every name in the Puranas has to be
examined at least under two aspects; geographically, and metaphysically, in its
allegorical application; e.g., Nila, 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 again in a mountain quite different from the
others (in Western Africa). Jambu-dwipa is Vishnu's dominion -- the world,
limited in the Puranas 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 Parasara. Likewise with Pushkara and all others.
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which stands Meru, for it is the
country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand years, who are free from
sickness or failing; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for
these men are "of the same nature as the Gods," (Vishnu Purana, Book
II. ch. iv.). Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, and locates there
also the Loka-lokas. Now Meru, we are told, which is the Swar-loka, the abode
of Brahma, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is
described geographically as "passing through the middle of the
earth-globe, and protruding on either side" (Surya Siddhanta, v. 5,
Whitney's trans.). On its upper station are the gods, on the nether (or South
pole) is the abode of demons (hells). How can then Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides
which, Taradaitya, a demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter
is identified with the "white" Island, which is Sveta-dwipa, for
reasons given in the foot-note. (Vide infra.)
Wilford accuses the modern Brahmans
"of having jumbled them (islands and countries) all together" (A.R.
III. 300); but he jumbled them still more. He believes that as the Brahmanda
and Vayu Puranas divide the old continent into seven dwipas, said to be
surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala
(ibid), hence "most probably the Greeks divided the nation of Atlantis,
which, as it could not be found after having once been discovered, they
conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of nature."
Finding certain difficulties in
believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even Homer, had all built their
notions of Atlantis on Atala -- a nether region located at the Southern pole --
we prefer holding to the statements given in the secret books. We believe in
the seven "continents," four of which have already lived their day,
the fifth still exists, and two are to appear in the future. We believe that
each of these is not strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but
that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,* refers to the geographical names
given (i.) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole earth during the
period of a Root-Race, in general; and (ii.) to what remained of these after a
geological (race) Pralaya -- as "Jambu," for instance: and (iii.) to
those localities which will enter, after the future cataclysms, into the
formation of new universal "continents," peninsulas, or dwipas** --
each continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land
surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jambu, Plaksha, Salmali, Kusa,
Krauncha, Saka, and Pushkara.
** Such as Saka 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 Upadwipas means "root" islands, or the dry land in
general.
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"jumble" the nomenclature
of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has
the key.
Thus, we believe we know that, though
two of the Puranic "islands" -- the sixth and seventh
"continents" -- are yet to come, nevertheless there were, or there
are, lands which will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of
new earths whose geographical faces will be entirely changed, as were those of
the past. Therefore we find in the Puranas that Saka-dwipa is (or will be) a
continent, and that Sankha-dwipa, as shown in the Vayu Purana, is only "a
minor island," one of the nine divisions (to which Vayu adds six more) of
Bharata Varsha. Because Sankha-dwipa was peopled by "Mlechchhas (unclean
foreigners), who worshipped Hindu divinities," therefore they were
connected with India.* This accounts for Sankhasura, a King of a portion of
Sankha-dwipa, 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 Nile** (?)
there were frequent contests between the Devatas (divine beings, demi-gods) and
the Daityas (giants); but the latter tribe having prevailed, their King,
Sankhasura, who resided in the Ocean, made frequent incursions in the
night" (As. Res., Vol. III. 225.)
It is not on the banks of the Nile,
but on the coasts of Western Africa, south of where now lies Morocco, that
these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara desert
was a sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after
another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other
wilderness, the desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Puranic tradition,
for on the same page as above cited, it is said: "The people were between
two fires; for, while Sankhasura was ravaging one side of the continent,
Krauncha (or Cracacha), King of Kraunch, used to desolate the other; both
armies . . . thus changed the most fertile regions into a savage desert."
That not only the last island of
Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large continent, first divided, and then
broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands (called dwipas), preceded
Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions,
as well as portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the
Indian Ocean (relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian Puranas,
Greek writers, and Asiatic, Persian, and Mohammedan traditions. Wilford, who
confuses sorely the Hindu and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however,
clearly. (See Vol. VIII., X. and XI. of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* They were called demons, Asuras,
giants, and monsters, because of their wickedness; and thus their country was
likened to Atala -- a hell, because of that.
** Not on the river Nile, surely, but
near the Nila mountains of the Atlas range.
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Asiatic Researches.) And his facts
and quotations from the Puranas give direct and conclusive evidence that the
Aryan Hindus and other ancient nations were earlier navigators than the
Phoenicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen that
appeared in the post-diluvian times. This is what is given in the Journal of
the Asiatic Society, III., pp. 325, et seq.:--
"In their distress the few
nations who survived (in the war between Devatas and Daityas) raised their
hands to Bhagavan, 'Let him who can deliver us . . . be our King'; using the
word I'T (a magic term not understood by Wilford, evidently) which re-echoed
through the whole country."
Then comes a violent storm, the
waters of the Kali are strangely agitated, "when there appeared from the
waves . . a man, afterwards called I'T, at the head of a numerous army, saying
abhayan, no fear" . . . and scattered the enemy. "The King I'T,"
explains Wilford, "is a subordinate incarnation of M'rira" (Mrida, a
form of Rudra, probably?) who "re-established peace and prosperity
throughout all Sankha-dwipa, through Barbaradesa, Hissast'han and Awasthan or
Arabia . . " etc., etc.
Surely, if the Hindu Puranas give a
description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in
the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as
Arabs -- they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kala pani (the
black waters of the Ocean) in the days of Phoenician navigation -- then their
Puranas must be older than those Phoenicians (placed at from 2,000 to 3,000
years B.C.). At any rate those traditions must have been older;* as --
"In the above accounts,"
writes an adept, "the Hindus speak of this island as existing and in great
power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago."
But another calculation and proof may
be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindu Aryans who knew of (because
they had once dwelt in it) and described the last surviving island of Atlantis
-- or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that continent which had
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says Wilford of the division of
Atlantis and Bharata or India, confusing the two accounts and Priyavrata with
Medhatithi:-- "The division was made by Priyavrata. . . . He had ten sons,
and it was his intention to divide the whole world. In the same manner Neptune
divided Atlantis between his ten sons. . . . One of them had . . . the
extremity of the Atlantis" -- which "is probably the old continent. .
. . This Atlantis was overwhelmed by a flood. . . . and it seems that by
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 only of them sat upon the throne." (Vol. III. p. 286.) . .
Some also are of opinion that of the seven dwipas six were destroyed by a flood
(Vol. VIII. p. 367). Wilford takes it to be "Gades which included
Spain," but it was Plato's island -- rather.
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perished soon after the upheaval of
the two Americas* -- the two Varshas of Pushkara. This may be demonstrated,
moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an adept who criticises Wilford.
For recalling what the Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount
Ashburj "at the foot of which the sun sets," where was the war
between the Devatas and the Daityas,** he says:--
"We will consider, then, the
latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining Mount Ashburj.
It was on the seventh stage of the world, i.e., in the seventh climate (which
is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north) . . . This
island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the
West; and the sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain
(Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the white
Devil of the 'White Island.' "
Now, considering this statement from
its astronomical aspect, and knowing that Krishna is the incarnated Sun
(Vishnu), a solar God; and that he is said to have killed Dev-Sefid, the white
giant -- a possible personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of
the Atlas -- perchance Krishna may be only a representation of the vertical
beams of the Sun? Those inhabitants (the Atlantides) are, we have seen, accused
by Diodorus of daily cursing the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is
an astronomical interpretation of course. But it will now be proved that
Sankhasura, and Sancha dwipa, and all their history, is also geographically and
ethnologically Plato's "Atlantis" in Hindu dress.
It was just remarked that since, in
the Puranic accounts, the island is still existing, then those accounts must be
older than the 11,000 years elapsed since Sancha dwipa, or the Poseidonis of
Atlantis, disappeared. Is it not barely possible that Hindus should have known
the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations,
which make this quite plain if one assumes, according to the said adept, that
"at the time when the summer tropical 'colure' passed through the
Pleiades, when cor-Leonis would be upon the equator; and when Leo was vertical
to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at
noon."
This explains, perhaps, why the
Singhalese, the heirs of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* America, the "new" world
-- is thus, though not much, older; still it is older than Europe, the
"old world."
** If Div or Dev-Sefid's (the
Taradaitya's) abode was on the seventh stage, it is because he came from
Pushkara, the Patala (antipodes) of India, or from America. The latter touched
the walls, so to say, of Atlantis, before the latter sank finally. The word
Patala, meaning both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, thus became
synonymous in ideas and attributes as well as in name.
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Rakshasas and Giants of Lanka, and
the direct descendants of Singha, or Leo, became connected with Sancha dwipa or
Poseidonis (Plato's Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey's
"Sphinxiad," this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago,
astronomically; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been
rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over
"Atlantis" or "Sancha dwipa." And that it was so is clearly
demonstrated.
"The sacred bull Nandi was
brought from Bharata to Sancha to meet Rishabha (Taurus) every Kalpa. But when
those of the White Island (who descended originally from Sveta dwipa),* 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 Sveta dwipa.)
"Those of the Fourth World (race) lost AUM" -- say the Commentaries.
Asburj (or Azburj), whether the peak
of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking of the "western
Atala" (or hell) began, and those who were saved told the tale to their
children. Plato's Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the
great mountain vomiting flames all the while. "The 'fire-vomiting Monster'
survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island."
Do the Greeks, accused of borrowing a
Hindu fiction (Atala), and inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also
accused of getting their geographical notions and the number seven from them?
(Vide in Part II. the several sections on the SEPTENATE in nature.)
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Neither Atlantis, nor yet Sancha
dwipa, was ever called "White Island." When tradition says that
"the White Island became black on account of the sins of people" it
only means the denizens of the "White Island," or Siddhapura, or
Sveta dwipa, who descended to the Atlantis of the Third and Fourth races, to
"inform the latter; and who, having incarnated, became black with
sin" -- a figure of speech. All the Avatars 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 dwipas and
can be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for -- it is the "eternal
land."
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islands beyond, which are not far
from the firm land, near which is the true sea."
"These seven dwipas
(inaccurately rendered islands) constitute, according to Marcellus, the body of
the famous Atlantis," writes Wilford himself. . . . . This evidently shows
that Atlantis is the old continent. . . . The Atlantis was destroyed after a
violent storm (?): this is well known to the Puranics, some of whom assert that
in consequence of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the dwipas
disappeared" . . . (xi., 27).
Enough proofs have now been given to
satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact
science are also added. Volumes might be written, however, to no purpose for
those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their
respective authorities.
Hence the teaching of the Roman
Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth --
meaning "anathema," "destruction" -- is the same as Mount
Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in
his own day enormous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was
the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the "Lord loved well"; and so
mixed up are facts and personages in the said scholiasts' brains, that, when
the Zohar explains the "birds" which inspired Balaam to mean
"Serpents," to wit, the wise men and adepts at whose school he had
learnt the mysteries of prophecy -- the opportunity is again taken of showing
Mount Hermon inhabited by the "winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael"
(the Jewish Satan).
"It is to those unclean spirits
chained on Mount Hermon of the Desert, that the scapegoat of Israel, who
assumed the name of one of them (Azaz(y)el), was sent" (Spencer).
We say it is not so. The Zohar has
the following explanation on the practice of magic which is called in Hebrew
Nehhaschim, or the "Serpents' Works." It says (Part III. col. 302):--
"It is called nehhaschim, because the magicians (practical Kabalists) work
surrounded by the light of the primordial serpent, which they perceive in
heaven as a luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars" . . . which
means simply the astral light, so called by the Martinists, by Eliphas Levi,
and now by all the modern Occultists. (Vide Sections about.)
-------
THE "CURSE" FROM A
PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW.
The foregoing teachings of the SECRET
DOCTRINE, supplemented by universal traditions, must now have demonstrated that
the Brahmanas and Puranas, the Yathas and other Mazdean Scriptures,
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down to the Egyptian, Greek, and
Roman, and finally to the Jewish Sacred records, all have the same origin. None
are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the unwary profane:
all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, the
great truths gathered in the same field of pre-historic tradition. Space
forbids us from entering, in these two volumes, into further and more minute
details with respect to the four Races which preceded our own. But before
offering to the student the history of the psychic and spiritual evolution of
the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Aryan) humanity, and before
demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown from the same
trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the
evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations
of more than one philosopher and scientist of the later ages, that the tenets
of our Esoteric Doctrine are corroborated by inferential as well as by direct
proof in almost every case. That neither the "legendary" giants, nor
the lost continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding races, are quite
baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, science will find
itself more than once unable to reply; they will, it is hoped, finally dispose
of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our
figures in general. (Vide §§ on the Septenaries.)
Meanwhile, one task is left
incomplete: that of disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological
dogmas -- the CURSE under which mankind is alleged to have suffered ever since
the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift
of divine wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the
paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity)
for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses his "chosen
people" by saying "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth" (Gen. ix. 1). The curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth
Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic
Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no
punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the
curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all the
mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative
power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no
purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third
chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing
Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy
for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that
woman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that period,
however, during the
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evolution of the Fourth Race, there
came enmity between its seed, and the "Serpent's" seed, the seed or
product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of woman or lust, bruised the
head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy
mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma
"bruised the heel" of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing
physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the
Fourth Race of mankind,* until, from the healthy King of animal creation of the
Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, scrofulous being,
and has now become the wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional and
hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all
animals!**
This is the real CURSE from the
physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in the Kabalistic
esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it is
evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the
physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing -- a gift quickened
by the "Lords of Wisdom," who have poured on the human manas the
fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The divine Titan has then suffered
in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh
for those days so graphically depicted by AEschylus, in his "Prometheus
Bound," when, at the close of the first Titanic age (the age that followed
that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), 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 Agnishwatta and
other divine "Sons of the Flame of Wisdom" (personified by the Greeks
in Prometheus***), may well, in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Brahmin 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
Brahmin astrologer in accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries
as the Punjab, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later
on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan 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.
** Diseases and over-population are
facts that can never be denied.
*** In Mrs. Anna Swanwick's volumes,
"The Dramas of AEschylus," it is said of "Prometheus Bound"
(Vol. II., pp. 146, 147), that Prometheus truly appears in it "as
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the injustice of the human heart, be
left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be
indirectly cursed for Pandora's gift: but to find themselves proclaimed and
declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a Karma for
"Him" "who dared alone "-- when Zeus "ardently
desired" to quench the entire human race -- to save "that mortal
race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is made to say:--
"From sinking blasted down to
Hades' gloom.
For this by the dire tortures I am
bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to
behold,
I who did mortals pity! . . . .
"
The chorus remarking very
pertinently:--
"Vast boon was this thou gavest
unto mortals . . . ."
Prometheus answers:--
"Yea, and besides 'twas I that
gave them fire.
CHORUS: Have now these short-lived
creatures flame-eyed fire?
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts
will learn. . . . . "
But, with the arts, the fire received
has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, and consciousness of
its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and
sensuality.* It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall.
Thus arises the responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which
represent humanity in its darkest aspect; "the restless insatiability of
the lower passions and desires, when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid
defiance to the restraints of law."**
Prometheus having endowed man,
according to Plato's "Protagoras," with that "wisdom which
ministers to physical well-being," but the lower aspect of manas of the
animal (Kama) having remained unchanged,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 (V, et seq.). . . .
Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently
subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonising 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.
* 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.
** Introduction to "Prometheus
Bound," p. 152.
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instead of "an untainted mind,
heaven's first gift" (AEschylus), there was created the eternal vulture of
the ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair coupled with "the
dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals" (p. 556),
unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed deliverer,
Herakles.
Now Christians -- Roman Catholics
especially -- have tried to prophetically connect this drama with the coming of
Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true theosophist, the pursuer of
divine wisdom and worshipper of ABSOLUTE perfection -- the unknown deity which
is neither Zeus nor Jehovah -- will demur to such an idea. Pointing to
antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse
of physical intelligence -- the psychic being guided by the animal, and both
putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, "All ye who can read
between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas -- the Indian and the
Greek; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of
Athens 2,400 years ago, namely 'Prometheus Bound' " The myth belongs to
neither Hesiod nor AEschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it "is older than the
Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human
consciousness. The Crucified Titan is the personified symbol of the collective
Logos, the "Host," and of the "Lords of Wisdom" or the
HEAVENLY MAN, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as his name Pro-me-theus,
meaning "he who sees before him" or futurity, shows* -- in the arts
he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least. For
as he complains to the daughters of Oceanos:--
"Of prophecies the various modes
I fixed,
And among dreams did first
discriminate
The truthful vision . . . and mortals
guided
To a mysterious art. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
All arts to mortals from Prometheus
came. . ."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From [[pro metis]] pro metis,
"forethought." "Professor Kuhn," we are told in the
above-named volumes of "The Dramas of AEschylus," "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 manthami (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
manthami passed into the Greek language and became the word manthano, 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," goes on the author; "he finds his prototype in the
Aryan [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Leaving for a few pages the main
subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden meaning of this, the most
ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates
directly to the early races, this will be no real digression.
The subject of AEschylus' drama (the
trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods
(the Elohim) of their secret -- the mystery of the creative fire. For this
sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by KRONOS* and delivered unto Zeus, the
FATHER and creator of a mankind which he would wish to have blind intellectually,
and animal-like; a personal deity, which will not see MAN "like one of
us." Hence Prometheus, "the fire and light-giver," is chained on
Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma),
whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus:--
"E'en he the fore-ordained
cannot escape. . . "
-- ordain that those sufferings will
last only to that day when a son of Zeus --
"Ay, a son bearing stronger than
his sire" (787)
. . . . . . . . . .
"One of thine (Io's) own
descendants it must be. ."(791)
-- is born. This "Son" will
deliver Prometheus (the suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name
is, "He who has to come. . . . "
On the authority, then, of these few
lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost
any meaning; namely, on the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io,
the daughter of Inachos, persecuted by Zeus -- a whole prophecy is constructed
by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:--
"And, portent past belief, the
speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling
phrase
Wast hailed as the illustrious spouse
of Zeus
. . . . . . . . . (v. 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 Mir-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Matarisvan, a divine . . . . personage, closely associated with the fire
god of the Veda, Agni. . . ." Mati, in Sanskrit, is
"understanding," and a synonym of MAHAT and manas, and must be of
some account in the origin of the name: Promati is the son of Fohat, and has
his story also.
* Kronos is "time," and
thus the allegory becomes very suggestive. (See closing pages of this
Sub-section.)
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ville amongst others -- into a clear
prophecy. Io -- "is the mother of God," we are told, and "dark
Epaphos" -- Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his father, except
metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that "Father"; nor
has the Christian Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says,
in verse 930, that Zeus will be humbled yet; as for himself:--
" . . . . 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 fail
he shall,
A fall disgraceful, not to be endured
. . . . " (v. 980).
"Dark Epaphos" was the
Dionysos-Sabazius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries,
during which the "father of the gods," assuming the shape of a
Serpent, begot on Demeter, Dionysos, or the solar Bacchus. Io is the moon, and
at the same time the EVE of a new race, and so is Demeter -- in the present
case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any
of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and
among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It
points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of
which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state,
from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the
opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state,
when woman knew no man, and human progeny was created, not begotten.
That state will return to it and to
the world at large, when the latter shall discover and really appreciate the
truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like "the light
that never shone on sea or land," and has to come to men through the
Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to the true spiritual
intuition. Then (as expressed once in a letter to a theosophist), "the
world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world will have
discovered that individuals have it in their own powers to procreate Buddha-like
children -- or demons." "When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic
religions, and with these the demons, will die out."
If we reflect upon the serial
development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may
be unriddled. KRONOS is of course "time" in its cyclic course. He
swallows his children -- the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See, for explanation of this curse,
the last page of the present sub-section.
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personal gods of exoteric dogmas
included. He has swallowed instead of Zeus, his stone idol; but the symbol has
grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind was cycling down toward
only its physical and intellectual -- not spiritual -- perfection. When it is
as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Kronos will be no longer deceived.
Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction
itself. Because, the serpent of wisdom, represented in the Sabasian mysteries
by the anthropomorphised Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers,
will have begotten in Time (Kronos) a progeny -- Dionysos-Bacchus or the
"dark Epaphos," the "mighty one" -- the race that will
overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and
birth-place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the moon-goddess of generation -- for
she is Isis and she is Eve, the great mother.* He traces the path of the
(racial) wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe
and go to Asia's continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of
Caucasus (737), the Titan telling her:--
"When thou hast crossed the
flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning
East." (810)
that she must travel eastward, after
passing the "Kimmerian Bosphorus," and cross what is evidently the
Volga and now Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. After this she will encounter
"fierce northern blasts" and cross thither to the land of the
"Arimaspian host" (east of Herodotus' Scythia) to --
"Pluto's gold-abounding flood. .
. ."(825)
Which is rightly conjectured by
Professor Newman to have meant the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is complained by the author of
the version on, and translator of, "Prometheus Bound" that in this
tracing of Io's wanderings, "no consistency with our known geography is
attainable" (p. 191, Vol. II). 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 Avatar, 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 arca -- the female generative power
symbolised 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 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. Arghyanath is a title of the
Maha-Chohan, meaning "the Lord of Libations;" and Arghya Varsha --
"the land of libations" -- is the mystery name of that region which
extends from Kailas mountain nearly to the Schamo Desert -- from within which
the Kalki Avatar is expected. The Airyana-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.
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Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being
"the recognised inhabitants of this golden region."
And here comes, between verses 825
and 835, a puzzle to all the European interpreters. Says the Titan:--
"To these (Arimaspi and Grypes)
approach not; a far border land
Thou next wilt reach, where dwells a
swarthy race
Near the Sun's founts, where is the
AEthiop "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 sons. Now we must see how the passage is interpreted. As
Io is told that she has to travel eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops,
which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile -- hence the perplexity.
"According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks" we
are informed by the author of the version on "Prometheus Bound" --
"This condition was fulfilled by
the river Indus. Arrian (vi. i.) 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 the Nile by
the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the
4th Georgic echoes the absolute error" (p. 197, Vol. II.).
Both Alexander and Virgil may have
erred considerably in their geographical notions; but the prophecy of
Prometheus has not so sinned, in the least -- not, at any rate, in its esoteric
spirit. When a certain race is symbolised, and events pertaining to its history
are rendered allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in
the itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river
"Ethiops" is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nil or Nila. It
is the river born on the Kailas (heaven) mountain, the mansion of the gods --
22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river -- and was so
called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its banks,
from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the
Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred nations, and the Eastern
Ethiopians -- the mighty builders -- have come from India, as is pretty well
proved, it is hoped, in "ISIS UNVEILED." (Vol. I. p. 569-70).
Then why could not Alexander, and
even the learned Virgil have used the word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the
Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day that river is called, in the
regions around Kala-Bagh, nil (blue), and Nilah, "the blue river."
The water here is of such dark blue colour that the name given to it from time
immemorial led to
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a small town on its banks being
called by the same name. It exists to this day. Evidently Arrian -- who wrote
far later than the day of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old name of
the Indus -- has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our
modern historians much wiser, in judging as they do. For they often make the
most sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient
colleagues ever did in days of old, when no Encyclopaedias were yet ready for
them.
The race of IO, "the cow-horned
maid" is then simply the first pioneer race of the AEthiopians brought by
her from the Indus to the Nile (which received its name in memory of the mother
river of the colonists from India*). For does not Prometheus say to Io** that
the sacred Neilos (the god, not the river) --
. . . "He to the land,
three-cornered, thee shall guide," -- namely, to the Delta, where her sons
are foreordained to found -- . . . . . "that far-off colony . . ."
(v. 830 et seq.).
It is there that a new race (the
Egyptians) will begin, and a "female race" (873) which, "fifth
in descent" from dark Epaphos --
"Fifty in number shall return to
Argos."
Then one of the fifty virgins will
fail through love and shall -- . . .
A kingly race in Argos bear
. . . . . . . .
But from this seed shall dauntless
heroes spring,
Bow-famous, who shall free me from
these ills."
When this hero shall arise, the Titan
does not reveal; for as he remarks:--
"This, to set forth at large
needs lengthy speech."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Alexander, who was better
acquainted with Attock than with India (where he never went) could not have
failed to hear the Indus near its very sources called Nil and Nilah. Even if a
mistake, it is thus easily accounted for.
** 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 Vach -- "the
melodious cow" (Rig-Veda) "from whom mankind was produced" (Bhagavata
Purana) is shown in the Aitareya Brahmana as pursued by her father Brahma, 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,
Vach, Venus -- the mother of the prolific god of love, Cupid, but, at the same
time, that of the Logos whose symbol became with the Egyptians and the Indians
-- the bull -- as testified to by Apis and the Hindu 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 Mr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were
sacred also with the Jews, who placed near the altar horns of Shittim wood, by
seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.
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But "Argos" is Arghya
Varsha, the land of libation of the old Hierophants, whence the deliverer of
Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour,
India -- the Arya-varta of old.
That the subject formed part of the
Sabasian mysteries is made known by several ancient writers: by Cicero (in
Tuscul. Quaest. I, ii. No. 20) and by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. I, ii.,
oper. tom. 1, p. 467 -- Ed. Potter's). The latter writers are the only ones who
attribute the fact that AEschylus was charged by the Athenians with sacrilege
and condemned to be stoned to death, to its true cause. They say that having
been himself uninitiated, AEschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them
in his trilogies on a public stage.* But he would have incurred the same
condemnation had he been initiated -- which must have been the case, as
otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a daimon to reveal to him the secret
and sacred allegorical drama of initiation. At all events, it is not the
"father of the Greek tragedy" who invented the prophecy of
Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by
the priests during the MYSTERIA of the Sabasia.** The latter, however, is one
of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history.
Mythologists connect it through Mithras (the Sun, called Sabasius on some old
monuments) with Jupiter and Bacchus. But it was never the property of the
Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
The translators of the drama wonder
how AEschylus could become guilty of such "discrepancy between the
character of Zeus as portrayed in the 'Prometheus Bound' and that depicted in
the remaining dramas." (Mrs. A. Swanwick.) This is just because AEschylus,
like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual "Sphinx"
of the ages. Between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the
Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented during the mysteries
no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence --
Manas wedded to Kama; Prometheus -- its divine aspect merging into and aspiring
to Buddhi -- the divine Soul. Zeus was the human soul and nothing more,
whenever shown yielding to his lower passions, -- the jealous God, revengeful
and cruel in its egotism or I-AM-NESS. Hence, Zeus is represented as a serpent
-- the intellectual tempter of man -- which, nevertheless, begets in the course
of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Herodotus and Pausanias supposed
that the cause of the condemnation was that AEschylus, adopting the theogony of
the Egyptians, made Diana, the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See
AElian Var. Hist. I, v. c. xviii., tom. 1, p. 433 Edition Gronov.) But AEschyIus
was initiated.
** 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 them.
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cyclic evolution the
"Man-Saviour," the solar Bacchus or "Dionysos," more than a
man.
Dionysos is one with Osiris, with
Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth)
Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering
Christos (mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and
Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian
teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of Kaliyuga.
It is only after the appearance of Kalki-Avatar, or Sosiosh, that man will be
born from woman without sin. Then will Brahma, the Hindu deity; Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd),
the Zoroastrian; Zeus, the Greco-Olympian Don Juan; Jehovah, the jealous,
repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the
universal Pantheon of human fancy -- vanish and disappear in thin air. And
along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of all those
deities, ever represented as their "twin brothers" and creatures, in
exoteric legend, their own reflection on earth -- in esoteric philosophy. The
Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that
day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued.
There is one eternal Law in nature,
one that always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony. It is
owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely
intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find
itself finally -- SELF-REDEEMED.
In its final revelation, the old myth
of Prometheus -- his proto- and anti-types being found in every ancient
theogony -- stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because
at the threshold of human physical life. KRONOS is "Time," whose
first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases in the
process of evolution during cyclic development should be strictly preserved --
under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It
was not in the programme of natural development that man -- higher animal
though he may be -- should become at once -- intellectually, spiritually, and
psychically -- the demi-god he is on earth, while his physical frame remains
weaker and more helpless and ephemeral than that of almost any huge mammal. The
contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its
indwelling god. The gift of Prometheus thus became a CURSE -- though foreknown
and foreseen by the HOST personified in that personage, as his name well
shows.* It is in this that rests, at one and the same time,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide supra, a foot-note concerning
the etymology of [[prometis]] prometis or forethought. Prometheus confesses it
in the drama when saying:-- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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its sin and its redemption. For the
Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or
Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self-conscious
pain and even torture "while myriad time shall flow" -- to inane,
imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and
not in the programme of nature, the heavenly host, "Prometheus,"
still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.*
But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures
of the self-consciousness of his responsibility -- the result of his free will
-- besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This torture
Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended
with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still unachieved at that
period of formation.
Spiritual evolution being incapable
of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the
admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin of
Evil.** The allegory which shows KRONOS cursing Zeus for dethroning him (in the
primitive "golden" age of Saturn, when all men were demi-gods), and
for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then
as delivering to his (Zeus') revenge the culprit, who despoiled the gods of
their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level,
intellectually and spiritually -- is highly philosophical. In the case of
Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the primeval progenitors, of the PITAR,
the "Fathers" who created man senseless
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]]
"Oh! holy Ether, swiftly-winged
gales . . . .
Behold what I, a god, from gods
endure
. . . . . . . . .
And yet what say I? Clearly I
foreknew
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.
* Mankind is obviously divided into
god-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between
the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea
Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor
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 Aryans, 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.
** 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.
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and without any mind; while the
divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators, the devas who "fell"
into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger,
than the "Prometheans": therefore, the latter are shown conquered.
"The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans
of Zeus," was on this earth in its own sphere and plane of action;
whereas, the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in
the meshes of matter. They (the inferior "Host") were masters of all
the Cosmic and lower titanic forces; the higher Titan possessed only the
intellectual and spiritual fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with
the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our
actual mankind: the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of
matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance.
In every such case one sees once more --
"A god . . . in fetters, anguish
fraught;
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held by
all. . . . "
A god, bereft even of that supreme
consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self-sacrifice --
"For that to men he bare too
fond a mind. . ."
as the divine Titan is moved by
altruism, but the mortal man by Selfishness and Egoism in every instance.
The modern Prometheus has now become
Epi-metheus, "he who sees only after the event"; because the
universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness
and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the free Titan of old, but not before
cyclic evolution has re-established the broken harmony between the two natures
-- the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower
titanic forces, invulnerable in his personality, and immortal in his
individuality, which cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated
from his nature. When man understands that "Deus non fecit mortem"
(Sap. I., 13), but that man has created it himself, he will re-become the
Prometheus before his Fall.
For the full symbolism of Prometheus
and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II. of
this Volume, chapter "A Second Key to Prometheus," etc. In the said
Part -- a kind of supplement to the present portion -- every additional
information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and
questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged
standards of theology and modern science, that no proof which tends to show
that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
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ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A
COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA XII.
THE MS. from which these additional
explanations are taken belongs to the group called "Tongshaktchi Sangye
Songa," or the Records of the "Thirty-five Buddhas of
Confession," as they are exoterically called. These personages, however,
though called in the Northern Buddhist religion "Buddhas," may just
as well be called Rishis, or Avatars, etc., as they are "Buddhas who have
preceded Sakyamuni" only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached
by Gautama. These great Mahatmas, or Buddhas, are a universal and common
property: they are historical sages -- at any rate, for all the Occultists who
believe in such a hierarchy of Sages, the existence of which has been proved to
them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some
ninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,* mostly
imaginary personages, who are really the personifications of the powers of the first-named.**
These "baskets" of the oldest writings on "palm leaves" are
kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history
of that sub-race to which the particular "Buddha-Lha" belonged. The
one special MS. from which the fragments which follow are extracted, and then
rendered into a more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from
stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest day of the Fifth Race,
who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of the
Atlantean race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from
the archaic records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern
symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the god Woden, the
highest god in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these
thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the continent to which he
and his race belonged, is also one of the earliest. So early, in truth, that in
the days when tropical nature was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing
snows, one could cross almost by dry land from Norway via Iceland and
Greenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson's
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Gautama Buddha, named Shakya
Thub-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the last group, as most of these Buddhas
belong to the divine dynasties which instructed mankind.
** Of these "Buddhas," or
the "Enlightened," the far distant predecessors of Gautama the
Buddha, and 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 Avatars of the Celestial Beings -- eleven only
belong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the Fifth race, from its beginnings.
They are identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas.
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Bay.* Just, as in the palmy days of
the Atlantean giants, the sons of the "giants from the East," a
pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara
desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the
waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never
written outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from
one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by
constant transmission "within the book volume of the brain," and
through countless aeons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written
document or record. "That which is part of our souls is eternal,"
says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our souls than that which happens at
the dawns of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the soul or spirit that
animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though
"the book and volume" of the physical brain may forget events within
the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can
never desert the divine soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft, the sound
of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet the
shadow of events that were, just as much as the shadow of the events that are
to come, is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind's
eye.
It is this soul-voice, perhaps, which
tells those who believe in tradition more than in written History, that what is
said below is all true, and relates to pre-historic facts.
This is what is written in one
passage:--
"THE KINGS OF LIGHT HAVE
DEPARTED IN WRATH. THE SINS OF MEN HAVE BECOME SO BLACK THAT EARTH QUIVERS IN
HER GREAT AGONY. . . . THE AZURE SEATS REMAIN EMPTY. WHO OF THE BROWN, WHO OF
THE RED, OR YET AMONG THE BLACK (races), CAN SIT IN THE SEATS OF THE BLESSED,
THE SEATS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MERCY! WHO CAN ASSUME THE FLOWER OF POWER, THE PLANT
OF THE GOLDEN STEM AND THE AZURE BLOSSOM?"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This may account for the similarity
of the artificial mounds in the U. S. of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It
is this identity that led some American archaeologists to suggest that
Norwegian mariners had discovered America some one thousand years ago. (Vide
Holmboe's Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvege, 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 archaeologists, 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 that 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.
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The "Kings of Light" is the
name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the divine Dynasties. The
"azure seats" are translated "celestial thrones" in certain
documents. The "flower of power" is now the Lotus; what it may have
been at that period, who can tell.
The writer proceeds, like the later
Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had become bereft of their
"azure" (celestial) kings, and "they of the Deva hue," the
moon-like complexion, and "they of the refulgent (golden) face" have
gone "to the land of bliss, the land of metal and fire"; or --
agreeably with the rules of symbolism -- to the lands lying North and East,
from whence "the great waters have been swept away, sucked in by the earth
and dissipated in the air." The wise races had perceived "the black
storm-dragons, called down by the dragons of wisdom" -- and "had
fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land" -- the
great ancient adepts, presumably; those the Hindus refer to as their Manus and
Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
They "of the yellow hue"
are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the
Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no
other than Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they lived and
died until the separation of the nations. But this "separation" did
not take place either in the localities assigned for it by modern science, nor
in the way the Aryans are shown to have divided and separated by Mr. Max Muller
and other Aryanists. Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since
that period. The yellow-faced giants of the post-Atlantean day, had ample time,
throughout this forced confinement to one part of the world, and with the same
racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, to branch off
during a period of nearly 700,000 years into the most heterogeneous and
diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more
extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from
gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced
isolation. The Africans have never left their continent for several hundred
thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and
other lands to re-emerge instead; and if the African tribes were to separate
and scatter on the face of the earth, it is they who, in about a hundred
thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is
the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have
survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that
would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for
dividing humanity into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and
becomes a fallacy.
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Such are the statements made and
facts given in the archaic records. Collating and comparing them with some
modern theories of Evolution, minus natural selection (Vide "Physiological
Selection" by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.), these statements appear quite reasonable
and logical.* Thus, while the Aryans are the descendants of the yellow Adams,
the gigantic and highly civilized tlanto-Aryan race, the Semites -- and the
Jews along with them -- are those of the red Adam; and both de Quatrefages and
the writers of the Mosaic Genesis are right. For, could chapter v. of the First
Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the
period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, of course under
different names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being turned into
periods, the whole being shown symbolical and allegorical. In the MS. under
consideration many and frequent are the references to the great knowledge and
civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and
the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the
Lemuro-Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned "with
their high civilizations and gods" ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65),
how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!
It is from the Fourth Race that the
early Aryans got their knowledge of "the bundle of wonderful things,"
the Sabha and Mayasabha, mentioned in the Mahabharata, the gift of Mayasur to
the Pandavas. It is from them that they learnt aeronautics, Viwan Vidya (the
"knowledge of flying in air-vehicles"), and, therefore, their great
arts of meteorography and meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Aryans
inherited their most valuable science of the hidden virtues of precious and
other stones, of chemistry, or rather alchemy, of mineralogy, geology, physics
and astronomy.
Several times the writer has put to
herself the question: "Is the story of Exodus -- in its details at least
-- as narrated in the Old Testament, original? Or is it, like the story of Moses
himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the
Atlanteans?" For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail
to perceive the great similarity of the fundamental features? The anger of
"God" at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the
"chosen" ones, to spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their
"jewels of silver and jewels of gold" (Exod. xi.); and finally the
Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea (xiv.). For here is a fragment
of the earlier story from the Commentary:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide the first pages of Part III.,
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
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. . . "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 (Viwan)
to all his brother-chiefs (chiefs of other nations and tribes) with pious men
within, saying: 'Prepare. Arise ye men of the good law, and cross the land
while (yet) dry.'
'The Lords of the storm are
approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only
shall the Lords of the Dark Face (the Sorcerers) live on this patient land. She
is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires
(the Gnomes and fire Elementals) are preparing their magic Agneyastra (fire-weapons
worked by magic). But the Lords of the Dark Eye ("Evil Eye") are
stronger than they (the Elementals) and they are the slaves of the mighty ones.
They are versed in Ashtar (Vidya, the highest magical knowledge).* Come and use
yours (i.e., your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers).
Let every lord of the Dazzling Face (an adept of the White Magic) cause the
Viwan of every lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands (or possession),
lest any (of the Sorcerers) should by its means escape from the waters, avoid
the rod of the Four, (Karmic deities) and save his wicked' (followers, or
people).
'May every yellow face send sleep
from himself (mesmerize?) to every black face. May even they (the Sorcerers)
avoid pain and suffering. May every man true to the Solar Gods bind (paralyze)
every man under the lunar gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny.
'And may every yellow face offer of
his life-water (blood) to the speaking animal of a black face, lest he awaken
his master.**
'The hour has struck, the black night is
ready, etc., etc.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
'Let their destiny be accomplished.
We are the servants of the great Four.*** May the Kings of light return.'
"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Wrote the late Brahmachari Bawa, a
Yogi of great renown and holiness: "Extensive works on Ashtar Vidya and
such other sciences were at different times compiled in the languages of the
times. But the Sanskrit originals were lost at the time of the partial deluge
of our country." . . . (See Theosophist of June, 1880, "Some Things
the Aryans Knew.") For Agneyastra, see Wilson's Specimens of the Hindu
Theatre, I., p. 297.
** 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.
Vide Part II., xxvii., "Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic."
*** The four Karmic gods, called the
Four Maharajahs in the Stanzas.
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"The great King fell upon his
dazzling Face and wept. . . .
"When the Kings assembled the
waters had already moved. . . .
"(But) the nations had now
crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water mark. Their Kings reached
them in their Viwans, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal (East and
North)."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Still, in another passage, it is
said:--
" . . . . Stars (meteors)
showered on the lands of the black Faces; but they slept.
"The speaking beasts (the magic
watchers) kept quiet.
"The nether lords waited for
orders, but they came not, for their masters slept.
"The waters arose, and covered
the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High lands remained, the
bottom of the Earth (the lands of the antipodes) remained dry. There dwelt
those who escaped; the men of the yellow-faces and of the straight eye (the
frank and sincere people).
"When the Lords of the Dark
Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Viwans 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 Face" -- who awoke earlier than the
others -- pursuing those who had "spoilt them" and who were in the
rear-guard, for -- "the nations that were led away, were as thick as the
stars of the milky way," says a more modern Commentary, written in
Sanskrit only.
"Like as a dragon-snake uncoils
slowly its body, so the Sons of men, led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their
folds, and spreading out, expanded like a running stream of sweet waters. . . .
. . many of the faint-hearted among them perished on their way. But most were
saved."
Yet the pursuers, "whose heads
and chests soared high above the water," chased them "for three lunar
terms" until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the
last man, the soil sinking under their feet and the earth engulfing those who
had desecrated her.
This sounds a good deal like the
original material upon which the similar story in Exodus was built many hundred
thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth,
childhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, is now shown to have
been adapted from the Chaldean narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian
tile in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews
robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and
so on? The gigantic magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the "lords of the Dark
Face," may have become in the later narrative the Egyptian Magi, and the
yellow-faced nations of
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the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of
Jacob, the "chosen people." . . . One more statement has to be made:
There have been several Divine Dynasties -- a series for every Root Race
beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity.
The last Seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldean records
belong to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called Aryan, was not
entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology
gives other names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our
disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in whom the
whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose
existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have denied,
before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the
carrier pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater even than that
of the Egyptians. It is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's
Atlantis, which built the first Pyramids in the country, and that certainly
before the advent of the "Eastern AEthiopians," as Herodotus calls
the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus
Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that "there are also subterranean
passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient
mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in
different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be
lost."
These men who "divined the
coming of floods" were not Egyptians, who never had any, except the
periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the
Atlanteans, we maintain. Those races which are dimly suspected by Science, and
thinking of which Mr. Ch. Gould, the well-known geologist, says: "Can we
suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of nature? Have we, in
fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers? Does the written history of man,
comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent
existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of
thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea and of China,
shadowy mementos 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"
("Mythical Monsters," p. 19).
After this one can turn with more
confidence to the words of a Master who wrote, several years before these words
were penned by Mr. Gould:-- "The Fourth Race had its periods of the
highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are
nothing com-
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pared to the civilizations that began
with the Third Race" -- after its separation.
But if this civilization and the
mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one
will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquity, such as those of
Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism
ever since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization;
during which period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in
Isis Unveiled: "Why should we forget that, ages before the prow 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 archaeologist 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 mementos 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
mediaeval cloister, nor the last cracked by a modern chemist, have revived, nor
will -- at least, in the present century."
And the same question may be put now
that was put then; it may be once more asked: "How does it happen that the
most advanced standpoint that has been reached in our times, only enables us to
see in the dim distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs
that earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
occupied?
"If modern masters are so much
in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us the lost arts of our
postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor
-- the Tyrian purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate the
walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their
application? The indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient
aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its
scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained
glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if
chemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediaeval ages in some
arts, why boast of achievements which, accord-
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ing to strong probability, were
perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more archeology 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 a heirloom from the Atlanteans -- had those of astronomy and
symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac.
As already explained, the whole of
antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all
intimately connected with the planets, and these with Zodiacal signs. The whole
world's History is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt this
was proved by the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of
a Sufi, the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous
records of the past, as also of the future, history of our globe. Yet the
original records exist, most undeniably.
As Europeans are unacquainted with
the real Zodiacs of India, nor do they understand those they happen to know
(witness Bentley), the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to
turn to the work of Denon (Travels in Egypt, Vol. II.) in which, if understood,
the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen them
personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students --
who have examined and studied both very carefully - have to say of them. As
asserted by the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, who was informed that the
terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, thus was
it found and corroborated by Mackey.* For he 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 prove that 'it was
not the last time they were in that position; but the first' -- after the
Zodiacs had been traced." "Capricorn," he adds, "is
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." (See in Part II., §"A Mystery of the
Zodiac.")
Broadly calculated, it is believed by
the Egyptologists that the great Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C. (See Proctor,
Knowledge, Vol. I. pp. 242, 400); and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 7 50
years before the Fourth
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Mythological Astronomy of
the Ancients Demonstrated" by a strangely intuitional symbologist and
astronomer, a kind of a self-made adept of Norwich, who lived in the first
quarter of this century.
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Dynasty (supposed to have built the
Pyramids) had appeared ("The Great Pyramid," Staniland Wake). Thus
4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's
declaration that "all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians
had already made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age
of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile"
(Rawlinson's "Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 345) is very suggestive, as
destroying this hypothesis. It points to great civilization in prehistoric
times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor ("the servants of
Horus") were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. G. Maspero
affirms, it is to this prehistoric race that "belongs the honour . . . of
having founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the most
important sanctuaries." This was before the great Pyramid epoch, and when
Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet "they possessed the
hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have been
already considerably advanced in civilization." It was, says Lenormant,
"the country of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal
dominion, which played the most important part in the origin of
civilization." What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000,
at the utmost of 5,000 years B.C. (Maspero). Now it is claimed that it is by
means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal year) that the approximate
year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. "Assuming
that the long narrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of the
pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that . . . . Alpha Draconis, the then
pole-star, was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170
B.C. (Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) 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" (ibid). This
demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal
years, the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case
that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later
date of 3,350 B.C.
Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple
in far Northern India, as on the Dendera Zodiac, the same characteristics of
the signs are found. Those who know well the Hindu symbols and constellations,
will be able to find out by the description of the Egyptian, whether the
indications of the chronological time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac
as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek adepts, and explained a
little differently by Mackey, the Lion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is
almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this
position agreeing with the original conformation of these constellations.
"But in many places we see the Lion (Simha),"
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Mackey adds, "with his tail
turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent's head; thereby showing 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,
given also by Denon, he says:-- There, "the Lion is standing on the
Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which it is found that
though six or seven hundred thousand years must have passed between the two positions,
yet they had made but little difference between 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 figure in the latter
part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo which has taken away one Decan out of
each sign."
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain,
as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs: namely, to the last
three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each of which
must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years. The first of these (the
"Aryan-Asiatics") witnessed the doom of the last of the populations
of the "giant Atlanteans"* who perished some 850,000 years ago (the
Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) toward the close of the Miocene Age.** The
fourth sub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans
-- the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years
ago. In order to understand this the reader
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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).
** Says a teacher in "Esoteric
Buddhism," on 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 (see p. 65 of the same work), and the last of "Atlantis" only
11,000 years ago; thus both overlapping -- one the Atlantean period, and the
other the Aryan.
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is asked to glance at the diagram of
the genealogical tree of the Fifth Root-Race -- generally, though hardly
correctly, called the Aryan race, and the explanations appended to it.
Let the reader remember well that
which is said of the divisions of Root Races and the evolution of Humanity in
this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric
Buddhism."
1. There are seven ROUNDS in every
manvantara; this one is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at
present.
2. Each Root-Race has seven
sub-races.
3. Each sub-race has, in its turn,
seven ramifications, which may be called Branch or "Family" races.
4. The little tribes, shoots, and
offshoots of the last-named are countless and depend on Karmic action. Examine
the "genealogical tree" hereto appended, and you will understand. The
illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader
in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists
between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of
Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures -- but only within
approximate limits, for the sake of comparison -- the duration of time through
which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It
would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate
dates to a few; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., down to their smallest
ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly
impossible to separate them.
The human Race has been compared to a
tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration.
[[diagram]]
The main stem of a tree may be
compared to the ROOT-RACE (A).
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Its larger limbs to the various
SUB-RACES; seven in number (B1, B2).
On each of these limbs are seven
BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES. (C).
After this the cactus-plant is a better
illustration, for its fleshy "leaves" are covered with sharp spines,
each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings.
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already
been in existence -- as a race sui generis and quite free from its parent stem --
about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four
preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each
Family-Race has an average existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European
"Family Race" has still a good many thousand years to run, although
the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding
"season" of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to
mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a
"Family-Race" and a "Sidereal year."
The knowledge of the foregoing, and
the accurately correct division, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where
these Sciences were taught to the disciples, and where they were transmitted by
one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European astronomers
assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to
the years 2000 or 2400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that this invention coincides
in its date with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an
Occultist and Eastern astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The year of the
Kaliyuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th of February in the
year 3102 B.C. Now the Hindus claim that in the year 20400 before Kaliyugam,
the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the spring equinox -- there being at
the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon -- and Bailly proved by a lengthy
and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from
which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was very
real. That "epoch is the year 3102 before our era," he writes. (See
Part III., Book I. "Hindu Astronomy defended by an Academician".) The
lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the black Age --
it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star
[[theta]] of the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based
upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades --
(Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern India
and Lanka,* the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The three
"Virgins," or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both,
the record of the first three "divine or astronomical Dynasties," who
taught the Third
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ceylon.
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Root-Race; and after having abandoned
the Atlanteans to their doom, returned (or redescended, rather) during the
third Sub-Race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries
of their birth-place -- the sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the
human races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes -- semi-divine astrals of the
Third and Fourth, and the "Heroes" of the Fifth Race), which preceded
the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages
of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course
changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In
Mackey's "Sphinxiad" the speculations of the bold author must have
horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, as he says,
fantastically enough:--
"But, after all, the greatest
length of time recorded by those monuments (the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the
Zodiacs) does not exceed five millions of years (which is not so)*; which falls
short of the records given us both by the (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus; which
latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of
years**; which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain. . . . "
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs
of the Atlantean Asura-Maya, as the modern Hindus still have. As stated in
"Esoteric Buddhism," the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and
"Romans" some thousand years ago, were "remnants of the
Atlanto-Aryans," i.e., the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans;
the last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden
disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The human
Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the knowledge of
the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins.
Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records. All this has been
shown long ago.*** And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and
80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has
correctly pointed out in his "Ruins of Empires" (p. 360) that it is
only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The forefathers of the Aryan
Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations and Zodiac from those born by
Kriyasakti power, the "Sons of Yoga"; the Egyptians from the
Atlanteans of Ruta.
** The former, therefore, may have
registered time for seven or eight millions of years, but the Egyptians could
not.
*** This question was amply
challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five Years of Theosophy.
(Art. "Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism," pp. 325-46).
**** Volney says that, as Aries was
in its 15th degree 1447 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 1790 since Christ, when Volney
wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or
rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.
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CONCLUSION.
Space forbids us to say anything
more, and this part of the "Secret Doctrine" has to be closed. The
forty-nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the Commentaries just given are
all that can be published in these volumes. These, with some still older
records -- to which none but the highest Initiates have access -- and a whole
library of comments, glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man's
genesis.
It is from the Commentaries that we
have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden meaning of some of the
allegories, thus showing the true views of esoteric antiquity upon geology,
anthropology, and even ethnology. We will endeavour in the Part which follows,
to establish a still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest races
and their Creators, the divine men from other worlds; accompanying the
statements proffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in
esoteric Astronomy and Symbolism.
In Volume III. of this work (the said
volume and the IVth being almost ready) a brief history of all the great adepts
known to the ancients and the moderns in their chronological order will be
given, as also a bird's eye view of the Mysteries, their birth, growth, decay,
and final death -- in Europe. This could not find room in the present work.
Volume IV. will be almost entirely devoted to Occult teachings.
The duration of the periods that
separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the Fifth Race -- in the
historical* or even the legendary beginnings of the latter -- is too tremendous
for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them.
During the course of the post-diluvian ages -- marked at certain periodical
epochs by the most terrible cataclysms -- too many races and nations were born,
and have disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for any one to offer any
description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of
Wisdom have a consecutive and full history of our race from its incipient stage
down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted record of man
since he became the complete physical being, and became thereby the king of the
animals and master on this earth -- is not for the writer to say. Most probably
they have,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The word "historical" is
used, because, although historians have dwarfed almost absurdly 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 an
historical event; and though even less than 1,000 years B.C. is the date
assigned to it, yet in truth it is nearer 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C.
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and such is our own personal
conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates, who do
not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, therefore, give
but what she has herself been taught, and no more.
But even this will appear to the
profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as a possible reality.
This is only natural and as it should
be, since for years such was the impression made upon the humble writer of
these pages herself. Born and bred in European, matter-of-fact and presumably
civilized countries, she assimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty.
But there are proofs of a certain character which become irrefutable and are
undeniable in the long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a
series of years such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude
that our present globe and its human races must have been born, grown and
developed in this, and in no other way.
But this is the personal view of the
writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have any more weight than any
other "doxy," in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory is
heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared
for such questions as these: "How does one know that the writer has not
invented the whole scheme? And supposing she has not, how can one tell that the
whole of the foregoing, as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the
imagination of the ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such
an immense, such an incredible antiquity?"
The answer that the history of this
world since its formation and to its end "is written in the stars,"
i.e., is recorded in the Zodiac and the Universal Symbolism whose keys are in
the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity
of the Zodiac in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied point-blank with
regard to India. "Your conclusions are often excellent, but your premises
are always doubtful," the writer was once told by a profane friend. To
this, the answer came that it was one point, at least, gained on the scientific
syllogisms. For, with the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely
physical science, both the premises and conclusions of the men of Science are
as hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not so
appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane is very little
aware, taking as he does his scientific data on faith, that both premises and
conclusions are generally the product of the same brains, which, however
learned, are not infallible; a truism demonstrated daily by the shifting and
re-shifting of scientific theories and speculations.
However it may be, the records of the
temples, Zodiacal and traditional, as well as the ideographic records of the
East, as read by the
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adepts of the Sacred Science and
Vidya, are not a whit more doubtful than the so-called ancient history of the
European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a century of
archaeological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the Assyrian
tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. So are our data based
upon the same readings, in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of Secret
works of which Europe knows nothing -- plus the perfect knowledge by the
Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these records
belong to an immense antiquity. Every archaeologist and palaeontologist is
acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain semi-savage tribes, who
from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their thoughts symbolically. This
is the earliest mode of recording events and ideas. And how old this knowledge
is in the human race may be inferred from some signs, evidently ideographic,
found on hatchets of the Palaeolithic period. The red Indian tribes of America,
only a few years ago comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the
United States to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being
written on the tiny surface of a piece of a fabric, which is covered with
barely a dozen representations of animals and birds. (See Lubbock.) The
American savages have a number of such different kinds of writing, but not one
of our Scientists is yet familiar, or even knows of the early hieroglyphic
cypher, still preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the
Senzar. Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of writing --
e.g., the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese characters -- as
"attempts of the early races of mankind to express their untutored
thoughts," will decidedly object to our statement, that writing was
invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phoenicians. Indeed, such a
claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of millenniums ago, in
the face of the philologists who have decreed that writing was unknown in the
days of, and to Panini, in India, as also to the Greeks in the time of Homer,
will be met by general disapprobation, if not with silent scorn. All denial and
ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply
for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have a too
long period, full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant
our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the denials of
our Teachers. Writing, our scientists say, was unknown to Panini; and this sage
nevertheless composed a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect
of all the grammars that were ever made! Panini is made out to have lived
barely a few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and
Central Asia (whence the philologists and historians
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show us the ancestors of the same
Panini, the Brahmins, coming into India) are covered with writing, two and
three thousand years old (12,000, according to some fearless palaeontologists).
Writing was an ars incognita in the
days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to Grote, and unknown to the Greeks so late
as 770 B.C.; and the Phoenicians who had invented it, and knew writing as far
back as 1500 B.C., at the earliest,* were living among the Greeks, and elbowing
them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions
disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (a) the site of
ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable; and
(b), excavated on that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions in characters
unknown to the paleontologists and the all-denying Sanskritists. Who will now
deny Troy, or these Archaic inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:--
"I was myself an eye-witness of two such discoveries, and helped to gather
the articles together. The slanderers have long since been silenced, who were
not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an imposture."** Nor were
truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu, Gordon-Cumming,
Madame Merian,*** Bruce, and a host of others were charged with lying.
Madame Merian -- says the author of
"Mythical Monsters," who gives this information in the Introduction
-- 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 accused by botanists of having invented the yellow water-lily,
which he figured in his Birds of the South under the name of Nymphaea 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 (Pop. Sci. Monthly,
No. 60, April 1877). And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his
Holiaetus Washingtonii,**** so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for . . . . his
marvellous word-painting of the devil-fish, and his description of a man
becoming its helpless victim. "The thing was derided as an impossibility;
yet within a few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle
fish with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable of dragging a
good-sized
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is an historical fact that
Sanchoniathon compiled and wrote in Phoenician characters -- from annals and
State documents in the archives of the older Phoenician cities -- the full
record of their religion in 1250 B.C.
** Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I to
Schliemann's Ilios. Murray, 1880.
*** 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," p. 227.)
**** 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."
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boat beneath the surface; and their
action has been reproduced for centuries past . . . . by Japanese
artists." ("Mythical Monsters," p. 11 Introd.).
And if Troy was denied, and regarded
as a myth; the existence of Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the
travels of Marco Polo laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron
Munchausen's tales, why should the writer of "Isis Unveiled" and of
the "Secret Doctrine" be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the
author of the above-cited volume quotes in his excellent work a few lines from
Macmillan (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point not to
be reproduced: "When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth
as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant
or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game. . . . . . As soon as
the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis ?) guiding
Spirit, a priori by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience pro
re nata, 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?"
(p. 13).
Thus let it be. No disbeliever who
takes the "Secret Doctrine" for a "hoax" is forced or even
asked to credit our statements. These have already been proclaimed to be such
by certain very clever American journalists before even the work went to
press.*
Nor, is it after all, necessary that
any one should believe in the Occult Sciences and the old teachings, before one
knows anything or even
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* So far back as July, 1888, at a
time when the MSS. 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 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 thus get out of it, probably by a more slashing
criticism than ever.
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believes in his own soul. No great
truth was ever accepted a priori, and generally a century or two passed before
it began to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in
such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths
of to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versa. It is
only in the XXth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work
will be vindicated.
It is no fact going against our
statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does affirm that writing was
unknown in the stone age. For it may have been unknown during that period in
the Fifth Aryan race, and have been perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the
Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise
and fall of the nations and races are there to account for it.
If told that there have been cases
before now of forged pseudographs being palmed off on the credulous, and that
our work may be classed with Jacolliot's "Bible in India" (in which,
by the way, there are more truths among its errors than are found in the works
of orthodox and recognized Orientalists) -- the charge and comparison will
dismay us very little. We bide our time. Even the famous "Ezour-Veda"
of the last century, considered by Voltaire "the most precious gift from
the East to the West," and by Max Muller "about the silliest book
that can be read," is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The
cases when the a priori negations of specialists became justified by subsequent
corroborations form but an insignificant percentage of those that were fully
vindicated by subsequent discoveries, and confirmed to the great dismay of the
learned objectors. "Ezour Veda," was a very small bone of contention
compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil de Perron, and others
in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such facts are recorded by
Professor Max Muller himself, who, speaking of the discomfiture of Dugald
Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states that "if the facts about
Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions
drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a
language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that
Sanskrit had been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those
arch-forgers and liars, the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature
was an imposition" (Science of Language, p. 168). The writer is quite
willing and feels proud to keep company with these Brahmans, and other
historical "liars," in the opinion of our modern Dugald Stewarts. She
has lived too long, and her experience has been too varied and personal, for
her not to know at least something of human nature. "When you doubt,
abstain," says the wise Zoroaster,
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whose prudent aphorism is found
corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. Yet, like St. John the
Baptist, this sage of the past Ages is found preaching in the desert, in
company with a more modern philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same
priceless bit of practical Wisdom. "In contemplation," he says (in
any question of Knowledge, we add), "if a man begin with certainties, he
shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall
end in certainties."
With this piece of advice from the
father of English Philosophy to the representatives of British scepticism we ought
to close the debate, but our theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece
of Occult information.
Enough was said to show that
evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything else in Nature proceed in
cycles. We have spoken of seven Races, five of which have nearly completed
their earthly career, and have claimed that every Root-Race, with its sub-races
and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its
preceding and succeeding race. This will be objected to, on the authority of
uniform experience in the question of Anthropology, and Ethnology. Man was --
save in colour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and
cranial capacity -- ever the same under every climate and in every part of the
world, say the Naturalists: ay, even in stature. This, while maintaining that
man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape, a claim that is
logically impossible without an infinite variation of stature and form, from
his first evolution into a biped. The very logical persons who maintain both
propositions are welcome to their paradoxical views. Once more we address only
those who, doubting the general derivation of myths from "the
contemplation of the visible workings of external nature" . . . . think it,
"less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demi-gods,
of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions, are
transformations, than to believe them to be inventions." It is only such
"transformations" in physical nature, as much as in the memory and
conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine teaches. It
confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of modern Science, based upon the
experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries, with the unbroken
tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of
cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few
millenniums back, and which Europeans call their "History," the Old
Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of Humanity.
The human Races are born one from the
other, grow, develop, become
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old, and die. Their sub-races and
nations follow the same rule. If your all-denying modern science and so-called
philosophy do not contest that the human family is composed of a variety of
well-defined types and races, it is only because the fact is undeniable, no one
would say that there was no external difference between an Englishman, an
African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand it is formally
denied by most naturalists that mixed human races, i.e., the seeds for entirely
new races, are any longer formed in our days. But this last is maintained on
good grounds by de Quatrefages and some others.
Nevertheless our general proposition
will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever forms man has passed
through in the long pre-historic Past there are no more changes for him (save
certain variations, as at present) in the future. Hence that our Sixth and
Seventh Root Races are fictions.
To this it is again answered: How do
you know? Your experience is limited to a few thousand years, to less than a
day in the whole age of Humanity and to the present types of the actual
continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can you tell what will or will not
be? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the Secret Books and their no uncertain
statements.
Since the beginning of the Atlantean
Race many million years have passed, yet we find the last of the Atlanteans,
still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the
enormous overlapping of one race over the race which succeeds it, though in
character and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes
the new features of the younger race. This is proved in all the formations of
mixed human races. Now, Occult philosophy teaches that even now, under our very
eyes, the new Race and Races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in
America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently
commenced.
Pure Anglo-Saxons hardly three
hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States have already become a
nation apart, and, owing to a strong admixture of various nationalities and
inter-marriage, almost a race sui generis, not only mentally, but also
physically. "Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to
play the part of a primary race in fresh crossings," says de Quatrefages.
"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" ("The Human Species," p. 274.)
Thus the Americans have become in
only three centuries a "primary race," pro tem., before becoming a
race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. They are,
in short, the germs of the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more,
will become
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most decidedly the pioneers of that
race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race, in all its
new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into
preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of cataclysms --
the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later
the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands
directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles -- the Sixth
Root-Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who
knows save the great Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon
the subject as the snow-capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is,
that it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for long
millenniums shall its pioneers -- the peculiar children who will grow into
peculiar men and women -- be regarded as anomalous lusus naturae, abnormal
oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and their numbers
become with every age greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a
majority. It is the present men who will then begin to be regarded as
exceptional mongrels, until these die out in their turn in civilised lands;
surviving only in small groups on islands -- the mountain peaks of to-day --
where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, perhaps millions of
years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam-Nyam and the dwarfish Moola
Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are the remnants of once
mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has entirely died out of the
remembrance of the modern generations, just as we shall vanish from the memory
of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many
hundreds of millenniums, changing with it slower than its new successor, still
changing in stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth
overlapped our Aryan race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This process of preparation for the
Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub-races
(vide supra, the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Race). But the
last remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after
the birth of the new Race; when another and new dwelling, the sixth continent,
will have appeared above the new waters on the face of the globe, so as to
receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and settle all those who
shall be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be --
as just said -- it is not for the writer to know. Only, as nature no more
proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child
into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller
submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant
pulse will beat
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high in the heart of the race now in
the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the Sixth Race
commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have now become a
new race, and many new nations. Yet the Fifth will not die, but survive for a
while: overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to come, it
will become transformed with it -- slower than its new successor -- still
getting entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind
will not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the
Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth race led the latter down
to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present Race
is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds
of matter, and even of flesh.
Thus it is the mankind of the New
world -- one by far the senior of our Old one, a fact men had also forgotten --
of Patala (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India),
whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and
far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of
Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind.
On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind
will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of cyclic Destiny,
and not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden
of its co-operative work with nature. Thus will mankind, race after race,
perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun,
to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only
to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other
less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some individual
men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind.
Such is the course of Nature under
the sway of KARMIC LAW: of the ever present and the ever-becoming Nature. For,
in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:-- "THE PRESENT IS
THE CHILD OF THE PAST; THE FUTURE, THE BEGOTTEN OF THE PRESENT. AND YET, O
PRESENT MOMENT! KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT THOU HAST NO PARENT, NOR CANST THOU HAVE
A CHILD; THAT THOU ART EVER BEGETTING BUT THYSELF? BEFORE THOU HAST EVEN BEGUN
TO SAY 'I AM THE PROGENY OF THE DEPARTED MOMENT, THE CHILD OF THE PAST,' THOU
HAST BECOME THAT PAST ITSELF. BEFORE THOU UTTEREST THE LAST SYLLABLE, BEHOLD!
THOU ART NO MORE THE PRESENT BUT VERILY THAT FUTURE. THUS, ARE THE PAST, THE
PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE, THE EVER-LIVING TRINITY IN ONE -- THE MAHAMAYA OF THE
ABSOLUTE IS."
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BOOK II., 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.
(The 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."
(Clem. Alex., "Strom." 12.)
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CONTENTS.
--------
PAGE.
§ ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN
EVERY SCRIPTURE ... 449
------
XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452
------
XVII. THE "HOLY OF HOLIES"
-- ITS DEGRADATION ... 459
------
XVIII. ON THE MYTH OF THE
"FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS PHASES ... 475
The Evil Spirit: Who and What? ...
475
The Gods of Light proceed from the
Gods of Darkness ... 483
The Many Meanings of the "War in
Heaven" ... 492
-------
XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? ... 506
-------
XX. PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN ... 519
His Origin in Ancient India ... 519
-------
XXI. ENOICHION ... 529
------
XXII. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE
MYSTERY-NAMES IAO AND JEHOVAH, WITH THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS AND CIRCLE ...
536
Cross and Circle ... 545
The Fall of the Cross into Matter ...
553
------
XXIII. THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC
LITERATURE ... 563
------
XXIV. THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN
DECADE ... 573
-------
XXV. THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD
... 590
Saptaparna ... 590
The Tetraktis in relation to the
Heptagon ... 598
The Septenary Element in the Vedas.
It corroborates the Occult Teaching concerning the Seven Globes and the Seven
Races ... 605
The Septenary in the Exoteric Works
... 611
Seven in Astronomy, Science and Magic
... 618
The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists
... 630
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BOOK II. -- PART II.
--------
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY
SCRIPTURE.
IN view of the strangeness of the
teachings, and of many a doctrine which from the modern scientific stand-point
must seem absurd, some necessary and additional explanations have to be made.
The theories contained in the Second Part of the Stanzas are even more difficult
to assimilate than those which are embodied in Vol. 1, on Cosmogony. Theology,
therefore, has to be questioned here, as Science will be in the Addenda (Part
III.). Since our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both
Materialism and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the
attacks of either or of both.
The reader can never be too often
reminded that, as the abundant quotations from various old Scriptures prove,
these teachings are as old as the world; and that the present work is a simple
attempt to render, in modern language and in a phraseology with which the
scientific and educated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as
taught in certain Asiatic centres of esoteric learning. They must be accepted
or rejected on their own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have
been carefully compared with the corresponding theological dogmas and the
modern scientific theories and speculations.
One feels a serious doubt whether,
with all its intellectual acuteness, our age is destined to discover in each
western nation even one solitary uninitiated scholar or philosopher capable of
fully comprehending the spirit of archaic philosophy. Nor can one be expected
to do so, before the real meaning of these terms, the Alpha and the Omega of
Eastern esotericism, the words Sat and Asat, -- so freely used in the Rig-Veda,
and elsewhere -- is thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to the Aryan
Wisdom, the Cosmogony of the Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a
dead letter to the average Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat,
nor is it the "not yet existing"; for Sat is in itself neither the
"existent," nor "being." SAT is the immutable, the ever
present, changeless and eternal root, from and through which all proceeds. But
it is far more than the potential force in the seed, which propels onward the
process of development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever
becoming, though the never manifesting.* Sat
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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
Vedanta philosophy.
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is born from Asat, and ASAT is
begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can
be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana.
Barth started a reflection on the
Rig-Veda which was meant for a stern criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was
thought, an original view of this archaic volume. It so happened, however,
that, while criticising, that scholar revealed a truth, without being himself
aware of its full importance. He premises by saying that "neither in the
language nor in the thought of the Rig-Veda" has he "been able to
discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity, which so many are fain
to see in it." Barth had Max Muller in his mind's eye when writing this.
For the famous Oxford professor has throughout characterised the hymns of the
Rig Veda, as the unsophisticated expression of the religious feeling of a
pastoral innocent people. "In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths appear
in their simplest and freshest form;" -- the Sanskrit scholar thinks.
Barth is of a different opinion, however.
So divided and personal are the
opinions of Sanskritists as to the importance and intrinsic value of the Rig
Veda, that those opinions become entirely biassed whichever way they incline.
Thus Mr. Max Muller declares that: "Nowhere is the wide distance which
separates the ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of Greece
more clearly felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the
full grown and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is founded. The Veda
is the real Theogony of the Aryan races, while that of Hesiod is a distorted
caricature of the original image." This is a sweeping assertion, and
perhaps rather unjust in its general application. But why not try to account
for it? Orientalists cannot do so, for they reject the chronology of the Secret
Doctrine, and could hardly admit the fact that between the Rig-Vedic hymns and
Hesiod's Theogony tens of thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see
that the Greek myths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the
Initiates, the disciples of the gods-Hierophants, the divine ancient
"sacrificers," and that disfigured by the distance, and encumbered by
the exuberant growth of human profane fancy, they now stand like distorted
images of stars in running waves. But if Hesiod's Cosmogony and Theogony are to
be viewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the myths in
the Hebrew Genesis in the sight of those, for whom they are no more divine
revelation or the word of God, than Hesiod's Theogony is for Mr. Gladstone.
"The poetry it (the Rig Veda)
contains appears to me, on the contrary," says Barth "to be of a
singularly refined character and
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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." ("The Religions of
India," p. xiii.)
We will not stop to enquire of the
critic what he can know of the phraseology in use among the
"initiated," or whether he belongs himself to such a group; for, in
the latter case, he would hardly have used such language. But the above shows
the remarkable disagreement between scholars even with regard to the external
character of the Rig Veda. What, then, can any of the modern Sanskritists know
about its internal or esoteric meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth,
that this Scripture has been compiled by INITIATES?
The whole of the present work is an
endeavour to prove this truth. The ancient adepts have solved the great
problems of science, however unwilling modern materialism may be to admit the
fact. The mysteries of Life and Death were fathomed by the great master-minds
of antiquity; and if they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is
because these problems formed part of the sacred mysteries; and, secondly,
because they must have remained incomprehensible to the vast majority of men
then, as they do now. If such teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our
opponents in philosophy, it may be a consolation to the Theosophists to learn,
on good proofs, that the speculations of modern psychologists -- whether
serious Idealists, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering pseudo-Idealists
-- are far more chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation
of facts in Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o'-the-wisps of materialistic
imagination, of the brains that evolved them -- and no more. While they deny,
we affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the sages of
antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good
reasons, we say: Certus sum, scio quod credidi; to which our critics reply:
Credat Judaeus Apella. Neither is converted by the other, nor does such result
affect even our little planet. E pur se muove!
Nor is there any need of
proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero, "Time destroys the
speculations of man, but it confirms the judgment of nature." Let us bide
our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the
destruction of one's gods, whether they be true or false. And as theology and
materialism have combined together to destroy the old gods of antiquity and
seek to disfigure every old philosophical conception, it is but just that the
lovers of old wisdom should defend their position, by proving that the whole
arsenal of the two is, at best, formed of new weapons made out of very old
material.
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§ XVI.
ADAM-ADAMI.
NAMES such as Adam-Adami, used by Mr.
Chwolsohn in his "Nabathean Agriculture"* and derided by M. Renan,
may prove little to the profane. To the Occultist, however, once that the term
is found in a work of such immense antiquity as the above cited, it proves a
good deal: for instance that Adami was a manifold symbol, originating with the
Aryan people, 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 languages are. The Secret Doctrine teaches that Ad-i
was the name given to the first speaking race of mankind -- in this Round -- by
the Aryans. Hence the Adonim and Adonai (the ancient plural form of the word
Adon), which the Jews applied to their Jehovah and angels, who were simply the
first spiritual and ethereal sons of the earth; and the god Adonis, who in his
many variations stood for the "First Lord." Adam is the Sanskrit
Ada-Nath, also meaning first Lord, as Ad-Iswara, or any Ad (the first) followed
by any adjective or substantive. The reason for this is that such truths were a
common inheritance. It was a revelation received by the first mankind before
that time which, in Biblical phraseology, is called "the period of one lip
and word," or speech; knowledge expanded by man's own intuition later on,
but still later hidden from profanation under an adequate symbology. The author
of the "Qabbalah, (according to), the philosophical writings of Ibn
Gebirol," shows the Israelite using "Adonai," (Lord) instead of
Eh'yeh (I am) and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonai is rendered
"Lord" in the Bible, "the lowest designation, or the Deity in
Nature, the more general term Elohim, is translated God." (p. 175.)
A curious work was translated in 1860
or thereabout, by the Orientalist Chwolsohn, and presented to ever-incredulous
and flippant Europe under the innocent title of Nabathean Agriculture. In the
opinion of the translator that archaic volume is "a complete initiation
into the mysteries of the pre-Adamite nations, on the authority of undeniably
authentic documents." It is "an invaluable compendium, the full
epitome of the Doctrines held, of the arts and sciences, not only of the
Chaldeans, but also of the Assyrians and Canaanites of the prehistoric
ages." These
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide infra.
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"Nabatheans" -- as some
critics thought -- were simply the Sabeans, or Chaldean star-worshippers. The
work is a retranslation from the Arabic, into which language it was at first
translated from the Chaldean.
Masoudi, the Arabic Historian, speaks
of those Nabatheans, and explains their 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 Biurasp."
The translator, Chwolsohn, finds that
the assertions of this historian are in perfect accord with those of Moses in
Genesis; while more irreverent critics might express the opinion that for this
very reason their truth should be suspected. It is useless to argue this point,
which is of no value in the present question. The weather-beaten,
long-since-buried problem, and the difficulty of accounting, on any logical
ground, for the phenomenal derivation of millions of people of various races,
of many civilized nations and tribes, from three couples (Noah's sons) in 346
years* after the Deluge, may be left to the Karma of the author of Genesis,
whether he is called Moses or Ezra. That which is interesting in the work
noticed is its, the doctrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read
esoterically, almost all of them identical with the Secret Teachings.
Quatremere suggested that this book
might have been simply a copy made under Nebuchadnezzar II., from some Hamitic
treatise, "infinitely more ancient," while the author maintains, on
"internal and external evidence," that its Chaldean original was
written out from the oral discourses and teachings of a wealthy Babylonian
landowner, named Qu-tamy, who had used for those lectures still more ancient
materials. The first Arabic translation is placed by Chwolsohn so far back as
the XIII. cent. B.C. On the first page of this "revelation," the author,
or amanuensis, Qu-tamy, declares that "the doctrines propounded therein,
were originally told by Saturn to the Moon, who communicated them to her idol,
which idol revealed them to her devotee, the writer -- the adept Scribe of that
work -- Qu-tamy.
The details given by the God for the
benefit and instruction of mortals, show periods of incalculable duration and a
series of numberless kingdoms and Dynasties that preceded the appearance on
Earth of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Genesis and the authorised
Chronology. In Chapt. ix. "Noah leaveth the Ark" "B.C.
2348." Chapter x. "Nimrod the first Monarch," stands over
"B.C. 1998."
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Adami (the "red-earth").
These periods have aroused, as might have been expected, the defenders of the
chronology of the Biblical dead-letter meaning almost to fury. De Rougemont was
the first to make a levee-in-arms against the translator. He reproaches him*
with "sacrificing Moses to an anonymous author." Berosus, he urges,
"however great were his chronological errors, was at least in perfect
accord with the prophet with regard to the first men, since he speaks of
Alorus-Adam, of Xisuthrus-Noah, and of Belus-Nimrod," etc.
"Therefore," he adds, "the work must be an APOCRYPHA to be
ranged with its contemporaries -- the fourth book of Esdras, that of Enoch, the
Sibylline Oracles, and the Book of Hermes -- every one of these dating no
further back than two or three centuries B.C." Ewald came down still
harder on Chwolsohn, and finally M. Renan. In the "Revue
Germanique,"** the ex-pupil pulls down the authority of his master, by asking
him to show a reason why his Nabathean Agriculture should not be the fraudulent
work of some Jew of the third or fourth century of our era? It can hardly be
otherwise -- argues the romancer of the "Life of Jesus." Since, in
this in-folio on astrology and Sorcery we recognise in the personages
introduced by Qu-tamy, all the patriarchs of the Biblical legends, such as
Adam-Adami, Anouka-Noah, and his Ibrahim-Abraham etc., etc."
This is no reason, since Adam and
others are generic names. Meanwhile it is humbly submitted that, all things
considered, an apocrypha -- if even of the third century A.D., instead of the
thirteenth century B.C., as suggested by Quatremere -- is old enough to appear
genuine as a document, and so satisfy the demands of the most exacting
archaeologist and critic. For, even admitting, for argument's sake, that this
literary relic has been compiled by "some Jew of the third century of our
era" -- what of that? Leaving the credibility of its doctrines for a
moment aside, why should it be less entitled to a hearing, or less instructive
as reflecting older opinions, than any other religious work, also a
"compilation from old texts" or oral tradition -- of the same or even
a later age? In such case we should have to reject and call "apocryphal"
the Kuran -- two centuries older, though we know it to have sprung,
Minerva-like, direct from the brain of the Arabian prophet; and 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 materials, and is not earlier than
the IX. century of our era.
The curious "Bible" of the
Chaldean adept, and the various criticisms upon it (as in the Chwolsohn's
translation), are noticed, because it has an important bearing upon a great portion
of the present work.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Annales de Philosophie, June 1860,
p. 415.
** April 30, 1860.
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With the exception of M. Renan, an
iconoclast by principle -- so pointedly called by Jules Lemaitre "le
Paganini du Neant" -- the worst fault found with the work is, it would
seem, that the "apocrypha" pretends to have been communicated as a
revelation to an adept by, and from, the "idol of the moon," who
received it from "Saturn." Hence, very naturally, it is "a fairy
tale all round." To this there is but one answer: it is no more a fairy
tale than the Bible, and if one falls, the other must follow it. Even the mode
of divination through "the idol of the moon" is the same as practised
by David, Saul, and the High Priests of the Jewish Tabernacle by means of the
Teraphim. In Volume III., Part II. of this present work, the practical methods
of such ancient divination will be found.
The "Nabathean Agriculture"
is a compilation indeed; it is no apocrypha, but the repetition of the tenets
of the Secret Doctrine under the exoteric Chaldean form of national symbols,
for the purpose of "cloaking" the tenets, just as the Books of Hermes
and the Puranas are Egyptian and Hindu attempts at the same. The work was as
well known in antiquity as it was during the Middle Ages. Maimonides speaks of
it, and refers more than once to this Chaldeo-Arabic MS., calling the
Nabatheans by their co-religionary name, i.e., "star-worshippers," or
Sabeans, but yet failing to see in this disfigured word "Nabatheans"
the mystic name of the caste devoted to Nebo (god of secret wisdom), which
shows on its face that the Nabatheans were an occult Brotherhood.* The
Nabatheans who, according to the Persian Yezidi, originally came to Syria from
Busrah, were the degenerate members of that fraternity; still their religion,
even at that late day, was purely Kabalistic.** Nebo is the deity of the planet
Mercury, and Mercury is the god of Wisdom or Hermes, and Budha, which the Jews
called [[hebrew]] "the Lord on high, the aspiring," . . . and the
Greeks Nabo, [[Nabo]], hence Nabatheans. Notwithstanding that Maimonides calls
their doctrines "heathenish foolishness" and their archaic literature
"Sabaeorum foetum," he places their "agriculture," the
Bible of Qu-tamy, in the first rank of Archaic literature; and Abarbinel
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "I will mention to thee the
writings . . . respecting the belief of the Sabeans," 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., p. 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, believed in to this day by the Roman
Catholics, as is shown elsewhere.
** See "Isis Unveiled,"
Vol. II., p. 197.
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praises it in unmeasured terms.
Spencer, quoting the latter, speaks of it as that "most excellent Oriental
work," adding (vol. 1., p. 354) that by Nabatheans, the Sabeans, the
Chaldeans, and the Egyptians, in short all those nations against whom the laws
of Moses were most severely enacted, have to be understood.
Nebo, the oldest God of Wisdom of
Babylonia and Mesopotamia, was identical with the Hindu Budha and
Hermes-Mercury of the Greeks. A slight change in the sexes of the parents is
the only alteration. As Budha was the Son of Soma (the Moon) in India, and of
the wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter), so Nebo was the son of Zarpa-nitu (the Moon
deity) and of Merodach, who had become 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 of the Secret Wisdom he was Nabin, a
seer and a prophet. The fact that Moses is made to die and disappear on the
mount sacred to Nebo, shows him an 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, not alone at Borsippa in his gorgeous Temple, or
planet-tower. He was likewise adored by the Moabites, the Canaanites, the
Assyrians, and throughout the whole of Palestine: then why not by the
Israelites? "The planetary 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."
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 their respective creatures. Adam-Adami is a personation
of the dual Adam: of the paradigmic Adam-Kadmon, the creator, and of the lower
Adam, the terrestrial, who, as the Syrian Kabalists have it, had only nephesh,
"the breath of life," but no living soul, until after his Fall.
If, therefore, Renan persists in
regarding the Chaldean Scriptures -- or what remains 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 were they not, it would still really matter
very little. These doctrines contain the teachings of Esoteric philosophy, and
this must suffice. To those who understand nothing of symbology it may appear
astrolatry, pure and simple, or to him who would conceal the esoteric truth,
even "heathenish foolishness." Maimonides, however, while expressing
scorn for the esotericism in the religion of other nations, confessed
esotericism and symbology in his own, preached
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silence and secresy upon the true
meaning of Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of Qu-tamy,
the Chaldean, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the religion of the
earliest nations of the Fifth Race.
Why then should M. Renan treat the
name "Adam-Adami" with such academical contempt? The author of the
"Origins of Christianity" evidently knows nothing of the
"origins of pagan symbolism" or of Esotericism either, otherwise he
would have known that the name was a form of universal symbol, referring, even
with the Jews, not to one man, but to four distinct humanities or mankinds.
This is very easily proven.
The Kabalists teach the existence of
four distinct Adams, or the transformation of four consecutive Adams, the
emanations from the Dyooknah (divine phantom) of the Heavenly Man, an ethereal
combination of Neschamah, the highest Soul or Spirit: this Adam having, of
course, neither 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
is certain, as everyone can see by their description in the Kabala: the first
being 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; the third Adam is the man made of "dust" (the
first, innocent Adam); and the fourth, is the supposed forefather of our own
race -- the Fallen Adam. See, however, the admirably clear description of these
in Mr. Isaac Myer's "Qabbalah," p. 418, et seq. He gives only four
Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no doubt. "The fourth Adam," he
writes, " . . . . was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc. This answers
to the Lower Nephesch and Guff, i.e., body, united. He has the animal power of
reproduction and continuance of species," and this is the human Root-Race.
It is just at this point that the
modern Kabalists -- led into error by the long generations of Christian mystics
who have tampered with the Kabalistic records wherever they could -- diverge
from the Occultists in their interpretations, and take the later thought for
the earlier idea. The original Kabala was entirely metaphysical, and had no
concern with animal, or terrestrial sexes; the later Kabala has suffocated the
divine ideal under the heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say:-- "God
made man male and female." "Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to
continued creation and existence is called the Balance," says the author
of Qabbalah; and being without this "Balance," connected with Ma-qom
(mysterious place),* even the First Race is not,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Simply, the womb, the "Holy of
Holies" with the Semites.
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as we have seen, recognized by the
Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly Man, the upper Adam who is
"male female" or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these
personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the
Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they
consider as a "Karma" pertaining only to the mundane relation of man,
who is dominated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the
person becomes "wise." They considered it a most fortunate
circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure
life of Brahmacharya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery
of the sublime correlation of creative Cosmic forces. And this ideal conception
is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse 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 emanates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite
Adamas, in "whose image he is made"; the third, from this second --
an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the 6th and 7th pairs of the
male-female AEons, --Amphian-Essumene, and Vannanin-Lamer (Father and Mother;
vide Valentinian Table, in Epiphanius) -- while the fourth Adam, or Race, is
represented by a Priapean monster. The latter -- a post-Christian fancy -- is
the degraded copy of the ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the "Good
One," or "He, who created before anything existed," the
Celestial Priapus -- truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God returned
from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of
Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodaemon, the
Gnostic Saviour, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract
creative Power, but symbolizes 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 in the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root-Races was recorded in
the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which five were framed in a
panel in the Initiation halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it was a
hand with five fingers spread, the fifth or little finger being only
half-grown, and also five "N's" -- hieroglyphs standing for that
letter. The Romans used the five vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this
archaic symbol was adopted during the middle ages as a motto by the House of
the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria!
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§ XVII.
THE "HOLY OF HOLIES."
ITS DEGRADATION.
THE Sanctum Sanctorum of the
Ancients, i.e., that recess on the Western side of the Temple which was
enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only aperture or door hung
over with a curtain -- also called the Adytum -- was common to all ancient
nations.
Nevertheless, a great difference is
found between the secret meanings of this symbolical place, in the esotericism
of the Pagans and that of later Jews; though the symbology of it was originally
identical throughout the ancient Races and Nations. The Gentiles, by placing in
the Adytum a sarcophagus, or a tomb (taphos), and the solar-god to whom the
temple was consecrated, held it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration.
They regarded it -- in its esoteric meaning -- as the symbol of resurrection,
cosmic, solar (or diurnal), and human. It embraced the wide range of periodical
and (in time) punctual, Manvantaras, or the re-awakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and
Man to new existences; the sun being the most poetical and also the most
grandiose symbol of the same in heaven, and man -- in his re-incarnations -- on
Earth. The Jews -- whose realism, if judged by the dead letter, was as
practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now* -- in the course of
their estrangement from the gods of their pagan neighbours, consummated a
national and levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of
Holies as the most solemn sign of their Monotheism -- exoterically; while
seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol -- esoterically. While the
Kabalists knew but Ain-Soph and the "gods" of the Mysteries, the
Levites had no tomb, no god in their adytum but the "Sacred" Ark of
the Covenant -- their "Holy of Holies."
When the esoteric meaning of this
recess is made clear, however, the profane will be better able to understand
why David danced "uncovered" before the ark of the Covenant, and was
so anxious to appear vile for the sake of his "Lord," and base in his
own sight. (See 2 Samuel vi. 16-22.)
The ark is the navi-form Argha of the
Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* But it was not so, in reality,
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.
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a long dissertation upon it in his
Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a word about it in the Hebrew lexicon,
explains it thus:-- "[[Arche]] 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 significance; with the supplementary addition
that, instead of a beautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the matrix
of Nature and resurrection) as in the Sanctum sanctorum of the pagans, they had
the ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two cherubs set up
on the coffer or ark of the covenant, facing each other, with their wings
spread 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 four
mystic letters of Jehovah's name, namely, [[hebrew]]; or [[hebrew]] meaning Jod
(membrum Virile, see Kabala); [[hebrew]] (the womb); [[hebrew]] (Vau, a crook
or a hook, a nail), and [[hebrew]] again, meaning also "an opening";
the whole forming the perfect bisexual emblem or symbol or Y (e) H (o) V (a) H,
the male and female symbol.
Perhaps also, when people realise the
true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh Kadeshim, "the holy
ones," or "the consecrated to the temple of the Lord," -- the
"Holy of Holies" of the latter may assume an aspect far from
edifying.
Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and
Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic 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]]?" (Psalms xxiv. 3).
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 xxxvii. from
verses 15 to 22. The "holy" Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical, as
to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu
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, says verse the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings.
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
(Judges xxi. 21, 23 et passim), and the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I
Kings xviii. 26). It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it
denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic
frenzy is
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apparent. Sistra were used on the
occasion, and the taunt of Michal and the King's reply are very expressive.
Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 49.
"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 Hindus, 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." ("Isis
Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 444.) Mistaken is he who accepts the Kabalistic
works of to-day, and the interpretations of the Zohar by the Rabbis, for the
genuine Kabalistic lore of old!* For no more to-day than in the day of
Frederick von Schelling does the Kabala accessible to Europe and America,
contain much more than "ruins and fragments, much distorted remnants still
of that primitive system which is the key to all religious systems" (See
Kabbala, by Prof. Franck, Preface). The oldest system and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 XIIIth 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 "Chaldean 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 (vide I. Myer's
Qabbalah, p. 7). Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained
to this day, "a running commentary on the . . . Books of the
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
Chaldean), the friends and co-workers of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk,
accepted their interpretations.
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Chaldean Kabala were identical. The
latest renderings of the Zohar are those of the Synagogue in the early
centuries -- i.e., the Thorah, 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, representing the solar god, had to
descend into the Sarcophagus, and represent 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
third morning, after a last night of the most cruel trials. While the postulant
represented the Sun -- the all-vivifying Orb that "resurrects" every
morning but to impart life to all -- the Sarcophagus was symbolic of the female
principle. This, in Egypt; its form and shape changed with every country, provided
it remained a vessel, a symbolic navis or boat-shaped vehicle, and a container,
symbolically, of germs or the germ of life. In India, it is the
"golden" Cow through which the candidate for Brahminism has to pass
if he desires to be a Brahmin, and to become DWIJA ("reborn 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 after their metamorphosis
of Jehovah into a male god, worshipped Astoreth, which made Isaiah declare:
"Your new moons and feasts my soul hateth," (i. 14); saying which, he
was evidently unjust. Astoreth and the New-moon (the crescent argha) festivals,
had no worse significance as a form of public worship than had the hidden
meaning of the moon in general, which was Kabalistically connected directly
with, and sacred to, Jehovah, as is well known; with the sole difference that
one was the 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), were the earliest Trinity of the
Egyptians, who personified them in Osiris, Isis, and Thoth (Hermes). In
[[PISTIS SOPHIA]], the seven great gods, divided into two triads and the
highest God (the Sun) are: the lower [[Tridunameis]], whose powers reside
respectively in Mars, Mercury and Venus; and the higher Triad ("the three
unseen gods") who dwell in the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn; (vide §§ 359 and
361 et seq).
This requires no proof. Astoreth was
in one sense an impersonal symbol of nature, the ship of Life carrying
throughout the boundless Sidereal Ocean the germs of all being. And when she
was not identified with Venus, like every other "Queen of Heaven" to
whom cakes and buns were offered in sacrifice, Astoreth became the reflection
of the
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Chaldean "Nuah, the Universal
Mother" (female Noah, considered as one with the ark), and of the female
triad, Ana, Belita and Davikina; called, when blended into one, "Sovereign
goddess, lady of the Nether Abyss, Mother of gods, Queen of the Earth, and
Queen of fecundity." Later, Belita or Damti (the sea), the Mother of the
City of Erech (the great Chaldean Necropolis) became Eve; and now she is Mary
the Virgin, in the Latin Church, represented as standing on the crescent-moon,
and, at times on the Globe, to vary the programme. The navi, or ship-like form
of the crescent, which blends in itself all those common symbols of the ship of
life, such as Noah's ark, the Yoni of the Hindus, and the ark of the Covenant,
is the female symbol of the Universal "Mothers of the gods," and is
now found under its Christian symbol in every Church, as the nave (from navis,
the ship).* The navis -- the Sidereal vessel -- is fructified by the Spirit of
Life -- the male God; or, as the learned Kenealy (in his Apocalypsis) calls it
very appropriately -- the Holy Spirit. In Western religious symbology the
Crescent was the male, the full moon, the female aspect of that universal
Spirit. "The mystic word Alm, which the prophet Mahomet prefixed to many
chapters of the Koran, alludes to her as the Alm, the immaculate Virgin of the
heavens. And -- the sublime ever falling into the ridiculous -- it is from this
root Alm that we have to derive the word Almeh -- the Egyptian dancing-girls.
The latter are "Virgins" of the same type as the Nautchnis in India,
and the (female) Kadeshim, the Holy Ones of the Jewish temples (those
consecrated to Jehovah, who represented both sexes), whose holy functions in
the Israelite fanes were identical with those of the Nautchnis.
Now Eustathius declares that ([IO])
IO means the moon, in the dialect of the Argians; and it was one of the names
of the same in Egypt. Says Jablonski, "[[IO]], Ioh, AEgyptiis LUNAM
significat neque habent illi in communi sermonis usu, aliud nomen quo Lunam,
designent praeter IO." The pillar and Circle (IO), now constituting the
first decimal number, and which with Pythagoras was the perfect number
contained in the Tetractis,** became later a pre-eminently phallic Number --
amongst the Jews, foremost of all, with whom it is the male and female Jehovah.
This is how a scholar explains it:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Timaeus, the Locrian, speaking of
Arka, calls her "the Principle of best things." The word arcane,
"hidden," or secret, is derived from Arka. "To no one is the
Arcane shown except to the most High" (Codex Nazareus), alluding to nature
the female, and Spirit, the male Power. All the Sun-Gods were called Archagetos
"born from the Arka," the divine Virgin-Mother of the Heavens.
** Because composed of ten dots
arranged triangularly in four rows. It is the Tetragrammaton of the Western
Kabalists.
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"I find, on the Rosetta stone of
Uhlemann, the word mouth, also in Seiffarth, viz., the name of the Moon used as
a cycle of Time, hence the lunar month from the hieroglyph [[diagram]] with
[[diagram]] and [[diagram]] as determinatives given, as the Coptic I O H, or I
O H. The Hebrew [[hebrew]] may also be used as I O H, for the letter yau, or
[[hebrew]], was used for o and for u, and for v or w. This, before the Massora,
of which the . was used as [[hebrew]] = o, [[hebrew]] = u, and [[hebrew]] = 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.". . . . (From a MS.)
This is the more remarkable when
Egyptology compares this with the little which it knows about the Theban triad
-- composed of Ammon, Mouth, (or Mout) and their son Khonsoo. This triad was,
when united, contained in the moon as their common symbol; and when separated,
it was Khonsoo who was the god, LUNUS, being thus confounded with Thot and
Phtah. His mother Mout(h) -- the name signifying Mother, by the bye, not the
moon, which was only her Symbol -- is called the "Queen of Heaven";
the "Virgin," etc., etc., as she is an aspect of Isis, Hathor, and
other mother goddesses. She was less the wife than the mother of Ammon, whose
distinct title is "the husband of his Mother." In a statuette at
Boulaq, Cairo, this triad is represented (Number 1981 Serapeum, Greek Period)
as a mummy-god holding in his hand three different sceptres, and bearing the
lunar disc on his head, the characteristic tress of hair showing the design 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 aspects (1) as
"Khonsoo, the Lunar god, and Lord of Thebes, Nofir-hotpoo -- 'he who is in
absolute repose'; and (2) as Khonsoo Iri-sokhroo, or 'Khonsoo, who executes
Destiny': the former preparing the events and conceiving them for those born
under his generative influence; the latter putting them into action." (See
Maspero's Definitions). Under theogonic permutations Ammon becomes Horus,
HOR-AMMON, and Mout(h)-Isis is seen suckling him in a statuette of the Saitic
period. (Abydos.) In his turn, in this transformed triad, Khonsoo becomes
Thot-Lunus, "he who operates salvation." His brow is crowned with the
head of an ibis decorated with the lunar disc and the diadem called IO-tef.
Now all these symbols are certainly found
reflected in (some believe them identical with) the Yave, or Jehovah of the
Bible. This will be
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made plain to any one who reads
"The Source of Measures," or "Hebrew Egyptian Mystery," and
understands the undeniable, clear, and mathematical proofs that the esoteric
foundations, or the system used in the building of 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 of the Covenant, are the same. If
anything in the world can settle the dispute that the old, as much as the
later, Jews (post-Babylonian), and especially the former, built their theogony
and religion on the very same foundation as all Pagans did, it is the work in
question.
And now it may be as well to remind
the reader of that which was said of I A O, in our work, "Isis Unveiled."
"No other deity affords such a
variety of etymologies as Jaho, 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 'Adonai' -- or Lord, as Philo
Byblius spells it in Greek letters [[IEUO]] -- IEVO. Theodoret says that the
Samaritans pronounced it Jahe (yahra), 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, therefore, that we maintain that before his initiation by Jethro, his
father-in-law, Moses had never known the word Jaho."*
The above receives corroboration in a
private letter from a very learned Kabalist. In STANZA IV. and elsewhere it is
stated that exoterically Brahma (neuter), so flippantly and so often confused
by the Orientalists with Brahma -- the male, is sometimes called Kala-hansa
(Swan in the eternity), and the esoteric meaning of A-ham-sa, is given. (I --
am -- he, so ham being equal to sah "he," and aham "I" -- a
mystic anagram and permutation). It is also the "four-faced" Brahma,
the Chatur mukha (the perfect cube) forming itself within, and from the infinite
circle; and again the use of the 1, 3, 5, and [[diagram]] = 14, as the esoteric
hierarchy of the Dhyan Chohans is explained. On this, the said correspondent
comments in this way:--
"Of the 1, 3, 5, and twice 7,
intending and very especially 13,514, which on a circle may be read as 31415
(or [[pi]] value), I think there cannot be a possibility of doubting; and
especially when considered with symbol marks on sacr,** 'Chakra,' or Circle of
Vishnu.
"But let me carry your
description a step further:-- You say 'The One from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The student must be aware that
Jethro is called the "father-in-law" of Moses; not 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 be married. It is an
allegory like everything else. Zipporah (the shining) is one of the personified
Occult Sciences given by Revel-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."
** In Hebrew the phallic symbol
lingham and Yoni.
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the Egg, the six, and the five (See
Stanza IV., Book I.) 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]] to [[hebrew]] or h to n, then
[[hebrew]] 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 (1,065) are but the use of our ratio of 113 to 355 because 1,065 = 355
x 3 which is circumference to a diameter of 113 x 3 = 339. Thus the first born
of Brahma Prajapati (or any Demiurgos) 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."
"It is a most singular thing: At
the entrance passage to the King's chamber the measurement from the surface of
the Great Step* and the Grand Gallery to the top of the said gallery, is by the
very careful measures of Piazzi Smyth 339 inches.
[[diagram]]
Take A as a centre and with this
radius describe a circle; the diameter of that circle will be 339 x 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 1,065 each) for 113 (man) x 6 = 678; and the
diameter to a circumference of 1,065 x 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 133 / 2 = 5.65 x 10, [[over]] [[hebrew]] or Jehovah. That is, he
personifies** 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 co-ordinately 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 Hindu Deus Lunus, the moon, because
of the esoteric influence attributed to this planet in Occultism. There are
other corroborations of it, however, in Hebrew tradition itself. Adam is spoken
of in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is on 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."
** 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 altar -- the Christian "Holy of
Holies."
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Maimonides (More Nevochim, "The
Guide of the Perplexed" -- truly!) in two aspects; 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 to 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 words sacr and n'cabvah are,
literally translated, lingham (phallus) and yoni, notwithstanding their
translation in the Bible (Genesis i. v. 27.) "male and female." As
said there "God creates 'Man in his own image'. . . . . in the image of
God created he him, male and female created he them," the androgyne
Adam-Kadmon. Now this Kabalistic name is not that of a living man, nor even of
a human or divine Being, but of the two sexes or organs of procreation, called
in Hebrew with that usual sincerity of language pre-eminently Biblical, sacr
and n'cabvah*; these two being, therefore, the image under which the "Lord
God" appeared usually to his chosen people. That this is so, is now
undeniably proven by almost all the symbologists and Hebrew scholars as well as
by the Kabala. Therefore Adam is in one sense Jehovah. This makes plain another
general tradition in the East mentioned in Gregorie's "Notes and
Observations upon several passages in Scripture" (1684. Vol. 1 pp. 120-21)
and quoted by Hargrave Jennings in his Phallicism: "That Adam was commanded
by God that his dead body should be kept above ground till committed 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," or 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, once they are
interpreted numerically and symbolically, will understand what is meant.
Jehovah, from the two words of which his name is composed, "makes up the
original idea of male-female as birth-originator, for the [[diagram]] was the
membrum virile and Houak 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." ("Source of Measures,"
159). Besides the same author shows and demonstrates numerically and
geometrically that (a) Arets, earth, Adam, man, and H'Adam are cognate with
each other, and are personified in the Bible under one form, as the Egyptian
and Hebrew Mars, god of the generation; and (b) that Jehovah, or Jah, is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jehovah says to Moses "the
Summation of my name is Sacr, the carrier of the germ" -- phallus.
"It is the vehicle of the annunciation, and the sacr has passed down
through ages to the sacr-factum of the Roman priest, and the sacr-fice, and
sacrament of the English speaking race." (Source of Measures, p. 236)
Thence marriage is a sacrament in the Greek and Roman Churches.
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Noah, or Jehovah is Noah in Hebrew
would be [[hebrew]], or literally in English, Inch."
The above affords, then, a key to the
said traditions. Noah, a divine permutation, 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, and a
Creator itself. Hence Adam is called the "Prophet of the Moon," the
Argha or "Holy of Holies" of the [[hebrew]] (Yodh). This also shows
the origin of the Jewish popular belief that the face of Moses is in the moon
-- i.e., the spots in the Moon. For Moses and Jehovah are once more
permutations, as has been shown Kabalistically. Says the author of the
"Source of Measures" (p. 271): "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]]
a various reading of [[hebrew]]. Now,
Moses is [[hebrew]], 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 = 10.5, 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 x 3; 501 [[squared]] = 251 +, a very valuable pyramid number, etc.,
etc.
For a clearer explanation for the
benefit of non-Kabalists we put it thus: "I am that I am" is in
Hebrew:--
Ahiye Asher Ahiye
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]]
5, 10, 5, 1 200, 300, 1 5, 10, 5, 1
Add the numbers of these separate
words and you have:--
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]]
21 501 21
(which relates to the process of
descending in fire on the mount to make man, etc., etc.), and which is
explained to be but a check and use of the numbers of the mountains; for:-- on
one side we have 10 + 5 + 6 = 21, down the middle 501, and on the other side 6
+ 5 + 10 = 21." (From the same author.) (Vide § XXII., "The Symbolism
of the Mystery Name IAO.")
The "Holy of Holies," both
Kabalistic and Rabbinical, are thus shown as an international symbol, and
common property. Neither has originated with the Hebrews; but owing to the too
realistic handling of the half-initiated Levites, the symbol has with them
acquired a significance which it hardly has with any other people to this day,
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and which it was originally never
meant to have by the true Kabalist. The Lingham and Yoni of the modern average
Hindu is, on the face of it, of course, no better than the Rabbinical
"Holy of Holies," -- but it is no worse; and this is a point gained
on the Christian traducers of the Asiatic religious philosophies. For, in such
religious myths, in the hidden symbolism of a creed and philosophy, the spirit
of the tenets propounded ought to decide their relative value. And who will
say, that, examined either way, this so-called "Wisdom," applied solely
to the uses and benefit of one little nation, has ever developed in it anything
like national ethics. The Prophets are there, to show the walk in life, before,
during, and after the days of Moses, of the chosen but "stiff-necked"
people. That they have had at one time the Wisdom-Religion and use of the
universal language and its symbols at their disposal and in their possession,
is proved by the same esotericism existing to this day in India with regard to
the "Holy of Holies." This, as said, was and still is the passage
through the "golden" cow in the same stooping position as the one
shown in the gallery of the pyramid, which identified man with Jehovah in
Hebrew esotericism. The whole difference lies in the Spirit of Interpretation.
With the Hindus as with the ancient Egyptians that spirit was and is entirely
metaphysical and psychological; with the Hebrews it was realistic and
physiological. It pointed to the first sexual separation of the human race (Eve
giving birth to Cain-Jehovah, as shown in the "Source of Measures");
to the consummation of terrestrial physiological union and conception (as in
the allegory of Cain shedding Abel's blood -- Habel, the feminine principle)
and -- child-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 themselves
Jehovah or Jah-hovah, the male Jod and Havah or Eve -- to wit, male and female
beings.* Thus the difference lies in the religious and ethical feeling, but the
two symbols are identical. There is no doubt that, with the fully initiated
Judaean Tanaim, the inner sense of the symbolism was as holy in its abstraction
as with the ancient Aryan Dwijas. The worship of the "god in the ark"
dates only from David; and for a thousand years Israel knew of no phallic
Jehovah. And now the old Kabala, edited and re-edited, has become tainted with
it.
With the ancient Aryans the hidden
meaning was grandiose, sublime, and poetical, however much the external
appearance of their symbol may now militate against the claim. The ceremony of
passing through
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the fourth chapter of Genesis,
v. 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.
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the Holy of Holies (now symbolized by
the cow), in the beginning through the temple Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg)
-- in itself a symbol of Universal, abstract nature -- meant spiritual
conception and birth, or rather the re-birth of the individual and his
regeneration: the stooping man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready
to pass through the matrix of mother nature, or 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 him with the result of dragging Deity down to
the level of man. For the Aryan, the symbol represented the divorce of Spirit
from matter, its merging into and return to its primal Source; for the Semite,
the wedlock of spiritual man with material female nature, the physiological
being taking pre-eminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The
Aryan views of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite
interpretations emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe,
thus marking its national features and the idiosyncratic defects that
characterize many of the Jews to this day -- gross realism, selfishness, and
sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father Jacob, with their
tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a covenant that his "seed
shall be as the dust of the earth"; and that deity could have no better
image henceforth than that of the symbol of generation, and, as representation,
a number and numbers.
Carlyle has wise words for both these
nations. With the Hindu Aryan -- the most metaphysical and spiritual people on
earth -- religion has ever been, in his 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 Hindu detaches him from this earth;
therefore, even now, the cow-symbol is one of the grandest and most
philosophical among all others in its inner meaning. To the "MASTERS"
and "Lords" of European potencies -- the Israelites -- certain words
of Carlyle apply still more admirably; for them "religion is a wise
prudential feeling grounded on mere calculation" -- and it was so from its
beginnings. Having burdened themselves with it, Christian nations feel bound to
defend and poetise it, at the expense of all other religions.
But it was not so with the ancient
nations. For them the passage entrance and the sarcophagus in the King's
chamber meant regeneration -- not generation. It was the most solemn symbol, a
Holy of Holies, indeed, wherein were created immortal Hierophants and
"Sons of God" -- never mortal men 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 easy to account for. The Aryan Hindu belongs
to the oldest races now on earth; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. One is
nearly one
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million years old; the other is a
small sub-race some 8,000 years old and no more.*
But Phallic worship has developed
only with the gradual loss of the keys to the inner meaning of religious
symbols; and there was a day when the Israelites had beliefs as pure as the
Aryans have. But now Judaism, built solely on Phallic worship, has become one
of the latest creeds in Asia, and theologically a religion of hate and malice
toward everyone and everything outside themselves. Philo Judaeus shows what was
the genuine Hebrew faith. The sacred Writings, he says, prescribe what we ought
to do . . . commanding us to hate the heathen and their laws and institutions.
They did hate Baal or Bacchus worship publicly, but left its worst features to
be followed secretly; and it is with the Talmudic Jews that the grand symbols
of nature were the most profaned. With them, as now shown by the discovery of
the key to the correct Bible reading -- Geometry, the fifth divine Science
("fifth" -- because it is the fifth key in the series of the Seven
Keys to the Universal esoteric language and symbology) was desecrated, and by
them applied to conceal the most terrestrial and grossly sexual mysteries,
wherein both Deity and religion were degraded.
We are told that it is just the same
with our Brahma-prajapati, with Osiris and all other creative gods. Quite so,
when their rites are judged exoterically and externally; the reverse when their
inner meaning is unveiled, as we see. The Hindu Lingham is identical with
"Jacob's Pillar" -- most undeniably. But the difference, as said,
seems to consist in that the esoteric significance of the Lingham was too truly
sacred and metaphysical to be revealed to the profane and the vulgar; hence its
superficial appearance was left to the speculations of the mob. Nor would the
Aryan Hierophant and Brahmin, in their proud exclusiveness and the satisfaction
of their knowledge, go to the trouble of concealing its primeval nakedness
under cunningly devised fables; whereas the Rabbi, having interpreted the
symbol to suit his own tendencies, had to veil the crude significance; and this
served a double purpose -- that of keeping his secret to himself and of
exalting himself
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Strictly speaking, the Jews are an
artificial Aryan race, born in India, and belonging to the Caucasian division.
No one who is familiar with the Armenians and the Parsis can fail to recognize
in the three the same Aryan, 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 Anthrop. Inst. of Great Britain,
etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its Fifth Sub-race, how can it be
otherwise?
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in his supposed monotheism over the
heathen, whom his Law commanded him to hate.* A commandment now gladly accepted
by the Christian too, in spite of another and later commandment -- "love
each other." Both India and Egypt had and have their sacred lotuses,
symbolic of the same "Holy of Holies" -- the Lotus growing in the
water, a double feminine symbol -- the bearer of its own seed and root of all.
Viraj and Horus are both male symbols, emanating from androgyne Nature, one
from Brahma and his female counterpart Vach, the other, from Osiris and Isis --
never from the One infinite God. In the Judaeo-Christian systems it is
different. Whereas the lotus, containing Brahma, 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 terrestrially concrete in the
Bible: one is almost inclined to say that in the esoteric they are grosser and
still more anthropomorphic, than in their exoteric rendering. Take as an
example the same symbol, even in its Christian application; the lilies in the
hand of the Archangel Gabriel (Luke i. 28). In Hinduism -- the "Holy of
Holies" is a universal abstraction, whose dramatis personae are Infinite
Spirit and Nature; in Christian Judaism, it is a personal God, outside of that
Nature, and the human Womb -- Eve, Sarah, etc., etc.; hence, an anthropomorphic
phallic god, and his image -- man.
Thus it is maintained, that with
regard to the of the Bible, one of two
hypotheses has to be admitted. Either behind the symbolic substitute -- Jehovah
-- there was the unknown, incognizable Deity, the Kabalistic Ain-Soph; or, the
Jews have been from the beginning, no better than the dead-letter Lingham-**
worshippers of the India of to-day. We say it was the former; and that,
therefore, the secret or esoteric worship of the Jews was the same Pantheism
that the Vedantin philosophers are reproached with to-day; Jehovah was a
substitute for purposes of an exoteric national faith, and had no importance or
reality in the eyes of the erudite priests and philosophers -- the Sadducees,
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Whenever such analogies between the
Gentiles and the Jews, and later the Christians, were pointed out, it was 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 different 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 Idol. I., 104.)
** Their consecrated pillars (unhewn
stones) erected by Abraham and Jacob were LINGHI.
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most refined as the most learned of
all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof 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 invented for a popular blind -- how could they, we
ask, feel reverence for such a phallic symbol and a NUMBER, as Jehovah is shown
most undeniably to 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 Bethel, oil-anointed phalli, and their
"Brazen Serpent," worship such a gross symbol, and minister unto it,
seeing in it their "Covenant" -- the Lord Himself! Let the reader
turn to Gemara Sanhedrin and judge. As various writers have shown, and as
brutally stated in Hargrave Jennings' Phallicism (p. 67) "We know from the
Jewish records that the Ark contained a table of stone. . . . that stone was
phallic, and yet identical with the sacred name Jehovah . . . which written in
unpointed Hebrew with four letters, is J-E-V-E or JHVH (the H being merely an
aspirate and the same as E). This process leaves us the two letters I and V (in
another form U); then if we place the I in the U we have the 'Holy of Holies';
we also have the Lingha and Yoni and Argha of the Hindus, the Isvara and
'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."
The Biblical Jews of to-day do not
date from Moses but from David -- even admitting the identity of the old
genuine with the later and remodelled Mosaic scrolls. Before that time their
nationality is lost in the mists of prehistoric darkness, the veil from which
is now withdrawn as much as we have space to do so. It is only to the days of
the Babylonian captivity that the Old Testament may be referred by the most
lenient criticism, as the approximately correct views that were current about
the days of Moses. Even such fanatical Christians and worshippers of Jehovah as
the Rev. Mr. Horne, have to admit the numerous changes and alterations made by
the later compilers of the "Book of God," since it was found by
Hilkiah (See "Introduction to the Old Testament," and also Bishop
Colenso's "Elohistic and Jehovistic writers"); and that "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 Bible chronology
itself. Hence, it is maintained that the deity, represented as the organ of
generation in his pillar form, and as a symbol of the double-sexed organ in the
numeral value of the letters of his name, or [[hebrew]] the Yodh (phallus), and
[[hebrew]] He (the opening, or
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the Womb) according to Kabalistic
authority -- is of a far later date than the Elohim symbols and is borrowed
from the Pagan exoteric rites; and Jehovah is thus on a par with the Lingham
and Yoni found on every road-side in India.
Just as the IAO of the mysteries was
distinct from Jehovah, so was the later Iao and Abraxas of some Gnostic sects
identical with the god of the Hebrews, who was the same with the Egyptian
Horus. This is undeniably 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 [[ABRASAXIAO]] (Abraxas Iao)
-- an address exactly parallel to the so frequent [[EIS ZETS SARAPI]] (Eis zets
sarapi) on the contemporary Heathen gems; and therefore only to be translated
by "Abraxas is the One Jehovah" (King's Gnostics, p. 327). But who
was Abraxas? As the same author shows -- "the numerical or Kabalistic
value of the name Abraxas directly refer to the Persian title of the god
'Mithra,' Ruler of the year, worshipped from the earliest times under the
appellation of Iao." Thus, the Sun, in one aspect, the moon or the Lunar
genius, in another, that generative deity whom the Gnostics saluted as
"Thou that presidest over the Mysteries of the Father and the Son, who
shinest in the night-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 credited 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 as 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 (! !). . . ."
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§ XVIII.
ON THE MYTH OF THE "FALLEN
ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS.
-------
A.
THE EVIL SPIRIT: WHO, AND WHAT?
OUR present quarrel is exclusively
with theology. The Church enforces belief in a personal god and a personal
devil, while Occultism shows the fallacy of such a belief. And though for the
Pantheists and Occultists, as much as for the Pessimists, Nature is no better than
"a comely mother, but stone cold" -- this is true only so far as
regards external physical nature. They both agree that, to the superficial
observer, she is no better than an immense slaughter-house wherein butchers
become victims, and victims executioners in their turn. It is quite natural
that the pessimistically inclined profane, once convinced of Nature's numerous
shortcomings and failures, and especially of her autophagous propensities,
should imagine this 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
blind force and chance, and to the survival of the strongest, even more often
than of the fittest. But the Occultists, who regard physical nature as a bundle
of most varied illusions on the plane of deceptive perceptions; who recognise
in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs of incessant procreation: a
series of stages toward an ever-growing perfectibility, which is visible in the
silent influence of never-erring Karma, or abstract nature -- the Occultists,
we say, view the great Mother otherwise. Woe to those who live without
suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates without a
change. And how can there be any change for the better without proportionate
suffering during the preceding stage? Is it not those only who have learnt the
deceptive value of earthly hopes and the illusive allurements of external nature
who are destined to solve the great problems of life, pain, and death?
If our modern philosophers --
preceded by the medieval scholars -- have helped themselves to more than one
fundamental idea of antiquity, theologians have built their God and his Archangels,
their Satan and his Angels, along with the Logos and his staff, entirely out of
the dramatis personae of the old heathen Pantheons. They would have been
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welcome to these, had they not
cunningly distorted the original characters, perverted the philosophical
meaning, and taking advantage of the ignorance of Christendom -- the result of
long ages of mental sleep, during which humanity was permitted to think only by
proxy -- tossed every symbol into the most inextricable confusion. One of their
most sinful achievements in this direction, was the transformation of the
divine alter ego into the grotesque Satan of their theology.
As the whole philosophy of the
problem of evil hangs upon the correct comprehension of the constitution of the
inner being of nature and man, of the divine within the animal, and hence also
the correctness of the whole system as given in these pages, with regard to the
crown piece of evolution -- MAN -- we cannot take sufficient precautions
against theological subterfuges. When the good St. Augustine and the fiery
Tertullian called the Devil "the monkey of God," this could be
attributed to the ignorance of the age they lived in. It is more difficult to
excuse our modern writers on the same ground. The translation of Mazdean
literature has afforded to the Roman Catholic writers the pretext for proving
their point in the same direction once more. They have taken advantage of the
dual nature of Ahura Mazda in the Zend Avesta and the Vendidad, and of his
Amshaspends, to emphasize still further their wild theories. Satan is the
plagiarist and the copyist by anticipation of the religion which came ages
later. This was one of the master strokes of the Latin Church, its best
trump-card after the appearance of Spiritualism in Europe. Though only a succes
d'estime, in 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 friends of Theosophy, when compared to
some fanatical "Christian" (as they call themselves,
"Sectarian" as we call them) Kabalists, on the Continent. These read
the Zohar, not to find in it ancient Wisdom, but to discover in its verses, by
mangling the texts and meaning, Christian dogmas, where none could ever have
been meant; and, having fished them out with the collective help of jesuitical
casuistry and learning, the supposed "Kabalists" proceed to write
books and to mislead less far-sighted students of the Kabala.*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Such a pseudo-Kabalist was the
Marquis de Mirville in France, who, having studied the Zohar and other old
remnants of Jewish Wisdom under the "Chevalier" Drach, an ancient
Rabbi Kabalist converted to the Romish Church -- wrote with his help 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.
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May we not then be permitted to drag
the deep rivers of the Past, and thus bring 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 exists, into an Angel of Evil -- a ridiculous horned
biped, half goat and half monkey, with hoofs and a tail? We need not go out of
the way to compare the pagan demons of either Egypt, India, or Chaldea with the
devil of Christianity, for no such comparison is possible. But we may stop to
glance at the biography of the Christian Devil, a piratical reprint from the
Chaldeo-Judaean mythology:--
The primitive origin of this
personification rests upon the Akkadian conception of the cosmic powers -- the
Heavens and the Earth -- in eternal feud and struggle with Chaos. Their
Silik-Muludag, "the God amongst all 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 Nebu. With both peoples -- as in the case of
the Hindu gods -- their deities were both beneficent and maleficent. As Evil
and punishment are the agents of Karma, in an absolutely just retributive
sense, so Evil was the servant of the good (Hibbert Lect. 1887, pp. 101-115).
The reading of the Chaldeo-Assyrian tiles has now demonstrated it beyond a
shadow of doubt. We find the same idea in the Zohar. Satan was a Son, and an
Angel of God. With all the Semitic nations, the Spirit of the 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, when not two in one. Nothing
of that which we find in Genesis is absent from the Chaldeo-Assyrian religious
beliefs, even in the little that has hitherto been deciphered. The great
"Face of the Deep" of Genesis is traced in the Tohu-bohu,
"Deep," "Primeval Space," or Chaos of the Babylonians.
Wisdom (the Great Unseen God) -- called in Genesis chap. i. the "Spirit of
God" -- lived, for the older Babylonians as for the Akkadians, in the Sea
of 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 great Dragon
Tiamat, the Sea Serpent. Its last stage of development was the great struggle
of Bel with the Dragon -- the Devil!
Whence the Christian idea that God
cursed the Devil? The God of the Jews, whomsoever he was, forbids cursing
Satan. Philo Judaeus and Josephus both state that the Law (the Pentateuch and
the Talmud) undeviatingly forbid one to curse the adversary, as also the gods
of the gentiles. "Thou shalt not revile the gods," quoth the god of
Moses (Exodus xxii. 28), for it is God who "hath divided (them) unto all
nations" (Deut. iv. 19); and those who speak evil of
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"Dignities" (gods) are
called "filthy dreamers" by Jude (8). For even Michael the Archangel
durst not bring against him (the devil) a railing accusation, but said:
"The Lord rebuke thee" (ibid 9). Finally the same is repeated in the
Talmud.* "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.' "**
This bit of Talmudic information
shows plainly two things: (a) that St. Michael is called "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 the weapon of Karmic
law and KARMA. It is our human nature and man himself, as it is said that "Satan
is always near and inextricably interwoven with man." It is only a
question of that Power being latent or active in us.
It is a well-known fact -- to learned
Symbologists at all events -- that in every 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, so to say, the key-note of that which may be
called the correlation of individuality and personality in the subsequent
scheme of evolution. The Logos it is, who is shown in the mystic symbolism of
cosmogony, theogony, and anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of
Creation and Being, i.e., that of the purely human personality and the divine
impersonality of the so-called Avatars, or divine incarnations, and of the
universal Spirit, called Christos by the Gnostics, and the Farvarshi (or
Ferouer) of Ahura Mazda in the Mazdean philosophy. On the lower rungs of
theogony the celestial Beings of lower Hierarchies had each a Farvarshi, or a
celestial "Double." It is the same, only a still more mystic,
reassertion of the Kabalistic axiom, "Deus est Demon inversus"; the
word "demon," however, as in the case of Socrates, and in the spirit
of the meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, standing for the guardian
Spirit, an "Angel," not a devil of Satanic descent, as theology will
have it. The Roman Catholic Church shows its usual logic and consistency by
accepting, as the ferouer of Christ, St. Michael, who was "his Angel
Guardian," as proved by St. Thomas,*** while he calls the prototypes of
Michael and his synonyms, such as Mercury, for example, devils
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., 487,
et seq.
** Treat. Kiddusheem, 81. But see the
Qabbala by Mr. I. Myer, pp. 92, 94, and the Zohar, quoted in his Volume.
*** In the work of Marangone
"Delle grandezze del Archangelo Sancto Mikaele," the author exclaims:
"O Star, the greatest of those that follow the Sun who is Christ! . . .
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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The Church accepts positively the
tenet that Christ has his Ferouer as any other god or mortal has. Writes de
Mirville: "Here we have the two heroes of the Old Testament, the Verbum
(?), or the second Jehovah, and his face ('Presence,' as the Protestants
translate) forming both 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 the
guardian of the Soul which finally assimilates the ferouer." (Memoires a
l'Academie, Vol. v., p. 516.) This is almost correct.
Among other absurdities, the
Kabalists maintain that the word metatron being divided into [[meta, thronon]],
means near the throne. It means quite the reverse, as meta means
"beyond" and not "near." This is of great importance in our
argument. St. Michael, then, the quis ut Deus, is the translator, so to speak,
of the invisible world into the visible and the objective.
They maintain, furthermore, along
with the Roman Catholic Church, that in the Biblical and Christian theology
there does not exist a "higher celestial personality, after the Trinity,
than that of the Archangel or the Seraphim, Michael." According to them,
the conqueror of the Dragon is "the archisatrap of the sacred militia, the
guardian of the planets, the King of the Stars, the slayer of Satan and the
most powerful Rector." In the mystic astronomy of these gentlemen, he is
"the conqueror of Ahriman, who having upset the sidereal throne of the
usurper, bathes in his stead in the solar fires"; and, defender of the
Christ-Sun, he approaches so near his Master, "that he seems to become one
with him . . . . Owing to this fusion with the WORD (Verbum) the Protestants,
and among them Calvin, ended by losing sight entirely of the duality, and saw
no Michael but only his Master," writes the Abbe Caron. The Roman
Catholics, and especially their Kabalists, know better; and it is they who
explain to the world this duality, which affords to them the means of
glorifying the chosen ones of the Church, and of rejecting and anathematizing
all those Gods who may 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 applied to them when they speak one in the
other" (sic) as, according to the Zohar, the term signifies equally
"the Master and the Ambassador." Both are the Angel of the Face,
because, as we are informed, if, on the one hand, the "Word" is
called "the face (or the Presence) and the image of the substance of
God," on the other, "when
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] O living image of Divinity! O great thaumaturgist of the old Testament!
O invisible Vicar of Christ within his Church! . . ." etc., etc. The work
is in great honour in the Latin Church.
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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."*
Elsewhere he (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 of Israel** . . . chiefs of the armies of the Lord, Supreme Judges of
the souls and even Seraphs."***
The whole of the above is given on
the authority of various works by Roman Catholics, and must, therefore, be
orthodox. Some expressions are translated to show what subtle theologians and
casuists mean by the term Ferouer,**** 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. of the Vendidad it is
said (verse 14), "Invoke, O Zarathustra! my Farvarshi, 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" (Mathra Spenta). The
French Orientalists translate Farvarshi by "Ferouer."
Now what is a Ferouer, or Farvarshi?
In some Mazdean works (e.g., Ormazd Ahriman, §§ 112, 113), it is plainly
implied that Farvarshi is the inner, immortal man (or that Ego which
reincarnates); that it existed before its physical body and survives all such
it happens to be clothed in. "Not only man was endowed with the Farvarshi,
but gods too, and the sky, fire, waters, and plants." (Introduction to the
Vendidad, by J. Darmesteter). This shows as plainly as can be shown that the
ferouer is the "spiritual counterpart" of whether god, animal, plant,
or even element, i.e., the refined and the purer part of the grosser creation,
the soul of the body, whatever the body may happen to be. Therefore does Ahura
Mazda recommend Zarathustra to invoke his Farvarshi and not himself
(Ahura-Mazda); that is to say, the impersonal and true Essence of Deity, one
with Zoroaster's own Atman (or Christos), not the false and personal
appearance. This is quite clear.
Now it is on this divine and ethereal
prototype that the Roman Catholics seized so as to build up the supposed
difference between their god and angels, and the deity and its aspects, or the
gods of the old religions. Thus, while calling Mercury, Venus, Jupiter (whether
as gods or planets) DEVILS, they yet make of the same Mercury the ferouer of
their Christ. This fact is undeniable. Vossius (De Idol., II., 373)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Isaiah, lxiii. 8-9.
** Metator and [[hegemon]].
*** "La Face et le Representant
du Verbe," p. 18, de Mirville.
**** That which is called in the
Vendidad "Farvarshi," the immortal part of an individual, that which
outlives man -- the Higher Ego, say the Occultists, or the divine Double.
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proves that Michael is the Mercury of
the pagans, and Maury and other French writers 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 of the Verbum
(the Sun), must be absorbed by and confounded with him."
This "pagan" view was
accepted from the first century of our era, as shown in the ORIGINAL Acts of
the Apostles (the English translation being worthless). So much is Michael the
Mercury of the Greeks and other nations, that when the inhabitants of Lystra
mistook Paul and Barnabas for Mercury and Jupiter -- "the gods have come
down to us in the likeness of men," -- verse 12 (xiv.) adds: "And
they called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul, Hermes (or Mercury), because he was the
leader of the WORD (Verbum)," and not "the chief speaker," as
erroneously translated in the authorised, and repeated even in the revised,
English Bible. Michael is the angel in the Vision, 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 Michael
leontoid [[ophiomorphos]] of the Ophites, who wears on certain Gnostic jewels a
lion head, like his father Ildabaoth. (See King's Gnostics.)
Now to all this the Roman Catholic
Church consents tacitly, many of her writers avowing it publicly. And, unable
to deny the flagrant "borrowing" of their Church, who
"spoilt" the symbols of her seniors, as the Jews had "spoilt"
the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold, they explain the fact quite
coolly and as seriously. Thus the writers who were hitherto timid enough to
see, in this repetition by Christian dogmas of old Pagan ideas, "a
legendary plagiarism perpetrated by man," are gravely assured that, far
from such a simple solution of the almost perfect resemblance, it has to be
attributed to quite another cause: "to a prehistorical plagiarism, of a
superhuman origin."
If the reader would know how, he must
kindly turn to the same fifth volume of de Mirville's work. Please note that
this author was the official and recognised defender of the Roman Church, and
was helped by the learning of all the Jesuits. On page 518 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 dishonouring it, the nativity of
the hero, who was quite God, before whom the whole earth had to bow; we traced
them being born as he was, from an immaculate mother; we saw 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
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coincidence of myth and symbol. They
forgot 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 commented in these words 'The Evangel is a sublime drama, parodied and played
before its appointed time by ruffians.' "
The "ruffians" (les
droles), are of course demons whose manager is Satan. Now this is the easiest
and the most sublime and simple way of getting out of the difficulty! The Rev.
Dr. Lundy, a Protestant de Mirville, followed the happy suggestion in his
"Monumental Christianity," and so did Dr. Sepp of Munich in his works
written to prove the divinity of Jesus and the Satanic origin of all other
Saviours. So much greater the pity that a systematic and collective plagiarism,
which went on for several centuries on the most gigantic scale, should be
explained by another plagiarism, this time in the fourth Gospel. For the
sentence quoted from it, "All that ever came before me, etc.," is a
verbatim repetition of words written in the "Book of Enoch" lxxxix.
In the Introduction to Archbishop Lawrence's translation of it from an Ethiopic
MS. in the Bodleian Library, the editor, author of the "Evolution of
Christianity," remarks:--
"In revising the proof-sheets of
the Book of Enoch . . . . . 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 . . . 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."
It is too late in the day to claim
that it is Enoch who borrowed from the New Testament, instead of vice versa.
Jude (14-15) quotes verbatim from Enoch a long passage about the coming of the
Lord with his 10,000 saints, and naming specifically the prophet, acknowledges
the source. This "parallelism between prophet and apostle, 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 . . . " and further " . . . the cumulative
coincidence of language and ideas in Enoch and the authors of N.T. 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
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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." (INT. xxxv.)
"Antediluvian," truly; but
if the phraseology of the text dates hardly a few centuries or even millenniums
before the historical era, then it is no more the original prediction of the
events to come, but, in its turn, a copy of some scripture of a prehistoric
religion. . . . . "In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and
other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In
the Treta age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal monarch (the
Chakravartin or the 'Everlasting King' of Enoch*) and protects the three worlds
(or races). In the Dwapara age, in the person of Veda-Vyasa, he divides the one
Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of branches."
Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it was written, went forth
into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first seeds of all
the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the never dying tree of
wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on Judaeo-Christianity. And at the
end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the "Everlasting King"
will appear as Kalki, and re-establish righteousness upon earth. The minds of
those who live at that time shall be awakened, and 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 the same antediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom. The
history begins by the descent on Earth of the "Gods" who incarnate in
mankind, and this is the FALL. Whether Brahma hurled down on Earth in the
allegory by Bhagavant, or Jupiter by Kronos, all are the symbols of the human
races. Once landed on, and having touched this planet of dense matter, no
snow-white wings of the highest angel can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or
incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatar is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Saith Uriel (chap. xxvi. v. 3), in
the "Book of Enoch" "all those who have received mercy shall for
ever bless God the everlasting King," who will reign over them.
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the fall of a God into generation.
Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear, when explained esoterically, or
more hidden from the average comprehension of those who instead of appreciating
the sublimity of the idea can only degrade, than in the Upanishads, the
esoteric glossaries of the Vedas. The Rig-Veda, as Guignault characterized it,
"is the most sublime conception of the great highways of Humanity."
The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the esotericism of the Vedanta and
the Upanishads, "the mirror of the eternal Wisdom."
For over sixteen centuries the new
masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have screened them from public
curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical FALL,
and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western Humanity through
roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it to believe in the dogma
of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former
lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally it created the
God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it spread a thick film
between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities; and, most pernicious
result of all, it made people remain ignorant 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. Henceforth the people were led to accept, as the
problematical consolation 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 every beast a passionate, inherent, and
instinctive desire for freedom and self-guidance, pertains to psychology and
cannot be touched on now. To show the feeling in higher Intelligences, to
analyse and give a natural reason for it, would necessitate, moreover, an
endless philosophical explanation for which there is no room here. Perhaps, the
best synthesis of this 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 operatum, 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 verses in Revelation; these verses being now
shown a plagiarism from Enoch by some scholars. These grew into endless
theories and speculations, which gradually acquired the importance of dogma and
inspired tradition. Every one wanted to explain the verse about the
seven-headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail
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"drew the third part of the
stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth," and whose place, with
that of his angels, "was found no more in heaven." What the seven
heads of the Dragon (cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be
learned in the Addenda which close Part III. of this Volume.
From Newton to Bossuet speculations
were incessantly evolved in Christian brains with regard to these obscure
verses. . . . . "The star that falls, is the heresiarch Theodosius" .
. . . explains Bossuet. "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 times, nor yet far later in China. But Christian
theology had to be protected and saved.
This was only natural. But why should
truth be sacrificed in order to protect from destruction the lucubrations of
Christian theologians?
The princeps aeris hujus, the
"prince of the air" of St. Paul, is not the devil, but the effects of
the astral light, as Eliphas Levi correctly explains. The Devil is not
"the God of this period," as he says, for it is 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 existence 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 of its formative period. The
"clouds of smoke" are a geological phenomenon. The "third part
of the stars of heaven" cast down to the earth -- refers to the divine
Monads, (the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology) that circumambulate our globe;
i.e., the human Egos destined to perform the whole cycle of incarnations. This
sentence, qui circumambulat terram, however, is again referred to the DEVIL in
theology, the mythical father of Evil being said to "fall like
lightning." Unfortunately for this interpretation, the "Son of
Man," or Christ, is expected, on the personal testimony of Jesus, to
descend on earth likewise, "As the lightning cometh out of the
East,"* just in the same shape and under the same symbol as Satan, who is
seen "as lightning to fall from heaven."** All these metaphors and
figures of speech, pre-eminently Oriental in their character, must have their
origin searched for in the East. In all the ancient cosmogonies light comes from
darkness. In Egypt, as elsewhere, darkness was "the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Matthew xxiv. 27.
** Luke x. 18.
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principle of all things." Hence
Pymander, the "Thought divine," issues as light from DARKNESS.
Behemoth* is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology,
and yet Job says of him that "Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the
ways of God" (xl. 19) -- "Principium viarum Domini Behemoth!"
Consistency does not seem to be a
favourite virtue in any portion of divine Revelation, so-called -- not as
interpreted by theologians, at any rate.
The Egyptians and the Chaldeans
referred the birth of their divine Dynasties to that period when creative Earth
was in her last final throes, in giving birth to her prehistoric mountain
ranges, which have since disappeared, her seas and her continents. Her face was
covered with "deep Darkness and in that (Secondary) Chaos was the
principle of all things" that developed on the globe later on. And our
geologists have ascertained that there was such a terrestrial conflagration in
the early geological periods, several hundred millions of years ago.** As to
the tradition itself, every country and nation had it, each under its
respective national form.
It is not alone Egypt, Greece,
Scandinavia or Mexico, that had their Typhon, Python, Loki and its
"falling" Demon, but China, also. The Celestials have a whole
literature upon the subject. In King, it is said that in consequence of a
rebellion against Ti of a proud Spirit who said he was Ti himself, seven choirs
of celestial spirits were exiled upon earth, which "brought a change in
all nature, heaven itself bending down and uniting with earth."
And 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 to fight
those who are the enemies of other gods." But all this does not prove that
the said allegories are presentments or prophetic writings which all refer to
Christian theology.
The best proof one can offer to
Christian Theologians that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* The Protestant Bible defines
Behemoth innocently -- "The elephant as some think" (See marginal
note in Job xl. 19) in the authorised versions.
** Astronomy, however, knows nothing
of stars that have disappeared unless from visibility, never from existence,
since the Science of Astronomy became known. Temporary stars are only variable
stars, and it is believed even that the new stars of Kepler and Tycho Brahe may
still be seen.
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esoteric meaning in the Bible -- in
both Testaments -- was the assertion of the same idea as in our Archaic
teachings -- to wit, that the "Fall of the Angels" referred simply to
the incarnation of angels "who had broken through the Seven Circles"
-- is found in the Zohar. Now the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai is the soul and
essence of its allegory, as the later Christian Kabala is the "dark
cloaked" Mosaic Pentateuch. And it says (in the Agrippa MSS.):
"The wisdom of the Kabala 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 chhaya of the Shadowy Pitris. (Vide
about the "Kings of Edom.")
"But those that came after them, who
shooting down like falling stars were enshrined in the shadows -- prevailed and
to this day": Dhyanis, who by incarnating in those "empty
shadows," inaugurated the era of mankind.
Every sentence in the ancient
cosmogonies, unfolds to him who can read between 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, but only exhibits periodically different
aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds. Now the collective Mind --
the Universal -- composed of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers,
however infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with the
unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. That which is
finite cannot be perfect. Therefore there are inferior Beings among those
Hosts, but there never were any devils or "disobedient Angels," for
the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. The Asuras who incarnated
(call them by any other name), followed in this 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 come -- hence the numerous allegories (Vide
"Demon est Deus inversus," Part II., Vol. I.). The name of Asura was
first given by the Brahmans indiscriminately to those who opposed their
mummeries and sacrifices, as the great Asura called "Asurendra" did.
It is to those ages, probably, that the origin of the idea of the demon, as
opposer and adversary, has to be traced.
The Hebrew Elohim, called in the
translations "God," and who create "light," are identical
with the Aryan Asuras. They are also
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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 or Darkness being
co-eternal with Good or Light, and they give the same interpretation. Ahriman
is the manifested shadow of AHURA-MAZDA (Asura-mazda), himself issued from
Zeruana Akerne "boundless (circle of) Time" or the Unknown Cause.
"Its glory," they say of the latter, "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 concealed 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 antitype (pre-existing Spiritual idea),
has lived within darkness from all eternity. The six Amshaspends (seven with
himself, chief of all), the primitive Spiritual Angels and Men are collectively
his Logos. The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the world in six days or periods
also, and rest on the Seventh; whereas that Seventh is the first period or
"day," in esoteric philosophy, (Primary creation in the Aryan
cosmogony). It is that intermediate AEon which is the Prologue to creation, and
which stands on the borderland between the uncreated eternal Causation and the
produced finite effects; a state of nascent activity and energy as the first
aspect of the eternal immutable Quiescence. In Genesis, on which no
metaphysical energy has been spent, but only an extraordinary acuteness and
ingenuity to veil the esoteric Truth, "Creation" begins at the third
stage of manifestation. "God" or the Elohim are the "Seven
Regents" of Pymander. They are identical with all the other Creators.
But even in Genesis that period is
hinted at by the abruptness of the picture, and the "darkness" that
was on the face of the deep. The Alahim are shown to "create" -- that
is to say, to build or to produce the two or "double heaven" (not
Heaven and Earth); which means, in so many words, that they separated the upper
manifested (angelic) heaven, or plane of consciousness, from the lower or
terrestrial plane; the (to us) eternal and immutable AEons 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 in Pymander, which
says that: "THOUGHT, the divine, which is LIGHT and LIFE (Zeruana Akerne)
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
planes, as also the seven invisible Spirits, in the angelic spheres, whose
visible symbols are the seven planets,* the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Another proof, if any were needed,
that the ancient Initiates knew of more than seven planets is to be found in
the Vishnu Purana, Book II., ch. xii., where, describing [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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seven Rishis of the great Bear and
other glyphs. As said of the Adityas 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 to operate (or build
the world with its creatures) likewise; for, having been born "within the
sphere of operation" -- the manifesting Universe -- such is the Manvantaric
LAW. And now comes the second portion of the passage, or 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 loved him well." The
latter -- the "him" -- were the primordial angels: the Asuras, the
Ahriman, the Elohim -- or "Sons of God," of whom Satan was one -- all
those spiritual beings who were called the "Angels of Darkness,"
because that darkness is absolute light, a fact now neglected if not entirely
forgotten in theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of those much abused
"Sons of Light" which is Darkness, must be evidently as great in
comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the ethereality of the
latter would be, when contrasted with the density of the human body. The former
are the "First-born"; therefore so near to the confines of pure
quiescent Spirit as to be merely the "PRIVATIONS" -- in the
Aristotelian sense -- the ferouers or the ideal types of those who followed.
They could not create material, corporeal things; and, therefore, were said in
process of time to have refused to create, as commanded by "God" --
otherwise, TO HAVE REBELLED.
Perchance, this is justified on that
principle of the Scientific theory which teaches us about light and sound and
the effect of two waves of equal length meeting. "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."
Explaining some of the
"heresies" of his day, Justin Martyr shows the identity of all the
world religions at their starting points. The first beginning opens invariably
with the unknown and PASSIVE deity, from which emanates a certain active power
or virtue, the Mystery that is sometimes called WISDOM, sometimes the SON, very
often God, Angel, Lord, and LOGOS.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] the chariots attached to Dhruva (the pole star), Parasara speaks of
"the chariots of the NINE planets," which are attached by aerial
cords.
* Justin: "Cum. Trypho," p.
284.
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had a beginning, for it proceeded
from Oulom* (Aion, time), the highest of the AEons when emitted from the
Father, it had remained with him before all creations, for it is part of him.**
Therefore, Philo Judaeus calls Adam Kadmon "mind" (the Ennoia of
Bythos in the Gnostic system). "The mind, let it be named Adam.***
As the old Magian books explain it,
the whole event becomes clear. A thing can only exist through its opposite --
Hegel teaches us, and only a little philosophy and spirituality are needed to
comprehend the origin of the later dogma, which is so truly satanic and
infernal in its cold and cruel wickedness. The Magians accounted for the origin
of evil in their exoteric teachings in this way. "Light can produce
nothing but light, and can never be the origin of evil"; how then was the
evil produced, since there was nothing co-equal or like the Light in its
production? Light, say they, produced several Beings, all of them spiritual,
luminous, and powerful. But a GREAT ONE (the "Great Asura," Ahriman,
Lucifer, etc., etc.) had an evil thought, contrary to the Light. He doubted,
and by that doubt he became dark.
This is a little nearer to the truth,
but still wide of the mark. There was no "EVIL thought" that
originated the opposing Power, but simply THOUGHT per se; something which,
being cogitative, and containing design and purpose, is therefore finite, and
must thus find itself naturally in opposition to pure quiescence, the as
natural state of absolute Spirituality and Perfection. It was simply the law of
Evolution that asserted itself; the progress of mental unfolding,
differentiated from spirit, involved and entangled already with matter, into
which it is irresistibly drawn. Ideas, in their very nature and essence, as
conceptions bearing relation to objects, whether true or imaginary, are opposed
to absolute THOUGHT, that unknowable ALL of whose mysterious operations Mr.
Spencer predicates that nothing can be said, but that "it has no kinship
of nature with Evolution" (Principles of Psychology,**** 474) -- which it
certainly has not.
The Zohar gives it very suggestively.
When the "Holy One" (the Logos) desired to create man, he called the
highest host of Angels and said to them what he wanted, but they doubted the
wisdom of this desire and answered: "Man will not continue one night in
his glory" -- for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A division indicative of time.
** Sanchoniathon calls time the
oldest AEon, Protogonos, the "first-born."
*** Philo Judaeus: "Cain and his
Birth," p. xvii.
**** 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
Haeckel, yet both the eternity of the Universe and the pre-existence of a
universal consciousness, are rejected by the modern psychologists. "Should
the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream," says Mr.
Herbert Spencer. (See foot note, pp. 1 and 2, Book II.)
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which they were burnt (annihilated?),
by the "Holy" Lord. Then he called another, lower Host, and said the
same. And they contradicted the "Holy One": "What is 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 the Son of Man
that thou hast made," they said. "Behold, he sinned!" Then the
Holy One replied: "If you had been among them (men) you would have been
worse than they." And he threw them from their exalted position in Heaven
even down on the Earth; and "they were changed (into men) and sinned after
the women of the earth"; (Zohar, 9, b.). This is quite plain. No mention
is made in Genesis of these "Sons of God" (chap. vi.) having been
punished for it. The only reference to it in the Bible is in Jude (6).
"And the angels which kept not their first estate but left their
habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day." 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 the expiration of the
"Week," on the SEVENTH SABBATH, or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana.
How truly esoteric and consonant with
the Secret Doctrine is "PYMANDER the Thought Divine" of Hermes, may
be inferred from its original and primitive translations in Latin and Greek
only. On the other hand how disfigured it has been later on by Christians in
Europe, is seen from the remarks and unconscious confessions made by de St.
Marc, in his Preface and letter to the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the
whole cycle of transformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a mystic
Roman Catholic treatise is given, and we see how PYMANDER has become what it is
now. Still, even in St. Marc's translation, traces are found of the real
PYMANDER -- the "Universal Thought" or "MIND." This is the
verbatim translation from the old French translation, the original being given
in the foot-note* 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 . . . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "SECTION 16 (chap. i., Mercure
Trismegiste -- PIMANDRE . . . . " "Oh, ma pensee, que s'ensuit il?
car je desire grandement ce propos. Pimandre dict, ceci est un mystere cele,
jusques a ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l'home, a produit le
miracle tres merveilleux, aiant celluy qui ie t'ay dict, la nature de
l'harmonie des sept du pere, et de l'esprit. Nature ne s'arresta pas la, mais
incontinent a produict sept homes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs en
puissance des deux sexes et esleuez. . . . La generation de ces sept s'est
donnee en ceste maniere . . . ."
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).
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produced seven men in accordance with
the seven 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 key-note in Nature which gives birth to the
seven notes -- the septenary scale of the creative Forces, and 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, collectively and individually, is, with all
manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in
its primal differentiation; and (b) of the countless "breaths"
proceeding from that One BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations,
as Nature with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are
ever increasing 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 most convincing are the two chapters Ezekiel xxviii. and
Isaiah xiv. Christian theologians are welcome to interpret both as referring to
the great War before Creation, the Epos of Satan's rebellion, etc., if they so
choose, but the absurdity of the idea is too apparent. Ezekiel addresses his
lamentations and reproofs to the King of Tyre; Isaiah -- to King Ahaz, who
indulged in the worship of idols, as did the rest of the nation, with the
exception of a few Initiates (the Prophets, so called), who tried to arrest it
on its way to exotericism, or idolatry, which is the same thing. Let the
student judge.
In Ezekiel xxviii. 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 . . . . and yet thou art a man . . . . behold I
shall 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.
The origin of the "prince of
Tyrus" is to be traced to, and sought in
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the "divine Dynasties" of
the iniquitous Atlanteans, the Great Sorcerers (See last Comments, on Stanza
XII., verses 47-49). There is no metaphor in the words of Ezekiel, but actual
history, this time. For the voice in the prophet, the voice of the "Lord,"
his own Spirit, which spake 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." (Verses 3-8.) All such
imprecations are not prophecy, but simply reminders of the fate of the
Atlanteans, the "Giants on Earth."
What can be the meaning of this last
sentence if it is not a narrative of the fate of the Atlanteans? Verse 17
saying, "thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty," may refer
to the "Heavenly Man" in Pymander, or to the Fallen Angels, who are
accused of having fallen through pride on account of the great beauty and
wisdom which became their lot. There is no metaphor here, except in the
preconceived ideas of our theologians, perhaps. These verses relate to the Past
and belong more to the Knowledge acquired at the mysteries of Initiation than
to retrospective clairvoyance! 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 was 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. . . . "
The "Mountain of God" means
the "Mountain of the Gods" or Meru, whose representative in the
Fourth Race was Mount Atlas, the last form of one of the divine Titans, so high
in those days that the ancients believed that the heavens rested on its top.
Did not Atlas assist the giants in their war against the gods? (Hyginus).
Another version shows the fable as arising from the fondness of Atlas, son of
Iapetus and Clymene, for astronomy, and from his dwelling for that reason on
the highest mountain peaks. The truth is that Atlas, "the mountain of the
gods," and also the hero of that name, are the esoteric symbols of the
Fourth Race, and his seven 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 is now; having sunk at two different times. It is of a volcanic
origin, and therefore the voice
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within Ezekiel says: "I will
bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee," etc. (v.
18). Surely it does not mean, as seems to be the case from the translated
texts, that this fire was to be brought from the midst of the Prince of Tyrus,
or his people, but from Mount Atlas, symbolising the proud race, learned in
magic and high in arts and civilization, whose last remnant was destroyed almost
at the foot of the range of those once gigantic mountains.
Truly, "thou shalt be a terror,
and never shalt thou be any more"; as the very name of the race and its
fate is now annihilated from man's memory. 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 feud between the Initiates of the Right and those
of the Left Path; finally, that the garden of Eden is referred to by other
personages than the Jews of the Adamic race, since even Pharaoh is compared to
the fairest tree of Eden by this same Ezekiel, who shows "all the trees of
Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, . . . comforted in the nether parts of
the earth . . .," for "they also went down into hell with him"
(Pharaoh)* unto the nether parts, which are in fact the bottom of the ocean,
whose floor gaped wide to devour the lands of the Atlanteans and themselves. If
one bears all this in mind and compares the various accounts, then one will
find out that the whole of chapters xxviii. and xxxi. of Ezekiel relate neither
to Babylon, Assyria, nor yet Egypt, since none of these have been so destroyed,
but simply fell into ruins on the surface, not beneath the earth -- but indeed
to Atlantis and most of its nations. And he will see that the "garden of
Eden" of the Initiates was no myth, but a locality now submerged. Light
will dawn upon him, and he will appreciate such sentences as these at their
true esoteric value: "Thou hast been in Eden; . . . thou wast upon the holy
mountain of God" -- for every nation had and many still have holy
mountains: some, Himalayan Peaks, others, Parnassus, and Sinai. They were all
places of initiation and the abodes of the chiefs of the 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" (Ezekiel
xxxi. 3-9).
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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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left hand. When Vishnu Purana
narrates that "the world was overrun with trees," while the
Prachetasas -- who "passed 10,000 years of austerity in the vast
ocean" -- were absorbed in their devotions, the allegory relates to the
Atlanteans and the adepts of the early Fifth Race -- the Aryans. Other
"trees (adept Sorcerers) spread, and overshadowed the unprotected earth;
and the people perished . . . unable to labour for ten thousand years."
Then the sages, the Rishis of the Aryan race, called Prachetasas, are shown
"coming forth from the deep,"* and destroying by the wind and flame
issuing from their mouths, the iniquitous "trees" and the whole
vegetable kingdom; until Soma (the moon), the sovereign of the vegetable world,
pacifies them by making alliance with the adepts of the Right Path, to whom he
offers as bride Marisha, "the offspring of the trees."** This means
that which is given in the Stanzas and Commentaries, and what is also given in
Part II. of Vol. I., "The Sacred Island." It hints at the great
struggle between the "Sons of God" and the Sons of the Dark Wisdom --
our forefathers; or the Atlantean and the Aryan Adepts.
The whole History of that period is
allegorized in the Ramayana, which is the mystic narrative in epic form of the
struggle between Rama -- the first king of the divine dynasty of the early
Aryans -- and Ravana, the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lanka) race.
The former were the incarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the lunar
Devas. This was the great battle between Good and Evil, between white and black
magic, for the supremacy of the divine forces, or of the lower terrestrial or
cosmic powers. If the student would understand better the last statement, let
him turn to the Anugita episode of the Mahabharata, chapter v., where the
Brahmana tells his wife, "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." The moon is the
deity of the mind (Manas) but only on the lower plane. "Manas is dual --
lunar in the lower, solar in its upper portion," says a commentary. That
is to say, it is attracted in its higher aspect towards Buddhi, and in its
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. xv.
** 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
Paramatman, the "Supreme Soul," says Kulluka Bhatta, Narayana,
meaning "he who abides in the deep" or plunged in the Waters of
Wisdom -- "water being the body of Nara" (Vayu). 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 Chaldean man-fish, who emerges from the
waters to teach wisdom.
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lower descends into, and listens to
the voice of its animal soul full of selfish and sensual desires; and herein is
contained the mystery of an adept's as of a profane man's life, as also that of
the post-mortem separation of the divine from the animal man. The Ramayana --
every line of which has to be read esoterically -- discloses in magnificent
symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both man and soul. "Within the
body, in the midst of all these life-winds (? principles), which move about in
the body, and swallow up one another,* blazes the Vaishvana fire** sevenfold,
of which 'I' am the goal," says the Brahmana.***
But the chief "Soul" is
Manas or mind; hence, Soma, the moon, is shown as making an alliance with the
solar portion in it, personified as the Prachetasas. But of the seven keys that
open the seven aspects of the Ramayana, as of every other Scripture, this is
only one -- the metaphysical.
The symbol of the "Tree"
standing for various Initiates was almost universal. Jesus is called "the
tree of Life," as also all the adepts of 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 the root of the
trees" (Matth. iii. 10); and the King of Assyria's armies are called trees
(Isaiah x. 19).
The true meaning of the Garden of
Eden was sufficiently given in "Isis Unveiled."
The writer has more than once heard
surprise expressed that Isis should contain so few of the doctrines now taught.
This is quite erroneous. For the allusions to such teachings are plentiful,
even if the teachings themselves were still withheld. The time had not arrived
then, as the hour has not struck now to say all. "No Atlanteans, or the
Fourth Race which preceded our Fifth Race, are mentioned in 'Isis Unveiled,'
" a critic on "Esoteric Buddhism" wrote one day. I, who wrote
Isis Unveiled, maintain that the Atlanteans are mentioned as our predecessors,
namely, in Volume I., p. 133, when speaking of the Book of Job. For what can be
plainer than this: "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." It is invited to do so now, now that
this hint is explained quite openly; but Evolutionists are as sure to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is explained by the able
translator of Anugita 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.
** "Vaisvanara (or Vaishvanara)
is a word often used to denote the Self" -- explains Nilakantha. ***
Translated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., Bombay.
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decline nowadays as they did ten
years ago. Science and theology are against us: therefore we question both, and
have to do so in self-defence. On the strength of hazy metaphors scattered
throughout the prophets, and in St. John's Revelation, a grand but re-edited
version of the Book of Enoch, on these insecure grounds Christian theology
built its dogmatic Epos of the War in Heaven. It did more: it used the
symbolical visions, intelligible only to the Initiates, as pillars upon which
to support the whole bulky edifice of its religion; and now the pillars have
been found very weak reeds, and the cunning structure is foundering. The entire
Christian scheme rests upon these Jakin and Boaz -- the two contrary forces of
good and evil, Christ and Satan the [[agathai kai kakai dunameis]]. Take away
from Christianity its main prop of the Fallen Angels, and the Eden Bower
vanishes with its Adam and 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, becomes forthwith a useless, meaningless myth.
In an old number of the Revue
Archaeologique for the year 1845 (p. 41), a French writer, M. Maury, remarks:--
"This universal strife between good and bad spirits seems to be only the
reproduction of another more ancient and more terrible strife, that, according
to an ancient myth, took place before the creation of the universe, between the
faithful and the rebellious legions."
Once more, it is a simple question of
priority. Had John's Revelation been written during the Vedic period, and were
not one sure now of its being simply another version of the Book of Enoch and
the Dragon legends of pagan antiquity -- the grandeur and the beauty of the
imagery might have biased the critics' opinion in favour of the Christian
interpretation of that first war, whose battle field was starry Heaven, and the
first slaughterers -- the Angels. As the matter stands now, however, one has to
trace Revelation, event by event, to other and far older visions. For the
better comprehension of the Apocalyptic allegories and of the esoteric epos we
ask the reader to turn to Revelation, and to read chapter xii., from verse 1 to
verse 7.
This has several meanings, most of
which have been found out with regard to the astronomical and numerical keys of
this universal myth. That which may be given now, is a fragment, a few hints as
to its secret meaning, as embodying the record of a real war, the struggle
between the Initiates of the two schools. Many and various are the still
existing allegories built on that same foundation stone. The true narrative,
that which gives the full esoteric meaning, is in the Secret books, but the
writer has had no access to these.
In the exoteric works, however, the
episode of the Taraka war, and some esoteric commentaries, may offer a clue
perhaps. In every Purana
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the event is described with more or
less variations, which show its allegorical character.
In the Mythology of the earliest
Vedic Aryans as in the later Puranic narratives, mention is made of Budha, the
"Wise"; one "learned in the Secret Wisdom," and who is the
planet Mercury in his euhemerization. The Hindu Classical Dictionary credits
Budha with being the author of a hymn in the Rig Veda. Therefore, he can by no
means be "a later fiction of the Brahmins," but is a very old
personation indeed.
It is by inquiring into his
genealogy, or theogony, rather, that the following facts are disclosed. As a
myth, he is the son of Tara, the wife of Brihaspati the "gold
coloured," and of "Soma" the (male) Moon, who, Paris-like,
carries this new Helen of the Hindu sidereal Kingdom away from her husband,
which causes a great strife and war in Swarga (Heaven). The episode brings on a
battle between the gods and the Asuras: King Soma, finds allies in Usanas
(Venus), the leader of the Danavas; and the gods are led by Indra and Rudra, who
side with Brihaspati. The latter is helped by Sankara (Siva), who, having had
for his guru Brihaspati's father, Angiras, befriends his son. Indra is here the
Indian prototype of Michael, the Archistrategus and the slayer of the
"Dragon's" angels -- since one of his names is Jishnu "leader of
the (celestial) Host." Both fight, as some Titans did against other Titans
in defence of revengeful gods, one -- of Jupiter tonans (in India, Brihaspati
is the planet Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other, in support
of the ever-thundering Rudra Sankara. During this war, he is deserted by his
body-guard, the storm-gods (Maruts). The story is very suggestive in some of
its 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 wronged husband. He
is the instructor or spiritual guru of the gods, who are the representatives of
the procreative powers. In the Rig Veda, he is called Brahmanaspati, a name meaning
"the deity in whom the action of the worshipped upon the gods is
personified." Hence Brahmanaspati represents the materialization of the
divine grace, so to say, by means of ritual and ceremonies, or the exoteric
worship.
"TARA"* -- his wife -- is
on the other hand the personification of the powers of one initiated into Gupta
Vidya (secret knowledge), as will be shown.
SOMA is the moon astronomically; but
in mystical phraseology, it is also the name of the sacred beverage drunk by
the Brahmins and the Initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites.
The "Soma" plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from
which that mystic beverage,
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See Dowson's Classical Dictionary.
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the Soma drink, is made. Alone the
descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the 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 man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he
begins to live in his astral body (See "The Elixir of Life"*); for,
his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and
part even from that etherealized form.**
Soma was never given in days of old
to the non-initiated Brahman -- the simple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric
ritual. Thus Brihaspati -- "guru of the gods" though he was -- still
represented the dead-letter form of worship. It is Tara his wife -- the symbol
of one who, though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true wisdom -- who is
shown as initiated into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom.
Soma is thus made in the allegory to carry her away. The result of this is the
birth of Budha -- esoteric Wisdom -- (Mercury, or Hermes in Greece and Egypt).
He is represented as "so beautiful," that even the husband, though well
aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship -- claims the
"new-born" as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless
forms.*** Such is, in brief, one of the meanings of the allegory.
War in Heaven refers to several
events of that kind on various and different planes of being. The first is a
purely astronomical and cosmical fact pertaining to cosmogony. Mr. John Bentley
thought that with the Hindus war in Heaven is only a figure referring to their
calculations of time periods (see Bentley's Hindu Astronomy).****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Five Years of
Theosophy."
** The partaker of Soma finds himself
both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form.
The latter, freed from the former, 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."
*** We see the same in the modern
exoteric religions.
**** "Historical Views of Hindu
Astronomy." Quoting from the work in reference to Aryachatta, who is said
to give a near approach to the true relation among the various values for the
computations of the value of [[pi]], the author of the "Source of
Measures" reproduces a curious statement. Mr. Bentley, it is said,
"was greatly familiar with the Hindu astronomical and mathematical
knowledge . . . this statement of his then may 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
Hindus. 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 Hindu exoteric astronomy
and sciences) was derived from a system exact beyond the European one, in which
Mr. Bentley himself, of [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This served as a prototype, he
thinks, for the Western nations to build their war of the Titans upon. The
author is not quite wrong, but neither is he quite right. If the sidereal
prototype refers indeed to a pre-manvantaric period, and rests entirely on the
Knowledge claimed by the Aryan Initiates of the whole programme and progress of
cosmogony,* the war of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy of the
real war that took place in the Himalayan Kailasa (heaven) instead of in the
depths of Cosmic interplanetary Space. It is the record of the terrible strife
between the "Sons of God" and the "Sons of the Shadow" of
the Fourth and the Fifth Races. It is on these two events, blended together by
legends borrowed from the exoteric account of the war waged by the Asuras
against the gods, that every subsequent national tradition on the subject has
been built.
Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed
subsequently into evil Spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with
the great deities -- are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions
of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being
used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the
Zoroastrians. (See Darmesteter's VENDIDAD). There was a time when the gods
Indra, Agni, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.
In the Aitareya Brahmana, the breath
(asu) of Brahma-Prajapati became alive, 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 initial "A" being a negative prefix
-- or "no-gods" -- the "gods" being referred to as
"Suras." This then connects the Asuras and their "Hosts,"
enumerated further on, with the "Fallen Angels" of the Christian
Churches, a hierarchy of spiritual Beings to be found in every Pantheon of
ancient and 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
every new Maha Kalpa, or Manvantara; in the same rank as the Angels who had
remained "faithful." These were the allies of Soma (the parent of the
Esoteric Wisdom) as against Brihaspati (representing ritualistic or ceremonial
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] course, trusted as far in advance of the Hindu Knowledge, at any time,
in any generation."
Which is Mr. Bentley's misfortune,
and does not take away from the glory of the ancient Hindu astronomers, who
were all Initiates.
* 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 pre-cogitated 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.
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worship). Evidently they have been
degraded in Space and Time into opposing powers or demons by the
ceremonialists, on account of their rebellion 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) the Usanas, or the
"host" of the planet Venus, become now in Roman Catholicism --
Lucifer, the genius of the "morning star" (see Isaiah xiv., 12), the
tsaba, or army of "Satan." (2) The Daityas and Danavas are the
Titans, the demons and giants whom we find in the Bible (Gen. vi.) -- the
progeny of the "Sons of God" and the "Daughters of Men." Their
generic name shows their alleged character, and discloses at the same time the
secret animus of the Brahmins: for they are the Krati-dwishas -- the
"enemies of the sacrifices" or exoteric shams. These are the
"hosts" that fought against Brihaspati, the representative of
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 and personal God, higher than
whom no exoteric worship can ever soar.
(3) Then come the Nagas,* the Sarpa
(serpents or Seraphs). These, again, show their character by the hidden meaning
of their glyph. In Mythology they are semi-divine beings with a human face and
the tail of a Dragon. They are therefore, undeniably, the Jewish seraphim (from
Serapis and Sarpa, Serpent); the plural being saraph, "burning,
fiery" (See Isaiah, vi. 23). Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes
between the Seraphim and the Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order;
esoterically, and Kabalistically, they are identical; the cherubim being simply
the name for the images or likenesses of any of the divisions of the celestial
hosts. Now, as said before, the Dragons and Nagas were the names given to the
Initiates-hermits, on account of their great Wisdom and Spirituality and their
living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel applies the adjective of 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 (v. 3, 4, xxviii.), he shows to an Occultist
that it is a "prophet," perhaps, still a follower of exoteric
worship, who fulminates against an Initiate of another school and not against
an imaginary Lucifer, a fallen cherub from the stars, and then from the garden
of Eden. Thus the so-called "war" is, in one of its many meanings,
also an allegorical record of the strife between the two classes of adepts --
of the right and of the left path. There were three classes of Rishis in India,
who were
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Nagas are described by the
Orientalists as a mysterious people whose landmarks are found abundantly in
India to this day, and who lived in Naga dwipa one of the Seven continents or
divisions of Bharatavarsha (old India), the town of Nagpur being one of the
most ancient cities in the country.
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the earliest adepts known; the royal,
or Rajarshis, kings and princes, who adopted the ascetic life; the Devarshis,
divine, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga; and Brahmarshis, descendants of those
Rishis who were the founders of gotras of Brahmans, or caste-races. Now,
leaving the mythical and astronomical keys for one moment aside, the secret
teachings show many Atlanteans who belonged to these divisions; and there were
strifes and wars between them, de facto and de jure. Narada, one of the
greatest Rishis, was a Devarishi; and he is shown in constant and everlasting
feud with Brahma, Daksha, and other gods and sages. Therefore we may safely
maintain that whatever the astronomical meaning of this universally accepted
legend, its human phase is based on real and historical events, disfigured into
a theological 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
knowledge," and by the Chaldees or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or
Father, i.e., the source) of knowledge, because it is in space that dwell the
intelligent Powers which invisibly rule the Universe.*
In the same manner and on the plan of
the Zodiac in the upper Ocean or the heavens, a certain realm on Earth, an
inland sea, was consecrated and called "the Abyss of Learning";
twelve centres on it in the shape of twelve small islands representing the
Zodiacal signs -- two of which remained for ages the "mystery
signs"** and were the abodes of twelve Hierophants and masters of wisdom.
This "sea of knowledge" or learning*** remained for ages there, where
now stretches the Shamo, or Gobi desert. It existed until the last great
glacial period, when a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Not less suggestive are the
qualities attributed to Rudra Siva, the great Yogi, 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," Trilochana,
"the three-eyed"; Pancha-anana, "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-Kronos, as his damaru (drum), 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.
** G. 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; which, owing to a secret sign added and the Libra invented by the
Greeks, instead of the secret name which was not given, made 12. (Vide Isis
Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 456.)
*** The above is, perhaps, a key to
the Dalai-Lama's symbolical name -- the "Ocean" lama, meaning the
Wisdom Ocean. Abbe Huc speaks of it.
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local cataclysm, which swept the
waters south and west and so formed the present great desolate desert, left
only a certain oasis, with a lake and one island in the midst of it, as a relic
of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ages the watery abyss -- which, with the
nations that preceded the later Babylonians, was the abode of the "great
mother" (the terrestrial post-type of the "great mother chaos"
in heaven), the parent of Ea (Wisdom), himself the early prototype of Oannes,
the man-Fish of the Babylonians -- for ages, 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 purely cosmic and geological meaning,
as well as an historical one. It is a page torn out of the History of the
Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth and DEATH -- for the
profane masses. It relates (a) to the systematic and gradual drying up of
immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain pre-historic period; one of
the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual transformation of once fertile
lands abundantly watered into the sandy deserts which they are now; and (b) to
the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the
Left. The latter, having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal
castes, have finally led the world into all these exoteric religions, invented
to satisfy the depraved tastes of the "hoi polloi" and the ignorant
for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever-immaterial and
Unknowable Principle.
This was a certain improvement on the
Atlantean sorcery, the memory of which lingers in the remembrances of all the
literary and Sanskrit-speaking portion of India, as well as in the popular
legends. Still it was a parody on, and the desecration of the Sacred Mysteries
and their science. The rapid progress of anthropomorphism and idolatry led the
early Fifth, as it had already led the Fourth Race, into sorcery once more,
though on a smaller scale. Finally, even the four "Adams"
(symbolizing under other names the four preceding races) were forgotten; and
passing from one generation into another, each loaded with some additional
myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the
Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions, as the
Tzelem, "the Shadow-Adam" (the Chhayas of our doctrine); the
"model" Adam, the copy of the first, and the "male and
female" of the exoteric genesis (chap. i.); the third, the "earthly
Adam" before the Fall, an androgyne; and the Fourth -- the Adam after his
fall, i.e., separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden
of Eden, or the forefather of our race -- the fifth -- is an ingenious compound
of the above four. As stated in Zohar (iii., fol. 4, col. 14, Cremona Ed.)
Adam, the FIRST man, is not found
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now on earth, he "is not found
in all, below." Because, "where does the lower earth come from? From
the chain of the Earth, and 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 of all kinds. Some of them in (solid) skins, some in
shells (Klippoth) . . . some in red shells, some in black, some in white, and
some of other colours . . . " (See Qabbalah).
As in the Chaldean Cosmogony of
Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some treatises on the Kabala speak of
creatures with two faces, some with four, and some with one face: for "the
highest Adam did not come down in all the countries, or produce progeny and have
many wives," but is a Mystery.
So is the Dragon a mystery. Truly,
says Rabbi Simeon Ben-Iochai, that to understand the meaning of the Dragon is
not given to the "Companions" (students, or chelas), but only to
"the little ones," i.e., the perfect Initiates.* "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."** And those Christians, who may happen to read
this, will also understand by the light of the above sentence who their
"Christ" was. For Jesus states repeatedly that he who "shall not
receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein";
and if some of his sayings have been meant to apply to children without any
metaphor, most of what relates to the "little ones" in the Gospels,
related to the Initiates, of whom Jesus was one. Paul (Saul) is referred to in
the Talmud as "the little one."
That "Mystery of the
Serpent" was this: Our Earth, or rather terrestrial life, 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 Siphrah
Dzeniouta speaks of primeval chaos and the evolution of the Universe after a
destruction (pralaya), comparing it to an uncoiling serpent:-- "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." (I., § 16).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 N.
T., Herod stands for Alexander Janneus (of Lyda), whose persecution and murder
of hundreds and thousands of Initiates led to the adoption of the Bible story.
** Zohar ii., 34.
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A commentary on the Puranas says:
"Ananta-Sesha 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 Brahma. The seven heads of Sesha support the Universe. . . .
"
So the Spirit of God
"sleeps," is "breathing" (meracha' pheth') over the Chaos
of undifferentiated matter, before each new "Creation." (Siphrah
Dzeniouta). Now one "Day" of Brahma is composed, as already
explained, of one thousand Mahayugas; and as each "Night" or period
of rest is equal in duration to this "day," it is easy to see to what
this sentence in Siphrah Dzeniouta refers, viz.:-- that the serpent manifests
"once in a thousand days." Nor is it more difficult to see whither
the initiated writer of the Siphrah 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'
" (lxxiv. 13). It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical
life, the "sea of sorrow," if read with one key; it hints at the
successive destruction of the seven spheres of a chain of worlds in the great
sea of space, when read with another key: for every sidereal globe or sphere,
every world, star, or group of stars, is called in symbolism "the Dragon's
head." But however it may read, the Dragon was never regarded as Evil, nor
was the Serpent either -- in antiquity. In the metaphors, whether astronomical,
cosmical, theogonical or simply physiological, i.e., phallic -- the Serpent was
always regarded as a divine symbol. When it is said "The (Cosmic) Serpent
which runs with 370 leaps" (Siphrah Dzeniouta, § 33) it means the cyclic
periods of the great Tropical year (25,868 years), divided in the esoteric
calculation into 370 periods or cycles, as one solar year is divided into 365
days. And if Michael was regarded by the Christians as the Conqueror of Satan,
the Dragon, it is because in the Talmud this fighting personage is represented
as the Prince of Waters, who had seven subordinate Spirits under him -- a good
reason why the Latin Church made him the patron Saint of every promontory in Europe.
In the Kabala (Siph. Dzen.) the creative Force "makes sketches and spiral
lines of his creation in the shape of a Serpent." It "holds its tail
in its mouth," because it is the symbol of endless eternity and of cyclic
periods. Its meanings, however, would require a volume, and we must end.
Thus the reader may now see for
himself what are the several meanings of the "War in Heaven," and of
the "great dragon." The most solemn and dreaded of church dogmas, the
alpha and omega of Christian faith, and the pillar of its FALL and ATONEMENT,
dwindles down to a pagan symbol, in the many allegories about those prehistoric
struggles.
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§ XIX.
IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR?
THE subject is not yet exhausted, and
has to be examined from still other aspects.
Whether Milton's grandiose
description of the three Days' Battle of the Angels of Light against those of
Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the corresponding
Eastern tradition -- it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in
connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had obtained
access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition of
the "Beni Shamash" -- the "children of the Sun" --
concerning the Eastern allegory, with far more minute details in its triple
version, than one can get either from the Book of Enoch, or the far more recent
Revelation of St. John about the "Old Dragon" and his various
Slayers, as just shown.
It seems inexplicable to find, to
this day, authors belonging to Mystical Societies 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 an Initiate converted to
Christianity (! !) (vide p. 16), the English compiler of Eliphas Levi'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." (Biograph. and Critical Essay, p. xxxviii.).
Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but
yesterday that the greatest literary critics in Europe denied the very
authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even the Book of
Hermes or Thot, until whole verses from the latter were discovered on Egyptian
monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The opinion of Archbishop
Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The "Old Dragon" and Satan,
now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for,
the "Fallen Angel," is not so described either in the original Kabala
(the Chaldean "Book of Numbers") or in the modern. For the most
learned, if not the greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas Levi, describes
Satan in the following glowing 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
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himself in full divine light; strong
enough to reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have built himself a throne on
his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the Republican and heretical
Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (!
! ) . . . . "(Histoire de la Magie, 16-17) This description -- one which
reconciles so cunningly theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even
contrives to include a political compliment in its phraseology -- is, when read
in the right spirit, quite correct.
Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of
ideals, this ever-living symbol -- nay apotheosis -- of self-sacrifice for the
intellectual independence of humanity; this ever active Energy protesting
against Static Inertia -- the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and
Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. It is -- as Eliphas says with
unparalleled justice and irony -- "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 -- it is he who
has been finally transformed into a serpent -- the red Dragon." But
Eliphas Levi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities; one may
add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any
existence on earth outside of that mankind.*
In this, Christian theology, although
following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its own
time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority.
Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright
sun-god of antiquity -- a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and
adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to
contain the germs 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
despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all
the Sun and the Moon Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the
many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost
sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that
is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even
tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own
tribal deity above all others to the hegemony
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Christian Hell!
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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 the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the
others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless,
it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only "a god among other
Gods," (lxxxii. Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying,
"I am the Almighty God," yet adds, "I will establish my covenant
to be a God unto thee" (Abraham), and unto his seed after him (Gen. xvii.
7) -- not unto Aryan Europeans.
But then, there was the grandiose and
ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off against a dark background, to
gain in radiance by the contrast; 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
for the reality, the anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless
Reality, the ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church,
for purposes of duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil -- created, as
taught by her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster
fabricated by the "Jehovah-Frankenstein," -- his father's curse and a
thorn in the divine side -- a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein could
have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.
The author of "New Aspects of
Life" describes the Jewish God very correctly from the Kabalistic
stand-point as "the Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the
Jew as Jehovah" (p. 209). "It was that Spirit again who, after the
death of Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ"
-- the doctrine of Cerinthius and several Gnostic sects with slight variation,
as one can see. But the author's explanations and deductions are 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,"
he says . . . "the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God"
(by the Jews only). "What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah,
the Achad, is claimed to be the God . . . by overcoming them?" the author
asks; 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 the Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah
himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best." Therefore, the author is
again right in saying: "The Greeks believed in the existence of . . .
daimons. But . . . they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held that
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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?" (pp. 144-145.)
Then the author shows "that the
Spirit Jehovah is a personator" on its own admission. It acknowledged to
Moses "that it had appeared to the patriarchs 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" (p. 146). And how are we to know, the
author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits personating even that
seemingly one -- Jod or Jod-He?
But if the Christian Church was the
first to make the existence of Satan a dogma, it was because, as shown in Isis,
the Devil -- the powerful enemy of God (? ! !) had to become the corner stone
of the pillar of the Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly
observes in his "Satan ou le Diable" (p. 9): "Il fallait eviter
de paraitre autoriser le dogme du double principe en faisant de ce Satan
createur une puissance reelle, et pour expliquer le mal originel, on profere
contre Manes l'hypothese d'une permission de l'unique tout Puissant."* The
choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of the lower
god of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely distinct from the
mystic "Father" of Jesus, or -- the "Fallen" Angels should
have been left unslandered by further fictions.
Every god of the Gentiles is connected
with, and closely related to,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* After the polymorphic Pantheism of
some Gnostics came the esoteric dualism of Manes, who was accused of
personifying Evil and creating of the Devil a God -- 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.
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Jehovah -- the Elohim; for they are
all One Host, whose units differ only in name in the esoteric teachings.
Between the "Obedient" and the "Fallen" Angels there is no
difference whatever, except in their respective functions, or rather in the
inertia of some, and the activity of others among those "Dhyan
Chohans" or Elohim who were "commissioned to create," i.e., to
fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The Kabbalists say that the true name
of Satan is that of Jehovah placed upside 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 invisible and incomprehensible.* "For the
initiates," says Eliphas Levi, "the devil is not a person but a
creative Force, for Good as for Evil." They (the Initiates) represented
this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of
God Pan -- or Nature: whence the horns 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 selected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the
scape-goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, the symbol of the greatest
mystery on earth -- the Fall into generation. Only the Jews have long forgotten
the real meaning of their (to the non-initiated) ridiculous hero, selected from
the drama of life in the great mysteries enacted by them in the desert; and the
Christians never knew it.
Eliphas Levi seeks to explain the
dogma of his Church by paradoxes and metaphors, but succeeds very poorly in the
face of the many volumes written by pious Roman Catholic demonologists under
the approbation and auspices 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
improve upon the narrative in the "Book of Enoch" -- is as real, and
as historical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the Bible.
But the Initiates give an explanation
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To quote in this relation Mr. Laing
in his admirable work "Modern Science and Modern Thought" (p. 222,
3rd Ed.): "From this dilemma (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.
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which differs from that given by
Eliphas Levi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to a certain
compromise dictated to him from Rome.
Thus, the true and uncompromising
Kabalists admit that, for all purposes of Science and philosophy, it is enough
that the profane should know that the great magic agent called by the followers
of the Marquis de St. Martin -- the Martinists -- astral light, by the
mediaeval Kabalists and Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium
Magnum, and by the Eastern Occultists AEther, the reflection of Akasa -- is
that which the Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded
in transforming the universal soul and Pleroma, the vehicle of Light and the
receptacle of all the forms, a force spread throughout the whole Universe, with
its direct and indirect effects, into Satan and his works, is no news to any
one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above-mentioned profane even
the secrets hinted at by Eliphas Levi without adequate explanation; for the
latter's policy of veiled revelations could only lead to further superstition
and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a student of Occultism, a beginner,
gather from the following highly poetical sentences of Eliphas Levi, as
apocalyptic as the writings 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, Folly. Hallucinations, visions, ecstasies 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 that
(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." (Histoire de la
Magie, p. 197).
There is no wrong statement in all
this; nothing save a superabundance of ill-applied metaphors, as in the
application of Adam -- a myth -- to the illustration of the astral effects.
Akasa -- 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 born by separation or differentiation. It is the
cause of existence; it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Akasa is not the Ether of Science,
as some Orientalists translate it.
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fills all the infinite Space; is
Space itself, in one sense, or both its Sixth and Seventh principles.* But as
the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation, this light must have its
shadowy side -- as already remarked. And as the infinite can never be
manifested, hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which
its actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and force to activity.
Hence, while it is the universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity,
the Astral light becomes, with regard to Mankind, simply the effects of the
causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens ---
whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness -- that produce Good or
Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in
the great magic agent. It is mankind which has become the "Serpent of
Genesis," and thus causes daily and hourly 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-loving, beneficent deity
to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of attracting to themselves
her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Levi -- "the fatal
light" which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and
master its effects; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing
good causes. It has power only on the manifested lower principles -- the shadow
of the Unknown and Incognizable Deity in Space. But in antiquity and reality,
Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the angelic Entity presiding over the
light of truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian gospel
Pistis Sophia (§ 361) it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the
Holy names of the Three [[Tridunameis]], that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost
according to these gnostics -- the most cultured of all), resides in the planet
Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light
may be God and Devil at once --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 acting through the instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things.
Such 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. Hartman's
"Paracelsus.")
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Demon est Deus inversus: that is to
say, through every point of Infinite Space thrill the magnetic and electrical
currents of animate Nature, the life-giving and death-giving waves, for death
on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial light,
the "Holy Ghost" and "Satan," at one and the same time,
visible Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly; and
the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and
attracted by ourselves, is the Karma of humanity, both a personal and
impersonal entity: personal, because 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-consciousness. In each of us that
golden thread of continuous life -- periodically broken into active and passive
cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan -- is
from the beginning of our appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutratma, the
luminous thread of immortal impersonal monadship, on which our earthly lives or
evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads -- according to the beautiful
expression of Vedantic philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan,
or the Red Fiery Dragon, the "Lord of Phosphorus" (brimstone was a
theological improvement), and Lucifer, or "Light-Bearer," is in us:
it is our Mind -- our tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and
Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle -- the emanation of the
very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates
direct from the Divine mind -- we would be surely no better than animals. The
first man Adam was made only a living soul (nephesh), the last Adam was made a
quickening Spirit*:-- says Paul, his words referring to the building or
Creation of man. Without this quickening spirit, or human Mind or soul, there
would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact,
between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the
hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because
irresponsible. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with
the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain
of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by theology; if that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The real original text of I
Corinthians, rendered Kabalistically and esoterically would read (in Chap. xv.,
verses 44 and 45): "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" (43) -- or in spirituality and intellect.
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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 their species in consequence of that same "original
sin," for which God cursed the earth -- hence everything living on it --
we will put another question. We are told by theology, as by Science, that the
animal was on earth far earlier than man? We ask the former: How did it
procreate its species, before the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of the Good
and the Evil, had 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." ("War in Heaven.")*
But, it is sufficiently proven now
that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who are credited with having made war on
the gods, are identical as personalities; moreover, that all the ancient religions
taught the same tenet save the final conclusion, which latter differs from the
Christian. The seven primeval gods had all a dual state, one essential, the
other accidental. In their essential state they were all the
"Builders" or Fashioners, the Preservers and the rulers of this
world, and in the accidental state, clothing themselves in visible
corporeality, they descended on the earth and reigned on it as Kings and
Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* By Godolphin Mitford, later in
life, Murad Ali Bey. 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 a 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' (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, MaIayak, and Malachim" --
Messengers, Angels, etc.
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Thus, esoteric philosophy shows that
man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects -- good and evil, but
theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching the dogma of the
Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the
corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption -- to do so would be
suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious angels distinct from God and the
Logos in their personalities, the admission that the downfall of the
disobedient Spirits meant simply their fall into generation and matter, would
be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the LOGOS
(or God) is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it
would follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Yet such was the real philosophical
view of the now disfigured tenet in antiquity. The Verbum, or the
"Son," was shown in a dual aspect by the Pagan Gnostics -- in fact,
he was a duality in full unity. Hence, the endless and various national
versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of Chronos, the Father, who hurls him
down into the depths of Kosmos. The Aryans had Brahma (in later theology)
precipitated by Siva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc., etc. But the fall of all
these Logoi and Demiurgi from their primitive exalted position, had in all
cases one and the same esoteric signification in it; the curse -- in its
philosophical meaning -- of being incarnated on this earth; an unavoidable rung
on the ladder of cosmic evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic
law, without which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever
a closed mystery to the understanding of true philosophy. To say, as the author
of the Esprits Tombes des Paiens (p. 347) does, that since "Christianity
is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil ([[ponerou]]), and of good [[Iagathou]];
on two forces, in short, [[Iagathau kai kakai dunomeis]]: 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 explains Christian dogma, it obscures the
facts and truths of the primitive wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of
Paul have all the true esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic
casuistry to give them the present false colouring in their interpretation. 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 everlasting principle. If the latter was said to be ever circling around the
world -- qui circumambulat terram -- the great Apostle referred simply to the
never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil will ever predominate
unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which
gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague
expressions written in dead and long-
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forgotten languages, and palm them
off as truths and revealed facts on the ignorant masses. The identity of
thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the
religions which mention the tradition of the fallen Spirits, and in those great
religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or
another form. Thus, Hoang-Ty, the great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired
active wisdom, falling into the valley of Pain. Their leader, the FLYING
DRAGON, having drunk of the forbidden ambrosia, fell to the Earth with his Host
(Kings). In the Zend Avesta, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with
fire (the "Flames" -- vide supra) seeks to conquer the Heavens,* 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
including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspends, "the seven bright
Sravah," accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished
Devas fall to the Earth along with him. (Acad. des Inscrip., Vol. xxxix., p.
690; see Vendidad, Farg. xix., iii.) In the Vendidad the Daevas are called
"evil-doing," and shown to rush away "into the depths of the
world of hell," or matter. (47.) This is an allegory showing the Devas
compelled to incarnate, once that they have separated themselves from their
parent essence, or, in other words, after the unit had become a multiple, after
differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Egyptian, Python, the
Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits
peopling the Earth. They are not "demons commissioned to create and
organize this visible universe," but fashioners (the
"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 absolute and complete
truth as well as the esoteric meaning about this universal myth? The whole
essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth 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 the innermost depths of his divine
intuitions. 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 eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the latter threw
herself into the sea and perished, it is not because OEdipus had unriddled the
secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and
the subjective, he had
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So does every Yogi and even
Christian: one must take the Kingdom of heaven by violence -- we are taught.
Why should such a desire make of any one a devil?
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dishonoured the great truth for ever.
Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical and intellectual planes,
unlocked with three keys respectively -- for the last four keys of the seven
that throw wide open the 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, our century, at any rate.
The dead letter is everywhere the
same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion, was born from exoteric
interpretation. The holy "Airyaman," "the bestower of
weal," invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyo, is the divine aspect of
Ahriman, "the deadly, the Dae of the Daevas" (Farg. xx., 43), and
Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. "Keep us from the
Hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta" (Vendidad Sadah), has, as a prayer and
invocation, an identical meaning with "Lead us not into temptation,"
and is addressed by man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. For
(Ahura) Mazda is the spiritual, divine, and purified man, and Armaita 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 magical, occult, hence allegorical
and symbolical -- even its "mystery of the law" (see the Gatha in
Yasna XLIV.). Now the Mobed and the Parsi keep their eye on the Baresma during
the sacrifice, the divine twig off Ormazd's "tree" having been
transformed into a bunch of metallic rods; and wonder why neither the
Amesha-Spentas, nor "the high and beautiful golden Haomas, nor even their
Vohu-Mano (good thoughts), nor their Rata (sacrificial offering)," help
them much. Let them meditate on the "tree of Wisdom," and study,
assimilating one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the tree of eternal
life, the white Homa, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the earth to the
other; and Haoma is in heaven as it is on earth. But to become once more a
priest of it, and a healer, man must heal himself before he can heal others.
This proves once more that the
so-called "myths," in order to be at least approximately dealt with
in any degree of justice, have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In
truth, every one of the seven Keys has to be used in its right place, and never
mixed with the others, if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our
day of dreary soul-killing materialism, the ancient priest Initiates have
become, in the opinion of our learned generations, the synonyms of clever
impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway
over the minds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism
and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more in Gods -- or, we may call
them, the Spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits,
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the noumena of the phenomena -- than
they did; and they believed just because they knew. If, initiated into the
Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the
profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less
dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught
only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know,
have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel
Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of
damnation. As well they may, for his mysteries can at best be only hinted at in
polite ears, never described. Turn to King's Gnostics, "Description of the
Plates" (Plate H), and see for yourself what was the primitive Ark of the
Covenant, according to the author, who says: "There is a Rabbinical
tradition that the cherubin 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?' " (p. 441.)
King thinks that this tradition
"savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand any credit," to
which we demur. The shape and form of the 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 eloquent in itself, besides the
"holy" Jod within the ark! The Mystery of Agathadaemon, whose legend
states, "I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 700," can alone solve the
mystery of Jesus, the number of whose name is 888." It is not the key of
St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the narthex -- the wand of the candidate
for initiation -- that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long-silent
Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile ----
The augurs, who, upon meeting each
other, have to thrust their tongues into their cheeks to suppress a fit of
laughter, may be more numerous in our own age than they ever were in the day of
Sylla.
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§ XX.
PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN.
HIS ORIGIN IN ANCIENT INDIA.
IN our modern day there does not
exist the slightest doubt in the minds of the best European symbologists that
the name Prometheus possessed the greatest and most mysterious significance in
antiquity. While giving the history of Deukalion, whom the Boeotians regarded
as the ancestor of the human races, and who was the Son of Prometheus, according
to the significant legend, the author of the Mythologie de la Grece Antique
remarks: "Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of
humanity; he is its generator. In the same way that we saw Hephaestus 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" (Apollodorus, I., 7, 1). After the Flood of
Deukalion, Zeus, it was taught, had commanded Prometheus and Athena to call
forth a new race of men from the mire left by the waters of the deluge (Ovid,
Metam. 1, 81. Etym. M. v. [[Prometheus]]); and in the day of Pausanias the
slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in Phocea (Paus.
x, 4, 4). "On several archaic monuments one still sees Prometheus
modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena's help" (Myth. Grece
Ant. 246).
The same authors remind the world of
another equally mysterious personage, though one less generally known than
Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable analogies with that of the Titan.
The name of this second ancestor and generator is Phoroneus, the hero of an
ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer extant -- the Phoronidae. His legend
was localized in Argolis, where a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as
a reminder that he was the bringer of fire upon earth (Pausanias, 11, 19, 5;
Cf. 20, 3.) A benefactor of men as Prometheus was, he had made them
participators of every bliss on earth. Plato (Timaeus, p. 22), and Clemens
Alexandrinus (Strom. 1, p. 380) say that Phoroneus was the first man, or
"the father of mortals." His genealogy, which assigns to him as his
father Inachos, the river, reminds one of that of Prometheus, which makes that
Titan the son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph
Melia; a significant descent which distinguishes him from Prometheus.
Melia, Decharme thinks, is the
personification of the ash-tree, whence,
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according to Hesiod, issued the race
of the age of Bronze* (Opera et Dies, 142-145); and which with the Greeks is
the celestial tree common to every Aryan mythology. This ash is the Yggdrasil
of the Norse antiquity, which the Norns sprinkle daily with the waters from the
fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It remains verdant till the last days
of the Golden Age. Then the Norns -- the three sisters who gaze respectively
into the Past, the Present, and the Future -- make known the decree of Fate
(Karma, Orlog), but men are conscious only of the Present. But when Gultweig
comes (the golden ore) "the bewitching enchantress who, thrice cast into
the fire, arises each time more beautiful, and fills the souls of gods and men
with unapproachable 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 (See "Asgard and the
Gods," p. 10-12). The thrice purified Gold is -- Manas, the Conscious
Soul.
With the Greeks, the
"ash-tree" represented the same idea. Its luxuriant boughs are the
sidereal heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by night -- the fruits of
Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during the
Golden Age without desire as without any fear . . . . "That tree had a
fruit, or an inflamed bough, which was lightning," Decharme guesses.
And here steps in the killing
materialism of the age; that peculiar twist in the modern mind, which, like a
Northern blast, bends all on its way, and freezes every intuition, allowing it
no hand in the physical speculations of the day. After having seen in
Prometheus no better than fire by friction, the learned author of the
"Mythologie de la Grece Antique" perceives in this "fruit"
a trifle more than an allusion to terrestrial fire and its discovery. It is no
longer fire, owing to the fall of lightning setting some dry fuel in a blaze,
and thus revealing all its priceless benefits to Palaeolithic men; -- but
something more mysterious this time, though still as earthly. . . . "A
divine bird, nestled in the boughs 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
[[Phoroneus]] 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 Aryan Hindus) into the Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* According to the Occult teaching,
three yugas passed away during the time of the Third Root-Race, i.e., the
Satya, the Treta, and the Dvapara yuga, answering to the golden age of its
early innocence: to the silver -- when it reached its maturity: and to the
Bronze age, when, separating into sexes, they became the mighty demi-gods of
old.
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(personified) bird, that brings the
heavenly lightning to the Earth. Traditions relating to the birth and origin of
the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the father of the
Argians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt (or lightning), as in the
legends of Hephaestus or Prometheus, was the origin of the human race"
(266).
This still affords us no more than
the external meaning of the symbols and the allegory. It is now supposed that
the name of Prometheus has been unriddled, and the modern mythologists and
Orientalists see in it no longer what their fathers saw on the authority of the
whole of classical antiquity. They only find therein something far more
appropriate to the spirit of the age, namely, a phallic element. But the name
of Phoroneus, as well as that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a
series of esoteric meanings. Both relate to the seven celestial fires; to Agni
Abhimanin, his three sons, and their forty-five sons, constituting the
forty-nine fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial mode of
fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindu Aryan mind never soar
above such purely sensual conceptions? that mind which is declared by Prof. Max
Muller to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined on the whole globe? The
number of those fires alone ought to have suggested an inkling of the truth.
We are told that one is no longer
permitted, in this age of rational thought, to explain the name of Prometheus
as the old Greeks did. The latter, it seems, "basing themselves on the
false analogy of [[prometheus]] with the verb [[Promanthanein]], saw in him the
type of the 'foreseeing' man, to whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was
added -- Epimetheus, or 'he who takes counsel after the event.' " But now
the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real meaning of the two
names better than those who invented them.
The legend is based upon an event of
universal importance. It was built "to commemorate a great event which
must have strongly impressed itself upon the imagination of the first witnesses
to it, and its remembrance has never since faded out from popular memory."
What is it? Laying aside every poetical fiction, all those dreams of the golden
age, let us imagine -- argue the modern scholars -- in all its gross realism,
the first miserable state of humanity, the striking picture of which was traced
for us after AEschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth of which is now
confirmed by science; and then one may understand better that a new life really
began for man, on that day when he saw the first spark produced by the friction
of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of a flint. How could man help feeling
gratitude to that mysterious and marvellous being which they were henceforth
enabled to create at their will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and
expanded, developing with singular power. "This terrestrial flame,
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was it not analogous in nature to
that one which they received from above, or that other which frightened them in
the thunderbolt?"
"Was it not derived from the
same source? And if its origin was in heaven, it must 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
Aryans offered in the early days of their existence, and which found their
answer in the myth of Prometheus"; (Mythologie de la Grece Antique, p.
258).
The philosophy of Occult Science
finds two weak points in the above reflections, and points them out. The
miserable state of Humanity described by AEschylus and Prometheus was no more
wretched then, in the early days of the Aryans, than it is now. That
"state" was limited to the savage tribes; and the now-existing savages
are not a whit more happy or unhappy than their forefathers were a million
years ago.
It is an accepted fact in Science
that "rude implements, exactly resembling those in use among existing
savages," are found in river-gravels and caves geologically "implying
an enormous antiquity." So great is that resemblance that, as the author
of "The Modern Zoroastrian" tells us: "If the collection in the
Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and arrow-heads used now 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" (p. 145). And if there are Bushmen
existing now, in our age of the highest civilization, who are no higher
intellectually than the race of men which inhabited Devonshire and Southern
France during the Palaeolithic age, why could not the latter have lived
simultaneously with, and have been the contemporary of, other races as highly
civilized for their day as we are for ours? That the sum of knowledge increases
daily in mankind, "but that intellectual capacity does not increase with
it," is shown when the intellect, if not the physical knowledge, of the
Euclids, Pythagorases, Paninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with
that of the Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Haeckels. On comparing
the results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist, worked out in
1868 (Trans. of the Royal Society of London), with regard to the internal
capacity of the skull -- its volume being taken as the standard and test for
judging of the intellectual capacities -- Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity
among the French (certainly in the highest rank of mankind) is 88.4 cubic
inches, being thus "perceptibly smaller than that of the Polynesians
generally, which, even among many Papuans and Alfuras of the lowest grade,
amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches"; which shows that it is the quality
and not the quantity of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity.
The
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average index of skulls among various
races having been now recognized to be "one of the most characteristic
marks of difference between different races," the following comparison is
suggestive: "The index of breadth among the Scandinavians (is) at 75:
among the English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80; Schiller's
skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 . . . the Madurese also 82!"
Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the European,
brings to light the startling fact "that most of these old skulls, belonging
to the stone period, are above rather than below the average of the brain of
the now living man in volume." Calculating the measures for the height,
breadth, and length in inches from the average measurements of several skulls,
the following sums are obtained:--
1. Old Northern skulls of the stone
age . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.877 ins.
2. Average of 48 skulls of the same
period from England . . . . 18.858 "
3. Average of 7 skulls of the same
period from Wales . . . . . 18.649
"
4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone
age from France . . . . . 18.220 "
The average of the now living
Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots, 17.795 inches!
Which 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" ("The Age and Origin of Man"). Besides which, they show
the "missing link" vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more
anon: we must return to our direct subject.
The race which Jupiter so ardently
desired "to quench, and plant a new one in its stead" (AEsch.* 241),
suffered mental, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to
mortals, as he tells the "Chorus," was to hinder them "from
foreseeing death" (256); he "saved the mortal race from sinking
blasted down to Hades' gloom" (244); and then only, "besides"
that, he gave them fire (260). This shows plainly the dual character, at any
rate of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of
the seven keys taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man's
spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or discovering fire. For fire
was never "discovered," but existed on earth since its beginning. It
existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being as
frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are
told that men appeared so late on Earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with the
exception of a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had
made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men
-- whether evolved from angel or gorilla -- appear now on any uninhabited
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Prometheus Vinctus.
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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 the fall of lightning setting in flames grass
or something else. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on earth
before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical
of all. But old AEschylus was an initiate, and knew well what he was giving
out.*
No occultist acquainted with
symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from the East, will deny for a
moment that the myth of Prometheus has reached Europe from Aryavarta. Nor is he
likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus represents fire by friction.
Therefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in his Les Mythes
du feu et breuvage celeste (Revue germanique, 1861 p. 356)** one of the aspects
of Prometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader the supposed
primitive process to obtain fire, still in use to-day in India to light the
sacrificial flame. This is what he says:--
"This process, such as it is
minutely described in the Vedic Sutras, 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 manthami, mathnani; which means 'to rub,
agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,' and is especially applied to rotatory
friction, as proved by its derivation from 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" (p. 358 et seq.).***
It remains to be seen what the
Brahmins will say to this. But supposing Prometheus has been conceived in one
of the aspects of his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 AEschylus,
which, being an ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well himself,
is absurdly ludicrous!
** See also his Memoires de la
Societe de la Linguistique following the "Fire Myths," (Vol. I, p.
337, et seq.)
*** There is the upper and nether
piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices,
and it is the aranî which contains the socket. This is proven by an allegory in
the Vayu Purana and others, which tell us that Nemi, the son of Ikshwaku, 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 aranî -- like an upper
aranî -- 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." (But see Goldstucker's Sanskrit
Dictionary at the word Arani.) Devaki, Krishna's mother, in prayer addressed to
her, is called "the aranî whose attrition engenders fire."
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myth as the producer of fire by means
of pramantha, or as an animate and divine pramantha, would this imply that the
symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning attributed to it by the modern
symbologists? Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the
truth; for he unconsciously corroborates by his remarks all that the Occult
sciences teach with regard to the Manasa Devas, who have endowed man with the
consciousness of his immortal soul: that consciousness which hinders man
"from foreseeing death," and makes him know he is immortal.*
"How has Prometheus got into the 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." The Greeks held that he was of the divine
race; the Hindus, that he was a Deva. Hence "with the Greeks he was the
son of the Titan lapetos," [[Iapetonides]] (Theog. 528) . . . . "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' (Theog. 565) . . . Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men
was a conquest made from heaven. . . " "Now according to Greek
ideas," (identical in this 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** 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, etc., etc."
That which is revolting in the
explanations that follow, is the one-sided view taken of this grandest of all
the myths. The most intuitional among modern writers cannot or will not rise in
their conceptions above the level of the Earth and Cosmic phenomena. It is not
denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented in the Theogony of Hesiod,
plays a certain part in the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than
a thief of the celestial fire. He is the representation of humanity -- active,
industrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at
equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person of
Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With the latter, Prometheus is
not a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, when
attaining physical development in the Third Race, had it not been for the
Agnishwatta and the Manasa Pitris.
** The fallen angels, therefore; the
Asuras of the Indian Pantheon.
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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 ([[philanthropos]]), which he has raised to civilization and
initiated into the knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most
poetical expounder in AEschylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is --
what? The fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. He is
simply the image of the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning. He is the
"evil fire" (mal feu) and the symbol of the divine reproductive male
organ. "Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to explain
is then simply a (Cosmic) genius of fire" (p. 261). It is the former idea
(the phallic) which was pre-eminently Aryan, if we believe Ad. Kuhn (in his
Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks) and Baudry. For --
"The fire used by man being the
result of the action of pramantha in the arani, the Aryas must have ascribed
(?) the same origin to celestial fire, and they must* have imagined (?) that a
god armed with pramantha, or a divine pramantha, exercised in the bosom of the
clouds a violent friction, which gave birth to lightning and thunderbolts. . .
. . This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch's testimony
(Philosoph. Plant., iii. 3), 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 Aryans, it was
believed that the pramantha lighted fire in the storm cloud as well as in the
aranis." (Revue Germanique, p. 368.)
Thus, suppositions and idle
hypotheses are made to stand for discovered truths. Defenders of the Bible
dead-letter could never help the writers of missionary tracts more effectually,
than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient
Aryans based their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the
physiological.
But it is not so, and the very spirit
of Vedic philosophy is against such an interpretation. And if, as Decharme
himself confesses, "this idea of the creative power of fire is explained
at once by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial
spark," as shown by the imagery often made use of in the Vedas when
speaking of Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual
conception. A hymn to Agni in the Veda is cited as example:-- "Here is the
pramantha, the generator is ready. Bring the mistress of the race (the female
Arani). Let us produce Agni by attrition, according
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* The italics are ours; they show how
assumptions are raised to laws in our day.
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to ancient custom" -- which
means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of mortals. The
"female Arani," the mistress of the race, is Aditi, the mother of the
gods, or Shekinah, eternal light -- in the world of Spirit, the "Great
Deep" and CHAOS; or primordial Substance in its first remove from the
UNKNOWN, in the manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied
to Devaki, the mother of Krishna, or the incarnated LOGOS; and if the symbol,
owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may
already be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no way mars the
original purity of the image. The subjective had been transformed into the
objective; Spirit had fallen into matter. The universal kosmic polarity of
Spirit-Substance had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual
union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring
which it had never had in the beginning. Between the Vedas and the Puranas
there is an abyss of which both are the poles, like the seventh (atmic) and the
first or lowest principle (the physical body) in the Septenary constitution of
man. The primitive, purely spiritual language of the Vedas, conceived many
decades of millenniums earlier, had found its purely human expression for the
purpose of describing events taking place 5,000 years ago, the date of
Krishna's death (from which day the Kali Yuga, or Black-Age, began for
mankind).
As Aditi is called Surarani (the
matrix or "mother" of the sura gods), so Kunti, the mother of the
Pandavas, is called in Mahabharata Pandavarani -- which term is already
physiologized. But Devaki, the antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a
later anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is the goddess mother, the "Deva-matri"
of Seven Sons (the six and the seven Adityas of early Vedic times); the mother
of Krishna, Devaki, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagaddhatri (the
"nurse of the world"), the seventh (Krishna, the Logos,) being
transferred to that Rohini. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven
children, of five sons and two daughters, (a later transformation of sex) in
Matthew's Gospel (xiii. 55-56). No one of the worshippers of the Roman Catholic
Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by the gods
to Devaki. Let the reader judge.
"Thou art that Prakriti
(essence), infinite and subtile, which bore Brahma 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 triform sacrifice,
becoming the germ of all. . . . Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds;
thou art the arani whose attrition engenders fire" . . . . ("Womb of
Light," "holy Vessel," are the epithets of the Virgin). "As
Aditi, thou art the parent of the gods. . . . Thou art Jyotsna (the morning
twilight)." The Virgin
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is often addressed as the
"morning Star" and the "star of Salvation" -- the light
whence day is begotten. "Thou art Samnati (humility, a daughter of
Daksha), the mother of Wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of harmony (Naya); thou
art modesty, the progenitrix of affection (Prasraya or vinaya); thou art
desire, of whom love is born. . . . Thou art the mother of knowledge
(Avabodha); patience (Dhriti), the parent of fortitude (Dhairya) . . . . etc.,
etc."
Thus arani is shown here as the Roman
Catholic "vase of election" and no worse. As to its primitive
meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No unclean thought traversed these
conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the Zohar -- far less metaphysical
than any other symbolism -- the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus,
when the Zohar (iii., 290) 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," it means no more than this: "The divine
Spirit of Life is ever coalescing with matter." It is the WILL of the
Deity that acts; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian. "When Atteekah
Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the concealed, desired to form all
things, it formed all things like male and female. This wisdom cornprises ALL
when it goeth forth." Hence Chochmah (male wisdom) and Binah (female
consciousness or Intellect) are said to create all between the two -- the
active and the passive principles. As the eye of the expert jeweller discerns
under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, enshrined
within its bosom, his hand dealing with the former but to get at its, so the
eye of the true philosopher reads between the lines of the Puranas the sublime
Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedantic wisdom. Our
Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the thick coating of the
shell, and -- act accordingly.
From all that has been said in this
section, one sees clearly that, between the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of
Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of ancient philosophy
can kill this dogma.
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§ XXI.
ENOICHION-HENOCH.
THE history of the evolution of the
Satanic myth would not be complete if we omitted to notice the character of the
mysterious and Cosmopolitan Enoch, variously called Enos, Hanoch, and finally
Enoichion by the Greeks. It is from his Book that the first notions of the
Fallen Angels were taken by the early Christian writers.
The "Book of Enoch" is
declared apocryphal. But what is an Apocrypha? 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 guardianship of the Hierophants and initiated
priests, and was never meant for the profane. Apocrypha comes from the verb
Crypto, [[krupto]], "to hide." For ages the Enoichion (the Book of
the SEER) was preserved in the "city of letters" and secret works --
the ancient Kirjath-Sepher, later on, Debir (see Joshua xv., 15).
Some of the writers interested in the
subject -- especially Masons -- have tried to identify Enoch with Thoth of
Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with the Latin Mercury. As individuals, all
these are distinct one from the other; professionally -- if one may use this
word, now so limited in its sense -- they belong one and all to the same
category of sacred writers, of Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient
Wisdom. Those who in the Quran (see Surat XIX.) are generically termed the
Edris, or the "Learned" (the Initiated), bore in Egypt the name of
"Thoth," the inventor of arts, sciences, writing or letters, of music
and astronomy. Among the Jews the Edris became "Enoch," who,
according to Bar-Hebraeus, "was the first inventor of writing," books,
arts, and sciences, the first who reduced to a system the progress of the
planets. In Greece he was called Orpheus, and thus changed his name with every
nation. The number Seven being attached to, and connected with, each of those
primitive Initiators,* as well as the number 365, of the days in the year,
astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the sacred office of
all those men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is the seventh
Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre, which
is the seven-fold mystery of initiation. Thoth, with 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch means
the "Initiator" and "teacher," as well as the "Son of
Man," Enos (vide Genesis iv., 26), esoterically.
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god of the seven days, or the week.
Esoterically and spiritually, Enoichion means the "Seer of the Open
Eye."
The story about Enoch, told by
Josephus, namely, that he had concealed under the pillars of Mercury or Seth
his precious rolls or books, is the same as that told of Hermes, "the
father of Wisdom," who concealed his books of Wisdom under a pillar, and
then, finding the two pillars of stone, found the science written thereon. Yet
Josephus, notwithstanding his constant efforts in the direction of Israel's
unmerited glorification, and though he does attribute that science (of Wisdom)
to the Jewish Enoch -- writes history. He shows those pillars as still existing
during his own time. He tells us that they were built by Seth; and so they may
have been, only neither by the Patriarch of that name, the fabled son of Adam,
nor by the Egyptian god of Wisdom -- Teth, Set, Thoth, Tat, Sat (the later
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, the Atlanteans.
What Josephus tells us, therefore,
must be allegorically true, with the exception of the application made of it.
According to his version the two famous pillars were entirely covered with
hieroglyphics, which, after the discovery, were copied and reproduced in the
most secret corners of the inner temples of Egypt, and have thus become the
source of its Wisdom and exceptional learning. These two "pillars,"
however, are the prototypes of the 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 -- like Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and
Plato -- got the elements of their theology from those hieroglyphics, he is
right in one sense, and wrong in another; for he errs in accuracy. The Secret
Doctrine teaches us that the arts, sciences, theology, and especially the
philosophy of every nation which preceded the last universally known, but not
universal Deluge, had been recorded ideographically from the primitive oral
records of the Fourth Race, and that these were the inheritance of the latter
from the early Third Root-Race before the allegorical Fall. Hence, also, the
Egyptian pillars, the tablets, and even the "white Oriental porphyry
stone" of the Masonic legend -- which Enoch, fearing that the real and
precious secrets would be lost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of
the Earth -- were simply the more or less symbolical and allegorical copies
from the primitive Records. The "Book of Enoch" is one of such copies
and is a Chaldean, now very incomplete compendium. As already said, Enoichion
means in Greek the "inner eye," or the Seer; in Hebrew, and with the
help of Masoretic points it means the initiator and instructor, [[hebrew]]. It
is a generic title; besides which his legend is
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that of several other prophets,
Jewish and heathen, with changes of made-up details, the root-form being the
same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven alive; and the astrologer, at the
court of Isdubar, the Chaldean Hea-bani, is likewise raised to heaven by the
god Hea, who was his patron, as Jehovah was of Elijah (whose name means in
Hebrew "God-Jah," Jehovah, [[hebrew]]), and again of Elihu, which has
the same meaning. This kind of easy death, or euthanasia, has an esoteric
meaning. It symbolises the death of any adept who has reached the power and
degree, as also the purification, which enable him to die only in the physical
body and still live and lead a conscious life in his astral body. The
variations on this theme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same.
The Pauline expression (Hebrews xi. 5) "that he should not see death"
-- ut non videret mortem -- 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 bliss of the last advent and of the destruction of Antichrist
-- signify, esoterically, that some of the great adepts will return in the
Seventh Race, when all Error will be made away with, and the advent of TRUTH
will be heralded by those Sishta, the holy "Sons of Light."
The Latin church is not always
logical, nor prudent either. She declares the "Book of Enoch" an
apocrypha, and has gone so far as to claim, through Cardinal Cajetan and other
luminaries of the Church, the rejection from the Canon of even the Book of
Jude, who, though an inspired apostle, quotes from and thus sanctifies the Book
of Enoch, which is alleged to be an apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the
dogmatics perceived the peril in time. Had they accepted Cajetan's resolution,
they would have been forced to reject likewise the fourth Gospel; as St. John
borrows literally from Enoch, and places in the mouth of Jesus, a whole
sentence! (Vide supra, § XVIII., sub-sect. A, about the sheep and the robbers.)
Ludolph, the "father of Ethiopic
literature," commissioned to investigate the 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 his too dogmatic assertion, as all know.
Bruce and Ruppel found and brought that same work from Abyssinia some years
later, and Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at
its; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it "a Gnostic
work," in which "the age of giants who devour " men -- is given
. . . hence it is another "Apocalypsis." Giants! another fairy-tale.
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Such, however, was not 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 nearest to that of the canonical works.
Verily, "where doctors disagree
. . ."
As usual, however, they were all
right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a Biblical character, a single living
man, is like accepting Adam as the first one. Enoch was a generic title,
applied to, and borne by, scores of individuals, at all times and ages, and in
every race and nation. This may be easily inferred from the fact that the
ancient Talmudists and the teachers 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 Nirvana, on earth, as Buddha did and others still do); and others maintain
that he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that Enoch, or its
equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later Talmudists, which
meant "Seer," "Adept in the Secret Wisdom," etc., without
any specification as to the character of the title-bearer. When Josephus,
speaking of Elijah and Enoch (Antiquities, ix., 2), 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 Yogis die to this day in India, or even some Christian monks
to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die -- on the
terrestrial plane -- even for themselves. A seemingly figurative way of
speaking, yet literally true.
"Hanokh transmitted the science
of (astronomical) calculation and of computing the seasons to Noah," says
the Midrash Pirkah R. Eliezar (cap. viii.), referring to Henoch that which
others did to Hermes Trismegistus, because the two are identical in their
esoteric meaning. "Hanokh" in this case, and his "Wisdom,"
belong to the cycle of the Fourth Atlantean Race,* and Noah to that of the
Fifth.** In this case both represent the Root-Races, the present one and the
one that preceded it. In another sense, Enoch disappeared, "he walked with
God, and he was not, for God took him," the allegory referring to the
disappearance of the Sacred and Secret knowledge from among men; for
"God" (or Java Aleim -- the high hierophants, the heads of the colleges
of initiated priests***) took him; in other words, the Enochs or the
Enoichions, the Seers and their knowledge and wisdom, became strictly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says the Zohar, "Hanokh had a
book which was one with the book of the generations of Adam; this is the
Mystery of Wisdom."
** Noah is heir to the Wisdom of
Enoch; in other words, the Fifth is heir to the Fourth Race.
*** Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p.
575, et seq.
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confined to the Secret Colleges of
the Prophets, with the Jews, and to the temples with the Gentiles.
Interpreted with the help of merely
the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual nature of man -- spiritual
and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of the astronomical cross (given by
Eliphas Levi from a secret work), which is a six-pointed star, "the
Adonai." In the upper triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower triangle
stands the lion; in the right, the bull: while between the bull and the lion,
over them and under the eagle, is the face of Enoch or man. (Vide illustrated
diagram in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 452). Now the figures on the upper
triangle represent the Four Races, leaving out the first -- the Chhayas or
Shadows -- and the "Son of Man," Enos or Enoch, is in the centre,
because he stands between the two (the Fourth and the Fifth) Races, as he
represents the Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four animals of Ezekiel and
of the Revelation. The same double triangle which in Isis, Vol. II, (p. 453),
faces the Hindu Adanari, is by far the best. For there, only the three (for us)
historical races are symbolized: the third, the androgynous, by Ada-nari; the
fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful lion; and the fifth -- the Aryan --
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 most singular statements in the Book of
Enoch, "worthy of the most serious 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."* . . . . 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."
Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine
teaches that that "order of nature" has been thus altered, and the
series of the Earth's humanities too. For, as 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 in 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, etc." (chap. lxxix). 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 (on its axis) became
inclined" --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Danielo's criticisms upon De
Sacy, in the Annales de Philosophic, p. 393.
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nature, geologically, astronomically,
and cosmically in general, could not have been the same, just because the Earth
had inclined. See chap. 1xiv. (Sect. xi.) . . . . "And Noah cried with a
bitter voice 'Hear me, hear me, hear me'; three times. And he said 'The earth
labours and is violently inclined; surely, I shall perish with it.' "
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 fear in one who had "found grace in
the eyes of the Lord" and been told to build an ark! But here we find the
venerable Patriarch expressing as much fear as if, instead of a
"friend" of God, he had been one of the Giants doomed by the wrathful
deity. The earth has already inclined, and the deluge of waters has become
simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems to know nothing of his intended
salvation.
A decree had come indeed; the decree
of nature and the Law of Evolution, that the earth should change its race, and
that the Fourth Race should be destroyed to make room for a better one. The
Manvantara had reached its turning point of three and a half Rounds, and
gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the
apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be
destroyed, "that their end may be" (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."
And now a natural question. Who could
have informed the apocryphal author of this powerful vision (to whatever age he
may be assigned before the day of Galileo) that the Earth could occasionally
incline her axis? Whence has he derived such astronomical and geological
knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had
drunk, is but a fancy, an invention of the later ages? Has Enoch read
prophetically perchance in Frederick Klee's work on the Deluge (p. 79) these
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 other
unscientific statement made by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, namely, that
the Sun has not always risen where it arises now, and that in former times the
ecliptic had cut the equator at right angles.*
There are many such "dark
sayings" throughout Puranas, Bible and Mythology; and to the occultist
they divulge two facts: (a) that the ancients knew as well, and better,
perhaps, than the moderns
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Astronomie Ancienne, Bailly, Vol.
I., p. 203, and Vol. II., p. 216.
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do, astronomy, geognosy and
cosmography in general; and (b) that the globe and its behaviour have altered
more than once since the primitive state of things. Thus, 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 -- Xenophantes
asserts somewhere that, "the Sun turned toward another country";
which is a parallel, however slightly more scientific, if as bold, of Joshua
stopping the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching of
the Northern mythology (in Jeruskoven) that, before the actual order of things,
the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone in the East,
whereas now it is in the North.
The Book of Enoch, in short, is a
resume, a compound of the main features of the History of the Third, Fourth and
Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the world; a long
retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite
historical events -- geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic --
with a touch of theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this
mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia,
and also 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
anachronism, since Origen, among others, lived in the second century of the
Christian era, yet he mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret
and sacred name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically
described in the old volume. From the XVIIIth to the Lth 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 the BOOK OF ENOCH out of her canon owing to
its too great antiquity, ob nimiam antiquitatem.* There was no room for the
events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the
world from its "creation"!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* City of God, I. xv. ch. xxiii.
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§ XXII.
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERY-NAMES
IAO AND JEHOVAH, WITH THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS AND CIRCLE.
WHEN the Abbe Louis Constant -- known
as Eliphas Levi -- said in his Histoire de la Magie that the "Sepher
Jezirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John) are the master-pieces of
the Occult Sciences," he ought, if he wanted to be correct and clear, to
have added, "in Europe." It is quite true that these works contain
"more significance than words"; and that "its expression is
poetical, while in numbers it is exact." Unfortunately, before any one can
appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness of the numbers, he
will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols
used. And man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the
fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism,
or in the Kabalistical symbology:-- the key, or value, in all their aspects, of
the "God"-names, "Angel"-names, and "Patriarchal"
names in the Bible -- their mathematical or geometrical value, and their
relations to manifested nature.
Therefore, if, on the one hand, the
Zohar "astonishes (the mystic) by the profundity of its views and the
great simplicity of its images," on the other hand, that work misleads the
student by such expressions as those used with respect to AIN-SOPH and Jehovah,
notwithstanding the assurance that "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, Clemens, and the Rabbis confessed, with regard to the Kabala and
the Bible, to their being veiled and secret Books; but few know that the
esotericism of the Kabalistic books in their present re-edited form is simply
another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of
these secret volumes.
The idea of representing the hidden
deity by the circumference of a Circle, and the Creative Power (male and
female, or the Androgynous WORD), by the diameter across it, is one of the
oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony was
built. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, it was complete,
as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its
absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of (the so-called)
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creation; and comprised psychological
and even Spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical
construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to be
distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jezirah -- or what remains of the
latter -- that which has been embodied subsequently in the Pentateuch proper, and
especially in Genesis, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical
law of creation, or rather of construction; while theogony is hardly, if at
all, outlined.
It is only in the first six chapters
of Genesis, in the rejected Book of Enoch, and the misunderstood and
mistranslated poem of Job, that true echoes of the archaic doctrine may now be
found. The key to it is lost, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose
predecessors in the early period of the middle ages have preferred, in their
national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of
Christianity, to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share
their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their
own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other
but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted
and which fitted him, the "lord god of Abraham and Jacob" could
hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon.
Being the weakest, the Judeans could not help the desecration; but they kept
the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah; and the
new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the old god: they were, indeed,
avenged!
The statement that Jehovah was the
tribal god of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things.
Yet the theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning
of verses 8 and 9 in Deuteronomy, chapter xxxii. These verses 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." This settles the question. So
impudent were the modern translators of Bibles and Scriptures and so damaging
are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy
Church Fathers, each translator rendered these verses in his own way. While the
above-cited quotation is taken verbatim from the authorized English version, in
the French Bible (of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to the
version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald) one finds the "Most High"
translated by Souverain (a Sovereign!!), the "sons of Adam" rendered
by "the children of men," and the "Lord" changed into the
"Eternal." For impudent sleight-of-hand, the French Protestant Church
seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.
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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 inheritance.
What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Aryans, to do with this
Semitic deity, the tribal god of Israel? Astronomically, the "Most
High" is the Sun, and the "Lord" is one of his seven planets,
whether it be Iao, the genius of the moon, or Ilda-Baoth-Jehovah, that of
Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.* Let the "Angel
Gabriel," the "Lord" of Iran, watch over his people; and
Michael-Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the gods of other nations, nor
were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet
(see Origen's Copy of the Chart), so each Hindu Deva (a "Lord") has
its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of
worlds implies plurality of gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize,
but will never worship, the latter. (Vide Part III., "On Chains of Worlds
and their Plurality.")
It has been repeatedly stated in this
work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached
to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e., either purely
metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc., etc. These seven
meanings and their applications are hard enough to learn when taken by
themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become
tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow
consecutively out of and to follow each other, each, or any one of these
meanings is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical
idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the statement. Here
are two interpretations given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and
the same verse in Exodus, xxxiii, 18-23. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him
his "glory." Evidently it is not the crude dead letter phraseology as
found in the Bible that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabala,
of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them
quotes, while explaining: "Thou canst not see my face . . . I will put
thee in the cleft of the rock . . . cover thee with my hand while I pass by.
And then I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my a'hoor, my back; . .
" and tells us 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* With the Egyptian Gnostics it was
Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of the Seven (Vide "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), Astapkoi (Mercury), and, finally,
Ildabaoth (Saturn).
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see my invisible nature. So proceeds
the Qabbalah." This is correct, and is the cosmo-metaphysical explanation.
And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves
a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more
space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fully what
was given in § XVII, "The Holy of Holies," page 467.
The numbers of the name Moses are
those of "I AM THAT I AM," so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at
one in numerical harmony.
The word Moses is [[hebrew]] [[over]]
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 when 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, 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 ahiye asher ahiye, and in the value of the sums of their letters stand
thus:--
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]]
21 501 21
. . . This being his (God's) name,
the sum of the values composing it are 21, 501, 21 are 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 and truly replies "Thou
canst not see my face" . . . but thou shalt see me behind -- (the true
sense, though not the precise words); because the comer and the behind of 543
is the face of 345 -- "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." "In other uses," adds the learned
Kabalist, "of the number they saw each other face to face. It is strange
that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the gnostic Kabalistic 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."
This is the astronomical and
numerical meaning in the secret theogony of sidereo-cosmical gods invented by
the Chaldeo-Hebrews,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer.
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and two meanings out of 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 and the noblest intellects of Christendom;
but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has
ended in the complete victory of the OEdipuses of Symbolism, it is not the
Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself
in the sea, but verily the many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians --
the civilized nations -- have accepted for their God. The latter has collapsed
under the too close analysis, and is -- drowned. Symbologists have discovered
with dismay that their adopted deity was only a mask for many other gods, an
Euhemerized extinct planet, at best, the genius of the Moon and Saturn with the
Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter, with early Christians; that the Trinity was, in
truth, only an astronomical triad -- unless they accepted the more abstract and
metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles -- composed of the Sun (the
Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost,
Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the bright
and morning Star; vide "Revelation," ch. xxii., 15). Because, if the
Father is the Sun (the elder Brother in the Eastern inner philosophy), the
nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thot), the name of whose mother
on Earth was Maia; the planet which receives seven times more light than any
other: which fact led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists
their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the "seven-fold light"
(vide at end of this §). Finally, this God was Bel; the Sun being
"Bel," with the Gauls, "Helios" with the Greeks,
"Baal," with the Phoenicians; "El" in Chaldean, hence
"EL-ohim," "Emanu-EL," El, "god," in Hebrew. But
even the Kabalistic god has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has
now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it
anything like Ain-Soph, the nameless deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively
and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in
the Mosaic books, by those who try to read without a Key to them. Ever since it
was lost Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two
conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the
Universal Deity of ITS majestic character and primitive meaning.
This is what was said in "Isis
Unveiled":--
It would seem, therefore, but natural
to make a difference between the mystery-god [[Iao]], 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.
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In the Ophite gems of King
("Gnostics") we find the name of IAO repeated, and often confounded
with that of Jevo, 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 Jaho or Iao
was a "Mystery name" from the beginning, for [[hebrew]] and
[[hebrew]] never came into use before 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 (2 Samuel), 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]], 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]], like the structures erected by Hiram
to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Furst: "The very ancient
name of God, Yaho, written in the Greek law, 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 Chaldeans, 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,* was called [[Iao]]([[hebrew]]), who was, like the Hebrew
Yaha, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the
Initiated. The Phoenicians had a Supreme God, whose name was trilateral and
secret, and he was [[Iao]]."** (Isis Unveiled), Vol. II., p. 298.)
The Cross, say the Kabalists,
repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient -- nay,
perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This is demonstrated at the very
beginning of the Proem (Vol. I.). The Eastern Initiates show it coeval with the
circle of Deific infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the
union of spirit and matter. This was rejected, and the astronomical allegory
alone was accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.
Let us demonstrate this statement. In
astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Coelus and Lux -- of the sky and
light, or the Sun; in mythology he is the 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 other things, the
"Interpreter" -- the "Word" by mouth; the LOGOS, or VERBUM.
Now, Mercury, besides being born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, is the
patron of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* By very few though, for the
creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate gods to
the Most High Deity.
** Lydus I., c. Ledrenus, I. c.
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latter. A psychopompic genius, he
conducted the souls of the dead to Hades and brought them back, an office
attributed to Jesus, after his death and resurrection. The symbols of
Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along and at the turning points of
highways (as crosses are now placed in Italy) and they were cruciform.* Every
seventh day the priests anointed these termini with oil, and once a year hung
them with garlands, hence they were the anointed. Mercury, when speaking
through his oracles said, "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.** He was often represented as three-headed and called "Tricephalos,"
"Triplex," as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as
Cornutus*** shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms,
because "the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the
assistance of arms or feet." It is this cubic form which connects the
termini directly with the cross, and the eloquence or the power of speech of
Mercury, which made the crafty Eusebius say "Hermes is the emblem of the
Word which creates and interprets all," for it is the creative word; and
he shows Porphyry teaching that the speech of Hermes, (now interpreted
"Word of God" (!) in Pymander) a creative speech (Verbum), is the
seminal principle scattered throughout the Universe.**** In Alchemy
"Mercury" is the radical Moyst, primitive or elementary water, containing
the seed of the Universe, fecundated by the solar fires. To express this
fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and
female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians (Vide
Egyptian Museums). 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. (But see the last page of § XVI., about the
Gnostic Priapus).
As shown by him, the cube unfolded
becomes in display a cross of the tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again,
"the circle attached to the tau gives the ansated cross" of the old
Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their "Kings
Initiates" for ages, and also what was meant by "the attachment of a
man to the cross," which idea "was made to co-ordinate with that of
the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form." Only the latter
came into action aeons and ages after the idea of the carpenter and artificer
of the Gods,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Montfaucon, Antiquities. See plates
in Vol. I., plate 77. The disciples of Hermes go after their death to his
planet, Mercury -- their Kingdom of Heaven.
** Cornutus.
*** Lydus de Mensibus, iv.
**** Preparat, Evang. I. iii. ch. 2.
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Visvakarma, crucifying the
"Sun-Initiate" on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes:
"the attachment of a man to the cross . . . was made use of in this very
form of display by the Hindus"; but, made "to co-ordinate" with
the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The
candidate for initiation was attached to the tau or astronomical cross with a
far grander and nobler 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 in life than that of procreating their
species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the Bible by
means of the numerical method, the author of the "Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery" is quite correct. Their (the Jewish) entire system --
"Seems to have been anciently
regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God,
as the basis of 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 coordinately 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" . . . etc., etc. (p. 3). . . .
"This system seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure (that of
creative design), 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."
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, an euhemerized Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a
mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the
possession of a god with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange
that the most learned of modem Kabalists can see in the cross and circle
nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne deity in its
relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.* One author believes
that "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" . . . . and adds: "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs
(by Messrs. I. Myer and Mathers), with interpretations, if the reader would
satisfy himself of this.
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established by that Being, which must
have existed prior to any creation (Kabalistically called the Word) "
("Source of Measures," p. 5).
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 to do with the ideal conception of the eternal universe. He is,
at best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the Totality of which is
called the "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 definitions of the Kabala and its mysteries, e.g.,
by John A. Parker, as 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 of Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are
expressions numerically of these relations respectively, the first being of
circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all. 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" (p. 22).
Such calculations can lead one no
further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the
"third creation of Brahma." The initiated Hindus know how to
"square the circle" far better than any European. But of this more
anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at
that stage when the universe "falls into matter," as the occultists
say. Throughout the whole series of Kabalistic books we have not met with one
sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and
spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets of
"creation." Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as
simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation? as
"divine" Phallicism, and rhapsodize on 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 the most careful reading of the Old
Testament -- esoterically, as well as exoterically -- seems to have carried the
most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds
that from the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every
character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin
of birth in its crudest and most
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brutal form. Thus, however
interesting and ingenious the 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 the Cross and Circle, but beyond the Flood.
Therefore, returning to Eliphas Levi and the Zohar, we answer for the Eastern
Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely
with Pascal, who says 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 their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the
definition of Deity by the Circle is not Pascal's at all, as E. Levi thought.
It was borrowed by the French philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or
Cardinal Cusa's Latin work, De Docta Ignorantia, in which he makes use of it.
It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words "Cosmic
Circle," which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word
Theos. With the ancients both words were synonymous.
-------
A.
CROSS AND CIRCLE.
Something of the divine and the
mysterious has ever been ascribed, in the minds of the ancient philosophers, to
the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism with its
pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into
one, represented Deity and its outward VEIL alike -- by a circle. This merging
of the two into a unity, and the name theos given indifferently to both, is
explained, and becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Plato's
etymological definition of the word theos has been shown elsewhere. He derives
it from the verb [[theein]] (see Cratylus), "to move," as suggested
by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with deity. According to
the Esoteric philosophy, this Deity is during its "nights" and its
"days" (i.e., cycles of rest or activity) "the eternal perpetual
motion," "the EVER-BECOMING, as well as the ever universally present,
and the ever Existing." The latter is the root-abstraction, the former --
the only possible conception in human mind, if it disconnects this deity from
any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing evolution, circling back in
its incessant progress through aeons of duration into its original status --
ABSOLUTE UNITY.
It was only the minor gods, who were
made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo,
the personification of Ra, who appears as "the great Cat of the Basin of
Persea, in An"
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(See "Book of the Dead,"
Ritual XVII, 45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated,
and holding a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements, attached to
a Circle.
In that very learned work, "The
Natural Genesis," by Mr. Gerald Massey, on pp. 408-455 (Vol. I.), under the
heading, "Typology of the Cross," there is more information to be had
on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain
have proofs of the antiquity of the Cross is referred to these two volumes. The
author shows that "the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The
crux ansata unites the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin
they came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of
Vishnu, is a circle. The names denote 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 (Swastica) 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
[[diagram]]."
Nor was the double glyph sacred with
the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid) "the
sign [[diagram]], occurring 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"
(Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansee, Mem. de l'Academie des Sciences,
pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in "Nat. Gen."), which
proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the
symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the divine origin of Cross
and Circle had been forgotten.
Another form of the cross is given
from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (vol. xviii., p. 393, pl. 4):--
"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 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
[[diagram]], which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the
two solstices placed within the figure of the earth's path.
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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 aspects, 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 of in the above cited work, is one
which receives its full explanation and final colour from Aryan 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.* 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 [[diagram]] the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . .
. The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru [[diagram]] set upright on the
Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes
the birth-place 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 birth-place,
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
[[diagram]], 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 we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents
that quarter, the birth-place of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh
symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark or Rak type of
reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued in the Cypriote [[diagram]]
and the Coptic Ro, P.** The Ro, was carried into the Greek cross [[diagram]],
which is formed of the Ro and Chi or R-K. . . . The Rak, or Ank, was the sign
of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the Ank-tie is the cross of the
North, the hind part of Heaven. . . ."
Now this, again, is entirely
astronomical and phallic. The Puranic version in India gives the whole another
colour; and without, however,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Certainly not; for very often there
are symbols made to symbolize other symbols, and these are in turn used in
ideographs.
** The R of the Slavonian and Russian
alphabets (the Kyriletza) is also the Latin P.
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destroying the above interpretation
it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the
astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The
"Ankh-tie" [[diagram]] does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists
under the name of pasa, a cord which Siva holds in the hand of his right back
arm* (Siva having four arms). The Mahadeva is represented in the posture of an
ascetic, as Maha-Yogi, with his third eye [[diagram]], which is "the Ru,
[[diagram]],set upright on the Tau-Cross" in another form. The pasa is
held in the hand in such a way that it is the first finger and hand near the
thumb which make the cross, or loop and crossing. [[diagram]] Our Orientalists
would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because,
forsooth, Kali, Siva's consort, has the same as an attribute!
The pasa has here a double
significance, as also has Siva's trisula and every other divine attribute. This
significance lies in Siva, as Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the
Egyptian ansated cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Siva it
becomes linga and yonic. That which is meant is this: Siva, as said before, is
unknown by that name in the Vedas; and it is in the white Yajur Veda that he
appears for the first time as the great god -- MAHADEVA -- whose symbol is the
lingham. In Rig Veda he is called Rudra, the "howler," the beneficent
and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the
Vishnu Purana, he is the god who springs from the forehead of Brahma, who
separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts,
half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the
Vedas, he is the divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and
at the same time that divine ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce
passions make of him the "roarer," the "terrible." This is
well shown in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of
Rudra, god of fire, are called the "ten vital breaths" (prana, life)
with manas, as eleventh, whereas as Siva, he is the Destroyer of that life.
Brahma calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, which names
are his seven forms of manifestation, also the seven powers of nature which
destroy but to recreate or regenerate.
Hence the cruciform noose (pasa) in
his hand, when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahayogin, has no phallic
signification, and it, indeed, requires a strong imagination bent in this
direction to find such even in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Moor's "Hindu
Pantheon," plate xiii.
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an astronomical symbol. As an emblem
of "door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet" it signifies the "strait
gate" that leads to the kingdom of heaven, far more than the
"birth-place" in a physiological sense.
It is a Cross in a Circle and Crux
Ansata, truly; but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be
crucified before the Yogi passes through the "strait gate," the
narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has
passed the threshold.
As to the mysterious constellation of
the Seven Rishis in the great Bear, if Egypt made them sacred to "the
oldest genitrix, Typhon" -- India has connected all these symbols ages ago
with time or Yuga revolutions, and the Saptarishis are intimately connected
with our present age -- the Dark Kali Yug.* The great Circle of Time, on the
face of which fancy in India has represented the Tortoise (Kurma, or Sisumara,
one of the Avatars of Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature in its
division and localisation of stars, planets and constellations. Thus in
Bhagavata Purana V., xxx., it is said that "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; and along that
tail are the Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; and across its loins the
Seven Rishis." This is then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into
the formation of which enters the Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal
Circle of Boundless Time, Kala, on whose plane lie crossways all the gods,
creatures, and creations born in Space and Time; -- who, as the philosophy has
it, all die at the Mahapralaya.
Meanwhile it is they, the Seven
Rishis, who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary life
cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom
only one -- she who hides -- has proven virtuous. The Pleiades (Krittika) are
the nurses of Karttikeya, the God of War (Mars of the Western Pagans), who is
called the Commander of the celestial armies -- or rather of the Siddhas
(translated Yogis in heaven, and holy sages on the earth) --
"Siddha-sena," which would make Karttikeya identical with Michael,
the "leader of the celestial hosts" and, like himself, a virgin
Kumara.** Verily he is the "Guha," the mysterious one, as much so as
are the Saptarshis and the Krittika (seven Rishis and the Pleiades), for the
interpretation of all these combined, reveal to the adept the greatest
mysteries of occult nature. One point is worth mention in this question of
cross and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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!
** The more so since he is the
reputed slayer of Tripurasura and the Titan Taraka. Michael is the conqueror of
the dragon, and Indra and Karttikeya are often made identical.
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circle, as it bears strongly upon the
elements of fire and water, which play such an important part in the circle and
cross Symbolics. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of a
mother alone (Juno), without the participation of a father, or like the Avatars
(Krishna, for instance), in the West as in the East -- Karttikeya is born, but
in a still more miraculous manner -- begotten by neither father nor mother, but
out of a seed of Rudra Siva, via Agni, who dropped it into the Ganges. Thus he is
born from fire and water -- a "boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the
moon." Hence he is called Agnibhuva (Agni's son) and Ganga-putra (Son of
Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittika, his nurses, as Matsya Purana
shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic words -- "The seven
Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni," and hence are called Agneya
-- and the connection is easy to follow.
It is, then, the Rishis who mark the
time and the periods of Kali-yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. See in the
Bhagavata Purana XII., II, 2, 6, 32, and Vishnu Purana. Says the latter:
"When the splendour of Vishnu (Krishna) departed for heaven, then did the
Kali Yug, during which men delight in sin, invade the world. . . . . When the
Seven Rishis were in Magha, the Kali Yug, comprising 1,200 (divine) years
(432,000 years of mortals), began; and when from Magha, they shall reach
Purvashadha, then will this Kali age attain its growth, under Nanda and his
successors."* This is the revolution of the Rishis "when the two
first stars of the Seven Rishis (of 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,"
a hater of Nanda makes Parasara say. According to Bentley, it is in order to
show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion
originated among the astronomers. It was done "by assuming an imaginary
line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the
beginning of the fixed Magha, which circle was supposed to cut some of the
stars in the Great Bear. . . . The seven stars 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 Magha, the precession would be
noted by stating the degree . . . of any moveable lunar mansion cut by that
line or circle as an index" ("Historical View of the Hindu
Astronomy," p. 65).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nanda is the first Buddhist
Sovereign, Chandragupta, against whom all the Brahmins were so arrayed; he of
the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Asoka. This is one of those passages
that do not exist in the earlier Puranic MSS. They were added by the
Vaishnavas, who interpolated almost as much, out of Sectarian spite, as the
Christian Fathers did.
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There was, and still exists, a
seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindus. Here is a
point that could help to determine -- approximately at least -- the age when
the symbolism of the Seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began.
When Karttikeya was delivered to them by the gods to be nursed, the Krittika
were only six -- whence Karttikeya is represented with six heads; but when the
poetical fancy of the early Aryan symbologists made of them the consorts of the
Seven Rishis, they were seven. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dula,
Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghayanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other
sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the Seven Rishis were made to
marry the Seven Krittika before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad.
Otherwise, how could the Hindu astronomers speak of that which, without the
help of the strongest telescopes, no one can see? This is why, perhaps, in
every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindu allegories is
fixed upon as "a very recent invention, certainly within the Christian
era"?
The oldest MSS. in Sanskrit on
astronomy, begin their series of Nakshatras (the 27 lunar asterisms) with the
sign of Krittika, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2780 B.C., (see
the "Vedic Calendar," accepted even by the Orientalists); though they
get out of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not prove that
the Hindus knew anything of astronomy at that date, and assure their readers
that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian pundits may have acquired their
knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittika from the Phoenicians, etc.
However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of
sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation of
Taurus, regarded by Madler and others, in astronomy, as the central group of
the system of The Milky Way, and in the Kabala and Eastern Esotericism, as the
sidereal septenate born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle,
the concealed [[diagram]]. This manifested side is Taurus, the Symbol of ONE
(the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph [[hebrew]]
(bull or ox) whose synthesis is ten (10), or [[hebrew]] Yodh, the perfect
letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered,
even in astronomy, as the central point around which our Universe of fixed
stars revolves, the focus from which, and into which the divine breath, MOTION,
works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence -- in the Occult philosophy and
its sidereal symbols -- it is this Circle and the starry cross on its face,
which play the most prominent part.
The Secret Doctrine teaches us that
everything in the universe, as well as the universe itself, is formed (created)
during its periodical manifestations -- by accelerated MOTION set into activity
by the BREATH of
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the ever-to-be-unknown power (unknown
to present mankind, at any rate) within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of
Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a circle: hence the serpent
biting his tail, represents the circle of Wisdom in infinity; as does the
astronomical cross -- the cross within a circle, and the globe, with two wings
added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabaeus of the Egyptians, its very
name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabaeus is
called in Egypt (in the papyri) Khopirron and Khopri from the verb Khopron
"to become," and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human
life and of the successive becomings of man, through the various peregrinations
and metempsychoses (reincarnations) of the liberated Soul. This mystical symbol
shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and the successive
lives and existences of the Immortal entity. Being, however, an esoteric
doctrine, revealed only during the mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the
Kings-Initiates to the candidates, it was kept secret. The incorporeal
intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always
represented under the form of circles. In the primitive philosophy of the
Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic causes and builders of
all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or coverings, and of
which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity.
(See Ezekiel, ch. 1.)
"Before the mathematical
numbers," says Proclus (in Quinto Libro, EUCLID), "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."
Deus enim et circulus est, says
Pherecydes, in his hymn to Jupiter. It was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras
prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of
contemplation. "The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of
a perfect circle," prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread among
the people the same custom, Pierius* tells his readers; and Pliny says:
"During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring, totum
corpus circumagimur."** The vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pierius Vale.
** The goddess Basht (or Pasht) was
represented with the head of a cat. This animal was sacred in Egypt for several
reasons: as 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 pre-eminently endowed. "The nine lives of a cat" is a popular
saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr. G. Massey gives also
an astronomical reason for it which may be found in § I. "SYMBOLISM."
"The cat saw the Sun, had it in its eye by night (was the eye [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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forcibly of this mysticism of the
circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind from which came out "one wheel upon
the earth" whose work "was as it were a wheel in the middle of a
wheel" (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . . . "for the Spirit of the living
creature was in the wheels" (v. 20).
"Spirit whirleth about
continually and returneth again according to his circuits" -- says Solomon
(Eccles. i. 6), who is made in the English translation to speak of the
"Wind," and in the original text to refer both to the Spirit and the
Sun. But the Zohar, the only true glossary of the Kabalistic Preacher, in
explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to
comprehend, says that "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." . . . (Zohar, fol. 87, col. 346.)
The Brahmanical "Golden
Egg," from within which emerges Brahma, the creative deity, is the
"circle with the Central Point" of Pythagoras, and its fitting
symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed UNITY -- whether representing
PARABRAHMAM, or the "GREAT EXTREME" of Confucius, or the Deity
concealed by PHTA, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish EN-SOPH, is 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-manifested (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 passing through the centre
of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth or
thickness: it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity and made
to rest on the plane of existence of the phenomenal world. It is dimensional,
whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the
dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the
Pythagorean sacred Decade which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the 1 and
a circle 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 objecting that it is not yet ascertained,
so far, at what period of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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."
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antiquity the nought or cipher occurs
for the first time -- especially in India -- are referred to Vol. II. of
"Isis Unveiled," pp. 299, 300, et seq.
Admitting for argument's sake that
the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic
figures -- though we know it was -- yet the circle and diameter idea is there
to show that it was the first symbol in cosmogony. Before the trigrammes of
Fo-hi, Yang, the Unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by
Eliphas Levi thus (Dogme et Rituel, Vol. I., p. 124):-- China had her
Confucius, and her Tau-ists.* The former circumscribes the "great
extreme" within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter place
three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed
the "great Extreme" in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two
lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention.
[[diagram]] Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, many
epithets of his applied to the "God over all" ([[ho epi pasi theos]])
notwithstanding. Plato having been initiated, could not believe in a personal
God -- a gigantic Shadow of Man. His epithets of "monarch" and
"Law-giver of the Universe" bear an abstract meaning well understood
by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law
that governs the Universe, recognizing it at the same time as immutable. "Beyond
all finite existences," he says, "and secondary causes, all laws,
ideas and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND ([[nous]]), 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 pervades the Universe" -- who
is called, by way of preeminence and excellence, the Supreme** good "the
god" ([[Theos]]), and "the god over all." These words apply, as
Plato himself shows, neither to the "Creator" nor to the
"Father" of our modern Monotheist, but to the ideal and abstract
cause. For, as he says, "this [gk char], the god over all, is not the
truth or the intelligence, but the FATHER of it," and its Primal cause. Is
it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a sage himself, for whom
there was but a single object of attainment in this life -- REAL KNOWLEDGE --
who would have ever believed in a deity that curses and damns men for ever, on
the slightest provocation?*** Not he, who considered only those to be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Also in T'sang-t-ung-ky, by
Wei-Pa-Yang.
** Cocker's "Christianity and
Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377.
*** The cry of despair uttered by
Count de Montlosier in his Mysteres 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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genuine philosophers and students of
truth who possessed the knowledge of the really existing in opposition to mere
seeming; of the always existing in opposition to the transitory; and of that
which exists permanently in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is
developed and destroyed alternately.* Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his
footsteps. The ONE, the original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it
by mortal men. "The [[timion]] (honoured one) dwells in the centre as in
the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity -- the world
Soul"** -- the plane of the surface of the circle. The Cross and Circle
are a universal conception -- as old as human mind itself. They stand foremost
on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, which
expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon
psychological, and even physiological mysteries; and this symbol is precisely
one of this kind, and is based upon the oldest esoteric cosmogony.
It is no explanation to say, as
Eliphas Levi does, that God, the universal Love, having caused the male unit to
dig an abyss in the female Binary, or chaos, produced thereby the world.
Besides being as gross a conception as any, it does not remove the difficulty
of conceiving it without losing one's veneration for the rather too human-like
ways of the Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the
Initiates never use the epithet "God" to designate the One and
Secondless Principle in the 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 very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute
Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical
difficulties. Between speculative Atheism and idiotic anthropomorphism there
must be a philosophical 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 mathematician
whose x must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus have
tried to solve it by their avatars, the Christians think
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] de grandeur oppose a celui de tant de misere, l'esprit qui se met a
observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande diviniti
qu'une diviniti, plus grande et plus pressante encore, aurait comme brisee et
mise en pieces en dispersant les debris dans tout l'Univers." The
"still greater and still more exacting divinity" than the god of this
world, supposed 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.
* See "Isis Unveiled,"
Before the Veil, xii. (Vol. I.).
** Plato: "Parmenides,"
141, E.
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they did it -- by their one divine
Incarnation. Exoterically -- both are wrong; esoterically both of them are very
near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems
to have 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 thus synthesized it into one symbol -- the central
Point in the Crucifix -- they have shown thereby that they have never seized
the true Spirit of the teaching of Christ, and by their interpretations they
have degraded it in more than one way. They have forgotten the Spirit of that
universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it -- as though the Boundless
and the Infinite can ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation
individualized in one man, or even in a nation!
The four arms of the
"[[diagram]]," the decussated cross, and of the "Hermetic,"
pointing to the four cardinal points -- were well understood by the mystical
minds of the Hindus, Brahmins and Buddhists, thousands of years before it was
heard of in Europe; and that symbol was and is found all over the world. They
bent the ends of that cross and made of it their Swastica [[diagram]] now the
Wan of the Buddhist Mongolian.* It implies that the "Central point"
is not limited to one individual, 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, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing
themselves in infinity.
Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have
found at Hebron, on the dead body of Hermes, the well known Smaragdine tablet,
which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic wisdom . . . .
"Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross . . . .
Ascend from the earth to heaven and then descend again to earth" was
traced on it. The riddle of the cross is contained in these words, and its
double mystery 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 circum-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Swastica is certainly one of
the oldest symbols of the Ancient Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H.
Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopeadia) it (the Swastica) "has survived in
the form of the mallet" in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many
"meanings" the author gives of it, we do not find, however, the most
important one, masons evidently not knowing it.
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scribes the four points of the cross,
which represent in succession birth, life, death, and IMMORTALITY.
" 'Attach thyself,' say the
alchemists, '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.' "
("Isis Unveiled.")
Again:-- The [[diagram]] (Tau), and
the astronomical cross of Egypt [[diagram]] 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. . . . The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress which he had to
wear always during his functions. . . . The perfect Tau, formed of the
perpendicular (descending male ray), and a horizontal line (matter, female
principle), and the mundane circle was an attribute of Isis, and it is but at
death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy." These
square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The claim that the
cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed,
when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah, who feared the
Lord (Ezekiel ix. 4), with the signum Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate.
In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus [[diagram]], but in the
original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross [[diagram]] (Tat,
the emblem of stability). In the Revelation, also, the "Alpha and
Omega" (spirit and matter), the first and the last, stamps the name of his
Father in the foreheads of the elect, (p. 323, Vol. II.) Moses, in Exodus xii.
22, orders his people to mark their door-posts and lintels with blood, lest the
"Lord God" should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people,
instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a tau! The identical Egyptian
handled cross, with the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown
on a sculptured ruin at Philoe.
Enough was said in the text about the
Swastica and the Tau. Verily may the Cross be traced back into the very depths
of the unfathomable Archaic Ages! Its Mystery deepens rather than clears, as we
find it on the statues of Easter Island -- in old Egypt, in Central Asia,
engraved on rocks as Tau and Swastica, in pre-Christian Scandinavia,
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everywhere! The author of the
"Hebrew Egyptian Mystery" stands perplexed before the endless shadow
it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular
nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by
translation. In Joshua (viii. 29) read in Arabic, and in the Targum of
Jonathan, it is said: "The king of Ai he crucified upon a tree." The
Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a double word (Wordsworth on
Joshua.) . . . The strangest expression of this kind is in Numbers xxv. 4,
where, by Onkalos (?) it is read: "Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah)
against the Sun." "The word here [[hebrew]], to nail to, is rendered
properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate to crucify. The very construction of this
sentence is mystic."
So it is, but the spirit of it has
been ever misunderstood. "To crucify before (not against) the sun" is
a phrase used of initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The
enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of
Initiation. The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the
trials, was attached, not nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau
[[diagram]] (in Egypt) of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations
(thus: [[diagram]], not [[diagram]]) plunged in a deep sleep (the "Sleep
of Siloam" it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in
Syria, and even higher Egypt). He was allowed to remain in this state for three
days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to
confabulate with the "gods," descend into Hades, Amenti, or Patala,
(according to the country), and do works of charity to the invisible beings,
whether souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a
temple crypt or subterranean 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 approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour
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 before he denies. Let him turn to some most
suggestive Egyptian bas reliefs. One especially from the temple of Philoe,
represents a scene of initiation. Two Gods-Hierophants, one with the head of a
hawk (the Sun), the 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 double
stream of water (the water of life and new birth), which stream is interlaced
in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical
of the awakening of the candidate
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(now an Initiate), when the beams of
the morning sun (Osiris) strike the crown of his head (his entranced body being
placed on its wooden tau so as to receive the rays). Then appeared the Hierophants-Initiators,
and the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly, to the Sun-Osiris,
addressed in reality to the Spirit Sun within, enlightening the newly-born man.
Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the Cross in both its
generative and spiritually regenerative capacities -- from the highest
antiquity. 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. So again, on the
throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment from the Hall of the
ancestors of Totmes III., preserved in the National Library of Paris, which
represents the adoration of Bakhan-Aleare.
In this extraordinary sculpture and
painting one sees the disc of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon
a cross of which those of the Calvary were perfect copies. The ancient MSS.
mention these as the "hard couches of those who were in (spiritual)
travail, the act of giving birth to themselves." A quantity of such
cruciform "couches," on which the candidate, thrown into a dead
trance at the end of his supreme initiation, was placed and secured, were found
in the underground halls of the Egyptian temples after their destruction. The
worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely,
believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone
Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex-initiates, knew better.
But they preferred to keep silent.
Again, let the reader read the Hindu "fables,"
as the Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Visvakarma, the
creative power, the great architect of the world, called in the Veda "the
all-seeing god," who "sacrifices himself to himself" (the Spiritual
Egos of mortals are 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) Surya, his son-in-law, on his lathe, in the exoteric
allegory; on the Swastika, in esoteric tradition, as on earth he is the
Hierophant Initiator, and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Visvakarma,
remember again, is the Son of Yoga-Siddha, i.e., the holy power of Yoga, and
the fabricator of the "fiery weapon," the magic Agneyastra. The
narrative is given more fully elsewhere. The author of the Kabalistic work so
often quoted from, asks:--
"The theoretical use of
crucifixion 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,
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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 Kosmos . . . . 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 link. . . . 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 . . . " (p. 205).
The author proves these points by
further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of more than one
dead-letter narrative, by showing that probably [[hebrew]] 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."
This is demonstrated by the Hindu
Wittoba -- a form of Vishnu -- as said already. The figure of Wittoba, even to
the nail-marks on the feet,* is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details
save the Cross; and 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
an instrument of torture, and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers,
the tree of death!
Thus, one of the seven esoteric
meanings implied in this mystery of Crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the
system -- the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very
establishment of the MYSTERIES -- is discovered in the geometrical symbols
containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews, whose prophet
Moses was so learned in the esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their
numerical system from the Phoenicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom
they borrowed most of their Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously,
the Cosmic and anthropological symbols of the "heathen" nations to
their peculiar secret records. If Christian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Moor's Hindu Pantheon, where
Wittoba's left foot bears the mark of the nail -- on the figure of his idol.
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sacerdotalism has lost the key of it to-day,
the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric
philosophy and the Hebrew occult metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus they
took the word aish (one of the Hebrew word forms for MAN) and used it in
conjunction with that of Shanah "lunar year," so 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 "Man
Crucified" in Space belongs certainly to the ancient Hindus, and Muir
shows it in his "Hindu Pantheon" in the engraving that represents
Wittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated Cross in Space, the [[diagram]],
"the Second God who impressed himself on the Universe in the form of the
Cross"; Krishna is likewise shown "crucified." (See Dr. Lundy's
Monumental Christianity, fig. 72.) 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 § II. of that same
most suggestive work on the Kabalistic meanings -- "The Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery," 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 bars) 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 most holy
(and with the Jews) feminine base number."
Thus, while the phallic or sexual
meaning of the "Crucifixion Nails" is proven by the geometrical and
numerical reading, its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks upon
it, as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is
another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human
passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in
Humanity.
Now, the primordial system, the
double glyph that underlies the idea of the Cross, is not "of human
invention," for Cosmic ideation and the Spiritual representation of the
divine Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it expanded in the beautiful idea
adopted by and represented in the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the
mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the
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Procrustean bed of torture, became
reborn as 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 as
a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross
became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol.
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; and it was Septenary with the Hermetic
philosophers, as with all ancients. For it is represented as a Sevenfold cross,
whose branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity, terrestrial
magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and Intelligence, or what some call
self-consciousness.
We have said it elsewhere. Long
before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity, the sign
of the cross was used as a sign of recognition among adepts and neophytes, the
latter being called Chrests (from Chrestos, man of tribulation and sorrow).
Says E. Levi: "The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not
belong exclusively to them. It is 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 making it, or, at least two
very different formulas to express its meaning -- one reserved for
priests-initiates, the other given to neophites and the profane. Thus, for
example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then
he added, belong: and continued, while 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 Chassed per Aeonas' -- a sign of the Cross, absolutely
and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the
militant and official Church completely lose." (Dogma et Ritual, etc.,
Vol. II., p. 88.)
The "militant and official
Church" did more: having helped herself to what had never belonged to her,
she took only that which the "profane" had, the Kabalistic meaning of
the male and female Sephiroth. She never lost the inner and higher meaning
since she never had it -- E. Levi's pandering to Rome, notwithstanding. The
sign of the cross adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from the beginning,
while that of the Greeks was the cross of the neophytes, the CHREST.
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§ XXIII.
THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE.
We are reminded in King's
"Gnostics" that the Greek language has but one word for vowel and
voice; and this has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On
the simple knowledge, however, of that well-known fact a comparison may be
attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the
words, so often used in the Upanishads and the Puranas, "Sound" and
"Speech," may be collated with the Gnostic "Vowels" and the
"Voices" of the Thunders and Angels in "Revelation." The
same will be found in Pistis Sophia, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This
was remarked even by the matter-of-fact author of "The Gnostics and their
Remains."
Through Hippolytus, an early Church
Father, we learn what Marcus -- a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic,
and a Kabalist most certainly -- had received in mystic revelation. It is said
that "Marcus had it revealed unto him that 'the seven heavens'* . . . .
sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete
doxology"; in clearer words: "the Sound whereof being carried down
(from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and parent of all
things that be on earth." (See "Hippolytus," vi., 48, and King's
Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer
language this would read: "The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into
seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels) these (the second logos, or
"Sound") created all on Earth.
Assuredly one who is acquainted with
Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John's Apocalypse, a work of
the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. x. 3, 4),
"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.' " The same injunction is
given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the
sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always
betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one
meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the
number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now
when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Heavens" are
identical with "Angels," as already stated.
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Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to
them, "the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father" (i.e., of the
higher SELF enlightened 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." "The
Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but they are the LIFE
and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age" -- says the
Commentary speaking of the "Fires."
Now it becomes evident that, in every
esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms,
there was the same underlying idea -- the basic number seven, the compound of
three and four, preceded by the divine THREE ([[diagram]]) making the perfect
number ten.
Also, these numbers applied equally
to divisions of time, to cosmography metaphysical and physical, as well as to
man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven vowels with their
forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the
Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of
the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing
the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive
renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the
globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and
assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years only. (Compare §
"Chronology of the Brahmins.")
Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a
key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that
Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird, -- the Vahan or
vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kala, "time") is shown to ride -- is
the origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phoenix, the emblem
of cyclic and periodical time, the "man-lion" Singha, of whose representations
the so-called "gnostic gems" are so full.* "Over the seven rays
of the lion's crown, and corresponding to their points, stand, in many cases,
the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet [Gk char], testifying to the Seven
Heavens." This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As confessed by 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
(p. 241).
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Garuda* is that of the great cycle,
the "Maha-Kalpa" co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the
emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the
allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on
account of his (Garuda's) "dazzling splendour," and called thereupon
Gaganeswara, "lord of the sky." Again, his being represented as
Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic)
gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes
Garuda's solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000
years. As well remarked by C. W. King:-- "Whatever the 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"
(Gnostics, p. 218).
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 Aryavarta, brought into India by the
primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the
Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages.
Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our
terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.** When the seven
"thunders," or "sounds," or "vowels" -- one
meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our own Earth
and its seven Root-Races in each Round -- "had uttered their voices"
-- but forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him "seal up those
things" -- what did the Angel "standing upon the sea and upon the
earth" do? He lifted 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" (x. 7), which means, in
theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time
will cease. "There shall be time no longer" very naturally, since
pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to keep a division
of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life.
Dr. Kenealy and others believed this
doctrine of the Rabbins (their calculations of cyclic seven and forty-nine) to
have been brought by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The lack of intuition in
Orientalists and antiquarians past and present, is remarkable. Thus, Wilson,
the translator of Vishnu Purana, declares in his Preface that in the Garuda
Purana he found "no account of the birth of Garuda." Considering that
an account of "Creation" in general is given therein, and that Garuda
is co-eternal with Vishnu, the Maha Kalpa, or Great Life-CycIe, beginning with
and ending with the manifesting Vishnu, what other account of Garuda's birth
could be expected !
** Vide Revelation xvii., verses 2
and 10; and Leviticus xxiii., verses 15 to 18; the first passage speaking of
the "Seven Kings," of whom five have gone; and the second about the
"Seven Sabbaths," etc.
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them from Chaldea. This is more than
likely. But the Babylonians, who had all those cycles and taught them only at
their great initiatory mysteries of astrological magic, got their wisdom and
learning from India. It is not difficult, therefore, to recognize in them our
own esoteric doctrine. In their secret computations, the Japanese have the same
figures in their cycles. As to the Brahmins, their Puranas and Upanishads are a
good proof of it. The latter have passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and
a Brahmin needs only to read Pistis Sophia* to recognize his forefathers'
property, even to the phraseology and similes used. Compare: in Pistis Sophia
the disciple says 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.
"I baptize you with water, but . . . . he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost and with fire," says John of Jesus (Matt. iii. 2); meaning this
esoterically. The real significance of this statement is very profound. It
means that he, John, a non-initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no
greater wisdom than the mysteries connected with the plane of matter (water
being a symbol of it). His gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic dogma,
of dead-letter orthodoxy; ** while the wisdom which Jesus, an Initiate of the
higher mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a higher character, for it was
the "FIRE" Wisdom of the true gnosis or the real spiritual
enlightment. One was FIRE, the other the SMOKE. For Moses, the fire on Mount
Sinai, and the spiritual wisdom imparted; for the multitudes of the
"people" below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) smoke,
i.e., the exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism.
Now, having the above in view, read
the dialogue between the sages Narada and Davamata in the Anugita, the
antiquity and importance of which MS. (an episode from the Mahabharata) one can
learn in the "Sacred Books of the East," edited by Prof. Max
Muller.** Narada is discussing upon the breaths or the "life-winds,"
as they are called in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pistis Sophia is an extremely
important document, a genuine Evangel of the Gnostics, ascribed at random to
Valentinus, but much more probably a pre-Christian work in its original. It was
discovered in a Coptic MS. by Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite
accidentally, and translated by him into Latin; after which text and (Latin)
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 to
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.
** 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.
*** See Introduction by Kashinath
Trimbak Telang, M.A.
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the clumsy translations of such words
as Prana, Apana, etc., whose full esoteric meaning 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 Brahmans, being accompanied by
intelligence." By "fire," says the Commentator, he means the
SELF. By "intelligence," the Occultist says, Narada means neither
"discussion" nor "argumentation," as Aruna Misra believes,
but "intelligence" truly, or the adaptation of the fire of Wisdom to
Exoteric Ritualism for the profane. This is the chief concern of the Brahmans
(who were the first to set the example to other nations who thus
anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest metaphysical truths). Narada
makes it plain 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": i.e., that faculty in the disciple which apprehends
the subtle truth (the flame) which escapes heavenward, while the objective
sacrifice remains as a proof and evidence of piety only to the profane. For
what can Narada mean in teaching that "those who understand the sacrifice
understand the Samana and the Vyana as the principal (offering)"; and
"the Prana and Apana, but portions of the offering . . . and between them
is the fire . . . . that is the excellent seat of the Udana as understood by
Brahmanas. 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, etc.,"
and after every such contrast Narada adds "That is the excellent seat of
the Udana as understood by Brahmanas."
Now many people do not know the full
meaning of such terms as Samana and Vyana, Prana and Apana, explained as being
"life-winds" (we say "principles and their respective faculties
and senses"), being offered up to Udana, the soi-disant principal
"life wind," (?) said to act at all the joints. Therefore the reader,
who is ignorant that the word "fire" means in these allegories both
the "Self" and the higher divine knowledge, will understand nothing
in this; and will therefore entirely miss the point of our argument, as its
translators and even its editor the great Oxford Sanskritist, Max Muller, has missed
the true meaning of Narada's words. Exoterically, all this enumeration of
"life winds" means, of course, approximately, that which is surmised
in the foot-notes; namely, "The sense appears to be this . . . . 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 Samana and
Vyana are controlled and held under check by
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the Prana and Apana. . . . The latter
two are held in check and controlled by the Udana, which thus controls all. And
the control of this, which is the control of all five . . . . leads to the
Supreme Self" (p. 259, Anugita, "Sacred Books of the East," Vol.
VIII.)
The above is given as an explanation
of the text, which records the words of the Brahmana, who narrates how he
reached the ultimate Wisdom of Yogism, and had reached all knowledge in this
wise. Saying that he had "perceived by means of the SELF the seat abiding
in the SELF," where dwells the Brahman free from all; and explaining that
that indestructible principle was entirely beyond the perception of senses
(i.e., of the five "life-winds"), he adds that "in the midst of
an these (life-winds) which move about in the body and swallow up one another,
blazes the Vaisvanara fire sevenfold." This "Fire," according to
Nilakantha's Commentary, is identical with the "I," the SELF, which
is the goal of the ascetic (Vaisvanara being a word often used for the Self).
Then the Brahmana goes on to enumerate that which is meant by the word
"Sevenfold," and says, "The nose (or smell), the tongue (taste),
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 Vaisvanara,*. . . .
. those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me,**. . . . . these are the seven
great officiating priests."
These seven priests are accepted by
Arjuna Misra in the sense of meaning "the soul distinguished as so many
(souls, or principles) with reference to these several powers"; and,
finally, the translator seems to accept the explanation, and reluctantly admits
that "they may mean" this; though he himself takes the sense to mean
"the powers of hearing, etc. (the physical senses, in short) which are
presided over by the several deities." (Vide loc. cit., p. 259, f.n. 6.)
But whatever it may mean, whether in
scientific or orthodox interpretations, this passage on page 259 explains
Narada's statements on page 276, and shows them referring to exoteric and
esoteric methods and contrasting them. Thus the Samana and the Vyana, though
subject to the Prana and the Apana, and all the four to Udana in the matter of
acquiring the Pranayama (of the Hatha-Yogi, chiefly, or the "lower"
form of the Yoga) are yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as
rightly argued by the commentator, their "operations are more practically
important for vitality"; i.e., they are the grossest, and are offered in
the sacrifice, to disappear, so to speak, in the quality of darkness of that
fire or its SMOKE (mere exoteric ritualistic form). But
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the astronomical and cosmical
key, Vaisvanara is Agni, son of the Sun, or Viswanaras, but in the
psycho-metaphysical symbolism it is the SELF, in the sense of non-separateness,
i.e., both divine and human.
** Here the speaker personifies the
said divine SELF.
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Prana and Apana, though shown as
subordinate (because less gross or more 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 which exists and that which does not exist"; all
these "pairs"* 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 wherein they are, that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of
theological 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 Hindus, who have their own Gurus; nor to the
Orientalists, who think they know more than all the Gurus and Rishis, past and
present, put together. These rather lengthy quotations and examples cited are
necessary, if even to point out to the student the works he has to study so as
to derive benefit and learning from comparison. Let him read Pistis Sophia in the
light of the Bhagavatgita, the Anugita and others; and then the statement made
by Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel will become clear, and the dead letter blinds
disappear at once. Read this and compare with the explanation from the Hindu
scriptures just given. . . . "And no name is more excellent than all these
(seven) vowels. A name wherein be contained all names, all Lights, and all (the
fortynine) powers, knowing it, if a man quits this body of matter** no Smoke
(i.e., no theological delusion),*** no darkness, nor Ruler of the Sphere (no
personal genius or planetary spirit called God), or of Fate (karma) shall
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Compare with these "pairs of
opposites," in the Anugita, the "pairs" of AEons, in the
elaborate system of Valentinus, the most learned and profound master of Gnosis.
As the "pairs of opposites," male and female, are all derived from
Akasa (undeveloped and developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or SELF
or Prajapati), so are the Valentinian "pairs" of male and female
AEons shown to emanate from Bythos, the pre-existing 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, copying incorrectly, "copied
one pair twice over," Mr. C. W. King thinks, "and thus adds one pair
to the proper fifteen." ("The Gnostics," etc., pp. 263-4.) Here
King falls into the opposite error: the pairs of AEons are not 15 (a blind) but
14, as the first AEon is that from which others emanate, Depth and Silence
being the first and only emanation from Bythos. As Hippolytus shows: "The
AEons 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
Anugita.
** Not necessarily at death only, but
during Samadhi or mystic trance.
*** All the words and sentences
between parenthetical marks, are the writer's. This is translated directly from
the Latin MS. of the British Museum. King's translation in the Gnostics
conforms too much to the gnosticism as explained by the Church-Fathers.
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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,* the Invisible God, and the
triple-powered Gods, so soon as he shall have uttered that name in those
places, they shall all be shaken and thrown one upon the other, so that they
shall be ready to melt, perish and disappear, and shall cry aloud, 'O, Light of
all Lights that art in the Boundless Light, remember us also and purify us!'
"
It is easy to see who this Light and
Name are: the light of Initiation and the name of the "Fire-Self,"
which is no name, no action, but a Spiritual, ever-living Power, higher even
than the "Invisible God," as this Power is ITSELF.
But if the able and learned author of the
"Gnostics and their Remains" has not sufficiently allowed for the
Spirit of allegory and mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by him,
in the above named work, from Pistis Sophia -- other Orientalists have done far
worse. Having neither his intuitional perception of the Indian origin of the
Gnostic Wisdom still more than of their "gems," most of them,
beginning with Wilson and ending with the dogmatic Weber, have made most
extraordinary blunders with regard to almost every symbol. Sir M. Monier
Williams and others show a very decided contempt for the "Esoteric
Buddhists" as theosophists are now called; yet no Student of Occult
philosophy has ever mistaken a cycle for a living personage and vice versa, as
was very often the case with our learned Orientalists. An instance or two may
illustrate the statement more graphically. Let us choose the best known.
In the Ramayana, Garuda is called
"the maternal uncle of Sagara's 60,000 sons"; and Ansumat, Sagara's
grandson, "the nephew of the 60,000 uncles" reduced to ashes by the
look of Kapila, "the Purushottama" (or infinite Spirit), who caused
Sagara's horse for the Aswamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda's son**
-- Garuda being himself the Maha-Kalpa or great cycle -- Jatayu, the king of
the feathered tribe, when on the point of being slain by Ravana who carries off
Sita -- says, speaking of himself:
"It is 60,000 years O King, that
I am born," after which turning his back on the Sun -- he dies.
Jatayu 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 (Vide cap. 359).
** In other Puranas Jatayu is the son
of Aruna, Garuda's brother, both the Sons of Kasyapa. But all this is external
allegory.
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since the whole meaning rests in his
being placed on the line of Garuda's descendants. Then, again, there is Diti --
the Mother of the Maruts -- whose descendants and progeny belonged to the
posterity of Hiranyaksha, "whose number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of
men." (See Padma Purana.) All such narratives are pronounced meaningless
fictions and absurdities. But -- Truth is the daughter of Time, verily; and
time will show.
Meanwhile, what could be easier than
an attempt, at least, to verify Puranic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but
the Kapila who slew King Sagara's progeny -- 60,000 men strong -- was
undeniably Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy, since it is so stated
in the Puranas; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without
explaining its esoteric meaning. It is the Bhagavata Purana (IX. viii., 12 and
13), which says that "the report that the sons of the King were reduced to
ashes by the mere glance of the sage is not true." "For," as it
argues, "how can the quality of darkness, the product of anger, exist in a
sage whose goodness was the essence that 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, and who has steered
here (on earth) that solid vessel of the Sankhya (philosophy), with the help of
which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the dreaded ocean of
existence, that path to death?"
The Purana is in duty bound to speak
as it does. It has a dogma to promulgate and a policy to carry out -- that of
great secrecy with regard to mystical divine truths divulged for countless ages
only at initiation. It is not in the Puranas, therefore, that we have to look
for an explanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states
of being. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the 60,000
Sons, brutal, vicious, and impious, are the personification of the human
passions that a "mere glance of the sage" -- the SELF who represents
the highest state of purity that can be reached on earthreduces to ashes. But
it has also other significations -- cyclic and chronological meanings, -- a
method of marking the periods when certain sages flourished, found also in
other Puranas.
Now it is as well ascertained as any
tradition can be, that it was at Hardwar (or Gangadwara, the "door or gate
of the Ganges") at the foot of the Himalayas, that Kapila sat in
meditation for a number of years. Not far from the Sewalik range, the
"pass of Hardwar" is called to this day "Kapila's Pass";
and the place, "Kapilasthen," by the ascetics. It is there that Ganga
(Ganges) emerging from its mountainous gorge, begins its course over the sultry
plains of India. And it is as clearly ascertained by geological survey that the
tradition which claims that the
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ocean ages ago washed the base of the
Himalayas -- is not entirely without foundation, for there are traces left of
this.
The Sankhya philosophy may have been
brought down and taught by the first, and written out by the last Kapila.
Now Sagara is the name of the Ocean,
and even of the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the Ganges, to this day in India
(Vide Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Vol. III. p. 309). Have geologists ever
calculated the number of millenniums it has taken the sea to recede to where it
is now, from Hardwar, 1,024 feet above the level of the sea at present? If they
did, those Orientalists who show Kapila flourishing from the 1st to the 9th
cent. A.D., might change their opinions, if only for one of two very good
reasons: the true number of years elapsed since Kapila's day is in the Puranas
unmistakably, though the translators fail to see it. And secondly -- the Kapila
of the Satya, and the Kapila of the Kali-Yugas may be one and the same
INDIVIDUALITY, without being the same PERSONALITY.
Kapila, besides being the name of a
personage, of the once living Sage and the author of Sankhya philosophy, is
also the generic name of the Kumaras, the celestial ascetics and virgins;
therefore the very fact of Bhagavata Purana calling that Kapila -- which it
showed just before as a portion of Vishnu -- the author of Sankhya philosophy,
ought to have warned the reader of a blind containing an esoteric meaning.
Whether the Son of Vitatha, as Harivansa shows him to be, or of anyone else,
the author of Sankhya cannot be the same as the Sage of the SatyaYuga -- at the
very beginning of the Manvantara, when Vishnu is shown in the form of Kapila,
"imparting to all creatures true Wisdom"; for this relates to that
primordial period when "the Sons of God" taught to the just created
men the arts and sciences, which have been cultivated and preserved since then
in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are several well-known Kapilas in
the Puranas. First the primeval sage, then Kapila, one of the three
"Secret" Kumaras; and Kapila, son of Kasyapa and Kadru -- the
"many-headed Serpent," (See Vayu Purana placing him on the list of
the forty renowned sons of Kasyapa), besides Kapila, the great sage and
philosopher of the Kali Yuga. Being an Initiate, "a Serpent of
Wisdom," a Naga, the latter was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the
former ages.
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§ XXIV.
THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE.
THE early Gnostics claimed that their
Science, the GNOSIS, rested on a square, the angles of which represented
respectively Sige (Silence), Bythos (depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and
Aletheia (Truth).
It is they who were the first to
introduce and reveal to the world that which had remained concealed for ages:
namely, the Tau, in the shape of a Procrustean bed, and Christos as incarnating
in Chrestos, he who became for certain purposes a willing candidate for a
series of tortures, mental and physical.
For them the whole of the Universe,
metaphysical and material, was contained within, and could be expressed and
described by the digits of Number 10, the Pythagorean decade.
This Decade representing the Universe
and its evolution out of Silence and the unknown Depths of the Spiritual Soul,
or anima mundi, presented two sides or aspects to the student. It could be, and
was at first so used and applied to the Macrocosm, after which it descended to
the Microcosm, or Man. There was, then, the purely intellectual and
metaphysical, or the "inner Science," and the as purely materialistic
or "surface science," both of which could be expounded by and
contained in the Decade. It could be studied, in short, from the Universals of
Plato, and the inductive method of Aristotle. The former started from a divine
comprehension, when the plurality proceeded from unity, or the digits of the
decade appeared, but to be finally re-absorbed, lost in the infinite Circle.
The latter depended on sensuous perception alone, when the Decade could be
regarded either as the unity that multiplies, or matter which differentiates,
its study being limited to the plane surface; to the Cross, or the Seven which
proceeds from the ten -- or the perfect number, on Earth as in heaven.
This dual system was brought, together
with the Decade, by Pythagoras from India. That it was that of the Brachmans
and Iranians, as they are called by the ancient Greek philosophers, is
warranted to us by the whole range of Sanskrit literature, such as the Puranas
and the laws of Manu. In these "Laws" or "Ordinances of
Manu," it is said that Brahma first creates "the ten lords of
Being," the ten Prajapati or creative Forces; which ten produce
"seven" other Manus, or, rather, as some MSS. have it, Munin, instead
of Manun = "devotees," or holy Beings, which are the Seven Angels of
the Presence in the
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Western religion. This mysterious
number Seven, born from the upper triangle [[diagram]], the latter itself born
from the apex thereof, or the Silent Depths of the unknown universal soul (Sige
and Bythos), is the sevenfold Saptaparna plant, born and manifested on the
surface of the soil of mystery, from the threefold root buried deep under that
impenetrable soil. This idea is fully elaborated in Vol. I. § "Primordial
Substance and Divine Thought," which the reader has to notice carefully,
if he would grasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as
in nature, it is, according to the cis-Himalayan esoteric philosophy (which is
that of the original Manu Cosmogony), the septenary division that is intended
by Nature herself. The seventh principle (purusha) alone is the divine SELF,
strictly speaking; for, as said in Manu, "He (Brahma) having pervaded the
subtile parts of those six of unmeasured brightness," created or called
them forth to "Self"-consciousness or the consciousness of that One SELF
(V. 16, ch. i. Manu). Of these six, five elements (or principles, or Tattva, as
Medhatithi, the commentator thinks) "are called the atomic destructible
elements" (v. 27); they are described in the above-named section.
We have now to speak of the Mystery
language, that of the prehistoric races. 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 the masses for more than 5,000 years an absolutely
dead language. Yet most of the learned Gnostics, Greeks and Jews, knew it, and
used it, though very differently. A few instances may be given.
On the plane above, the Number is no
Number but a nought -- a CIRCLE. On the plane below, it becomes one -- which is
an odd number. Each letter of the ancient alphabets having had its
philosophical meaning and raison d'etre, the number I signified with the
Alexandrian Initiates a body erect, a living standing man, he being the only
animal that has this privilege. 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 a
"moving man," one on his way. Hence PATER ZEUS had nothing sexual or
phallic either in its sound or form of letters; nor had [[pater Deus]] (vide
Ragon). If we turn now to the Hebrew Alphabet, we shall find that while I or
aleph, [[hebrew]], has a bull or an Ox for its symbol, 10, the perfect number,
or One of the Kabala is a Yodh [[hebrew]] (y, i, or j); and means, as the first
letter of Jehovah, the procreative organ, et seq.
The odd numbers are divine, the even
numbers are terrestrial, devilish, and unlucky. The Pythagoreans hated the
binary. With them it was the origin of differentiation, hence of contrasts,
discord, or matter, the beginning of evil. In the Valentinian theogony, Bythos
and Sige (Depth, Chaos, matter born in Silence) are the primordial binary.
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With the early Pythagoreans, however,
the duad was that imperfect state into which the first manifested being fell
when it got detached from the Monad. It was the point from which the two roads
-- the Good and the Evil -- bifurcated. All that which was double-faced or
false was called by them "binary." ONE was alone Good, and Harmony,
because no disharmony can proceed from one alone. Hence the Latin word Solus in
relation to one and only God, the Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon
became Sol -- the Sun.
The ternary is thus the first of the
odd numbers, as the triangle is the first of the geometrical figures. This
number is truly the number of mystery par excellence. To study it on the
exoteric lines one has to read Ragon's Cours Interpretatif des Initiations; on
the esoteric -- the Hindu symbolism of numerals; as the combinations which were
applied to it are numberless. It is on the occult properties of the three equal
lines or sides of the Triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded the
famous masonic society of the Trinosophists (those who study three sciences; an
improvement upon the ordinary three masonic degrees, given to those who study
nothing except eating and drinking at the meetings of their lodges). "The
first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for study," writes
the founder, -- "is the mineral kingdom, symbolized by Tubalc . . .
(Tubal-cain). The second side on which the 'companion' has to meditate, is the
vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schibb [[diagram]] (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 [[diagram]] (Sun of putrefaction)"
etc., etc.
The first solid figure is the
Quaternary, symbol of immortality. It is the pyramid: for the pyramid stands on
a triangular, square, or polygonal base, and terminates with a point at the
top, thus yielding the triad and the quaternary or the 3 and 4. It is the
Pythagoreans who taught the connection and relation between the gods and the
numbers -- in a Science called arithmomancy. The Soul is a number, they said,
which moves of itself and contains the number 4; and spiritual and physical man
is number 3, as the ternary represented for them not only the surface but also
the principle of the formation of the physical body. Thus animals were
ternaries only, man alone being a septenary, when virtuous; a quinary when bad,
for:--
Number 5 was composed of a binary and
a ternary, which binary threw everything in the perfect form into disorder and
confusion. The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reason for it is simple, and
was given in "Isis Unveiled." In geometry, one line fails to
represent a perfect body or figure, nor can two lines constitute a
demonstratively perfect figure. The triangle alone is the first perfect figure.
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perfect man, they said, was a
quaternary and a ternary, or four material and three immaterial elements; which
three spirits or elements we likewise find in 5, when it represents the
microcosm. The latter is a compound of a binary directly relating to gross
matter, and of three Spirits:
"since 5 is the ingenious union
of two Greek accents [[diagram]] placed over vowels which have or have not to
be aspirated. The first sign [[diagram]] is called 'Strong Spirit' or superior
Spirit, the spirit of God aspired (spiratus) and breathed by man. The second
sign [[diagram]] the lower, is the Spirit of Love, representing the secondary
Spirit; the third embraces the whole man. It is the universal Quintessence, the
vital fluid or Life." (Ragon.)
The more mystic meaning of 5 is given
in an excellent article by Mr. Subba Row, in "Five Years of
Theosophy" (pp. 110, et seq.) -- "The Twelve Signs of the
Zodiac," in which he gives some rules that may help the inquirer to ferret
out "the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old
Aryan myths and allegories." Meanwhile, let us see what has been hitherto
stated about the constellation Capricornus in theosophical publications, and
what is known of it generally. Every one knows that [[diagram]] is the tenth
sign of the Zodiac into which the Sun enters at the winter solstice, about
December 21st. But very few are those who know -- even in India, unless they
are initiated -- the real mystic connection which seems to exist, as we are
told, between the names Makara and Kumara. The first means some amphibious
animal called flippantly 'crocodile,' as some Orientalists think, and the
second is the title of the great patrons of Yogins (See "Saiva
Puranas,") the Sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Siva); a Kumara himself.
It is through their connection with Man that the Kumaras are likewise connected
with the Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara means.
The word Makara, says the author of
"The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," "contains within itself the
clue to its correct interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to No. 5, and
Kara means hand. Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or Karam
(both synonyms) being understood to mean a side. So Makaram or Panchakaram
means a Pentagon" -- the five-pointed star or pentagon representing the
five limbs of man.* Under the old system, we are told, Makara was the eighth
instead of the tenth sign.** It is "intended to represent the faces of the
Universe, and indicates that the Universe is bounded by Pentagons," as the
Sanskrit writers "speak also of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* What is the meaning and the reason
of this figure? Because, Manas is the fifth principle, and because the pentagon
is the symbol of Man -- not only of the five-limbed, but rather of the
thinking, conscious MAN.
** The reason for it becomes apparent
when Egyptian symbology is studied. See further on.
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Ashtadisa or eight faces bounding
Space," referring thus to the loka-palas, the eight points of the compass
(the 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." (pp. 113, 115).
But the true esoteric sense of the
word "Makara," does not mean "crocodile," in truth, at all,
even when it is compared with the animal depicted on the Hindu Zodiac. For it
has the head and the fore-legs of an antelope and the body and tail of a fish.
Hence the tenth sign of the Zodiac has been taken variously to mean a shark, a
dolphin, etc.; as it is the vahan of Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often
called, for this reason, Jala-rupa 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-dragon" as
much as the Crocodile of the Sacred Nile is the vehicle of Horus, and Horus
himself. "I am the fish and seat of the great Horus of Kem-our," says
the mummy-form God with the crocodile's head (ch. lxxxviii., 2, "Book of
the Dead"). With the Peratae Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune), who
converts into a sphere the dodecagonal pyramid, "and paints its gate with
many colours." He has FIVE androgyne ministers -- he is Makara, the
Leviathan.
The rising Sun being considered the
Soul of the Gods sent to manifest itself to men every day, and the crocodile
rising out of the water at the first sunbeam, that animal came finally to
personify a Solar-fire devotee in India, as it personified that fire, or the
highest soul with the Egyptians.
In the Puranas, the number of the
Kumaras changes according to the exigencies of the allegory. For occult
purposes their number is given in one place as seven, then as four, then as
five. In the Kurma Purana it is said of them: "These five (Kumara), O
Brahman, were Yogins who acquired entire exemption from passion." Their
very name shows their connection with the said constellation -- the Makara, and
with some other Puranic characters connected with the Zodiacal signs. This is
done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs of the primitive
Temples. They are mixed up astronomically, physiologically, and mystically, in
general, with a number of Puranic personages and events. Hardly hinted at in
the "Vishnu," they figure in various dramas and events throughout all
the other Puranas and sacred literature; so that the Orientalists, having to
pick up the threads of connection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming
the Kumaras "due chiefly to the fancy of the Puranic 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 or
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a pentagon. The Kumara (in this case
an anagram for occult purposes) are five in esotericism, as Yogis -- because
the last two names have ever been kept secret; they are the fifth order of
Brahmadevas, and the fivefold 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 lotos (padma) floating on the water." In India it is Vishnu
(one of whose avatars was Budha, as claimed in days of old). The Prachetasas,
the worshippers of Narayana (who, like Poseidon moved or dwelt over not under
the waters), plunged into the depths of the ocean for their devotions and
remained therein 10,000 years; and the Prachetasas are ten exoterically, but
five, esoterically. "Prachetas" is in Sanskrit, the name of Varuna,
the water god, Nereus, an aspect of the same as Neptune, the Prachetasas being
thus identical with the "five ministers" of [[CHOZZAR]] (Poseidon) of
the Peratae Gnostics. These are respectively called [[AOT, AOAI, OTO, OTOB]],
"the fifth, a triple name (making Seven) being lost"* -- i.e., kept
secret. This much for the "aquatic" symbol; the "fiery"
connecting them with the fiery symbol -- spiritually. For purposes of identity,
let us remember that as the mother of the Prachetasas was Savarna, 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 in the Dolphin, who had overcome
the chaste Amphitrite's unwillingness to wed Poseidon, and in Triton their son.
The latter, whose body above the waist is that of a man and below a dolphin, a
fish, is, again, most mysteriously connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag,
and further also with the (fish) Avatar of Vishnu, Matsya, 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, thus shown
identical with Makara, whose head is also that of an antelope and the body and
tail those of a fish. This is why the sign of the Makara was borne on the
banner of Kama deva, the Hindu god of love, identified, in Atharva Veda, with
Agni (the fire-god), the son of Lakshmi, as correctly given by Harivansa. For
Lakshmi and Venus are one, and Amphitrite is the early form of Venus. Now Kama
(the Makara-ketu) is "Aja" (the unborn), and "Atma-bhu"
(the self-existent), and Aja is the LOGOS in the Rig-Veda, as he is shown
therein to be the first manifestation of the ONE: "Desire first arose in
IT, which was the primal
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So is Brahma's fifth head, said to
be lost, burnt to ashes by Siva's "central eye"; Siva being also
panchanana "five faced." Thus the number is preserved and secresy
maintained on the true esoteric meaning.
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germ of mind," that "which
connects entity with non-entity" (or Manas, the fifth, with Atma, the
seventh, esoterically) say the Sages. This is the first stage. The second, on
the following plane of manifestation, shows Brahma (whom we select as a
representative for all the other first gods of the nations) as causing to issue
from his body his mind-born sons, "Sanandana and others," who, in the
fifth "creation," and again in the ninth (for purposes of blind)
become the Kumara. Let us close by reminding the reader that goats were
sacrificed to Amphitrite and the Nereids on the sea-shore, as goats are
sacrificed to this day to Durga Kali, who is only the black side of Lakshmi
(Venus), the white side of Sakti; and by suggesting what connection these
animals may have with Capricornus, in which appear twenty-eight stars in the
form of a goat, which goat was transformed by the Greeks into Amalthaea --
Jupiter's foster-mother. Pan, the god of Nature, had goat's feet, and changed
himself into a goat at the approach of Typhon. But this is a mystery which the
writer dares not dwell upon at length, not being sure of being understood. Thus
the mystical side of the interpretation must be left to the intuition of the
student. Let us note one more thing in relation to the mysterious number five.
It symbolizes at one and the same time the Spirit of life eternal and the
Spirit of life and love terrestrial -- in the human compound; and, it includes
divine and infernal magic, and the universal and the individual quintessence of
being. Thus, the five mystic words or vowels (vide infra) uttered by Brahma at
"creation," which forthwith became the Panchadasa (certain Vedic
hymns, attributed to that God) are in their creative and magical potentiality,
the white side of the black Tantrik five "makaras," or the five m's.
"Makara," the constellation, is a seemingly meaningless and absurd
name. Yet, even besides its anagrammatical significance in conjunction with the
term "Kumara," the numerical value of its first syllable 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 of the spiritual "microcosm,"
and the death or dissolution of the physical Universe (its passage into the
realm of the Spiritual)*; so the Dhyan Chohans, called in India Kumara, are
connected with both. Moreover, in the exoteric religions, they have become the
synonyms of the Angels of Darkness. Mara is the God of Darkness, the Fallen
One, and Death**; and yet it is one of the names of Kama, the first god in the
Vedas, the Logos, from whom have sprung the Kumaras, and this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "When the Sun passes away
behind the 30th degree of Makara and will reach no more the sign of the Meenam
(pisces) then the night of Brahma has come." . . .
** Death of every physical thing truly;
but Mara is also the unconscious quickener of the birth of the Spiritual.
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connects them still more with our
"fabulous" Indian Makara, and the crocodile-headed God in Egypt.* The
crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are Five, and the God Toum, the primordial
deity creating the heavenly bodies and the living beings, 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 re-emerge out of the sacred river. All this is highly symbolical,
and shows how primeval esoteric truths found their expression in identical
symbols. But, as Mr. T. Subba Row truly declares, "The veil, that was
dexterously thrown over certain portions of the mystery connected with the (Zodiacal)
signs by the ancient philosophers, will never be fully lifted up for the
amusement or edification of the uninitiated public."
Nor was number five less sacred with
the Greeks. The five words (Panchadasa) of Brahma have become with the Gnostics
the "Five Words" written upon the akasic (shining) garment of Jesus
at his glorification: the words [[ZAMA ZAMA OZZA PAXAMA, OZAI]], translated by
the Orientalists "the robe, the glorious robe of my strength." These
words were, in their turn, the anagrammatic blind of the five mystic powers
represented on the robe of the "resurrected" Initiate after his last
trial of three days' trance; the five becoming seven only after his death, when
the Adept became the full CHRISTOS, the full KRISHNA-VISHNU, i.e., merged in
Nirvana. 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 fac-simile of gold.
It is easy to recognize in the two
spirits -- the Greek accents or signs ([[diagram]]) spoken of by Ragon (vide
supra) -- Atma and Buddhi, or "divine spirit and its vehicle"
(spiritual soul).
The six or the "Senary" is
dealt with later, while the Septenary will be fully treated in the course of
this volume. (Vide the "Mysteries of the Hebdomad.")
The Ogdoad or 8 symbolizes the
eternal and spiral motion of cycles, the 8, [[diagram]], and is symbolized in
its turn by the Caduceus. It shows the regular 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 reproduces itself incessantly under all
shapes and figures in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Osiris is called in the "Book
of the Dead" "Osiris, the double Crocodile." (See Chapter
"On the Names of Osiris," cxlii.) "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.
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every multiplication. It is the sign
of every circumference, since its value in degrees is equal to 9, i.e., to 3 +
6 + 0. It is a bad number under certain 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 informed by a bad or evil spirit.
Ten, or the Decade, brings all these
digits back to unity, and ends the Pythagorean table. Hence this figure --
[[diagram]], unity within zero -- was the symbol of Deity, of the Universe, and
of man. Such is the secret meaning of "the strong grip of the Lion's paw,
of the tribe of Judah" between two hands (the "master mason's
grip"), the joint number of whose fingers is ten.
If we now give our attention to the
Egyptian cross, or the Tau, we may discover this letter, so exalted by
Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, to be mysteriously connected with the Decade. The
tau is the Alpha and the Omega of secret divine Wisdom, which is symbolized by
the initial and the final letter of Thot (Hermes). Thot was the inventor of the
Egyptian alphabet, and the letter tau closed the alphabets of the Jews and the
Samaritans, who called this character the "end" or
"perfection," "culmination" and "security."
Thence -- Ragon tells us -- the words terminus (end), and tectum (roof), are
symbols of shelter and security, which is rather a prosaic definition. But such
is the usual destiny of ideas and things in this world of spiritual decadence,
if also of physical 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
tumbled down into a godling of the fields, a rural god; and history will not
recognize him, while theology makes of him the devil. Yet his seven-piped
flute, the emblem of the seven forces of nature, of the seven planets, the
seven musical notes, of all the septenary harmony, in short, shows well his
primordial character. So with the Cross. Far earlier than the Jews had devised
their golden candlestick of the temple with three sockets on one side and four
on the other, and made of number 7 a feminine number of generation,* thus
introducing
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 three to be counted on the one side and four on the other,
making in all number 7 upon the self-same idea of one in common with the cross
display. Take a line of one unit in breadth by three units long, and place it
on an incline; take another of four units long, and lean it upon this one, from
an opposite incline, making the top unit of the four in length the corner or
apex of a triangle. This is the display of the candlestick. Now take away the
line of three units in length and cross it on the one of four 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).
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the phallic element into religion,
the more spiritually-minded nations had made of the cross (as 3, 4 = 7), their
most sacred divine symbol. In fact, Circle, Cross, and Seven -- the latter
being made a base of circular measurement -- are the first primordial symbols.
Pythagoras, who brought his wisdom from India, left to posterity a glimpse into
this truth. His school regarded number 7 as a compound of numbers 3 and 4,
which they explained in a dual manner. On the plane of the noumenal world, the
triangle was, as the first conception of the manifested Deity, its image:
"Father-Mother-Son"; and the Quaternary, the perfect number, was the
noumenal, ideal root of all numbers and things on the physical plane. Some
students, in view of the sacredness of Tetraktis 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 planes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek delta,
[[diagram]], which was the "vehicle of the unknown Deity." A good proof
of it lies with the name of the Deity beginning with Delta. Zeus was written
[[Deus]], by the Boeotians,* thence the Deus of the Latins. This, in relation
to the metaphysical conception, with regard to the meaning of the Septenary in
the phenomenal world, but for purposes of profane or exoteric interpretation,
the symbolism changed. Three became the ideograph of the three material
elements -- air, water, earth; and four became the principle of all that which
is neither corporeal nor perceptible. But this has never been accepted by the
real Pythagoreans. Viewed as a compound of 6 and 1, the senary and the unity,
number seven was the invisible centre, the spirit of everything (see further
the explanation of 6), as there exists no body with six lines constituting its
form without a seventh being found as the central point in it (see crystals and
snow-flakes in so-called inanimate nature). Moreover, number seven, they said,
has all the perfection of the UNIT -- the number of numbers. For as absolute
unity is uncreated, and impartite (hence number-less) and no number can produce
it, so is the seven: no digit contained within the decade can beget or produce
it. And it is 4, which affords an arithmetical division between unity and
seven, as it surpasses the former 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
above four. (From a MS. supposed to be by "St. Germain.")
"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 Zao, "I
live," and of Zeus, "the father of all living."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Liddell's Greek-English
Lexicon.
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Moreover, figure 6 was the symbol of
the Earth during the autumn and winter "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 physically. The number of the Solar year, 365 in days,
is the numerical value of the word Neilos (Nile). This, together with the Bull,
with the Crescent and the ansated cross between its horns, and the Earth under
its astronomical symbol -- [[diagram]] -- 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,* it was the source of descent,
and held the waters of life" (Unpub. MS.) It was, to put it plainly, the
symbol of the personified Earth, or Isis, regarded 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 poetical 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 was the sun, and the river Nile, and the
tropical year of 365 days; while Isis was the moon, the bed of that river, or
the mother earth "for the parturient energies, of which water was a
necessity," as also the lunar year of 354 days, "the time-maker of
the periods of gestation." All this then is sexual and phallic, and our
modern scholars seem to find in these symbols nothing beyond a physiological or
phallic meaning. Nevertheless, the three figures 365, or the number of days in
a solar year, have but to be read with the Pythagorean Key to find in them a
highly philosophical and moral meaning. One instance will be sufficient. It can
read:
The Earth -- animated by -- the
Spirit of Life.
3. 6. 5.
Simply because 3 is equivalent to the
Greek gamma, or [[G]], which letter is the symbol of gaia (the Earth); while
the figure 6 is the symbol of the animating or informing principle, and the 5
is the universal quintessence which spreads in every direction and forms all
matter. (St. Germain's MS.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It had no such meaning in the
beginnings; nor during the earlier dynasties.
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The few instances and examples
brought forward reveal only one small portion of the methods used to read the
symbolical ideographs and numerals of antiquity. The system being of an extreme
and complex difficulty, very few, even among the Initiates, could master all
the seven keys. Is it to be wondered, then, that the metaphysical gradually
dwindled down into the physical nature; that the Sun, once upon a time the
symbol of DEITY, became, as aeons glided by, that of its creative ardour only;
and that thence it fell into a glyph of phallic significance? But surely, it is
not those whose method was (like Plato's) to proceed from the universals down
to the particulars, who could ever have begun by symbolizing their religions by
sexual emblems! It is quite true, though uttered by that incarnated paradox,
Eliphas Levi, 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 the Hosts of
ITS incarnated beams, called by us Dhyan 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 dogma grew out of the
one root, the root of wisdom, which grows and thrives on the Indian soil. There
is not an Archangel that could not be traced back to its prototype in the
sacred land of Aryavarta. These "prototypes" are all connected with
the Kumaras who appear on the scene of action by refusing -- as Sanatkumara and
Sananda -- to "create progeny." Yet they are called the
"creators" of (thinking) man. More than once they are brought into
connection with Narada -- another bundle of apparent incongruities, yet a wealth
of philosophical tenets. Narada is the leader of the Gandharvas, the celestial
singers and musicians; esoterically, the reason for it is explained by the fact
that the latter (the Gandharvas) are "the instructors of men in the secret
sciences." It is they, who "loving the women of the Earth,"
disclosed to them the mysteries of creation; or, as in the Veda -- the
"heavenly Gandharva" is a deity who knew and revealed the secrets of
heaven and divine truths, in general. If we remember what is said of this class
of Angels in Enoch and in the Bible, then the allegory is plain: their leader,
Narada, while refusing to procreate, leads men to become gods. Moreover, all of
these, as stated in the Vedas, are Chhandaja (will-born) or incarnated (in
different Manvantaras) of their own will; -- and they are shown in exoteric
literature as existing age after age; some being "cursed to be
re-born," others, incarnating as a duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the
seven Kumaras who went to visit Vishnu on the "White Island"
(Sveta-dwipa) the island inhabited by the Maha Yogins -- they are connected
with Sakadwipa and the Lemurians and Atlanteans of the Third and Fourth Races.
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In Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras
(Kumaras, Adityas, Gandharvas, Asuras, etc.) are the highest Dhyan Chohans or
Devas as regards intellectuality. They are those who, owing to their having
acquired by self-development the five-fold nature -- hence the sacredness of
number five -- became independent of the pure Arupa devas. This is a mystery
very difficult to realize and understand correctly. For, we see that those who
were "obedient to law" are, equally with the rebels, doomed to be
reborn in every age. Narada, the Rishi, is cursed by Brahma to incessant
peripateticism on Earth, i.e., to be constantly reborn. He is a rebel against
Brahma, and yet has no worse fate than the Jayas -- the twelve great creative
gods produced by Brahma as his assistants in the functions of creation. For the
latter, lost in meditation, only forgot to create; and for this, they are
equally cursed by Brahma to be born in every manvantara. And still they are
termed -- together with the rebels -- Chhandajas, or those born of their own
will in human form!
All this is very puzzling to one who
is unable to read and understand the Puranas except in their dead letter
sense.* Hence we find the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and cutting the
Gordian knot of perplexity by declaring the whole scheme "figments"
"of Brahminical fancy and love of exaggeration." But to the student
of occultism, the whole is pregnant with deeply philosophical meaning. We willingly
leave the rind to the Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit
for ourselves. We do more: we concede that in one sense much in these so-called
"fables" refers to astronomical allegories about constellations,
asterisms, stars, and planets. Yet, while the Gandharva of the Rig-Veda may
there be made to personify the fire of the Sun, the Gandharva devas are
entities both of a physical and psychic character; while the Apsarasas (with
other Rudras) are both qualities and quantities. In short, if ever unravelled,
the theogony of the Vedic Gods will reveal fathomless mysteries of Creation and
being. Truly says Parasara: "These thirty-three divinities exist age after
age, and their appearance and disappearance is in the same manner as the sun sets
and rises again." (Book I., xv.)
There was a time, when the Eastern
symbol of the Cross and Circle, the Swastica, was universally adopted. With the
esoteric (and, for the matter of that, exoteric) Buddhist, the Chinaman and the
Mongolian, it means "the 10,000 truths." These truths, they say,
belong to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 in it. Still the Keys are
there, deeply buried, yet ever present to him who searches for them.
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mysteries of the 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 Swastica is always
placed -- as the ansated Cross was in Egypt -- on the breasts of the defunct
mystics. It is found on the heart of the images and statues of Buddha, in Tibet
and Mongolia. It is the seal placed also on the hearts of the living Initiates,
burnt into the flesh, for ever, with some. This, because they have to keep
those truths inviolate and intact, in eternal silence and secrecy to the day
these are perceived and read by their chosen successors -- new Initiates --
"worthy of being entrusted with the ten thousand perfections." So
degraded, however, has it now become, that it is often placed on the headgear
of the "gods," the hideous idols of the sacrilegious Bhons, the
Dugpas (Sorcerers) of the Tibetan borderlands; until found out by a Galukpa and
torn off together with the head of the "god;" though it would be
better were it that of the worshipper which was severed from the sinful body.
Still, it can never lose its mysterious properties. Throw a retrospective
glance, and see it used alike by the Initiates and Seers, as by the priests of
Troy (found by Schliemann on the site of that old city). One finds it with the
old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldeans, as well as on the walls of the
old-world cyclopean buildings; in the catacombs of the New world, and in those
of the Old (?), at Rome, where, because the first Christians are supposed to
have concealed themselves and their religion, it is called Crux Dissimulata.
"According to de Rossi, the
Swastica 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 Swastica cross in the catacombs is the sign of an inscription which
reads [['ZOTIKO ZOTIKE]],' 'Vitalis Vitalia,' or 'life of life.' "*
But the best evidence to the
antiquity of the cross is that which is brought forward by the author of
Natural Genesis on page 433.
"The value of the cross,"
says Mr. Massey, "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.** During some six
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Quoted in "The Natural
Genesis" (p. 427, Vol. I.).
** 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.
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AFTER-THOUGHT.
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 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.* During centuries the
cross stood for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It
was made divine at first, and humanized at last."
Few world-symbols are more pregnant
with real occult meaning than the Swastica. It is symbolized by the figure 6;
for, like that figure, it points in its concrete imagery, as the ideograph of
the number does, to the Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and East;
one finds the unit everywhere, and that unit reflected in all and every unit.
It is the emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the
"wheels," and of the Four Elements, the "Sacred Four," in
their mystical, and not alone in their cosmical meaning; further, its four
arms, bent at right angles, are intimately related, as shown elsewhere, to the
Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the
meaning of the Swastica, say the Commentaries, "can trace on it, with
mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhya."
Also "the relation of the Seen to the Unseen," and "the first
procreation of man and species."
To the Eastern Occultist the TREE of
Knowledge in the Paradise of man's own heart, becomes the Tree of Life eternal,
and has nought to do with man's animal senses. It is an absolute mystery that
reveals itself only through the efforts of the imprisoned Manas and the Ego to
liberate themselves from the thraldom of sensuous perception and see, in the
light of the one eternal present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and now far
more to the superficial Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of
materialistic science, there is but one chief explanation of the mysteries of
the Cross -- its sexual element. Even the otherwise spiritualistic modern
commentator discerns in the Cross and Swastica, this feature before all others.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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"The cross was used in Egypt as
a protecting talisman and a symbol of saving power. Typhon, or Satan, is
actually found chained and bound to 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.'* 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 Swastica or four-footed Cross. . . . In
the primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber had the form of a
Cross.** The pagoda of Mathura . . . the birth-place of Krishna, was built in
the form of a Cross . . . . ***
This is perfect and no one can
discern in this "sexual worship," with which the Orientalists love to
break the head of Paganism. But how about the Jews, and the exoteric religions
of some Hindu sects, especially the rites of the Vallabacharyas? For, as said,
the Lingham and Yoni of Siva-worship stand too high philosophically, its modern
degeneration notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the
tree or Cross-worship**** of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can
hardly escape the charge. The "Sons of Sorcerers," "the seed of
the adulterer," as Isaiah calls them (lvii.), never lost an opportunity of
"enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree," which
denotes no metaphysical recreation. It is from these monotheistic Jews that 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 physical form of the
Cross, by all means.
But to the follower of the true
Eastern archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the
Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in
every atom of nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise
the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give life eternal and not physical life
alone. For him the Cross and Circle, the Tree or the Tau, are, after every
symbol relating to these has been applied to, and read one after another, still
a profound mystery in their Past, and it is to that Past alone that he directs
his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be the seed from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Apophis or Apap is the Serpent of
evil, symbol of human passions. The Sun (Osiris-Horus), destroys him, when 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. v. 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, Ritual xviii.).
** So have the crypts in
cis-Himalayan regions where Initiates live, and where their ashes are placed for
seven lunar years.
*** The Natural Genesis, Vol. I. p.
432.
**** The Cross and the Tree are
identical and synonymous in symbolism.
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which grows 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 substance -- that interest him, but rather
the FORCE which directs its growth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown.
For this vital Force, that makes the seed germinate, burst open and throw out
shoots, then form the trunk and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like
the boughs of the Aswattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take
root and procreate other trees -- this is the only FORCE that has reality for
him, as it is the never-dying breath of life. The pagan philosopher sought for
the Cause, the modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in
the latter. What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A-gnostic
care: thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full security
base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to
fathom it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan,
not the antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine did,* is
forthwith regarded by the Church as a heathen: by Science, as a lunatic. This
because, while refusing to worship the god of physical generation, he confesses
that he can know nothing of the Cause which underlies the so-called First
Cause, the causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly admitting the
All-Presence of the boundless Circle and making of it the universal Postulate
upon which the whole of the manifested universe is based, the Sage keeps a
reverential silence concerning that upon which no mortal men should dare to
speculate. "The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the logos (the
verb) of man is the revealer of God," says Eliphas Levi in one of his
paradoxes. To this, the Eastern Occultist would reply:-- "On this
condition, however, that man should be dumb on the CAUSE that produced both God
and its logos. Otherwise, he becomes invariably the reviler, not the
'revealers' of the incognizable Deity."
We have now to approach a mystery --
the Hebdomad in nature. Perchance, all that we may say, will be attributed to
coincidence. We may be told that this number in nature is quite natural (so we
say too), and has no more significance than the illusion of motion which forms
the so-called "Strobic circles." No great importance was given to
these "singular illusions" when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited
them at the meeting of the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should
like to learn the scientific explanation why seven should ever form itself as a
pre-eminent number -- six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings
within one another round a central point, etc., etc. -- in this illusion,
produced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the solution refused
by science in the section which follows.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Sermon the 160th.
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§ XXV.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD.
WE must not close this Part on the
Symbolism of Archaic History, without an attempt to explain the perpetual
recurrence of this truly mystic number in every scripture known to the
Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest to the latest, claims its
presence, and explains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special
dogmas, this is no easy task. We can, therefore, do no better or more
explanatory work than to give a bird's-eye view of all. These sacred numbers
(3, 4, 7) are the sacred numbers of Light, Life, and Union -- especially in
this present manvantara, our Life-cycle; of which number seven is the special
representative, or the Factor number. This has now to be demonstrated.
If one happened to ask a Brahmin
learned in the Upanishads -- so full of the secret wisdom of old, why "he,
of whom seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the moon-plant, is
trisuparna," as Bopaveda is credited with saying; and why the Somapa
Pitris should be worshipped by the Brahmin trisuparna -- very few could answer
the question; or, if they knew, they would still less satisfy one's curiosity.
Let us, then, hold to what the old Esoteric doctrine teaches.
"When the first 'Seven' appeared
on earth, they threw the seed of everything that grows on the land into the
soil. First came three, and four were added to these as soon as stone was
transformed into plant. Then came the second 'Seven,' who, guiding the Jivas of
the plants, produced the middle (intermediate) natures between plant and moving
living animal. The third 'Seven' evolved their Chhayas. . . . The fifth 'Seven'
imprisoned their ESSENCE. . . . Thus man became a Saptaparna."
(Commentary.)
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A.
SAPTAPARNA.
Such is the name given in Occult
phraseology to man. It means as shown elsewhere, a seven-leaved plant, and the
name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under
disguise, in the Greek "myths." The T, or [[diagram]] (tau), formed
from the figure 7, and the Greek letter [[G]] (gamma), was (see § "Cross
and Circle") the symbol of life,
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and of life eternal: of earthly life,
because [[G]] (gamma) is the symbol of the Earth (gaia)*; and of "life
eternal," because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked with
divine life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:--
[[diagram]]
a triangle and a quaternary, the
symbol of septenary MAN.
Now, the number six has been regarded
in the ancient mysteries as an emblem of physical nature. For six is the
representation of the six dimensions of all bodies: the six lines which compose
their form, namely, the four lines extending to the four cardinal points,
North, South, East, and West, and the two lines of height and thickness that
answer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the senary was applied by
the sages to physical man, the septenary was for them the symbol of that man
plus his immortal soul.
Ragon gives in his Maconnerie Occulte
a very good illustration of the "hieroglyphical senary," as he calls
our double equilateral triangle, [[diagram]]. He shows it as the symbol of the
commingling of the "philosophical three fires and the three waters, whence
results the procreation of the elements of all things. The same idea is found
in the Indian equilateral double triangle. For, though it is called in that
country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the Triad (or the
Trimurti). For, even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle [[diagram]]
with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the god of the moist principle
and water ("Nara-yana," or the moving Principle in Nara, water;**)
while the triangle, with its apex upward, [[diagram]] is Siva, the Principle of
Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand. (See the bronze statue of
Tripurantika Siva, "Mahadeva destroying Tripurasura," at the museum
of the India House). It is these two interlaced triangles -- wrongly called
"Solomon's seal," which also form the emblem of our
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Hence the Initiates in Greece
called the Tau [[I]], son of gaia, "sprung from earth," like Tityos
in Odyssey 7, 324.
** See the Mahabharata, e.g., III.,
189, 3, where Vishnu says, "I called the name of water nara in ancient
times, and am hence called Narayana, 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.
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Society -- that produce the Septenary
and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad, whatever way this
sign [[diagram]] is examined, as all the ten numbers are contained therein. For
with a point in the middle or centre, thus [[diagram]] it is a sevenfold sign;
its triangles denote number 3; the two triangles show the presence of the
binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the
quaternary; the six points are the senary; and the central point, the unit; the
quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of two triangles, the even
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 sacred to Venus,
since "the union of the two sexes, and the spagyrisation of matter by
triads are necessary to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and
tendency to reproduction which is inherent in all bodies."*
Belief in "Creators," or
the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a
philosophical necessity. Like all the other planets of our system, the Earth
has seven Logoi -- the emanating rays of the one "Father-Ray" -- the
PROTOGONOS, or the manifested "Logos" -- he who sacrifices his Esse
(or flesh, the Universe) that the world may live and every creature therein
have conscious being.
Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male
and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is the emblem of life eternal in
spirit on its ascending arc, and in matter as the ever resurrecting element --
by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical [[diagram]];
the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or
[[diagram]]. The former (the 3), is invisible; the latter (the 4), is on the
plane of objective perception. This is why all the matter of the Universe, when
analyzed by science to its ultimates, can be reduced to four elements only --
carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen: and why the three primaries, the
noumenoi of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a terra
incognita and mere speculations, names, to exact Science. Her servants must
believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom
the nature 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.** As those Alche-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "Potency of the Pythagorean
Triangles" (Ragon).
** There are learned Brahmins who
have protested against our septenary division. They are right from their own
standpoint, as we are right from ours. Leaving the [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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mists have it:-- "When the Three
and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its middle nature with that
of the Triangle," (or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces
becoming the middle face of the other), "and becomes a cube; then only
does it (the cube unfolded) become the vehicle and the number of LIFE, the
Father-Mother SEVEN."
The following diagram will perhaps
assist the student to grasp these parallelisms.
HUMAN PRINCIPLES. [[diagram]]
PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICAL NATURE.
VII. . . . . ATMA.
VI. . . . . BUDDHI.
V. . . . . . MANAS.
IV. Kama-rupa, the principle of
animal desire, which burns fiercely during life in matter, resulting in
satiety: it is inseparable from animal existence.
HYDROGEN
The lightest of all gases: it burns
in oxygen giving off the most intense heat of any substance in combustion, and
forming Water, the most stable of compounds; Hydrogen enters largely into all
organic compounds.
III. Linga-Sarira; the inert vehicle
or form on which the body is moulded; the vehicle of Life. It is dissipated
very shortly after the disentigration of the body.
NITROGEN
An inert gas; the vehicle with which
Oxygen is mixed to adapt the latter for animal respiration; it also enters
largely into all organic substances.
II. Prana, LIFE, the active power
producing all vital phenomena.
OXYGEN
The supporter of combustion the
life-giving gas; the active chemical agent in all organic life.
I. The gross Matter of the body, the
substance formed and moulded over the Liga-sarira (Chhaya) by the action of
Prana.
CARBON
The fuel par excellence; the basis of
all organic substances; the (chemical) element which forms the largest variety
of compounds.
Now we are taught that all these
earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of numbers. From
minerals or "soft
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] three aspects, or adjunct principles out of calculation, they accept
only four Upadhis (bases) including the Ego -- the reflected image of the Logos
in the "Karana Sarira" -- and even "strictly speaking . . . .
only three Upadhis." For purely theoretical metaphysical philosophy, or
purposes of meditation, these three may be sufficient, as shown by the Taraka
Yoga system; but for practical occult teaching our septenary division is the
best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of school and choice.
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stones that hardened" (Stanza)
followed by the "hard plants that softened," which are the product of
the mineral, for "it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is
born" (Commentary, Book IX., F. 19); and then to man -- all the primitive
models in every kingdom of nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films.
This, of course, takes place only in the first 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 the mammalian animals* in the Fourth Round.
Virgil, versed as every ancient poet
was, more or less, in esoteric philosophy, sang evolution in the following
strains:--
Principio coelum ac terras, camposque
liquentes
Lucentemque globum lunae, Titaniaque
astra*
SPIRITUS intus alit; totamque infusa
per artus
MENS agitat molem, et magno se
corpore miscet
Inde Hominum pecudumque genus, etc.**
(AEneid VI. )
"First came three, or the
triangle." This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, and the
fact is corroborated in mineralogy, botany, and even in geology, as was
demonstrated in the section on "Ancient Chronology," by the compound
number seven, the three and the four being in it. Salt in solution proves it.
For when its molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a
solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and
cones. It is the figure of fire, whence the word "pyramids"; while
the second geometrical figure in manifested Nature is a square or a cube, 4 and
6; for, "the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are
pyramidal" truly -- (Enfield). The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the
pines -- the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites
in cosmic nature -- fire and water, heat and cold -- begin their metrographical
manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the
stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them
a double or a treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature
star within the larger one. Says Mr.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Palaeozoic than the Cenozoic ages. Smaller
marsupial mammalia are contemporary with the huge reptilian monsters of the
Secondary.
** "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.
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Darwin, in his "Descent of
Man," p. 164. showing that the inhabitants of the sea-shore are greatly
affected 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," etc. . . "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."
(Bartlett's "Land and Water.")
This number is closely connected with
the moon, whose occult influence is ever manifesting itself in septenary
periods. It is the moon which is the guide of the occult side of terrestrial
nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life; (See also
Vol. I., Part II.), and this truth was ever evident to the Seers and the
adepts. Jacob Boehme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven
properties of everlasting mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great
Occultist.
But to return to the consideration of
the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the metrological key to the
symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the geometrical relations
of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral
emanations of the divine area, 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, its population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.
Now bearing in mind the Septenary
division in divine Hierarchies, as in Cosmic 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 [[diagram]],
triad -- of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female angle --
emanates the [[diagram]] Quaternary. The latter symbolizing by itself the
"Heavenly Man," the sexless Adam-Kadmon viewed as Nature in the abstract,
becomes a septenate again by emanating from itself the additional three
principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested 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 lower creative Sephiroth are seven.
The above is not directly to our
point, though it is a necessary
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reminder to facilitate the
comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to 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 Four letters -- in his
theogonic and Kabalistic aspects.
(c) Noah -- identical with the Hindu
Sishta, the human seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous
creation or Manvantara, as expressed in the Puranas, or the pre-diluvian period
as rendered allegorically in the Bible -- in his Cosmic character.
But whether a Quaternary
(Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the Bible Creative God is not the Universal 10,
unless blended with AIN-SOPH (as Brahma with Parabrahm), but a septenary, one of
the many Septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the
question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by
placing the 3, [[diagram]],and 4, [[diagram]] on parallel lines with the
"Cosmic" and "Human" principles. For the latter, the old
familiar classification is made use of. Thus:--
HUMAN ASPECTS, OR PRINCIPLES.
COSMIC ASPECTS, OR PRINCIPLES.
[[diagram]]
Triple aspect of the Deity.
1. Universal Spirit (Atma)
1. The Unmanifested Logos
2. Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)
2. Universal (latent) Ideation*
3. Human Soul, Mind (Manas)
3. Universal (or Cosmic) active**
Intelligence
[[diagram]]
Spirit of the Earth.
Jehovah.***
4. Animal Soul (Kama-Rupa)
4. Cosmic (Chaotic) Energy
Noah.
5. Astral Body (Linga Sarira)
5. Astral Ideation, reflecting
terrestrial things.
Space containing Life -- the Waters
of the Deluge.
6. Life Essence (Prana)
6. Life Essence or Energy
Mount Ararat.****
7. Body (Sthula Sarira)
7. The Earth.
As an additional demonstration of the
statement, let the reader turn to scientific works. "Ararat = the mount of
descent = [[hebrew]], Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of composition by Areth
= [[hebrew]]. Editor
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
NOTE. -- For footnotes, see next
page.
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of Moses Cherenensis says: 'By this,
they say, is signified the first place of descent (of the ark).' (Bryant's
Anal., Vol. IV., pages 5, 6, 15.) Under "Berge" mountain, Nork says
of Ararat: [[hebrew]], for [[hebrew]] (i.e., Ararat for Arath) EARTH, Aramaic
reduplication.' Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of the same
equivalent in Arath, with the meaning of Earth."*****
Noah thus symbolizing both the
Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power which developed the planetary chain,
and our earth, and the Seed Race (the Fifth) which was saved while the last
sub-races of the Fourth perished -- Vaivasvata Manu -- the number Seven will be
seen to recur at every step. It is he (Noah), who represents, as Jehovah's
permutation, the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or
Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence verses 2 and 3 of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Adwaitee Vedantic philosophy
classifies this as the highest trinity, or rather the Trinitarian aspect of
Chinmatra (Parabrahmam), explained by them as the "bare potentiality of
Pragna" -- the power or the capacity that gives rise to perception;
Chidakasam, the infinite field or plane of Universal Consciousness; and Asath
(Mulaprakriti), or undifferentiated matter. (See "Personal and Impersonal
God" in "Five Years of Theosophy.")
** Differentiated matter existing in
the Solar System (let us not touch the whole Kosmos) in seven different
conditions, and Pragna, or the capacity of perception, existing likewise in
seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter, there
must necessarily be seven states of consciousness in man; and according to the
greater or smaller development of these states, the systems of religions and
philosophies were schemed out.
*** Represented as the jealous,
angry, turbulent and ever active-god, revengeful, and kind only to his chosen
people when propitiated by them.
**** Noah and his three Sons are the
collective symbol of this Quaternary in many and various applications, Ham
being the Chaotic principle.
***** "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]]. The root derivations are the same with
those of Ararat, of acre, of earth." As by Hebrew metrology "Jared,
[[hebrew]] is, literally in British Y R D; hence in Jared is to be found
literally our English word yard (and also [[hebrew]], 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 co-ordination, through the yard, or jared, who
thus was its father, in or through Enoch; and truly enough, 1296 = yard (or
jared) x 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.
p. 65). 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.
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chapter vii. of Genesis, "Of
every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male (3), and the
female (4); of fowls also of the air by sevens," etc., etc., followed by
all the sevening of days and the rest.
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B.
THE TETRAKTIS IN RELATION TO THE
HEPTAGON.
Thus Number Seven, as a compound of 3
and 4, is the factor element in every ancient religion, because it is the
factor element in nature. Its adoption must be justified, and it must be shown
to be the number par excellence, for, since the appearance of "Esoteric
Buddhism," frequent objections have been made, and doubts expressed as to
the correctness of these assertions.
And here let the student be told at
once, that in all such numerical divisions the ONE universal Principle, --
although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One -- never enters into
the calculations. IT stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite,
and the universal abstraction, entirely by ITSELF and independent of every
other Power whether noumenal or phenomenal. IT "is neither matter nor
spirit; IT is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and IT is neither object nor
subject," says the author of "Personal and Impersonal God," and
adds:--
"In the language of Hindu
philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha (Spirit) and
Prakriti (matter). As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the
product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than an illusion, and
Purusha is the only reality; it is the ONE existence which remains in the
universe of Ideas. This . . . then, is the Parabrahm of the Adwaitees. . . .
."
"Even if there were to be a
personal God with anything like a material upadhi (physical basis of whatever
form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee 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 ideation ceases during Pralaya. There is only one
permanent condition in the Universe, which is the state of perfect
unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (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 Parabrahmam by
the Adwaitees."*
Being itself entirely out of human
reckoning or calculation, yet this "huge aggregation of various states of
consciousness" is a Septenate,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Five Years of
Theosophy," Art. "Personal and Impersonal God."
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in its totality entirely composed of
Septenary groups; simply because "the capacity of perception exists in
seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter"
(ibid), or the seven properties, or states, or conditions of matter. And,
therefore, number 1 down to number 7 begins in the esoteric calculations with
the first manifested principle, which is number one if we commence from above,
and the seventh when reckoning from below, or from the lowest Principle.
The Tetrad is esteemed in the Kabala,
as it was by Pythagoras, the most perfect, or rather sacred number, because it
emanated from the one, the first manifested Unit, or rather the three in one.
Yet the latter has been ever impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though
within the possibility of the higher mental perceptions.
The first manifestation of the
eternal monad was never meant to stand as the symbol of another symbol, the
UNBORN for the Element-born, or the one LOGOS for the Heavenly man.
Tetragrammaton, or the Tetractys of the Greeks, is the Second logos, the
Demiurgos. The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thought (vide the "Pythagorean
Triangle"), "is the animal itself of Plato, who, as Syrianus justly
observes, was the best of the Pythagoreans; it 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." "The
Pythagorean world," Plutarch tells us (in De anim. procr., 1027)
"consisted of a double quaternary." This statement corroborates what
is said about the choice, by the exoteric theologies, of the lower Tetraktis.
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 rizomata, the
roots or principles of all mixed bodies," i.e., the lower Tetraktis 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!
"Thus number four forms the
arithmetical mean between the monad and the heptad, as this contains 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
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cube, form and matter, flow from one
fountain, the tetragon (on earth) the monad (in heaven) . . . . " (See
Reuchlin, "Cabala" 1, ii.).
Here Reuchlin, the great authority on
the Kabala, shows the cube to be matter, whereas the pyramid or the triad is
"form." With the Hermesians the number four becomes the symbol of
truth only when amplified into a cube, which, unfolded, makes seven, as
symbolizing the male and female elements and the element of LIFE.*
Some students have been puzzled to
account for the vertical line, which is male, becoming (vide infra) in the
cross a four-partitioned line -- four being a female number, while the
horizontal (the line of matter) becomes three-divisioned. But this is easy of
explanation. Since the middle face of the cube unfolded is common to both the
vertical and the horizontal bar, or double-line, it becomes neutral ground so
to say, and belongs to neither. The spirit line remains triadic, and the matter
line two-fold -- two being an even and therefore a female number also.
Moreover, according to Theon, the Pythagoreans who gave the name of Harmony to
the Tetraktis, "because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia" -- were
of opinion that "the division of the canon of the monochord was made by
the tetraktis in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a
sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a double, 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." Moreover, the
quaternary though an even, therefore a female ("infernal") number,
varied according to its form. This is shown by Stanley (in Pythag. p. 61). The
4 was called by the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In the "Hebrew Egyptian
Mystery, the Source of Measures," the Author shows (on p. 50) 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)
(CUBE UNFOLDED)
[[diagram]]
. . . 4 for the upright and 3 for the
cross bar making seven in all," -- 4 for the upright, and 3 for the --
adding -- "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 [[diagram]] as
the symbol of man, generation and life. In Egypt ank signified soul, life and
blood. It is the ensouled, living man, the Septenary.
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Pythagoreans the Key-Keeper of
Nature; but in union with the 3, which made it seven, it became the most
perfect and harmonious number -- nature herself. The four was "the
Masculine of Feminine 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 and Music of the Spheres, calling "a tone"
the distance of the Moon from the Earth; from the Moon to Mercury half a tone,
from thence to Venus the same; from Venus to the Sun l 1/2 tones; from the Sun
to Mars a tone; from thence to Jupiter 1/2 a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn 1/2 a
tone; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones -- the diapason
harmony. All the melody of nature is in those seven tones, and therefore is
called "the Voice of Nature."
Plutarch explains (de Plac. Phil., p.
878) that the Achaean Greeks regarded the tetrad as the root and principle of
all things, since it was the number of the elements which gave birth to all
visible and invisible created things. With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the
figure of the Cross, or Cube unfolded, formed the subject of a disquisition in
one of the theosophic degrees of Peuret, and was treated according to the
fundamental principles of light and darkness, or good and evil.
"The intelligible world proceeds
out of the divine mind (or unit) after this manner. The Tetraktis 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, 'deum domus alta,' whose top is UNITY, its wall trinity, and its
superficies quaternity." (Reuchlin, Cabala, p. 689).
The "superficies" has thus
to remain a meaningless surface, if left by itself. UNITY only
"illuminating" quaternity; the famous lower four has to build for
itself also a wall from trinity, if it would be manifested. Moreover, the
tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus, is "Jehovah" arrogating to himself
very improperly the "Was, Is, Will be," now translated into the
"I am that I am," and interpreted as referring to the highest
abstract Deity, while esoterically and in plain truth, it means only
periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal MATTER with all its
potentialities. For the Tetragrammaton is one with Nature or Isis, and is the
exoteric series of androgyne gods such as Osiris-Isis, Jove-Juno, Brahma-Vach,
or the Kabalistic Jah-hovah; all male-females. Every anthropomorphic god, in
old nations, as Marcelinus Vicinus well observed,
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has his name written with four
letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut; the Arabs, Alla; the Persians,
Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mohammedans, Abdi; the Greeks, Theos; the ancient
Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which J. Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott;
the Sarmatian, Bouh, etc., etc.
The Monad being one, and an odd
number, the ancients therefore called the odd, the only perfect numbers; and --
selfishly, perhaps, yet as a fact -- considered them all as masculine and
perfect, being applicable to the celestial gods, while even numbers, such as
two, four, six, and especially eight, as being female, were regarded as
imperfect, and given only to the terrestrial and infernal deities. In his
eighth eclogue, Virgil records the fact by saying, "Numero deus impare
gaudet," "Unequal numbers please the gods."
But number seven, or the heptagon,
the Pythagoreans considered to be a religious and perfect number. It was called
"Telesphoros," because by it all in the Universe and mankind is led
to its end, i.e., its culmination (Philo. de Mund. opif.). Being under the rule
of seven sacred planets,* the doctrine of the Spheres shows, from Lemuria to
Pythagoras, the seven powers of terrestrial and sublunary nature, as well as
the seven great Forces of the Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones,
which are the seven notes of the musical scale. The heptad (our Septenary) was
regarded "as the number of a virgin, because it is unborn" (like the
Logos or the "Aja" of the Vedantins); "without a father or a
mother, but proceeding directly from the Monad, which is the origin and crown
of all things." (Pythag. Triangle, p. 174.) And if the heptad is made to
proceed from the Monad directly, then it is, as taught in the Secret Doctrine
of the oldest schools, the perfect and sacred number of this Maha-Manvantara of
ours.
The septenary, or heptad, was sacred
indeed to several gods and goddesses; to Mars, with his seven attendants, to
Osiris, whose body was divided into seven and twice seven parts; to Apollo (the
Sun), between his seven planets, and playing the hymn to the seven-rayed on his
seven-stringed harp; to Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others.
Cis-Himalayan Occultism with its
sevening, and because of such sevening, must be regarded as the most ancient,
the original of all. It is opposed by some fragments left by Neo-Platonists;
and the admirers of the latter, who hardly understand what they defend, say to
us: "See, your forerunners believed only in triple man, composed of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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Spirit, Soul, and body. Behold, the
Taraka Raja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, we, to 4, and the
Vedantins to 5 (koshas)." To this, we of the Archaic school, ask:--
Why then does the Greek poet say that
"it is not four but SEVEN who sing the praise of the Spiritual Sun,"
[[HEPTA ME]]? He says--
"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 yet the triad and tetradic
symbols come under one unified name with the Christians -- the Jehovah of the
seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Sheba is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktis)
identical with number 7; or, as Mr. G. Massey has it, "taking an oath was
synonymous with 'to seven,' and the 10 expressed by the letter Yod, was the
full number of IAO-SABAOTH, the ten-lettered God"? In Lucian's Auction,
Pythagoras asks, "How do you reckon?" The reply is, "One, Two,
Three, Four." "Then, do you see," says Pythagoras, "in what
you conceive FOUR there are Ten; then, a perfect triangle and our Oath
(tetraktis, four!)," or Seven. Why does Proclus say in Timaeus, c. iii. --
"The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetractys as the fountain
of perennial nature"?
Simply because those Western
Kabalists who quote the exoteric proofs against us have no idea of the real
esoteric meaning. Because all the ancient Cosmologies -- the oldest
Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the Fifth Root Race, the Hindu
Aryans and the Egyptians, adding to them the early Chinese races (the remnants
of the Fourth or Atlantean Race) -- based the whole of their mysteries on
number 10: the higher triangle standing for the invisible and metaphysical
world, the lower three and four, or the Septenate, for the physical realm. It
is not the Jewish Bible that brought number seven into prominence. Hesiod used
the words "The seventh is the sacred day," before the Sabbath of
"Moses" was ever heard of. The use of number seven was never confined
to any one nation. This is well testified by the seven vases in the temple of
the Sun, near the ruins of Babion in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning
continually for ages before the altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the
Arabians; the seven peninsulas, the seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and
rivers of India; and of the Zohar (See Ibn Gebirol); the Jewish Sephiroth of
the Seven splendours; the seven Gothic deities, the seven worlds of the
Chaldeans and their seven Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod
and Homer; and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every
MS. they discover.
What we have to say finally is this:
Enough has been brought forward to show why the human principles were and are
divided in the
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esoteric schools into seven. Make it
four and it will either leave man minus his lower terrestrial elements, or, if
viewed from a physical stand-point, make of him a soulless animal. The
Quaternary must be the higher or the lower -- the celestial or terrestrial Tetraktis:
to become comprehensible, according to the teachings of the esoteric ancient
school man must be regarded as a Septenary. This was so well understood, that
even the so-called Christian Gnostics had adopted this time-honoured system
(Vide § on "The Seven Souls"). This remained for a long time secret
as, though suspected, no MSS. of that time spoke of it clearly enough to
satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the literary curiosity of
our age -- the oldest and best preserved gospel of the Gnostics, Pistis Sophia
[[Pictic Cophia]]. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall quote from
an authority (C. W. King) -- the only archaeologist who had a faint glimmer of
this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the day 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,* just as our school teaches. It is composed of
seven elements, four of which are borrowed from the four Kabalistical
manifested worlds. Thus "from Asia 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, and from Aziluth it obtains the
Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life;" (King). "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 AEons of the Spheres,
being the Power -- a particle of the Divine light ("Divinae particula aurae")
yet left in themselves; the Soul (the fifth) "formed out of the tears of
their eyes, and the sweat of their torments; the [[Antimimon Prieumatos]],
Counterfeit of the Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience), (the sixth);
and lastly the [[Moira]], Fate** (Karmic Ego), whose
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
Devaki killed before the birth of Krishna by Kamsa. 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 Jivanmukta, and centre ourselves
entirely in the highest, the Seventh or the ONE.
** [[Moira]] is destiny, not
"Fate," in this case, as it is an appellation, not a proper noun.
(See Wolf's transl. in Odyssey 22, 413). But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a
deity [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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,
etc."* -- the SEVENTH!
-------
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 bring our best evidence to testify to the
facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig-Vedic hymns are
none the less suggestive. The seven rays of Surya (the Sun) are made therein parallel
to the Seven Worlds (of every planetary chain), to the seven rivers of heaven
and earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the Seven
men, or primitive human groups. The Seven ancient Rishis -- the progenitors of
all that 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, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the FATHERS, or
the ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Aswins, the Adityas
(Rig-Veda III., 54, 16, II., 29, 3, 4), are all synonymous with that
"sacrificer," or the fathers, variously called Pitar (Pitris,
fathers), Angirases** (Ibid, 1, 31, 17, 139, et seq.), the Sadhyas,
"divine sacrificers," the most occult of all. They are all called
deva putra rishayah or "the Sons of God" (X., 62; 1, 4). The
"sacrificers," moreover, are collectively the ONE sacrificer, the
father of the gods, Visvakarman, who performed the great Sarva-Medha ceremony,
and ended by sacrificing himself. (See Rig-Vedic Hymns.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] "who like [[Aisa]] gives to all their portion of good and
evil," and is therefore Karma (Vide Liddell). By this abbreviation,
however, the subject to Destiny or Karma is meant, the SELF or Ego, and that
which is reborn. Nor is [[Antimimon Pneumatos]] our conscience, but our Buddhi;
nor is it again the "counterfeit of Spirit" but "modelled
after," or a counterpart of the Spirit -- which Buddhi is, as the vehicle
of Atma (Vide Ar. Theism, 17; and Liddell's definitions).
* C. W. King's Gnostics, p. 38.
** Prof. Roth (in Peter's Lexicon)
defines the Angirases as an intermediate race of higher beings between gods and
men; while Prof. Weber, according to his invariable custom of modernising and
anthropomorphising the divine, sees in them the original priests of the
religion which was common to the Aryan Hindus and Persians. Roth is right.
"Angirases" was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors
("guru-deva"), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth
Race Initiates.
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In these Hymns the "Heavenly Man" is
called purusha, "the Man," (X. 90, 1) from whom Viraj was born (X.
90, 5); and from Viraj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna (now drawn from his
sublime position to be the chief of the lords-Dhyanis or Devas) who regulates
all natural phenomena, who "makes a path for the Sun, for him to
follow." The seven rivers of the sky (the descending creative gods) and
the seven rivers of the earth (the seven primitive mankinds) are under his
control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna's laws (Vratani,
"courses of natural action," active laws) is punished by Indra (X.
113, 5), the Vedic powerful god, whose Vrata (law or power) is greater than the
Vratani of any other god.
Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all
the known ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the occult teachings in
almost every respect. Its hymns -- 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) allegorising them by the "seven
streams" (1, 35, 8); and of the Five Races ("panca krishtayah")
which have already inhabited this world (ibid) on the five regions "panca
pradicah" (IX, 86, 29), as also of the three continents that were.*
It is those scholars only who will
master the secret meaning of the Purushasukta (in which the intuition of the
modern Orientalist has chosen to see "one of the very latest hymns of the
Rig-Veda"), who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings
and how corroborative of the Esoteric doctrines. One must study in all the
abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning the relations in it between the
(Heavenly) man "Purusha," SACRIFICED for the production of the
Universe and all in it (See Visvakarman), and the terrestrial mortal man (Hymn
X. 20, 1, 16), before one realizes the hidden philosophy of this verse:--
"15. He ("Man,"
purusha, or Visvakarman) 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 antiquity of the Vedas, who knew of no other, probably in this
earliest oral teachings; and also
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Three submerged, or otherwise
destroyed, continents -- the first "continent" of the First Race
prevailing to the last and existing to this day -- are described in the occult
Doctrine, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting the 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 -- 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.
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to the seven primeval groups of
mankind, as Visvakarman represents divine humanity collectively.*
The same doctrine is found reflected
in the other old religions. It may, and must have come down to us disfigured
and misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsis, who read it in their Vendidad
and elsewhere, without understanding the allusions they contain any better than
the Orientalists do; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works.
(See the enumeration of the seven spheres --not the "Karshvare of the
earth," as believed -- in Fargard XIX., 30). But see further on.
Comparing the esoteric teaching with
the interpretations by James Darmesteter (the Vendidad, edited by Prof. Max
Muller), one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the cause that
produced it. The passage runs thus:--
"The Indo-Iranian Asura (Ahura)
was often conceived as seven-fold; by the play of certain mythical (?) formulae
and the strength of certain mythical (?) numbers, the ancestors of the
Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,** and the Supreme God was
often made seven-fold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled." (Vide
the foot note). "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.*** Parsi mythology knows
also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm.
Ahr. § 72. "Vendidad Introd. p. Lx.,)" and the same division and doctrine
is to be found in the oldest and most revered of the Hindu
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 the Occultists do -- namely, in the sense of their essential and original
homogeneity and their origin from one and the same source:-- e.g., Negroes,
Aryans, Mongols, etc., have all originated in the same way and from the same
ancestors. The latter were all of one essence, yet differentiated, because
belonging to seven planes which differed in degree though not in kind. That
original physical difference was but 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.).
** The seven worlds are, as said, the
seven spheres of the chain, each presided over by one of the "Seven great
gods" of every religion. When the latter 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.
*** The six invisible globes of our
chain are both "worlds" and "earths" as is our own, albeit
invisible. But where could be the Six invisible earths on this globe?
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scriptures -- the Rig-veda. Mention
is made therein of six worlds, besides our earth: the six rajamsi above
prithivi -- the earth, -- or "this" (idam) as opposed to that which
is yonder (i.e., the six globes on the three other planes or worlds). (See
Rig-veda I. 34, III. 56; VII 10, 411, and V., 60. 6).
The italics are ours to point out the
identity of the tenets with those of the esoteric doctrine, and the mistake
made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other people believed in;
namely, in seven "worlds" or globes of our planetary chain, of which
only one is accessible to man (at the present time), our Earth; and in the
successive appearance 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., etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now
Secret Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities under
Septenary division, that made the Orientalists (led astray, moreover, by the
oblivion of both the uninitiated Hindus and Parsis of their primitive doctrines)
feel so puzzled by this ever-recurring seven-fold number, as to regard it as
"mythical." It is that oblivion of the first principles which has led
the Orientalists off the right track and made them commit the greatest
blunders. The same failure is found in the definition of the Gods. Those who
are ignorant of the esoteric doctrine of the earliest Aryans, can never
assimilate or understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these
BEINGS.
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and
synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas (or Amshaspends), and, therefore, an
Amesha Spenta himself. Just as "Jehovah-Binah Arelim" was the head
and synthesis of the Elohim and no more; so Agni-Vishnu-Surya was the synthesis
and head, or the focus whence emanated in physics as in metaphysics, from the
Spiritual as from 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 after the loss of the primeval secrets, the sinking of Atlantis, or
"the Flood," and the occupation of India by the Brahmans, who sought
safety on the summits of the Himalayas, when even the high table-lands of what
is now Tibet became submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as
"the Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the corporeal World" in the
Vendidad. "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
Manasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed 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 signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows
it to be.
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When geology shall have found out how
many thousands of years ago the disturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached
the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf
made one with it, then only will they know the age of the Aryan Brahminical
nation, and the time of its descent into the plains of Hindostan, which it did
millenniums later.
Yima, the so-called "first
man" in the Vendidad, as much as his twin-brother Yama, the Son of
Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of the Universal History. He is the
"Progenitor" of the Second human Race, hence the personification of
the shadows of the Pitris, and the father of the postdiluvian Humanity. The
Magi said "Yima," as we say "man" when speaking of mankind.
The "fair Yima," the first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is
the first "man" who dies or disappears, not the first who is born.
The "Son of Vixanghat," was, like the Son of Vaivasvata, the
symbolical man, who stood in esotericism as the representative of the first
three races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these races the first two
never died* but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the third knew
death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its
"Fall" into generation. This is plainly alluded to in the II. Fargard
of the Vendidad. Yima refuses to become the bearer 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." And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and
"watch over his world" (3 and 4).
He refuses to become the priest of
Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest and sacrificer, but he accepts the
second proposal. He is made to answer:--
"Yes! . . . yes, I will 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 sovereignty, and 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," etc. (300 winters mean 300 periods
or cycles.)
"Replenished," mark well,
that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven the
knowledge of the doctrine about the successive destructions of the world and
its life cycles. Once the "300 winters" were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima
that the earth is becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima
steps forward, and with the help of Spenta Armaita (the female genius, or
Spirit of the Earth) makes that earth stretch out and become larger by
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Death came only after man had
become a physical creature, vide supra. The men of the First Race and also of
the Second, dissolved and disappeared in their progeny.
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one-third, after which "new
herds and flocks and men" appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and
Yima makes the earth by the same magic power to become larger by two-thirds.
"Nine hundred winters" pass away, and Yima has to perform the
ceremony for the third time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes
of stretching the earth, refer to the three successive continents and races
issuing 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 fatal winters are
going to fall, and all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for
the "flood," and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away
every race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a vara (an
enclosure, an ark) under the God's direction, and brings thither the seed of
every living creature, animals and "fires."
It is of this "earth" or
new continent that Zarathustra became the law-giver and ruler. This was the
Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till
then, as said (vide supra, foot note) there had been no regular death, but only
a transformation, for men had no personality as yet. They had monads -- breaths
of the ONE Breath, and as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded.
They had bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence
Karmaless. Therefore, as there was no Kamaloka -- least of all Nirvana or even
Devachan -- for the "souls" of men who had no personal Egos, there could
be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the Phoenix,
primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new body. Each time, and with
each new generation, he became more solid, more physically perfect, agreeably
with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came with the
complete physical organism, and with it -- moral decay.
This explanation shows one more old
religion agreeing in its symbology with the universal Doctrine.
Elsewhere the oldest Persian
traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, are given, and
some of them explained. Mankind did not 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-nihilo -- an
absurdity -- and a superhuman Creator or creators -- a fact -- are made away
with by science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences
(rather fewer from a scientific point of view) than monogenism does.
Nevertheless, it is as scientific as
any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott's and Gliddon's "Types of
Mankind," Agassiz declares
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his belief in an indefinite number of
"primordial races of men created separately"; and remarks that,
"whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man,
in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms one and the same human
being."
Occultism defines and limits the
number of primordial races to seven, because of the "seven
progenitors," or prajapatis, the evolvers of beings. These are neither
gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from another and lower
planet, reborn on this one, and giving birth in their turn in the present Round
to present Humanity. This doctrine is again corroborated by one of its echoes
-- the Gnostic. In their Anthropology and Genesis of man they taught that
"a certain company of Seven angels," formed the first men, who were
no better than senseless, gigantic, shadowy forms -- "a mere wriggling
worm" (!) writes Irenaeus (I., 24, 1), who takes, as usual, the metaphor
for reality.
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D.
THE SEPTENARY IN THE EXOTERIC WORKS.
We may now examine other ancient
Scriptures and see whether they contain the septenary classification, and, if
so, to what degree.
As much, if not much more, even than
in the Jewish Bible, scattered about in the thousands of Sanskrit texts, some
still unopened, others yet unknown, as well as in all the Puranas, the numbers
seven and forty-nine (7 x 7) play a most prominent part. They are found from
the Seven creations in Chapter I., down to the seven rays of the Sun at the
final Pralaya, which expand into Seven Suns and absorb the material of the
whole Universe. Thus the Matsya Purana 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." Then again the same Purana
shows that "in all the Manvantaras, classes of Rishis* appear by seven and
seven, and having established a code of law and morality depart to
felicity" -- the Rishis representing many other things besides living
Sages.
In Hymn xix., 53, of Atharva Veda
(Dr. Muir's translation) one reads:--
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "These are the seven persons
by whom in the several Manvantaras" -- says Parasara -- "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 Vis 'to enter' or
'pervade,' for all the gods, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the Sons of the Manu,
the Indras, all are but the impersonated potencies (Vibhutayah) of Vishnu"
(Vish. Purana). 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 Brahmins, at all events.
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"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' " . . . .
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 incognizable THAT, which can be sensed
only through its seven rays -- which are the Seven Creations, the Seven Worlds,
the Seven Laws," etc., etc., etc. . . .
Remembering that the Puranas insist
on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space*; 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 mystic and occult Force that gives the impulse to, and
regulates the course of the stars and planets) is septenary. The Kurma and
Linga Puranas enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the
principles of Cosmic Space. They are intimately connected with Dhruva** (now
Alpha), the Pole-Star, which is connected in its turn with the production of
various phenomena through cosmic forces.
Thus, from the Seven Creations, seven
Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc., etc. in the Aryan Scriptures, the
number has passed through Indian, Egyptian, Chaldaic, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and
finally Christian mystic thought, until it landed in and remained impressed
indelibly on every 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 remem-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vishnu is all -- the worlds, the
stars, the seas, etc., etc. "Vishnu is all that is, all that is not . . .
. but is not Vastubhuta," "a substance" (Vishnu Purana, Book II.
ch. xii). "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."
** Therefore it is said in the
Puranas that the view of Dhruva (the polar star) at night, and of the celestial
porpoise (Sisumara, a constellation) "expiates whatever sin has been
committed during the day." The fact is that the rays of the four stars in
the circle of perpetual apparition -- the Agni, Mahendra, Kasyapa, and Dhruva,
placed in the tail of Ursa Minor (Sisumara) -- focussed in a certain way and on
a certain object produce extraordinary results. The astro-magians of India will
understand what is meant.
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brance 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 thousand times seven copies of them in later aeons.
The mysterious number is once more
prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The Vayu Purana shows, and
Harivansa corroborates, that the Maruts -- the oldest as the most
incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower gods in the Rig Veda --
"are born in every manvantara (Round) seven times seven (or 49); that in
each Manvantara, four times seven (or twenty-eight) they obtain emancipation,
but their places are filled up by persons reborn in that character." What
are the Maruts in their esoteric meaning, and who those persons "reborn in
that character"? In the Rig and other Vedas, the Maruts are represented as
the storm gods and the friends and allies of Indra; they are the "Sons of
heaven and of earth." This led to an allegory that makes them the children
of Siva, the great patron of the Yogis, "the MAHA-YOGI, the great ascetic,
in whom is centred the highest perfection of austere penance and abstract
meditation, by which the most unlimited powers are obtained, marvels and
miracles are worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union
with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained." In the Rig
Veda the name Siva is unknown, but the god is called Rudra, which is a word
used for Agni, the fire god, the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the
Ramayana and the Puranas, their mother, Diti -- the sister, or complement of,
and a form of Aditi -- anxious to obtain a son who would destroy Indra, is told
by Kasyapa the Sage, that "if, with thoughts wholly pious and person
entirely pure, she carrys the babe in her womb for a hundred years" she
will get such a son. But Indra foils her in the design. With his thunderbolt he
divides the embryo in her womb into seven portions, and then divides every such
portion into seven pieces again, which become the swift-moving deities, the
Maruts.* These deities are only another aspect, or a development of the
Kumaras, who are Rudras in their patronymic, like many others.**
Diti, being Aditi, unless the
contrary is proven to us, Aditi, we say, or Akasa in her highest form, is the
Egyptian seven-fold heaven. Every true Occultist will understand what this
means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the Ramayana it is Bala-Rama,
Krishna's elder brother, who does it.
** With regard to the origin of
Rudra, it is stated in several Puranas that his (spiritual) progeny, created in
him by Brahma, was not confined to either the seven Kumaras 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, Brahma 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, Vayu, Matsya, and other Puranas.)
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principle of metaphysical nature, the
Buddhi of Akasa. Diti, the mother of the Maruts, is one of her terrestrial
forms, made to represent, at one and the same time, the divine Soul in the
ascetic, and the divine aspirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from
the webs of Maya, and final bliss in consequence. Indra, now degraded, because
of the Kali Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become
abnormal through a general spread of Ahamkara (the feeling of Egotism, Self, or
I-AM-NESS) and ignorance -- was, in the beginning, one of the greatest gods of
the Hindu Pantheon, as the Rig Veda shows. Sura-dhipa, "the chief of the
gods," has fallen down from Jishnu, "the leader of the celestial
host," -- the Hindu St. Michael -- to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy
of every holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindri (Indrani), the
personification of Aindri-yaka, the evolution of the element of senses, whom he
married "because of her voluptuous attractions"; after which he began
sending celestial female demons to excite the passions of holy men, Yogis, and
"to beguile them from the potent penances which he dreaded."
Therefore, Indra, now characterized as "the god of the firmament, the
personified atmosphere" -- is in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and
the fifth human -- Manas in its dual aspect: as connected with Buddhi; and as
allowing himself to be dragged down by his Kama-principle (the body of passions
and desires). This is demonstrated by Brahma telling the conquered god that his
frequent defeats were due to Karma, and were a punishment for his
licentiousness, and the seduction of various nymphs. It is in this latter
character that he seeks, to save himself from destruction, to destroy the
coming "babe" destined to conquer him:-- the babe, of course, allegorizing
the divine and steady will of the Yogi -- determined to resist all such
temptations, and thus destroy the passions within his earthly personality.
Indra succeeds again, because flesh conquers spirit -- (Diti is shown
frustrated in the Dvapara Yug, during that period when the Fourth Race was
flourishing). He divides the "Embryo" (of new divine adeptship,
begotten once more by the Ascetics of the Aryan Fifth Race), into seven
portions -- a reference not alone to the seven sub-races of the new Root-Race,
in each of which there will be a "Manu,"* but also to the seven
degrees of adeptship -- and then each
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Notwithstanding the terrible, and
evidently purposed, confusion of Manus, Rishis, and their progeny in the
Puranas, 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) as there
are fourteen Manus in every Round, the "presiding gods, the Rishis and
Sons of the Manus" being identical. (See Book III. ch. 1 of Vishnu
Purana.) "Six" Manvantaras are given, the Seventh being our own in
the Vishnu Purana. The Vayu Purana 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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portion into seven pieces -- alluding
to the Manu-Rishis of each Root-Race, and even sub-race.
It does not seem difficult to
perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining "four times seven"
emancipations in every "manvantara," and by those persons who, being
reborn in that character (of the Maruts in their esoteric meaning), "fill
up their places." The Maruts represent (a) the passions that storm and
rage within every candidate's breast, when preparing for an ascetic life -- this
mystically; (b) the occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of
Akasa's lower principles -- her body, or sthula sarira, representing the
terrestrial, lower, atmosphere of every inhabited globe -- this mystically and
sidereally; (c) actual conscious Existences, Beings of a cosmic and psychic
nature.
At the same time "Maruts"
is, in occult parlance, one of the names given to those EGOS of great Adepts
who have passed away, and who are known also as Nirmanakayas; of those Egos for
whom -- since they are beyond illusion -- there is no Devachan, and who, having
either voluntarily renounced it for the good of mankind, or not yet reached
Nirvana, remain invisible on earth. Therefore are the Maruts* shown firstly --
as the sons of Siva-Rudra -- the "Patron Yogi," whose "third
eye," mystically, must be acquired by the ascetic before he becomes an
adept; then, in their cosmic character, as the subordinates of Indra and his
opponents -- variously. The "four times seven" emancipations have a
reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of
which Marut-Jivas (monads) have been re-born, and have obtained final
liberation, if they have only availed themselves of it. Instead of which,
preferring the good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in
the meshes of ignorance and misery, were it not for this extraneous help --
they are re-born over and over again "in that character," 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 Twashtri, a synonym of Visvakarman -- the
great patron of the Initiates -- is included. This gives us an ample knowledge
of their true nature.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] of the Progenitors of mankind. All the Puranas speak of the seven
Prajapatis of this period (Round).
* "Chakshuba was the Manu of the
sixth period (Third Round and Third Race), in which Indra was Manojava"
(Mantradruma in the Bhagavata Purana). As there is a perfect analogy between
the "great Round" (Mahakalpa), 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 Marutwan, or "lord of
the Maruts." To receive a name Rudra is said to have wept for it. Brahma
called him Rudra; but he wept seven times more and so obtained seven other
names -- of which he uses one during each "period."
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The same for the Septenary Division
of Kosmos and human principles. The Puranas, along with other sacred texts,
teem with allusions to this. First of all, the mundane Egg which contained
Brahma, or the Universe, "was externally invested with seven natural
elements, at first loosely enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and three
secret elements" (Book I.); then the "World" is said to be "encompassed
on every side" by seven elements, also within the egg -- as explained,
"the universe is encompassed on every side, above and below by the
Andakat'aha -- the shell of the egg of Brahma." . . . Around the shell
flows water, which is surrounded with fire; fire by air; air by ether; ether by
the origin of the elements (Ahamkara); the latter by Universal Mind
("Intellect" in the Texts) (Book II., ch. VII. Vishnu Purana). It
relates to spheres of being as much as to principles. Prithivi is not our
Earth, but the World, the Solar system, and means the broad, the Wide. In the
Vedas -- the greatest of all authorities, though needing the key to read it
correctly -- three terrestrial and three celestial earths are mentioned as
having been called into existence simultaneously with Bhumi -- our earth. We
have often been told that six, not seven, appears to be the number of spheres,
principles, etc. We answer that there are, in fact, only six principles in man;
since his body is no principle, but the covering, the shell thereof. So with
the planetary chain; speaking of which, esoterically, the Earth (as well as the
seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh if we count
from the first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin the formation) may
be left out of consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the
seven. The language of occultism is varied. But supposing that three earths
only, instead of seven, are meant in the Vedas, what are those three, since we
still know of but one? Evidently there must be an occult meaning in the
statement under consideration. Let us see. The "Earth that floats" on
the Universal Ocean (of Space), which Brahma divides in the Puranas into seven
zones, is Prithivi, the world divided into seven principles; a cosmic division
looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, physical in its occult effects.
Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and, in its turn, is divided into
seven zones* on that same law of analogy that guided ancient philosophers.
After which one finds on it seven continents, seven isles, seven oceans, seven
seas and rivers, seven mountains, and seven climates, etc., etc., etc.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the Puranas.
** In Vishnu Purana, Book II., chap.
iv., it is stated that the EARTH, "with its continents, mountains, oceans,
and exterior shell, is fifty crores (500 millions) of yojanas in extent,"
to which the commentator remarks that "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 [[Footnot continued on next page]]
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Furthermore, it is not only in the
Hindu Scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the Seven Earths,
but in the Persian, Phoenician, Chaldean, and Egyptian Cosmogonies, and even in
Rabbinical literature. The Phoenix* -- called by the Hebrews Onech [Heb char]
(from Phenoch, Enoch, symbol of a secret cycle and initiation), and by the
Turks, Kerkes -- lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is
self-consumed; and then, reborn from itself -- it lives another thousand years,
up to seven times seven: (See "Book of Ali" -- Russian transl.), when
comes the day of Judgment. The "seven times seven," 49, are a
transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty-nine "Manus," the
Seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human cycles in 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 Kuran -- shoots out new branches
and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phoenix; the "Day of
judgment" meaning a "minor Pralaya" (See "Esoteric
Buddhism"). The author of the "Book of God" and the
"Apocalypse" believes that "the Phoenix is very plainly the same
as the Simorgh, the Persian roc, 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" -- (p.
175); and a watery one in 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;** that the age of the human race, in which we now are, is to
endure seven thousand numbers, and that she herself had seen twelve of these
revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see." (Oriental
Collections, ii., 119.)
The above, however, is no new
statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in this one,
these facts have been noticed by several writers, but now a connection can be
established between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] diameter of that which precedes it -- amounts to but two crores or
fifty-four lakhs etc. . . . Whenever any contradictions in different Puranas
occur, they have to be ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the
like." "The like" ought to read "Occult meaning,"
which explanation 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.
* The Phoenix, connected with the Solar Cycle
of 600 years (with ciphers taken out or with more added according to which
cycle is meant), the Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations -- is a
generic symbol for several kinds of cycles. Fuller details will be given in the
section on "Kalpas and Cycles."
** The tense is the "past"
because the book is allegorical, and has to veil the truths contained.
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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 Hindus, 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 pre-existence 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" (p. 176). It shows rather that the initiated Jews
borrowed, and their non-initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost the sense,
and applied the Seven Rounds, and the forty-nine races, etc., to the wrong end.
Not only "their priests,"
but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the
many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers,
under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We
say more: even the Christian editor or author of Revelation has preserved this
tradition and speaks of the Seven RACES, four of which, with part of the fifth,
are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as could be stated in
chapter xvii., verses 9 and 10. Thus saith 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 . . . . " Who, acquainted in the least with the symbolical
language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings that have fallen, the
four Root-Races that were, and part of the fifth, the one that is; and in the
other, that "is not yet come," the sixth and seventh coming root
races, as also the sub-races of this, our present race? Another still more
forcible allusion to the Seven Rounds and the forty-nine root-races in
Leviticus, will be found elsewhere in the Addenda, Part III.
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E.
SEVEN IN ASTRONOMY, SCIENCE, AND
MAGIC.
Again, number seven is closely
connected with the occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters
of Atlas, "the six present, the
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seventh hidden." In India they
are connected with their nursling, the war god, Karttikeya. It is the Pleiades
(in Sanskrit, Krittika) who gave the god their name, for Karttikeya is the
planet Mars, astronomically. As a god he is the son of Rudra, born without the
intervention of a woman. He is a Kumara, a "virgin youth" again,
generated in the fire from the Seed of Siva -- the holy spirit -- hence called
Agni-bhu. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Karttikeya is the
secret symbol of the cycle of Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years,
according to whether it is solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years that are
counted; and the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are
needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the
astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when made to commemorate one
particular event, Karttikeya appeared, of old, as a Kumara, an ascetic, with
six heads -- one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed
for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters,
Karttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumara (or Sena) his female aspect. He is
then riding on a peacock -- the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the
Hindu Phoenix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of Naros is well-known.
A six-rayed star (double triangle) a Swastica, a six and occasionally
seven-pointed crown is on his brow; the peacock's tail represents the sidereal
heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which
he is also called Dwadasa Kara," ("the twelve-handed"), and
Dwadasaksha, "twelve-eyed." It is as Sakti-dhara, however, the
"Spear-holder," and the conqueror of Taraka, "Taraka-jit,"
that he is shown most famous.
The years of the Naros, being (in
India) counted in two ways -- either "100 years of the gods," (divine
years) -- or 100 mortal years -- one can see the tremendous difficulty for the
non-initiated in comprehending correctly this cycle, which plays such an
important part in St. John's Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic Cycle; yet
in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found anything but a few
approximate truths, because of its being of various lengths and relating to
various pre-historic events.
It has been urged against the
duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, that Suidas shows
the ancients counting, in their chronological computations, days for years. Dr.
Sepp in his ingenious plagiarism -- exposed elsewhere -- of the Hindu 432 in
thousands and millions of years (the duration of the Yugas) which he dwarfed to
4,320 lunar years before the "birth of Christ" -- as
"foreordained" in the sidereal (besides the invisible) heavens, and
proved "by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem" -- appeals to
Suidas and his authority. But Suidas had no other warrant for it than his own
speculations, and he
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was no Initiate. He cites, as a
proof, Vulcan, in showing him as having, according to chronological claim,
reigned 4,477 years, i.e., 4,477 days, as he thinks, or rendered in years, 12
years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has 5 days in his original -- thus committing
an error even in such an easy calculation. (See Suidas, art. [[Heelios]].)
True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations --
Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the
Chaldeans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognises 720,000 years (Pliny. Histor.
Natur. Lib. VII. c. 56.) The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers
are based upon and due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of all the Western
peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in
the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two paccham
(or 30 days) are a month of the mortals, adding that such a month is only one
day of the Pitar Devata (Pitris). Again, two of these months constitute a
roodoo, three roodoo make an ayanam, and two ayanams a year -- which year of
the mortals is but a day of the gods. It is on such misunderstood teachings
that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed
days into years!
This mistake of the ancient Greek and
Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past
and the beginning of this century, relying upon the purposely mutilated
accounts of Hindu chronology, brought from India by certain too zealous and as
unscrupulous missionaries, Bailly, Dupuis, and others built quite a fantastic
theory upon the subject. Because the Hindus had made half a revolution of the
moon, a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days --
of which Quint. Curtius speaks (Menses in quinos dies descriperunt dies. Quint.
Curt. LVIII., c. 9) -- is found mentioned in Hindu literature, therefore, it is
a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a
day. The Chinese, too, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, hence their
year into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it
prevent their having an astronomical year just the same as ours. And they have
a period of sixty days -- the Southern Indian Roodoo, to this day in some
provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (Lib. I. § 26, p. 30) calls "thirty
days an Egyptian year," or that period during which the moon performs a
complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch both speak of it (Hist. Nat. Lib. VII.,
c. 48, Vol. III., p. 185, and Life of Numa, § 16); but does it stand to reason
that the Egyptians, who knew astronomy as well as any other people did, made
the lunar month consist of thirty days, when it is only twenty-eight days with
fractions? This lunary period had an occult meaning surely as much as the
Ayanam and the roodoo of the Hindus had. The year of two months' duration, and
the period of sixty days also,
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was a universal measure of time in
antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traite de l'Astronomie Orientale. The
Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from
one equinox to the other (Mem. Acad. Ins. T. XVI., c. 48, Tom. III., p. 183);
the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two
months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-tche, it is said that two
moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the
aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when
visited by Abbe Chappe (Voyage to Siberia, Vol. III., p. 19). But is all this a
reason to say that when the Hindu Puranas say "a solar year" they mean
one solar day! It is the knowledge of the natural laws that make of seven the
root nature-number, so to say, in the manifested world -- at any rate in our
present terrestrial life-cycle -- and the wonderful comprehension of its
workings, that unveiled to the ancients so many of the mysteries of nature. It
is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and
moral planes, which enabled the old astronomers to calculate correctly the
duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to
record beforehand (prophecy, it is called) the influence which they will have
on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and planets
being the never-erring time measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well
known, became thus the great Ruler and rulers of our little system in all its
seven domains, or "spheres of action."*
This has been so evident and
remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well
as Mystics, had their attention called to this law. Physicians and theologians,
mathematicians and psychologists have drawn the attention of the world
repeatedly to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of "Nature."
These numbers are explained in the "Commentaries" in these words.
THE CIRCLE IS NOT THE "ONE"
BUT THE ALL.
IN THE HIGHER [heaven] THE
IMPENETRABLE RAJAH ["ad Mutant," see Atharva-Veda X., 105], IT [the
Circle] BECOMES ONE, BECAUSE [it is] THE INDIVISIBLE, AND THERE CAN BE NO TAU
IN IT.
IN THE SECOND [of the three
"Rajamsi" (tritiya), or the three "Worlds"] THE ONE BECOMES
TWO [male and female]; AND THREE [add the Son or logos]; AND THE SACRED FOUR
["tetractis," or the "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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OBTAIN SEVEN, THE SACRED NUMBER OF
LIFE; BLEND [the latter] WITH THE MIDDLE RAJAH, AND THOU WILT HAVE NINE, THE
SACRED NUMBER OF BEING AND BECOMING."*
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-fold, and especially the nine-fold
division, the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to heaven and earth, gods
and men, will become clearer to 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 perception 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 analyse our sensations of this kind with mathematical
accuracy." ("Medical Review," July, 1844).
So much so, indeed, that more than
one physician has stood aghast at the periodical septenary return of the cycles
in the rise and fall of various complaints, and naturalists have felt
themselves at an utter loss to explain this law. "The birth, growth,
maturity, vital functions . . . . 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.** Dr. Laycock
(Lancet, 1842-3), writing on the Periodicity of Vital Phenomena, records a
"most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in
insects."***
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In Hinduism, as understood by the
Orientalists from the Atharvaveda, 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 take it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The sentence
pareshu, guhyeshu, vrateshu, cf. I, 155, 3, and IX., 75, 2; or again, verse X.,
114, in Atharvaveda -- has yet to be explained.
** H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in
his "Approaching End of the Age."
*** 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 . . .
I think it 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 . . . the 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 . . . change for the better .
. . will be seen on the fourteenth day, [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness,
the author of "The Approaching End of the Age," says very
pertinently, as he defends Biblical Chronology, "And man's life . . . is a
week, a week of decades. 'The days of our years are threescore years and ten.'
Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there
prevails in organic mature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion
in weeks" (p. 269). Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the
premises of the learned Founder of "the East London Institute for Home and
Foreign Missions," the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the
occult chronology of the Bible. Just as, while rejecting the theories and
hypotheses of modern Science and its generalizations, we bow before its great
achievements in the world of the physical, or in all the minor details of
material nature.
There is most assuredly an occult
"chronological system in Hebrew Scripture" -- the Kabala being its
warrant; there is in it "a system of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] namely, about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most
languid." (See "Approaching End of the Age," by Grattan
Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted.)
This is pure "sooth-saying"
by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldean astrolatry and
astrology. Thus materialistic Science -- 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 the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of
entomology, icthyology 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." (Ibid. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, Jan. 1843.) 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 vertebrate." If Science does this, why should the
latter scorn the Occult information, namely, that (speaking 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. We (mankind) have 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.
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weeks" -- which is based on the
archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.* And there
are in it cycles of "the week of days," of the "week of
months," of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, decamillenniums,
and more, or "the week of years of years."** But all this can be
found in the archaic doctrine. And if this common source of the chronology in
every Scripture, however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible, then the
six days, and a Sabbath, the seventh, can hardly disconnect Genesis from the
Puranic Cosmogonies. For the first "Week of Creation" shows the
septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahma's "Seven
Creations." The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which
he has collected on some 760 pages every proof of that septiform calculation,
is good evidence. For if the Bible chronology is, as he says, "regulated
by the law of weeks," and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the
creation week and the length of its days; and if, finally, "the Bible
system includes weeks on a great variety of scales," then this system is
shown to be identical with all the pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show
that 4,320 years (in lunar months) elapsed between "Creation" and the
Nativity, is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 of the
Hindu Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures,
which are pre-eminently Chaldean and Indo-Aryan, play such a part in the New
Testament? We shall prove it now still more forcibly.
Let the impartial critic compare the
two accounts -- the Vishnu Purana and the Bible -- and he will find that the
"seven creations" of Brahma are at the foundation of the
"week" of creation in Genesis i. The two allegories are different, but
the systems are all built on the same foundation-stone. The Bible can be
understood only by the light of the Kabala. Take the Zohar, the "Book of
Concealed Mystery," however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis
and the fourteen Manus of the seven Manvantaras -- issue from Brahma's head;
they are his "mind-born sons," and it is with them that begins the
division of mankind and its races from the Heavenly man, "the Logos"
(the manifested), who is Brahma Prajapati. Says (V. 70 in) the "Ha Idra
Rabba Qadisha" (the Greater Holy Assembly) of the skull (head)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Parasara, "and
the basis of calculation for larger cycles" (Miscell. Essays, Vol. I., pp.
106 and 108) -- up to the Mahayuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
** The Hebrew word for
"week" is Seven; and any length of time divided by Seven would have
been a "week" in their day, even 49,000,000 years, as it is seven
times seven millions. But their calculation is throughout septiform.
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of Macroprosopus, the ancient One*
(Sanat, an appellation of Brahma), that in every one of his hairs is a
"hidden fountain 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) his brain is
formed; and thence that brain goeth into THIRTY and TWO paths" (or the
triad and the duad, or again 432). And again: (V. 80) "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, Mankind and Races).
"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 adds, speaking of
Tetragrammaton and his seven "companions," whom he calls "the
eyes of Tetragrammaton.")
TETRAGRAMMATON is Brahma Prajapati,
who assumed four forms, in order to create four kinds of supernal creatures,
i.e., made himself fourfold, or the manifest Quaternary (see Vishnu Purana,
Book I. ch. V.); and who, after that, is re-born in the seven Rishis, his
Manasaputras, "mind-born sons," who became later, 9, 21 and so on,
who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahma**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brahma creates in the first Kalpa
(day one) various "sacrificial animals" pasu -- or the celestial
bodies and the Zodiacal signs, and plants which he uses in sacrifices at the
opening of Treta Yuga. The esoteric meaning of it shows him proceeding
cyclically and creating astral prototypes on the descending spiritual arc and
then on the ascending physical arc. The latter is the sub-division of a
two-fold creation, subdivided 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 Hindu cosmogony.
** It is very surprising to see
theologians and Oriental scholars express indignation at the "depraved
taste of the Hindu mystics" who, not content with having invented the
"Mind-born" Sons of Brahma, make the Rishis, Manus, and Prajapatis of
every kind spring from various parts of the body of their primal Progenitor --
Brahma (see Wilson's footnote in his Vishnu Purana, Vol. I., p. 102). Because
the average public is unacquainted with the Kabala, 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
Kabala, 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
"Books of Concealed Mystery," of the "Greater," and the
"Lesser Holy Assembly") is entirely phallic and far more crudely expressed
than is the four-fold Brahma in any of the Puranas. (See "Kabala
Unveiled," by Mr. S. L. Mathers, Chap. xxii., concerning the remaining
members of Microprosopus). [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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There are two Tetragrammatons: the
Macro and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the
TETRACTIS within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called
AIN -- the 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 plane
Square. For it is written in the same "Greater Holy Assembly" --
(83): "And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to 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?'* (Where did they distinguish
between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus,
who is called AIN, Ain the negatively existent?)"**
Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the
THREE made four and the FOUR made three, 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, verse 1,152 of the "Greater Holy Assembly" (Kabala) says
--
"We have learned that there were
ten (companions) who entered into the Sod, ('mysterious assembly or mystery'),
and that seven only came forth"*** (i.e., 10 for the unmanifested, 7 for
the manifested Universe.)
1,158. "And when Rabbi Shimeon
revealed the Arcana there were found none present there save those (seven
companions) . . . . 1,159. And Rabbi Shimeon 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.
Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and
the latter is the male-female Chochmah-Binah, the 2d and 3d Sephiroth. The
Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number Seven, in its terrestrial
significance. Seven stands between four and nine -- the basis and foundation
(astrally) of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For Christians and believers, this
reference to Zaccharias and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 Kabala 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.
* Simplified in the English Bible to:
"Is the Lord (! !) among us, or not?" (See Exodus xvii. 7.)
** See Kabala Denudata, by S. Liddell
MacGregor Mathers, F.T.S., p. 121.
*** Translators often render the word
"companion" (angel, also adept) by "Rabbi," as the Rishis
are called gurus. The "Zohar" is, if possible, more occult than the
Books of Moses; to read the "Book of Concealed Mystery" one requires
the keys furnished by the genuine "Chaldean Book of Numbers," which
is not extant.
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CHEMISTRY.
especially to the Epistle of Peter (I
P. ii. 2-5) ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, 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 what we say, i.e., a man
whose constitution or ("principles,") is septenary.
To demonstrate more clearly the seven
in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the
periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the
series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in
that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the
factor, sine qua non, in the production of occult astral phenomena.
Thus, if the chemical elements are
arranged in groups according to their atomic weights, they will be found to
constitute a series of groups of seven; the first, second, etc., members of
each group bearing a close analogy in all their properties to the corresponding
members of the next group. The following table, copied from Hellenbach's Magie
der Zahlen, exhibits this law and fully warrants the conclusion he draws in the
following words: "We thus see that chemical variety, so far as we can
grasp its inner nature, depends upon numerical relations, and we have further
found in this variety a ruling law for which we can assign no cause; we find a
law of periodicity governed by the number seven."
[[diagram]]
The eighth column in this list is, as
it were, the octave of the first, containing elements almost identical in
chemical and other properties with those in the first; a phenomenon which
accentuates the septenary law of periodicity. For further details the reader is
referred to Hellenbach's
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work, where it is also shown that
this classification is confirmed by the spectroscopic peculiarities of the
elements.
It is needless to refer in detail to
the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are
strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of
colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal
with only one octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of
seven octaves represented theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and
in ordinary 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 Abbas said:
"We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (light); thou
(Tetragrammaton) art the seventh light (the origin) of us all;" (V. 1,160)
and -- "For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save what they
derive from the seventh. For ALL THINGS DEPEND FROM THE SEVENTH." (V.
1,161. Kabala, "The Greater Holy Assembly.")
The (ancient and modern) Western
American Zuni Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present-day
customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time
immemorial, their institutions -- political, social and religious -- were (and
still are) shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient
towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is
always a group 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 priests" spoken of in Anugita, the name given to the
"seven senses," exoterically, and to the seven human principles,
esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact
of Arjuna going over to Patala (the Antipodes, America) and there marrying
Ulupi, the daughter of the Naga (or rather Nargal) King? But to the Zuni
priests.
These receive an annual tribute, to
this day, of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during
the whole year, on a certain day, they come out (the six priests and one
priestess) arrayed in their
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priestly robes, each of a colour
sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of
them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the
colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East,
because from the East comes the first Sun-light; the yellow, corresponds to the
North, from the colour of the flames produced by the aurora borealis; the red,
the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West,
the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of
the nether underground region -- darkness; corn with grains of all colours on
one ear represents the colours of the upper region -- of the firmament, with
its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The "speckled" corn
-- each grain containing all the colours -- is that of the
"Priestess-Mother": woman containing in herself the seeds of all
races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.
Apart from these was the Sun -- the
Great Deity -- whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts
were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became an
Indian Zuni, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and
has learned more about them than any other man now living.
Seven is also the great magic number.
In the occult records the weapon mentioned in the Puranas and the Mahabharata
-- the Agneyastra or "fiery weapon" bestowed by Aurva upon his chela
Sagara -- is said to be built of seven elements. This weapon -- supposed by
some ingenious Orientalists to have been a "rocket" (!) -- is one of
the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his
penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the Hindu Theatre,
and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Agneyastra.
"These weapons," he argues,
"are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are wielded as
missiles; but, in general, they appear to be mystical powers exercised by the
individual -- such as those of paralysing an enemy, or locking his senses fast
in sleep, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven. (Vide supra,
pp. 427 and 428.) . . . . They assume celestial shapes, endowed with human
faculties. . . . . The Ramayana calls them the Sons of Krisaswa" (p. 297).
The Sastra-devatas, "gods of the
divine weapons," are no more Agneyastra, the weapon, than the gunners of
modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not
seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the
armiform progeny of Krisaswa, "the allegorical origin of the (Agneyastra)
weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient."* It is the fiery javelin of
Brahma.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is. But Agneyastra are fiery
"missile weapons," not "edged" weapons, as there is some
difference between Sastra and Astra in Sanskrit.
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The seven-fold Agneyastra, like the
seven senses and the "seven principles," symbolized by the seven
priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine 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 doctrine under analysis become
positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can
hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol from a purely natural
standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too materialistic, because too much that of an
ardent Evolutionist and follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows
that "the student of Bohme'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 mediaeval
mysteries;"* and adds --
"The followers of Bohme look on
such matter as divine revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of
the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the Wisdom** of the past
(or of the broken links), and are unable to recognise the physical features of
the ancient Seven Spirits beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask.
A second connecting link between the Theosophy of Bohme and the physical
origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of Hermes
Trismegistus.*** 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.**** 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.***** It is useless for us to read our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Natural Genesis, Vol. I.. pp,
318-319.
** Yet there are some, who may know
something of these, even outside the author's lines, wide as they undeniably
are.
*** 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, mediaeval, and modern thought, but,
unfortunately, too loosely edited.
**** Ay; but how can the learned
writer prove that these "beginnings" were precisely in Egypt, and
nowhere else; and only 50,000 years ago?
***** Precisely: and this is just
what the Theosophists do. They have never claimed," (original inspiration,"
not even as mediums, but have always pointed, and do now point to the
"primary signification" of the symbols, which they trace to other
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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later thought into the earliest types
of expression, and then say the ancients meant that.* 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.**
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 most triumphantly our
Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt.
Let the reader judge from his learned lecture on "The Seven Souls of
Man."*** 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."
Just so, for the Hindus place in the
great Bear their seven primitive Rishis and call this constellation the abode
of the Saptarishi, Riksha and Chitra-Sikhandinas. But whether it is only an
astronomical myth or a primordial mystery, having a deeper meaning than it bears
on its surface, is what their adepts claim to know. We are also told that
"the Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The
primary Heaven was seven-fold." So it was with the Aryans. One has but
read the Puranas about the beginnings of Brahma, and his "Egg" to see
it. Have the Aryans taken the idea from the Egyptians? -- "The earliest
forces," proceeds the lecturer, "recognized in nature were reckoned
as seven in number. These became seven elementals, devils (?) or later,
divinities. Seven properties were assigned to nature, as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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.
* 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. G. Massey
says. His interpretations are very correct, but equally 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.
** 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!
*** The fact that this learned
Egyptologist does not recognise in the doctrine of the "Seven Souls,"
as he terms our principles, or "metaphysical concepts," 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.
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matter, cohesion, fluxion,
coagulation, accumulation, station, and division and seven elements or souls to
man."
All this was taught in the esoteric
doctrine, but it was interpreted and its mysteries unlocked, as already stated,
with seven, not two, or at the utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their
effects worked in invisible or mystic as well as psychic nature, and were made
referable to metaphysics and psychology as much as to physiology. "The
principle of sevening" -- as the author says -- "was introduced, and
the number seven supplied a sacred type that could be used for manifold
purposes"; 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. . . ."
And then, the author tabulates the
two teachings -- the Esoteric and the Egyptian, -- and shows that the latter
had the same series and in the same order.
(Esoteric) Indian. Egyptian.
1. Rupa, body or element of form. 1.
Kha, body.
2. Prana, the breath of life. 2. Ba,
the Soul of Breath.
3. Astral body. 3. Khaba, the shade.
4. Manas -- or Intelligence.* 4.
Akhu, Intelligence or Perception.
5. Kama -- rupa, or animal soul. 5.
Seb, ancestral Soul.
6. Buddhi, Spiritual Soul. 6. Putah,
the first intellectual father.
7. Atma, pure spirit. . . . 7. Atmu,
a divine or eternal soul.
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; it becomes less so from the esoteric point
of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean that the "Esoteric
Buddhists" resolve men into a number of elementary Spirits, as Mr. G.
Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of maintaining. No "Esoteric
Buddhist" has ever been guilty of any such absurdity. Nor has it been ever
imagined that these shadows "become spiritual beings in another
world," or "seven potential spirits or elementaries of another
life." What is maintained is simply that every time the immortal Ego
incarnates it becomes, as a total, a com-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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pound unit of Matter and Spirit,
which together act on seven different planes of being and consciousness.
Elsewhere, Mr. G. 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 Christ in the
Revelation, have the same significance," etc.
And a still greater one, as these
stars represent also the seven keys of the Seven Churches or the SODALIAN
MYSTERIES, cabalistically. However, we will not stop to discuss, but add that
other Egyptologists have also found out that the septenary constitution of man
was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable
articles in the "Sphinx" (Munich) Herr Franz Lambert gives
incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the "Book of the Dead"
and other Egyptian records. For details the reader must be referred to the
articles themselves, but the following diagram, summing up the author's
conclusions, is demonstrative evidence of the identity of Egyptian psychology
with the septenary division in "Esoteric Buddhism."
On the left hand side the Kabalistic
names of the corresponding human principles are placed, and on the right the
hieroglyphic names with their renderings as in the diagram of F. Lambert.
Kabala. Hieroglyphics.
[[diagram]]
Upper circle: Tzelem of Neschamah.
Jeshida VII. Chu -- Divine Spirit.
Chayah VI. Cheybi -- Spiritual Soul.
Neschamah V. Bai {Intellectual Soul,
the intelligence.
Middle circle: Tzelem of Ruach.
Ruach* IV. Ab Hati {The Heart:
Feeling: Animal Soul.
Lower circle: Tzelem of Nephesch.
Nephesch III. Ka {The Astral Body:
Evestrum: Sidereal man.
Coach ha Guf. II. Anch {Vital Force:
Archaeus: Mumia.
Guf. I. Chat -- The Elementary Body.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* There seems a confusion -- lasting
for many centuries -- in the minds of Western Kabalists. They call Ruach
(Spirit) what we call Kama-rupa; whereas, with us Ruach would be the
"Spiritual Soul" Buddhi, and Nephesh the 4th principle, the Vital,
Animal Soul. Eliphas Levi falls into the same error.
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This is a very fair representation of
the number of the "principles" of Occultism, but much confused; and
this is what we call the 7 principles in man, and what Mr. Massey calls
"Souls," giving the same name to the Ego or the Monad which
reincarnates and resurrects, so to speak, at each rebirth, as the Egyptians
did, namely -- "the Renewed." But how can Ruach (Spirit) be lodged in
Kama-rupa? What does Bohme, the Prince of all the mediaeval Seers, say?
"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 analysing 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,* and again in
Aurora xxiv. p. 27 (quoted in Natural Genesis) -- "The Creator hath in the
body of this world generated himself as it were creaturely in his qualifying
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."
This is rendering in mystical
language our theosophical doctrine. . . But how can we agree with Mr. G. Massey
when he states that --
"The Seven Races of men that
have been sublimated and made Planetary (?) by Esoteric Buddhism,** 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." . . . Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted
in their later form -- is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching.
They all refer to the pre-Human evolution of the water-men "terrible and
bad" by unaided Nature through millions of years, as previously described.
But we deny point blank the assertion made that "these were never real
races," and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to
infer and to say that our "instructors have mistaken these shadows of the
Past, for things human and spiritual"; but that "they are neither,
and never were either," it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever
remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common
pithecoid ancestor. What the Lecturer takes for a "mode of
expression" and nothing more, in the Egyptian Ritual, we take as having
quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance. Says the Ritual,
the "Book of the Dead" --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Signatura rerum xiv. ps. 10, 15 et
seq.
** This is indeed news! It makes us
fear that the Lecturer had never read "Esoteric Buddhism" before
criticising it, as there are too many such misconceptions in his notices of it.
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"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." Of
these last two sentences, one: "whose soul comes from men" -- is
explained by the Lecturer, who says parenthetically, "that is, as a type
of intelligence," and the other: "I am the Soul of the Gods," as
meaning, "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 human monad has passed on globe A and others,
in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms -- the mineral, the
vegetable, and the animal -- in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung
from Man if the semi-ethereal, many-shaped creature with the human Monad in it,
of the first two races, can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for,
in the esoteric language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now
referred to as Man, which is in any way the MAN, but the inner divine MONAD
with its manifold principles or aspects.
The lecture referred to, however,
much as it opposes "Esoteric Buddhism" and its teachings, is an
eloquent answer to those who have tried to represent the whole as a newfangled
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 Brahmins who have seriously studied their Secret
Philosophy, the difference does not appear so very great. It seems centred in,
and limited to, the question of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other
principles, more than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence
than the everlasting question of the filioque dogma, which since the XIIth.
century has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern Church.
Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary dogma is
presented, the substance is there, and its presence and importance in the
Brahminical system may be judged by what one of India's learned metaphysicians
and Vedantic 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
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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-Himalayan esoteric doctrine.' In fact, it has a closer connection
with the Brahminical 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 become
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 Pragna 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."*
The above is perfectly correct, save,
perhaps, one point. The "sevenfold classification" in the esoteric
system has never been claimed (to the writer's knowledge) by any one belonging
to it, as "the peculiar property of the Trans-Himalayan esoteric
doctrine"; but only as having survived in that old school alone. It is no
more the property of the trans, than it is of the cis-Himalayan esoteric
doctrine, but is simply the common inheritance of all such schools, left to the
sages of the Fifth Root Race by the great Siddhas** of the Fourth. Let us
remember that the Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in
so many of the oldest MSS. of India, only toward their fall, the submersion of
their continent having been brought on by it. What is claimed is simply the
fact that the wisdom imparted by the "Divine Ones" -- born through
the Kriyasakti powers of the Third Race before its Fall and Separation into
sexes -- to the adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its
pristine purity in a certain Brotherhood. The said
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Theosophist, 1887 (Madras).
** According to
Svetasvatara-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, Siddhas are the
Nirmanakayas 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.
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School or Fraternity being closely
connected with a certain island of an inland sea, believed in by both Hindus
and Buddhists, but called "mythical" by geographers and Orientalists,
the less one talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said
"sevenfold classification" as having "a closer connection with
the Brahminical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos," since both are
identical, whether the one "Logos" is called Eswara or
Avalokiteswara, Brahma or Padmapani. These are, however, very small
differences, more fanciful than real, in fact. Brahmanism and Buddhism, both
viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as
water and oil. Each of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in
its constitution. While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree
but to disagree, once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted,
every disagreement must fall, for the two will find themselves on common
ground. The "heel of Achilles" of orthodox Brahmanism is the Adwaita
philosophy, whose followers are called by the pious "Buddhists in
disguise"; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern mysticism, as
represented by the disciples of the philosophies of Aryasanga (the Yogacharya
School) and Mahayana, who are twitted in their turn by their correligionists as
"Vedantins in disguise." The esoteric philosophy of both these can be
but one if carefully analysed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Sankaracharya
are most closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain esoteric
teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form
rather than of substance.
A most mystic discourse, full of
septenary symbology, may be found in the Anugita.* There the Brahmana narrates
the bliss of having crossed beyond 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, avarice, the beasts of prey
and reptiles, and desire and anger are the obstructors." . . . . The sage
describes the entrance into and exit from the forest (a symbol for man's
life-time) and also that forest itself:**
"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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Sacred Books of the
East," vol. viii. Anugita, p. 284, et seq.
** I propose to follow here the text
and the editor's commentaries, who accepts Arjuna Misra 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.
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"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." (See Khandagya, p. 219, and Com.)
The explanation is harmless, if
unsatisfactory.
Says the Brahmana continuing 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 seven) with two large
trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours (mind
and understanding -- the two higher senses, or theosophically, 'Manas-Buddhi').
Here is one Fire (Self) here connected with the Brahman* and having a good mind
(or true knowledge, according to Arjuna Misra). 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 the KSHETRAGNA (the "Supreme SELF," says Krishna, in the Bhagavad
Gita, p. 102 et seq.) within for the Sun."
Now, all the above is very plain, and
no theosophist, even among the least learned, could fail to understand the
allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in
their explanations. The "great sages" who "receive hospitality"
are explained as meaning the senses, "which, having worked as unconnected
with the self are finally absorbed into it." But one fails to understand,
if the senses are "unconnected" with the "Higher Self," in
what manner can they be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The English editor explains here,
saying, "I presume devoted to the Brahman." This would be a very poor
devotion, indeed, in the accomplishment of the gradually emancipating process
of Yoga. We venture to say that the "Fire" or Self is the higher real
SELF "connected with," that is to say one with Brahma, the One Deity.
The "Self" separates itself no longer from the universal Spirit.
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"absorbed into it." One
would think, on the contrary, that just because the personal senses gravitate
and strive to be connected with the impersonal Self, that the latter, which is
FIRE, burns the lower five and purifies thereby the higher two, "mind and
understanding" or the higher aspects of Manas* and Buddhi. This is quite
apparent from the text. The "great sages" disappear after having
"been worshipped." Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses)
are "unconnected with the self"? By MIND, of course; by Manas (in
this case merged in the sixth sense) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman,
the SELF, or Kshetragna -- the soul's spiritual sun. Into the latter, in time,
Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped "great sages" and
given hospitality to terrestrial wisdom: but once that "another forest
shone forth" upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi, the 7th sense, but 6th
principle) which is transformed into the tree -- that tree whose fruit is
emancipation -- which finally destroys the very roots of the Aswattha tree, the
symbol of life and of its illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who
attain to that state of emancipation have, in the words of the above-cited
sage, "no fear afterwards." In this state "the end cannot be
perceived because it extends on all sides."
"There always dwell seven
females there," he goes on to say, carrying out the imagery. These
females, who, according to Arjuna Misra, are the Mahat, Ahamkara and five
Tanmatras, have always their faces turned downwards, as they 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
(Kshetragna, the Higher Self). . . . Those whose wishes are reduced
(unselfish). . . . whose sins (passions) are burnt up by restraint, merging the
Self in the Self,** devote themselves to Brahman. Those people who understand
the forest of Knowledge (Brahman, or SELF) praise tranquillity. And aspiring to
that forest, they are (re-) born so as not to lose courage.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As Mahat (universal intelligence)
is first born, or manifests, as Vishnu, and then, when it falls into matter and
develops self-consciousness, it becomes Egoism, Selfishness, so Manas is of a
dual nature. It is respectively under the sun and moon, for as Sankaracharya
says "The moon is the mind, and the sun the understanding." The sun
and moon are the deities of our planetary Macrocosmos, and therefore Sankara
adds that "the mind and the understanding are the respective deities of
the (human) organs" (vide Brihadaranyaka, pp. 521, et seq.) This is
perhaps why Arjuna Misra says that the moon and the Fire (the self, the sun)
constitute the universe.
** "The body in the Soul,"
as Arjuna Misra is credited with saying, or rather the "Soul in the
Spirit," and on a still higher plane of development: "the SELF or
Atman in the Universal Self."
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Such indeed, is this holy forest . .
. . and understanding it, they (the Sages) act accordingly, being directed by
the KSHETRAGNA. . . . "
No translator among the Western
Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing allegory anything higher than
mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies,
and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice
of SELF WITHIN SELF, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism,
however often he may err in minor details of the philosophy.
And here, we must be allowed a last
remark. No true theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned,
ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon occult
matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification
of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution,
and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach
others more ignorant than ourselves -- are all liable to err. Thus mistakes
have been made in "Isis Unveiled," in "Esoteric Buddhism,"
in "Man," in "Magic: White and Black," etc., etc.; and more
than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be
helped. For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be
entirely exempt from error and blunder, it would have to be written from its
first to its last page by a great adept, if not by an Avatar. Then only should
we say, "This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!" But, so
long as the artist is imperfect, 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 benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer
on us. For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers' ends,
even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?
Our chief point in the present
subject, however, was to show that the Septenary doctrine, or division of the
constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us. This
has been successfully done, for we are supported in this, consciously and
unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediaeval, and modern writers. What the
former said, was well said; what the latter repeated, was generally distorted.
An instance: Read the "Pythagorean Fragments," and compare the
Septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned mason, in his
"Pythagorean Triangle" (ch. on "Science of Numbers," p.
179).
He speaks 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;
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(3.) The elemental man;
(4.) The mercurial paradisiacal man;
(5.) The martial Soul-like man;
(6.) The passionate man of desires;
(7.) The Solar man; a witness to and
inspector of the wonders of the Universe. They had also seven fountain Spirits,
or Powers of Nature."
Compare this jumbled account and
distribution of Western theosophic philosophy with the latest theosophic
explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then decide which is the
more correct. Verily:--
"Wisdom hath builded her house,
She hath hewn out her seven
pillars." -- (Prov. ix, 1.)
As to the charge that our School has
not adopted the Seven-fold classification of the Brahmins, but has confused it,
it is quite unjust. To begin with, the "School" is one thing, its
exponents (to Europeans) quite another. The latter have first to learn the A B
C of practical Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand
correctly the tremendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct
states of Pragna (consciousness); and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Pragna
is, in the Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification
is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of
consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge,
through only one of the states of that consciousness, came to him; 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 the ontological. This is why the
primary, old, classification was adopted by the Theosophists, of which
classifications there are many.
To busy oneself, after such a
tremendous number of independent witnesses and proofs have been brought before
the public, with an additional enumeration from theological sources, would be
quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme
are far less philosophical than even the Seven Liberal and the Seven Accursed
Sciences -- or the Seven Arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the
latter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as for the
future. The modern name for it is HYPNOTISM. In the ignorance of the seven
principles, and used by scientific and ignorant materialists, it will soon
become SATANISM in the full acceptation of the term.
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BOOK II. -- 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?"
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§§ PAGE
I. ARCHAIC OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY?
... 645
-------
II. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED
BY SCIENCE ... 656
Plastidular Souls, and Conscious
Nerve-Cells ... 670
-------
III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE
ANTHROPOID APE ... 675
Western Evolutionism: the comparative
Anatomy of Man and Ape ... 680
Darwinism and the Antiquity of Man:
the Anthropoids and their Ancestry ... 685
-------
IV. ON THE DURATION OF GEOLOGICAL
PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN ... 690
Modern Scientific Speculations
thereon ... 694
On Chains of Planets and their
Plurality ... 699
Esoteric Geological Chronology ...
709
-------
V. ORGANIC EVOLUTION -- CREATIVE
CENTRES ... 731
The Origin and Evolution of the
Mammalia ... 734
The European Palaeolithic Races ...
738
-------
VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND
SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY ... 742
-------
VII. SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS
OF THE EXISTENCE OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS ... 778
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ADDENDA TO BOOK II.
§ I.
ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY?
WHENEVER the question of the origin
of man is offered seriously to an unbiassed, honest, and earnest man of
science, the answer comes invariably:-- "WE DO NOT KNOW." De
Quatrefages, in his agnostic attitude, is one of such anthropologists.
This does not imply that the rest of
the men of science are neither fair-minded nor honest, as in such case our
remark would be questionably discreet. But, it is estimated that 75 per cent.
of European Scientists are Evolutionists. Are these representatives of modern
thought all guilty of flagrant misrepresentation of the facts? No one says this
-- but there are a few very exceptional cases. However, the Scientists in their
anti-clerical enthusiasm and despair of any alternative theory to Darwinism,
except that of "special creation," are unconsciously insincere in
"forcing" a hypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and
which resents the severe strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on
the same subject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple
has come forward as a thorough-going supporter of Darwinism in his
"Religion and Science." This clerical writer goes so far as to regard
Matter -- after receiving its "primal impress" -- as the unaided
evolver of all cosmic phenomena. This view only differs from that of Haeckel,
in postulating a hypothetical deity at "the back of beyont," a deity
which stands entirely aloof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical
entity is no more the Theological God than that of Kant. Bishop Temple's truce
with Materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic -- apart from the fact
that it involves a total rejection of the Biblical cosmogony. In the presence
of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our "learned"
age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the Masters such
theological truants profess to serve, Christ, and Christendom at large?
However, we have no desire, for the
present, to throw down the gauntlet to the clergy, our business being now with
materialistic Science alone. The latter answers to our question, in the person
of its best representatives "We do not know;" -- yet the majority of
these act as though Omniscience was their heirloom, and they knew all things.
For, indeed, this negative reply has
not prevented the majority of Scientists from speculating on that question,
each seeking to have his
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own special theory accepted to the
exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet in 1748 down to Haeckel in 1870,
theories on the origin of the human Race have differed as much as the
personalities of their inventors themselves. Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent,
Lamarck, E. G. St. Hilaire, Gaudry, Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Haeckel,
Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, etc., etc., each evolved a more or less
scientific hypothesis of genesis. De Quatrefages arranges them in two principal
groups -- one holding to a rapid, and the other to a very gradual
transmutation; the former, favouring a new type (man) produced by a being
entirely different; the latter teaching the evolution of man by progressive
differentiation.
Strangely enough, it is from the most
scientific of these authorities that the most unscientific of all the theories
upon the subject of the origin of man has hitherto emanated. This is so
evident, that the hour is rapidly approaching when the current teaching about
the descent of man from an Ape-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 his own. .
. . Consequently, in accordance with these principles man cannot be considered
as the descendant of any simian type whatever."*
Lucae's argument versus the
Ape-theory, based on the different flexures of the bones constituting the axis
of the skull in the cases of Man and the Anthropoids, is fairly discussed by
Schmidt ("Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 290). He admits that
"the ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man . . . more human," and
seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on: e.g., "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." The writer evidently
is not a little disquieted at the argument. He assures us that it upsets any
possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But
does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and anthropoid having
had a common -- though, so far, an absolutely theoretical -- ancestor.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Human Species," p.
111, by de Quatrefages. The respective developments of the human and Simian
brains are referred to. "In the ape the temporo-spheroidal convolutions,
which form the middle lobe, make their appearance and are completed before the
anterior convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, the frontal
convolutions are, on the contrary, the first to appear, and those of the middle
lobe are formed later." (Ibid.)
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Even "Natural Selection"
itself is with every day more threatened. The deserters from the Darwinian camp
are many, and those who were at one time its most ardent disciples are, owing
to new discoveries, slowly but steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In
the "Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society" for October, 1886,
one can read as follows:--
"PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION. -- Mr.
G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties in regarding natural selection as a
theory for the origin of adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what
he calls physiological selection, or the 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."*
An attempt is made to show the above
to be a complement of, and sequence to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy
attempt at best. The public will soon be made to believe that Mr. C. Dixon's
"Evolution without Natural Selection" is also Darwinism -- expanded,
as the author certainly claims it to be!
But it is like splitting the body of
a man into three pieces or various portions of man, and then maintaining that
each portion is the identical man as he was before; only -- expanded. Yet the
author states on p. 79:-- "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." (!!)
And before this, on p. 48, 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."
This does not prevent the learned
author, however, from upsetting this theory as "triumphantly," and
from even openly calling his work
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To this an editorial remark adds
that an "F.J.B.," in the Athenaeum -- (No. 3069, Aug. 21, 1886, pp.
242-3) points out that naturalists have long recognised 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."
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"Evolution without a 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 many 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; but a convenient phrase
for describing the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of
the unfit among organisms is brought about in the struggle for existence. Every
group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence, the
constant battle for life -- the "struggle to obtain enough to eat and to
escape being eaten" added to the environmental conditions -- necessitating
a perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The elite of any stock thus sorted out,
propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to their
descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a progressive
improvement is effected. But Natural Selection, in the writer's humble opinion,
"Selection, as a Power," is in reality a pure myth; especially when
resorted to as an explanation of the origin of species. It is merely a
representative term expressive of the manner in which "useful
variations" are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, "it" can
produce nothing, and only operates on the rough material presented to
"it." The real question at issue is: what CAUSE -- combined with
other secondary causes -- produces the "variations" in the organisms
themselves. Many of these secondary causes are purely physical, climatic,
dietary, etc., etc. Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic
evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The materialist's
"spontaneous variations," and "accidental divergencies" are
self-contradictory terms in a universe of "Matter, Force and
NECESSITY." Mere variability of type, apart from the supervisory presence
of a quasi-intelligent impulse, is powerless to account for the stupendous
complexities and marvels of the human body for instance. The insufficiency of
the Darwinists' mechanical theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von
Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader's
intelligence to write, as does Haeckel, of blind indifferent cells,
"arranging themselves into organs." The esoteric solution of the
origin of animal species is given elsewhere.
Those purely secondary causes of
differentiation, grouped under the head of sexual selection, natural selection,
climate, isolation, etc., etc., mislead the Western Evolutionist and offer no
real explanation whatever of the "whence" of the "ancestral
types" which served as the starting point for physical development. The
truth is that the
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differentiating "causes"
known to modern science only come into operation after the physicalization of
the primeval animal root-types out of the astral. Darwinism only meets
Evolution at its midway point -- that is to say when astral evolution has given
place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our present senses
acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with the "expansions"
recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of the case. The underlying
physiological variation in species -- one to which all other laws are
subordinate and secondary -- is a sub-conscious intelligence pervading matter,
ultimately traceable to a REFLECTION of the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom.*
A not altogether dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a
thinker as Ed. von Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of unaided Natural
Selection, regards evolution as intelligently guided by the UNCONSCIOUS (the
Cosmic Logos of Occultism). But the latter acts only mediately through FOHAT,
or Dhyan-Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great
pessimist describes.
It is this divergence among men of
Science, their mutual, and often their self-contradictions, that gave the
writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other and older
teachings -- if only as hypotheses for future scientific appreciation. Though
not in any way very learned in modern sciences, so evident, even to the humble
recorder of this archaic clearing, are the said scientific fallacies and gaps,
that she determined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two
teachings on parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self-defence,
and nothing more.
So far, the "Secret
Doctrine" has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure and simple. It has
now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain of physical science and
practical anthropology, or those branches of study which materialistic
Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly asserting, furthermore, that
the higher and more perfect the working of the Soul, the more amenable it is to
the analysis and explanations of the zoologist and the physiologist alone. (Haeckel
on "Cell-Souls and Soul-Cells.") This stupendous pretension comes
from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include
among the ancestors of man the Lemuridae; which have been promoted by him to
the rank of Prosimiae, indeciduate mammals, to which he very incorrectly
attributes a decidua
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "principle of
perfectibility" of Nageli; 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 veiled manifestations of the universal
guiding FOHAT, rich with the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic thought.
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and a discoidal placenta.* For this
Haeckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised by his own
brother materialists and agnostics, as great, if not greater, authorities than
himself, namely, by Virchow and du Bois-Reymond.**
Such opposition notwithstanding,
Haeckel's wild theories are, to this day, called scientific and logical by
some. The mysterious nature of Consciousness, of Soul, Spirit in Man being now
explained as a mere advance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of
the lively Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and
"social instincts" toward civilization having to be traced back to
their origin in the civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures, the
chances left for an impartial hearing of the doctrines of archaic Wisdom, are
few indeed. The educated profane is told that "the social instincts of the
lower animals have, of late, been regarded as being clearly the origin of
morals, even of those of man" (!) and that our divine consciousness, our
soul, intellect, and aspirations have "worked their way up from the lower
stages of the simple cell-soul" of the gelatinous Bathybius -- (See
Haeckel's "Present Position of Evolution" Notes), -- and he seems to
believe it. For such men, the metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect
that our grandest orchestral and vocal oratorios produce on the Chinaman: a
sound that jars upon their nerves.
Yet, are our esoteric teachings about
"angels," the first three pre-animal human Races, and the downfall of
the Fourth, on a lower level of fiction and self-delusion than the Haeckelian
"plastidular," or the inorganic "molecular Souls of the
Protista"? Between the evolution of the spiritual nature of man from the
above Amoebian Souls, and the alleged development of his physical frame from
the protoplastic dweller in the Ocean slime, there is an abyss which will not
be easily crossed by any man in the full possession of his intellectual
faculties. Physical evolution, as modern Science teaches it, is a subject for
open controversy; spiritual and moral development on the same lines is the
insane dream of a crass materialism.
Furthermore, past as well as present
daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been accepted by the learned
bodies unless it dovetailed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide infra, M. de Quatrefages'
expose of Haeckel, in § ii., "The Ancestors Mankind is offered by
Science."
** 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."
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with the habitual preconceived ideas
of their professors. "The crown of the innovator is a crown of
thorns":-- said G. St. Hilaire. It is only that which fits in with popular
hobbies and accepted notions that as a general rule gains ground. Hence the
triumph of the Haeckelian ideas, notwithstanding their being proclaimed by
Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, and others 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, radically inconsistent as is their accepted
anthropological system with the real facts of nature, -- the pseudo-idealistic
bias now colouring English thought is almost more pernicious. The pure materialistic
doctrine admits of a direct refutation and appeal to the logic of facts. The
idealism of the present day, not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the
basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of unreality,
which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such writers is almost
out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still more antagonistic to
the Occult teachings now given than even the Materialists. But as no worse fate
can befall the exponents of Esoteric Anthropo-Genesis than being openly called
by their foes by their old and time-honoured names of "lunatics" and
"ignoramuses," the present archaic theories may be safely added to
the many modern speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial
recognition. Only, as the existence itself of these "archaic
theories" will probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and
stand by them to the bitter end.
In our race and generation the one
"temple in the Universe" is in rare cases -- within us; but our body
and mind have been too defiled by both Sin and Science to be outwardly now
anything better than a fane of iniquity and error. And here our mutual position
-- that of Occultism and Modern Science -- ought to be once for all defined.
We, Theosophists, would willingly bow
before such men of learning as the late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes,
Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and several others, though we may not
agree, from the stand-point of esoteric philosophy, with all they say. But
nothing could make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of
other men of science, such as Haeckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Buchner, in
Germany; or even of Mr. Huxley and his co-thinkers in materialism in England --
the colossal erudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply
the intellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Haeckel,
whose crass materialism often rises to the height of idiotic naivetes in his
reasonings. One has but to read his "Pedigree of Man, and Other
Essays" (Aveling's transl.) to feel a desire, in the words of Job, that
his
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remembrance should perish from the
earth, and that he "shall have no name in the streets." Hear him
deriding the idea of the origin of the human race "as a supernatural (?)
phenomenon," 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," . . goes on the creator of the mythical Sozura,
"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 (or 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 had
very wisely . . . 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 Buchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living form, was held as
the necessary sequence to Darwin's teaching . . and we are at present concerned
with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race
through ALMIGHTY EVOLUTION" (pp. 34, 37).
To which, unabashed by this
scientific farrago, Occultism replies: in the course of Evolution, when the
physical triumphed over, and nearly crushed under its weight, spiritual and
mental evolutions, the great gift of Kriyasakti* remained the heirloom of only
a few elect men in every age . . . . Spirit strove vainly to manifest itself in
its fulness in purely organic forms (as has been explained in Part I. of this
Volume), and the faculty, which had been a natural attribute in the early
humanity of the Third Race, became one of the class regarded as simply
phenomenal by the Spiritualists and Occultists, and as scientifically
impossible by the materialists.
In our modern day the mere assertion
that there exists a power which can create human forms -- ready-made sheaths
for the "conscious monads" or Nirmanakayas of past Manvantaras to
incarnate within -- is, of course, absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded
as quite natural, on the other hand, is the production of a Frankenstein's
monster, plus moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling
of one's own immortal nature within one's self -- by "physico-chemical
forces, guided by blind Almighty Evolution" ("Pedigree of Man").
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For explanation of the term
Kriyasakti, see Com. 2 in Stanza 26.
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As to the origin of that man, not
ex-nihilo, cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity
consolidating the astral body with surrounding materials -- this conception is
too absurd even to be mentioned in the opinion of the materialists.
Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims and
theories -- however unscientific and superstitious at first glance -- compared
as to their intrinsic value and probability, with those of the modern
evolutionists. Hence the esoteric teaching is 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 of Evolution in the Scientific brain of a
materialist. What is EVOLUTION? If asked to define the full and complete
meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor Haeckel will be able to do it any
better than Webster does: "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 egg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm
from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the
latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the
unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which
they must pass before the flower or the animal are fully developed? Hence, the
future plan, if not a DESIGN, must be there. Moreover, that seed has to be
traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinists been successful in
this? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery
Abysses is not homogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that
had moulded and cast it into being.
Here Science is once more silent. But
since there is no Self-consciousness as yet in either speck, seed, or germ,
according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school --
Occultists agreeing in this for once with their natural enemies -- what is it
that guides the force or forces so unerringly in this process of evolution?
Blind force? As well call blind the brain which evolved in Haeckel his
"Pedigree of Man" and other lucubrations. We can easily conceive that
the said brain lacks an important centre or two. For, whoever knows anything of
the anatomy of the human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an atheist
and a materialist, must be "hopelessly insane," according to Lord
Herbert, who rightly sees in the frame of man's body and the coherence of its
parts, something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it "to be the
greatest miracle 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 little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work
in Kosmos, he sees very plainly
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that every part, every speck and atom
are in harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having
its distinct mission throughout the life-cycle. But, fortunately, the greatest,
the most eminent thinkers and Scientists of the day are now beginning to rise
against this "Pedigree," and even Darwin's natural selection theory,
though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched
conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N. T. Danilevsky --
"Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory" -- upsets it
completely and without appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our
readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges -- read by
its author, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society at a recent official
meeting of the latter -- called "Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of
Spirit, etc." in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings -- namely,
those of the physical and spiritual evolutions. He explains the origin of the
variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such evident intelligent
design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two principles
in (manifest) nature, the inner Conscious Principle adapting itself to physical
nature and the innate potentialities in the latter. Thus the French Scientist
has to return to our old friend -- Archaeus, or the life-Principle -- without
naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done in England in his
"Nerve-Force," etc. 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 still another excellent volume of another Russian deep thinker, 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 Memoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious,
integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner
Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large -- the Soul. Thus,
gradually, all the best Scientists and Thinkers are approaching the Occultists
in their general conclusions.
But such metaphysically inclined men
of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his
magnificent poem on
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the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal
youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after
beholding naked Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our
Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at
the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after
reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while
gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter
and ganglia in their brain, to respond to blind physico-chemical forces. At any
rate Shakespeare's lines apply admirably to our modem Evolutionist who
symbolizes that "proud man," who --
"Dress'd 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! . . . .
"
These have nought to do with the
"angels." Their only concern is the human ancestor, the pithecoid
Noah who gave birth to three sons -- the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape,
and the "arboreal" Palaeolithic man. On this point, they will not be
contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to
cripple scientific inquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation
of the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an
approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first
man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is "really
of no account." Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we
are informed. 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, . . ." etc.,
etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.)
And, withal, to reject a scientific
hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
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§ 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." --
HUXLEY.
---------------------
THE world stands divided this day,
and hesitates between divine progenitors -- be they Adam and Eve or the lunar
Pitris -- and Bathybius Haeckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep.
Having explained the occult theory, it may now be compared with that of the
modem Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having
judged them on their respective merits.
We may derive some consolation for
the rejection of our divine ancestors, in finding that the Haeckelian
speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science
than do our own. Haeckel's phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of
his fantastic evolution, by 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 "ancestral trees of our race sketched in the
'Schopfungs-geschichte' 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 that German naturalist
(Haeckel) himself confessing that neither geology (in its history of the past)
nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever "rise to the position of
a real exact Science,"* a large margin is thus left to Occult Science to
make its annotations and lodge its protests. The world is left to choose
between the teachings of Paracelsus, the "Father of Modern
Chemistry," and those of Haeckel, 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 Haeckel a
propos of our blood relationship to "those ancestors (of ours) which have
led up from the unicellular classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia,
Reptilia to the Aves" -- one may put in a few words, a question or two,
for the information of our readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and
bearing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Pedigree of Man." --
"The Proofs of Evolution," p. 273.
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in mind Darwin's theories of natural
selection, etc., we would ask Science -- with regard to the origin of the human
and animal species -- which theory of evolution of the two herewith described
is the more scientific, or the more unscientific, if so preferred.
(1). Is it that of an Evolution which
starts from the beginning with sexual propagation?
(2). Or that teaching which shows the
gradual development of organs; their solidification, and the procreation of
each species, at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even
several individuals. Then follows a fresh development -- the first step to a
species of separate distinct sexes -- the hermaphrodite condition; then again,
a kind of Parthenogenesis, "virginal reproduction," when the egg-cells
are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming
matured outside of it; until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes,
the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection?
Of these two, the former
"theory," -- rather, a "revealed fact" -- is enunciated by
all the exoteric Bibles (except the Puranas), preeminently by the Jewish
Cosmogony. The last one, is that which is taught by the Occult philosophy, as
explained all along.
An answer is found to our question in
a volume just published by Mr. S. Laing -- the best lay exponent of Modern
Science.* In chapter viii. of his latest work, "A Modern
Zoroastrian," the author begins by twitting "all ancient religions
and philosophies" for "assuming a male and female principle for their
gods." At first sight, he says "the distinction of sex appears as
fundamental as that of plant and animal." . . . . "The Spirit of god
brooding over Chaos and producing the world," he goes on to complain,
"is only a later edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the
far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Kosmos out of Chaos
by the co-operations 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, 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."
However we may agree with the learned
author as to the inadvisability of using wrong words, and the terrible
anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old Scriptures -- especially in the
orthodox Christian Bible -- nevertheless, there may be two extenuating
circumstances in the case. Firstly, all these "ancient philosophies"
and "modern
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Author of "Modern Science and
Modern Thought."
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religions" are -- as
sufficiently shown in these two volumes -- an exoteric veil thrown over the
face of esoteric truth; and -- as the direct result of this -- they are
allegorical, i.e., mythological in form; but still they are immensely more
philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific theories, so-called.
Secondly, from the Orphic theogony down to Ezra's last remodelling of the
Pentateuch, every old Scripture having in its origin borrowed its facts from
the East, it has been subjected to constant alterations by friend and foe,
until of the original version there remained but the name, a dead shell from
which the Spirit had been gradually eliminated.
This alone ought to show that no
religious work now extant can be understood without the help of the Archaic
wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all built.
But to return to the direct answer
expected from Science to our direct question. It is given by the same author,
when, following his train of thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the
powers of Nature in ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon
them in the following 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 reproduction" must have
been known -- to the ancient Hindus, at any rate -- Mr. Laing's assertion to
the contrary, notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu Purana,
quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha "established sexual intercourse as the
means of multiplication," only after a series of other "modes,"
which are all enumerated therein, (Vol. II., p. 12, Wilson's Transl.), it
becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note
well, in an EXOTERIC work. Then, Mr. S. Laing goes on to tell us that:--
. . . . "By far the larger
proportion of living forms, in number . . . . have come into existence, without
the aid of sexual propagation." He then instances Haeckel's monera . . . .
"multiplying by self-division." The next stage the author shows in
the nucleated cell, "which does exactly the same 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 separate existence, which grows to the size of the parent
by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding
inorganic materials."**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vide Part I. of this volume, page
183, Stanza VIII.
** In this, as shown in Part I.,
Modern Science was again anticipated, far beyond its own speculations in this
direction, by Archaic Science.
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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". . . . when "we are at the
threshold of that system of sexual propagation, which has (now) become the rule
in all the higher families of animals" . . . . It is when an
"organism, having advantages in the struggle for life, established itself
permanently" . . . . that special organs developed to meet the altered
condition . . . . . when a 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." . . . . "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 lower families of animals . . . the male and female organs are
developed within the same being . . . . . a hermaphrodite. Moreover, in the
"virginal reproduction -- germ-cells apparently similar in all respects to
egg-cells, develop themselves into new individuals without any fructifying
element," etc., etc. (pp. 103-107).
Of all which we are as perfectly well
aware as of this -- that the above was never applied by the very learned English
popularizer of Huxleyo-Haeckelian theories to the genus homo. He limits this to
specks of protoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true
to the theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the
fundamental 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 (caenogenesis)
has obtained." (Anthrop. 3rd edition, p. 11.)
This shows to us that every living
creature and thing on earth, including man, evolved from one common primal
form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary
process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have: he must have
divided himself; then, hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on
the immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the
oviparous -- at first "without any fructifying element," then
"with the help of the fertilitary spore"; and only after the final
and definite evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct "male and
female," when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal
law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be
ascertained: the plain and comprehensively described
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processes of such ante-sexual reproduction.
This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which was attempted by
the writer in Part I. of this Volume.
Either this, or -- man is a distinct
being. Occult philosophy may call him that, because of his distinctly dual
nature. Science cannot do so, once that it rejects every interference save
mechanical laws, and admits of no principle outside matter. The former -- the
archaic Science --allows the human physical frame to have passed through every
form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one, or from the simple
to the complex -- to use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this cycle
(the fourth), the frame having already existed among the types and models of
nature from the preceding Rounds -- that it was quite ready for man from the
beginning of this Round.* The Monad had but to step into the astral body of the
progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin
around the shadowy prototype.**
What would Science say to this? It
would answer, of course, that as man appeared on earth as the latest of the
mammalians, he had no need, no more than those mammals, to pass through the
primitive stages of procreation as above described. His mode of procreation was
already established on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply:
since to this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal
has yet been found, then (if the Occultist doctrine is to be repudiated) he
must have sprung miraculously in nature, like a fully armed Minerva from Jupiter's
brain. And in such case the Bible is right, along with other national
"revelations." Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by the
author of "A Modern
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 on the globe even if no active work is 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 Brahma."
** 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 one and two dimensional lines, and then only can he reproduce it in a
three dimensional or objective figure. And if 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?
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Zoroastrian" upon ancient
philosophies and exoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would
the sudden discovery of a "missing-link" -- like fossil mend matters
at all. For neither one such solitary specimen nor the scientific conclusions
thereupon, could insure its being the long-sought-for relic, i.e., that of an
undeveloped, still a once speaking MAN. Something more would be required as a
final proof (vide infra, Note). Besides which, even Genesis takes up man, her
Adam of dust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her "Sons of God and
Wisdom" and picks up the physical man of the THIRD Race. Eve is not
"begotten," but is extracted out of Adam on the manner of
"Amoeba, A," contracting in the middle and splitting into Amoeba B --
by division. (See p. 103, in "The Modern Zoroastrian.") Nor has human
speech developed from the various animal sounds.
Haeckel's theory that "speech
arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal sounds . . . ." as such "speech
still remains amongst a few races of lower rank" (Darwinian theory in
"Pedigree of Man," p. 22) is altogether unsound, as argued by
Professor Max Muller, among others. He contends that no plausible explanation
has yet been given as to how the "roots" of language came into
existence. A human brain is necessary for human speech. And figures relating to
the size of the respective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf
which separates the two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla,
measures no more than 30.51 cubic inches; while the average brains of the
flat-headed Australian natives -- the lowest now in 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 and 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." ("The Age
and Origin of Man.") From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive
that in order to prove the Huxley-Haeckelian theories of the descent of man, it
is not one, but a great number of "missing links" -- a true ladder of
progressive evolutionary steps -- that would have to be first found and then
presented by Science to thinking and reasoning humanity, before it would
abandon belief in gods and the immortal Soul for the worship of Quadrumanic
ancestors. Mere myths are now greeted as "axiomatic truths." Even
Alfred Russel Wallace maintains with Haeckel that primitive man was a
speechless ape-creature. To this Joly answers:-- "Man never was, in my
opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose portrait Haeckel 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 analo-
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gous to that of the Australians and
Papuans." ("Man before Metals," p. 320, N. Joly. Inter. Scient.
Series.)
Haeckel, among other things, often
comes into direct conflict with the Science of languages. In the course of his
attack on Evolutionism (1873, "Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language"),
Prof. Max Muller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as "vulnerable at the
beginning and at the end." The fact is, that only the partial truth of
many of the secondary "laws" of Darwinism is beyond question -- M. de
Quatrefages evidently accepting "Natural Selection," the
"struggle for existence" and transformation within species, as proven
not once and for ever, but pro. tem. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to
condense the linguistic case against the "Ape ancestor" theory:--
Languages have their phases of
growth, etc., like all else in nature. It is almost certain that the great
linguistic families pass through three stages.
(1) All words are roots and merely
placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages).
(2) One root defines the other, and
becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative).
(3) The determinative element (the
determinating meaning of which has long lapsed) unites into a whole with the
formative element (Inflected).
The problem then is: Whence these
ROOTS? Max Muller argues that the existence of these ready-made materials of
speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This
potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which materialists almost
invariably avoid.
Von Hartmann explains it as a
manifestation of the "Unconscious," and admits its cogency versus
mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair representative of the Metaphysician and
Idealist of the present age.
The argument has never been met by
the non-pantheistic Evolutionists. To say with Schmidt: "Forsooth are we
to halt before the origin of language?" is an avowal of dogmatism and of
speedy defeat. (Cf. his "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 304.)
We respect those men of science who,
wise in their generation, say: "Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our
powers of direct observation, we are too honest, too devoted to the truth -- or
what we regard as truth -- to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our
unproven theories along with facts absolutely established in modern
Science." . . . . "The borderland of (metaphysical) knowledge is best
left to time, which is the best test as to truth" (A Modern Zoroastrian,
p. 136).
This is a wise and an honest sentence
in the mouth of a materialist. But when a Haeckel, after just saying that
"historical events of
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past time . . " having
"occurred many millions of years ago,* . . . are for ever removed from
direct observation," and that neither geology nor phylogeny** can or will
"rise to the position of a real exact science," then insists on the
development of all organisms -- "from the lowest vertebrate to the
highest, from Amphioxus to man" -- we ask for a weightier proof than he
can give. Mere "empirical sources of knowledge," so extolled by the
author of "Anthropogeny" -- when he has to be satisfied with the
qualification for his own views -- are not competent to settle problems lying
beyond their domain; nor is it the province of exact science to place any
reliance on them.*** If "empirical" -- and Haeckel declares so
himself repeatedly -- then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the
sight of exact research, when extended into the remote past, than our Occult
teachings of the East, both having to be placed on quite the same level. Nor
are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations treated in any better way by
the real scientists, than are our cyclic repetitions of the evolution of the
Great in the minor races, and the original order of evolutions. For the
province of exact, real Science, materialistic though it be, is to carefully
avoid anything like guess-work, speculation which cannot be verified; in short,
all suppressio veri and all suggestio falsi. The business of the man of exact
Science is to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of nature;
to record, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest
minutiae which are presented to the observation of the senses with the help of
all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies, not by the aid of
metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate right to do, is to
correct by the assistance of physical instruments the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It thus appears that in its anxiety
to prove our noble descent from the catarrhine "baboon," Haeckel's
school has pushed the times of pre-historic man millions of years back. (See
"Pedigree of Man," p. 273.) Occultists, render thanks to science for
such corroboration of our claims!
** 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.
*** Such newly-coined words as
"perigenesis of plastids," "plastidule Souls" (!), and
others less comely, invented by Haeckel, may be very learned and correct in so
far as they may express very graphically the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As a
fact, however, they remain for his less imaginative colleagues painfully
caenogenetic -- 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 ape, is a deductive
law that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory of
descent" ("Anthropogeny," p. 392) -- 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, calling them, in return, ignoramuses (see
"Pedigree of Man," Notes).
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defects or illusions of his own
coarser vision, auditory powers, and other senses. 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 under his direct observation; to profit by the
experiences and mistakes of the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a
certain concatenation of cause and effects, which, but only by its constant and
unvarying 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 true to his
original programme of natural or physical sciences. Any side-way path from this
royal road becomes speculation.
Instead of keeping to this, what does
many a so-called man of science do in these days? He rushes into the domains of
pure metaphysics, while deriding it. He delights in rash conclusions and calls
it "a deductive law from the inductive law" of a theory based upon
and drawn out of the depths of his own consciousness: that consciousness being
perverted by, and honeycombed 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 denounces everything, save his own hobbies, as
superstition. He suggests theories of the Universe, a Cosmogony developed by
blind, mechanical forces of nature alone, far more miraculous and impossible
than even one based upon the assumption of fiat lux out of nihil -- and tries
to astonish the world by such a wild theory; which, being known to emanate from
a scientific brain, is taken on blind faith as very scientific and the outcome
of SCIENCE.
Are those the opponents Occultism
would dread? Most decidedly not. For such theories are no better treated by
real (not empirical) Science than our own. Haeckel, hurt in his vanity by du
Bois-Reymond, never tires of complaining publicly of the latter's onslaught on
his fantastic theory of descent. Rhapsodizing on "the exceedingly rich
storehouse of empirical evidence," he calls those "recognised
physiologists" who oppose every speculation of his drawn from the said
"storehouse" -- ignorant men. "If many men," he declares --
"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" ("Pedigree of Man," p. 273).
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.,
etc. Again, "an Empiric -- One who confines himself to applying the
results of his own observations" (only)
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(which is Haeckel'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 endeavour to rank his knowledge, the
fruits of his personal observation and experience, among the exact sciences of
modern learning. He keeps within his legitimate sphere, where he is master. But
what is one to think of a rank materialist, whose duty is clearly traced before
him, who 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."
("Anthropogeny," p. 392).
A "theory" is simply a
hypothesis, a speculation, and no law. To say otherwise is only one of the many
liberties taken now-a-days by scientists. They enunciate an absurdity, and then
hide it behind the shield of Science. Any deduction from theoretical speculation
is no better than a speculation on a speculation. Now Sir W. Hamilton has
already shown that 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 term practice
and practical."
But modern Science puts an
extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks at the idea. Materialistic
philosophers and Idealists of Europe and America may be agreed with the
Evolutionists as to the physical origin of man -- yet it will never become a
general truth with the true metaphysician, and the latter defies the
materialists to make good their arbitrary assumptions. That the ape-theory
theme* of Vogt and Darwin, on which the Huxley-Haeckelians have composed of
late such extraordinary variations, is far less scientific -- because clashing
with the fundamental laws of that theme itself -- than ours can ever be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 more attention from the scientific
student than the great quadrumana (the anthropoids), bearing such a striking
resemblance to the human form as to have justified the epithet of
anthropomorphic being conferred on them. . . . 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.
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shown to be, is very easy of
demonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent work on "Human
Species" by the great French naturalist de Quatrefages, and our statement
will 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 hesitate. This is the description given by Mr.
Darwin of "the earliest ancestors of man."
"They were without doubt once
covered with hair; both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and
capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the
proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies were acted on by many muscles which now
only occasionally reappear in man, but which are still normally present in the
quadrumana. . . . The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the
foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in
their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land, and the males were
provided with canine teeth which served as formidable weapons. . . ."*
Darwin connects him 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 Haeckel, 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 fundamental law is broken. "In
fact," he says, "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"; (p. 106).
"Now man and ape present a very
striking contrast in respect to type. Their organs . . . correspond almost
exactly term for term: but these
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A ridiculous instance of
evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt ("Doctrine of Descent
and Darwinism," on page 292). He says, "Man's kinship with the apes
is not impugned by the bestial strength of the teeth of the male orang or
gorilla." Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, endows this fabulous being with
teeth used as weapons!
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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.
"Vogt, in placing man among the
primates, 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
apes," goes on de Quatrefages, thus corroborating our Doctrine, "if
we would adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the Darwinian
theory. We then come to the prosimiae of Haeckel, the loris, indris, etc. But
those animals also are climbers; we must go further, therefore, in search of
our first direct ancestor. But the genealogy by Haeckel 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.* We know that he considers the want of information upon similar
questions as a proof in his favour. Haeckel 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 Haeckel admit the existence of four
unknown intermediate groups instead of one?" asks de Quatrefages.
"Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to
answer." ("The Human Species," p. 107-108.)
But see Haeckel's famous genealogy,
in "The Pedigree of Man," called by him "Ancestral Series of
Man." In the "Second Division"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* According even to a fellow-thinker,
Professor Schmidt, Darwin has evolved "a certainly not flattering, and
perhaps in many points an incorrect, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in
the dawn of humanity." ("Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p.
284.)
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(Eighteenth Stage) he describes
"Prosimiae, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and Makis (Lemur) as without
marsupial bones and cloaca, but with placenta." And now turn to de
Quatrefages' "The Human Species," pp. 109, 110, and see his proofs,
based on the latest discoveries, to show that "the prosimiae of Haeckel
have no decidua and a diffuse placenta." They cannot be the ancestors of
the apes even, let alone man, according to a fundamental law of Darwin himself,
as the great French Naturalist shows. But this does not dismay the "animal
theorists" in the least, for self-contradiction and paradoxes are the very
soul of modern Darwinism. Witness -- Mr. Huxley. Having himself shown, with
regard to fossil man and the "missing link," that "neither in
quaternary ages nor at the present time does any intermediary being fill the
gap which separates man from the Troglodyte"; and that to "deny the
existence of this gap would be as reprehensible as absurd," the great man
of Science denies his own words in actu by supporting with all the weight of
his scientific authority that most "absurd" of all theories -- the
descent of man from an ape!
"This genealogy," says de
Quatrefages, "is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material
error." Indeed, Haeckel bases his descent of man on the 17th and 18th
stages (See Aveling's "Pedigree of Man," p. 77), the marsupialia and
prosimiae -- (genus Haeckelii?). Applying the latter term to the Lemuridae --
hence making of them animals with a placenta -- he commits a zoological blunder.
For after having himself divided mammals according to their anatomical
differences into two groups: the indeciduata, which have no decidua (or special
membrane uniting the placentae), and the deciduata, those who possess it: he
includes the prosimiae in the latter group. Now we have shown elsewhere what
other men of science had to say to this. As de Quatrefages says, "The
anatomical investigations of . . . Milne Edwards and Grandidier upon these
animals . . . place it beyond all doubt that the prosimiae of Haeckel 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 Haeckel himself, they cannot be regarded even as the ancestors of the
zonoplacental mammals . . . and ought to be connected with the pachydermata,
the edentata, and the cetacea"; (p. 110). And yet Haeckel's inventions
pass off with some as exact science!
The above mistake, if indeed, one, is
not even hinted at in Haeckel's "Pedigree of Man," translated by
Aveling. If the excuse may stand good that at the time the famous
"genealogies" were made, "the embryogenesis of the prosimiae was
not known," it is familiar now. We shall see whether the next edition of
Aveling's translation will have this important error rectified, or if the 17th
and 18th stages remain
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as they are to blind the profane, as
one of the real intermediate links. But, as the French naturalist observes --
"their (Darwin's and Haeckel's) process is always the same, considering
the unknown as a proof in favour of their theory." (Ibid.)
It comes to this. Grant to man an
immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the whole animate and inanimate creation with
the monadic principle gradually evolving from the latent and passive into
active and positive polarity -- and Haeckel will not have a leg to stand upon,
whatever his admirers may say.
But there are important divergences
even between Darwin and Haeckel. While the former makes us proceed from the
tailed catarrhine, Haeckel traces our hypothetical ancestor to the tailless
ape, though, at the same time, he places him in a hypothetical
"stage" immediately preceding this: "Menocerca with tails"
(19th stage).
Nevertheless, we have one thing in
common with the Darwinian school: it is the law of gradual and extremely slow
evolution, embracing many million years. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with
regard to the nature of the primitive "Ancestor." We shall be told
that the Dhyan Chohan, or the "progenitor" of Manu, is a hypothetical
being unknown on the physical plane. We reply that it was believed in by the
whole of antiquity, and by nine-tenths of the present humanity; whereas not
only is the pithecoid man, or "ape-man," a purely hypothetical
creature of Haeckel's creation, unknown and untraceable on this earth, but
further its genealogy -- as invented by him -- clashes with scientific facts
and all the known data of modern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd,
even as a fiction. As de Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Haeckel
"admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man" -- a
hundred times more difficult to accept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not
the only instance in which he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete
his genealogical table; and he admits very naively his inventions himself. Does
he not confess the non-existence of his sozura (14th stage) -- a creature
entirely unknown to science -- by confessing over his own signature, that --
"The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate
type between the 13th and the 14th stages"!
If so, we might maintain with as much
scientific right, that the proof of the existence of our three ethereal races,
and the three-eyed men of the Third and Fourth Root-Races "arises also
from the necessity of an intermediate type" between the animal and the gods.
What reason would the Haeckelians have to protest in this special case?
Of course there is a ready answer:
"Because we do not grant the presence of the monadic essence." The
manifestation of the Logos as individual consciousness in the animal and human
creation is not accepted
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by exact science, nor does it cover
the whole ground, of course. But the failures of science and its arbitrary
assumptions are far greater on the whole than* any "extravagant"
esoteric doctrine can ever furnish. Even thinkers of the school of Von Hartmann
have become tainted with the general epidemic. They accept the Darwinian
Anthropology (more or less), though they 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, but that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart
from material facts, though organism (as an upadhi) is necessary for ITS
manifestation.
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PLASTIDULAR SOULS, AND CONSCIOUS
NERVE-CELLS.
But one can never see the end of such
wonders with Haeckel and his school, whom the Occultists and Theosophists have
every right to consider as materialistic tramps trespassing on private
metaphysical grounds. Not satisfied with the paternity of Bathybius (Haeckelii),
"plastidule souls,"** and "atom-souls" are now invented by
them, on the basis of purely blind mechanical forces of matter. We are informed
that "the study of the evolution of soul-life shows 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."
("Present Position of Evolution," p. 266.)
"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,*** yet the
comparative and genetic observation of it clearly shows that it is only a
higher and more complex function of the nerve cells." (Ibid, note 22.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** According to Haeckel, there are
also cell-souls; "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 away before such a stupendous revelation!
*** 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 Haeckelii still more humorous and empirical,
in the sense of Webster's second definition.
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Mr. Herbert Spencer's song on
Consciousness -- is sung, it seems, and may henceforth be safely stored up in
the lumber room of obsolete speculations. Where, however, do Haeckel's "complex
functions" of his scientific "nerve-cells" land him? Once more
right into the Occult and mystic teachings of the Kabala about the descent of
souls as conscious and unconscious atoms; among the Pythagorean MONAD and the
monads of Leibnitz -- and the "gods, monads, and atoms" of our
esoteric teaching;* into the dead letter of Occult teachings, left to the
amateur Kabalists and professors of ceremonial magic. For this is what he says,
while explaining his newly-coined terminology:--
"Plastidule-Souls; the
plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the smallest, homogeneous parts of the
protoplasm are, on our plastic 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." ("Pedigree of Man," Note, p.
296.)
This he develops in his mirific
lecture on the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule, or the wave-motions of
living particles." It is an improvement on Darwin's theory of
"Pangenesis," and a further approach, a cautious move towards
"magic." The former is a conjecture that certain of the actual and
identical atoms which had belonged to 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 in the later . . . period" -- explains the author of
"The Modern Zoroastrian" (in "Primitive Polarities," etc.).
The latter (Occultism) teaches that -- (a) the life-atoms of our (Prana) life-principle
are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with
the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially
transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more
together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new
incarnation of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Haeckel (one taught for
thousands of years in all the Eastern religions, however), that the 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 Kama and Manas) "has its
developmental history" -- is claimed by Haekel as his own discovery and
innovation on an "untrodden (?) path"! He (Haeckel) 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, p. 137, "Pedigree of Man.")
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the Monads. Because (b), as the
individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles
(body, its astral, or life double, etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and
Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies,
etc., etc.*
To be just, and, to say the least,
logical, our modern Haeckelians ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the
"Perigenesis of the Plastidule," and like lectures, should be bound
up with those on "Esoteric Buddhism," and "The Seven Principles
in Man." Thus the public will have a chance, at any rate, of judging after
comparison which of the two teachings is the most or the least ABSURD, even
from the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science!
Now the Occultists, who trace every
atom in the universe, whether an aggregate or single, to One Unity, or
Universal Life; who do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic;
who know of no such thing as dead matter -- the Occultists are consistent with
their doctrine of Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of
will and sensation. But what can a materialist mean by the qualification? The
law of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Haeckelians -- "is
the result of the ignorance on the part of the man of science of occult
physics." We know and speak of "life-atoms" -- and of
"sleeping-atoms" -- because we regard these two forms of energy --
the kinetic and the potential -- as produced by one and the same force or the
ONE LIFE, and regard the latter as the source and mover of all. But what is it
that furnished with energy, and especially with memory, the "plastidular
souls" of Haeckel? The "wave motion 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 consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human
cycle, is transmitted from father to son.
Now Haeckel, modifying Darwin's
theory, suggests "most plausibly," as the author of the "Modern
Zoroastrian" thinks, "that not the identical atoms, but their
peculiar motions and mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted" (by
heredity).
If Haeckel, or any other Scientist,
knew more than any of them does of the nature of the atom, he would not have
improved the occasion in this way. For he only states, in a more metaphysical
language than Darwin, one and the same thing. The life-principle, or life
energy,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* (See "Transmigration of the
Life Atoms," "Five years of Theosophy," p. 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.")
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which is omnipresent, eternal,
indestructible, is a force and a PRINCIPLE as noumenon, atoms, as phenomenon.
It is one and the same thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in
materialism.*
Further, Haeckel enunciates
concerning the Atom Souls that which, at first sight, appears as occult as a
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," he tells us -- "seems to be capable of the
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."
He does not say a word concerning the
fact that this is Leibnitz's theory, and one pre-eminently occult. Nor does he
understand the term "Soul" as we do; for, with Haeckel it is simply,
along with consciousness, the production of the grey matter of the brain, a
thing which, as the "cell-soul, is as indissolubly bound up with the
protoplasmic body as is the human soul with the brain and spinal cord."
(Ibid.) He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois-Reymond
and Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of science,
as of the greatest thinkers of this and the past ages, in saying that "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, or, in other words, his Consciousness, will not permit him to
follow the conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe. He is greater
than they. He asserts this, and protests against all. "No one has the
right
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In "The Transmigration of the
Life-Atoms," we say, to explain better 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 entirely abandons the first set (because the
atoms themselves would then disappear), but only that it transfers its vis viva,
or life 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," etc., etc. Now what can Haeckel 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? He must have read Paracelsus and studied "Five Years of
Theosophy," without properly digesting the teachings, before evolving such
theories.
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to hold that in the future we
(Haeckel) shall not be able to pass beyond those limits of our knowledge that
to day seem impassable"; and he quotes from Darwin's introduction to the
"Descent of Man" these words, which he modestly applies to his
scientific opponents and himself: "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. That
day is not far off when the "thrice great" Haeckel will have shown
(to his own satisfaction) that the consciousness of Sir I. Newton was,
physiologically speaking, but the reflex action (or minus consciousness) caused
by the peri-genesis of the plastidules of our common ancestor and old friend,
the Moneron Haeckelii. The fact that the said "Bathybius" has been
found out and exposed as a pretender simulating the organic substance it was
not; and since, among the children of men, Lot's wife alone (and even this,
only after her disagreeable metamorphosis into a salt pillar) could claim the
pinch of salt it is, as her forefather -- will not dismay him at all. He will
go on asserting, as coolly as he has always done, that it was no more than the
peculiar mode and motion of the ghost of the long-vanished atoms of our
"Father Bathybius," which, transmitted across aeons of time into the
cell-tissue of the grey matter of the brains of every great man, caused
Sophocles and AEschylus, as well as Shakespeare, to write their tragedies,
Newton, his "Principia," Humboldt, his "Cosmos," etc. etc.
It prompted Haeckel to invent Graeco-Latin names three inches long, pretending
to mean a good deal, and meaning -- nothing.
Of course we are quite aware that the
true, honest evolutionist agrees with us; and that he is the first to say that
not only is the geological record imperfect, but that there are enormous gaps
in the series of hitherto discovered fossils, which can never be filled. He
will tell us, moreover, that "no evolutionist assumes that man is
descended from any existing ape or any extinct ape either," but that man
and apes originated probably aeons back, in some common root stock. Still, as
de Quatrefages points out, he will claim as an evidence corroborating his (the
evolutionist's) claim, even this wealth of absent proofs, 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" (A. Wilson). This is just what we ourselves claim. It
is just as possible that future should have in store for us the discovery of
the giant skeleton of an Atlantean, 30ft. high, as the fossil of a pithecoid
"missing link": only the former is more probable.
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§ III.
THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE
ANTHROPOID APE.
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A.
GEOLOGICAL FACTS BEARING ON THE
QUESTION OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.
THE data derived from scientific
research as to "primeval man" and the ape lend no countenance to
theories deriving the former from the latter. "Where, then, must we look
for primeval man?" still queries Mr. Huxley, after having vainly searched
for him in the very depths of the quaternary strata. "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 palaeontologist? Time will show
. . . ." ("Man's Place in Nature," p. 159).
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 he has all but
found the "missing link" -- in theory. It was due to theologians more
than to geologists that, till nearly 1860, man had been considered a relic no
older than the Adamic orthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it though, it was
left to a French Abbe -- l'abbe Bourgeois -- to give this easy-going theory
even a worse blow than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de
Perthes. Everyone knows that the Abbe discovered and brought to light good
evidence that man already existed during the Miocene period; for flints of
undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words of 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 Palaeolithic man."
Or -- the descendant of Eocene Man,
which is a variant offered to the theory. Meanwhile, the Dryopithecus with such
fine mental endowments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic
and even Palaeolithic man having become an absolute certainty, -- and, as the
same author justly observes: "If 100,000,000 years have elapsed since
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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" --
why should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as an hypothesis, to
the close of Mesozoic times -- admitting argumenti causa that the (much more
recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time to man and the
modern apes to have diverged from the mythical "ape more anthropoid,"
and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that are found mimicking
man in using "branches of trees as clubs, and cracking cocoa-nuts with
hammer and stones."* Some savage tribes of hillmen in India build their
abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of
the two, the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the other, is
scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins' theory. The fanciful
character of his hypothesis, is, however, generally admitted. It is argued that
while in the Pliocene and Miocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and
man was undeniably contemporaneous with the former of those times -- though as
we see orthodox anthropology still hesitates in the teeth of facts to place him
in the era of the Dryopithecus, which latter "has been considered by some
anatomists as in some respects superior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla"
-- yet, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil primates unearthed and no
pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms. And we find it also
hinted that the Dryopithecus may have been the "missing link," though
the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than does the brain of
the modern gorilla. (Vide also Gaudry's speculations.)
Now we would ask who among the
Scientists is ready to prove that there was no man in existence in the early
Tertiary period? What is it that prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years
ago his existence any farther back than 6, or 7,000 years was indignantly
denied. Now he is refused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may
become a question whether man was not contemporary with the "flying
Dragons;" the pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc., etc. Let
us listen, however, to the echo of Science.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This the way primitive man must
have acted? We do not know of men, not even of savages, in our age, who are
known to have imitated the apes who live side by side with them in the forests
of America and the islands. 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 had
personally a chimpanzee who, without being taught, opened a newspaper and
pretended to read in it. It is the descending generations, the children, who
mimic their parents -- not the reverse.
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"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 specialised for erect posture and a larger brain* . .
. . 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 . . . " ("Modern Science
and Modern Thought," p. 152.)
While most of the men of Science, who
are uncompromising in their belief in the descent of man from an "extinct
anthropoid mammal," will not accept even the bare tenability of any other
theory than an ancestor common to man and the Dryopithecus, it is refreshing to
find in a work of real scientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed,
it is as wide as it can be made under the circumstances, i.e., without
immediate danger of getting 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** between
man and the highest animal," the 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 a smaller brain."
Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth, and not the reverse.
** 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, pp. 102-3); 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 Haeckel, to the level of the large-brained and moral
man of to-day -- 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.
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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 cretin, 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 sculls 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,* 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 . . . . It may well make us hesitate before we admit
that man . . . is alone an exception. . . . This is more difficult to believe,
as the ape family which man (?) so closely resembles . . . . 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
ape and monkeys which are all built on the same lines?" (p. 182,
"Modern Science, etc.")
There was a "special
creation" for man, and a "special creation" for the ape, his progeny;
only on other lines than ever bargained for by Science. Albert Gaudry and
others give some weighty reasons why man cannot be regarded as the crown of an
ape-stock. When one finds that not only was the "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 inference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary.
The very manlike Gibbon is still in the same low grade of development, as it
was when it co-existed with Man at the close of the Glacial Period. It has not
appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to choose
between the Dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids -- gibbon, gorilla, etc.
If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-sufficient, how are we to
"explain" the evolution of this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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ape into Man during the first half of
the Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical transformation.
The extreme slowness with which variation in species supervenes renders the
thing inconceivable -- more especially on the Natural Selection hypothesis. The
enormous mental and structural gulf between a savage acquainted with fire and
the mode of kindling it, and a brutal anthropoid, is too much to bridge even in
idea, during so contracted a period. Let the Evolutionists push back the
process into the preceding Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace
both Man and Dryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration
has, nevertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are
as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of Haeckel.
Is an exit out of this cul de sac to be found by an appeal to the
"unknown," and a reference with Darwin to the "imperfection of
the geological record"? So be it; but the same right of appeal must be
accorded equally to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of
puzzled materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the
Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most
brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the
Haeckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval forests,
and Mr. Grant Allen's putative ancestor to have swung himself from bough 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 civilization of the
Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons. The
monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean giants, "blurred
copies" of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man (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 in Southern Asia, others, again, believe
in an independent origin of human stocks in Asia and America from a Simian
ancestry (Vogt). Haeckel, however, advances gaily to the charge. Starting from
his "prosimiae" . . . "the ancestor common to all other
catarrhini, including man" -- a "link" now, however, disposed of
for good by recent anatomical discoveries! -- he endeavours to find 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
men. 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. (Vide infra, "Scientific and
geological proofs of the former existence of several
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submerged continents.")
"The period during which the evolution of the anthropoid apes into apelike
men took place was probably the last part of the tertiary period, the Pliocene
Age, and perhaps the Miocene, its forerunner." (Pedigree of Man, p. 73.)
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 who materialized through long aeons out of
the ethereal hermaphrodites. Only, if it is proved that Easter Island is an
actual relic of Lemuria, we must believe that according to Haeckel the "dumb
ape-men," just removed from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic
portrait-statues, some of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are
mistaken in terming Haeckelian doctrines "abominable, revolutionary,
immoral" -- though materialism is the legitimate outcome of the
ape-ancestor myth -- they are simply too absurd to demand disproof.
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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 disregarded, this, our denial of the
Darwinian theory as applied to Man, will be the one "unpardonable"
sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock on the evidence of similarity of
structure between the ape and the man. The anatomical evidence, it is urged, is
quite overpowering in this case; it is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle,
even the brain conformation being very much the same.
Well, what of that? All this was
known before King Herod; and the writers of the Ramayana, the poets who sang
the prowess and valour of Hanuman, the monkey-God, "whose feats were great
and Wisdom never rivalled," must have known as much about his anatomy and
brain as does any Haeckel or Huxley in our modern day. Volumes upon volumes
were written upon this similarity, in antiquity as in more modern times.
Therefore, there is nothing new whatever 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 pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one
-- we are told -- if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we
are called upon to explain the reason of:--
(I.) The similarity of structure
between the two; the fact that the
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higher animal world -- man and beast
-- is physically of one type or pattern.
(II.) The presence of rudimentary
organs in man, i.e., traces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of
these organs, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment,
except for a semi-animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in Man
those "rudimentary" organs (as useless as its rudimentary wing is to
the Apteryx of Australia), the vermiform appendix of the coecum, the ear
muscles,* the "rudimentary tail" (with which children are still
sometimes born), etc., 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 themselves --
with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such eminent zoologists as Mr. Romanes
and others -- while defending the Darwinian theory, are the first to confess
the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of its final demonstration. And
there are as great men of science as the above-named, who deny, most
emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and loudly denounce the
unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this supposed similarity. It is
sufficient to glance at the works of Broca, Gratiolet, of Owen, Pruner-Bey, and
finally, at the last great work of de Quatrefages, "Introduction a l'Etude
des Races humaines, Questions generales," to discover the fallacy of the
Evolutionists. We may say more: the exaggerations concerning such similarity of
structure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring and
absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley found himself forced to protest against
the too sanguine expectations. It was that great anatomist personally who
called the "smaller fry" to order, by declaring in one of his
articles that the differences in the structure of the human body and that of
the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only far from being trifling
and unimportant, but were, on the contrary, very great and suggestive:
"each of the bones of the gorilla has its own specific impress on it that
distinguishes it from a similar human bone." Among the existing creatures
there is not one single intermediate form that could fill the gap between man
and the ape. To ignore that gap, he added, "was as uncalled-for as it was
absurd."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Quoted in the Review of the
"Introduction a l'Etude des Races Humaines," by de Quatrefages. We
have not Mr. Huxley's work at hand to quote from. Or to cite another good
authority:-- "We find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon), in the
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Finally, the absurdity of such an
unnatural descent of man is so palpable in the face of all the proofs and
evidence of the skull of the pithecoid as compared to that of man, that even de
Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our esoteric theory by saying that it is
rather the apes that can claim descent from man than vice versa. As proven by
Gratiolet, with regard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids, in
which species that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case
were the corresponding organs in man really the product of the development of
the said organs in the apes -- the size of the human skull and its brain, as
well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man. His
intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws
diminish and straighten, thus being more and more spiritualized: whereas with
the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent
and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller; and, as its skull recedes
and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain
being finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more
room for the animal type. The organ of thought -- the brain -- recedes and
diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast -- the
jaw apparatus.
Thus, as wittily remarked in the
French work, a gorilla would have a perfect right to address an Evolutionist,
claiming its right of descent from himself. It would say to him, "We,
anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure from the human type, and
therefore our development and evolution are expressed by a transition from a
human-like to an animal-like structure of organism; but in what way could you,
men, descend from us -- how can you form a continuation of our genus? For, to
make this possible, your organization would have to differ still more than ours
does from the human structure, it would have to approach still closer to that
of the beast than ours does; and in such a case justice demands that you should
give up to us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you
insist on tracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our
organization and its development are such that we are unable to generate forms
of a higher organization than our own."
This is where the Occult Sciences
agree entirely with de Quatre-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 the average Australian
brain = 99.35 cub. inches; that of the gorilla 30.51 cub. in., and that of the
chimpanzee only 25.45, the giant gap to be bridged by the advocate of
"Natural" Selection becomes apparent.
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fages. Owing to the very type of his
development man cannot descend from either an ape or an ancestor common to
both, but shows his origin from a type far superior to himself. And this type
is the "Heavenly man" -- the Dhyan Chohans, or the Pitris so-called,
as shown in the first Part of this volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids,
the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee can, and, as the Occult
Sciences teach, do, descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being
the product of man and an extinct species of mammal -- whose remote ancestors
were 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 many variations on basic types
originally thrown off by the MAN of the Third and Fourth Round, such an
evolutionist argument as that insisting on the "unity of structural
plan" characterising all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types referred
to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to
which they ultimately gave rise; but a general unity of type has, nevertheless,
been preserved throughout the ages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the
co-existence of several utterly opposed "ground plans" of organic
evolution on one planet. Once, however, that the general drift of the occult
explanation is formulated, inference as to detail may well be left to the
intuitive reader.
Similarly with the important question
of the "rudimentary" organs discovered by anatomists in the human
organism. Doubtless this line of argument, when wielded by Darwin and Haeckel
against their European adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists,
who ventured to dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry, were
sorely puzzled how to deal with the presence of gill-clefts, with the
"tail" problem, and so on. Here again Occultism comes to our
assistance with the necessary data.
The fact is that, as previously
stated, the human type is the repertory of all potential organic forms, and the
central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true
"Evolution" or "Unfolding" -- a sense which cannot be said
to belong to the mechanical theory of natural selection. Criticising Darwin's
inference from "rudiments," an able writer remarks: "Why is it
not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that Man was created with the
rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful
appendages in the lower animals into which man degenerated, as to suppose that
these parts existed in full development in the lower animals out of which man
was generated?" ("Creation or Evolution?" Geo. T. Curtis, p.
76.)
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Read for "into which Man
degenerated," "the prototypes which man shed in the course of his
astral developments," and an aspect of the true esoteric solution is
before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
So far as our present Fourth Round
terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded
as traceable to prototypes shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes,
etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in
the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity
subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks.
"Evolution" has to deal with the progressive modifications, which
palaeontology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in
the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature of things
cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the
basis for future differentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling the
development of physical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it
has acquitted itself ably of the task.
To return to the immediate subject of
discussion. The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials
of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from purely astral
progenitors contemporary with the Second Race. They are thus post-Human, and,
consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their
embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and
epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. 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 branchiae of the fish are developed;* 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" -- aeons before the epoch of the First Root-Race,
[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "At this period," writes
Darwin, "the arteries run in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood
to branchiae 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.
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-- "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 terrestrial animal forms were just as much
referable to types thrown off by Third Round man, as that new importation into
our planet's area -- the mammalian stock -- is to the Fourth Round Humanity of
the Second Root-race. The process of human foetal growth epitomizes not only
the general characteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial
life. The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no
loss to "account for" the birth of children with an actual caudal
appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human foetus is, at one period,
double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every organ useful
to animal life is locked up in Man -- the microcosm of the Macrocosm -- and
abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the strange phenomena which
Darwinists regard as "reversion to ancestral features."* Reversion,
indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by our present-day empiricists!
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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 man of science, that "all estimate
of geological duration is not merely impossible, but necessarily imperfect; for
we are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed, which quickened
or retarded the progress of the sedimentary deposits."** And now another
man of Science, as well known (Croll), calculating that the tertiary age began
either 15 or 2 1/2 million of years ago -- the former being a more correct
calculation, according to Esoteric doctrine, than the latter there -- seems in
this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see
in man "a special creation" (to a certain degree the Secret Sciences
do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half
Races -- the Spiritual, the semi-astral, and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Those who with Haeckel regard the
gill-clefts with their attendant phenomena as illustrative of an active
function in our amphibian and piscine ancestors (Vide his XII. and XIII.
stages), ought to explain why the "Vegetable with leaflets" (Lefevre)
represented in foetal growth, does not appear in his 22 stages through which
the monera have passed in their ascent to Man. Haeckel does not postulate a
vegetable ancestor. The embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and
here cuts its possessor.
** "Physiology," Lefevre,
p. 480.
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semi-human -- of our teachings. But
it can hardly do the same in the case of the Third at its closing period, the
Fourth, and the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palaeolithic
and Neolithic man.* The geologists of France place man in the mid-miocene age
(Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de
Quatrefages suggests; while the English savants do not generally accept such
antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For "If we
consider," says Sir Charles Lyell in "Antiquity of Man," p. 246
--
"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."
The men of Science avoid pinning
themselves down to any definite statement concerning the age of man, as indeed
they hardly could, and thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations.
Nevertheless, while the majority of the Anthropologists carry back the
existence of man only into the period of the post-glacial drift, or what is
called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to
a common origin with that of the monkey, do not show great consistency in their
speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater
antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers. This
is proven by the greatest authorities on the question -- Mr. Huxley, for
instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, ipso facto hold
very tenaciously to an antiquity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We confess to not being able to see
any good reasons for Mr. E. Clodd's certain 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 to this: "but the men
of Palaeolithic 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 Palaeolithic 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
Palaeolithic man.
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of man so very great, indeed, that it
falls not so far short of the Occultist's estimate.* The modest thousands of
years of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the 100,000 years, to which
Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem quite microscopical
when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley's bold speculations. The
former, indeed, makes of the original race of men ape-like cave-dwellers. The
great English biologist, in his desire to prove man's pithecoid origin, insists
that the transformation of the primordial ape into a human being must have
occurred millions of years back. For in criticising the excellent average
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 this skull "possesses large bosses on the
forehead, strikingly (?) suggestive of those which give the gorilla its
peculiarly fierce appearance,"** (Fortnightly Review, 1882,) still Mr.
Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once 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 those 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"*** (Huxley).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 palaeolithic 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 palaeolithic men, the more ominous and destructive
for the theory of the gradual development of man from the animal kingdom is the
result stated." Huxley states ("Man's Place in Nature," p. 159)
that the most liberal estimates for the antiquity of Man must be still further
extended.
** 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 Palaeolithic type is superior to a very large number of existing
races?
*** 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 to trace the ape from man than man
from the anthropoid. With this exception science has not one single valid argu-
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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An untold antiquity for man is thus,
then, the scientific sine qua non in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since
the oldest Palaeolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from
his modern descendant. It is only of late that modern Science began to widen
with every year the abyss that now separates her from old Science, that of the
Plinies and Hippocrateses, none of whom would have derided the archaic
teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal species,
as the present day Scientist -- geologist or anthropologist -- is sure to do.
Holding, as we do, that the mammalian
type was a post-human Fourth Round product, the following diagram -- as the
writer understands the teaching -- may make the process clear:--
[[diagram]]
[[text on diagram:]]
Primeval Astral Man
Second Astral Race
Race Third Semi Astral
Astral Mammals Prototypes
3rd Race Man
Separation into Sexes
4th Race M, physical
5th Race Man
Lower (physical) mammals
Lower Apes.
The unnatural union was invariably
fertile, because the then mammalian types were not remote enough from their
Root-type* -- Primeval Astral
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] ment 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 Palaeolithic Savage, a "Man of Canstadt," evolve
into thinking men 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 changes since 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.)
* Let us remember in this connection
the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a
GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the
Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes,
especially of the later anthropoids -- apart from the fact that these latter
preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires.
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Man -- to develop the necessary
barrier. Medical science records such cases of monsters, bred from human and
animal parents, even in our own day. The possibility is, therefore, only one of
degree, not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest
problems presented to the consideration of the anthropologist.
The pendulum of thought oscillates
between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of
theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to
interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most
extravagant theory of the ages -- the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal
ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one form or another, now become, that the
most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The
Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of
modem Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the
ineptitude of the theological legend of Man's "creation" became more
and more 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 answer
to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between
Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some
former ancestor common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper
solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the
genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as was useful, by
stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the
production of huge man-like monsters -- the offspring of human and animal
parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into
the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external
conditions, until 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 crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very
simple theory -- and we are willing to offer it even as a hypothesis to the
unbelievers -- with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles,
that no sooner is one of these overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis,
than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed
of.
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§ IV.
DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS,
RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
MILLIONS of years have dropped into
Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few
millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology 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 the still-debated man of the Pliocene or
even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right
(argumenti causa) in basing its present anthropology -- as to the date and mode
of origin of "Homo sapiens" -- on the Darwinian theory.* But if the
skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but
no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid --
then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And
it is said in well-informed quarters that the XXth century will be yet in its
earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man's priority will be
forthcoming.
Even now evidence is brought forward
that the dates for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other
historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a
peace-offering to Biblical chronology. "No date," writes the
well-known Palaeontologist, Ed. Lartet, "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 hundred and forty different opinions
have been formed about the single date 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, archaeologists have had to throw back by
nearly 3,000 years also the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Ed. Lartet, "Nouvelles
Recherches sur la co-existence de l'homme et des Grands Mammiferes Fossils de
la derniere periode Geologique." Annales des Soc. Nat., t. XV., p. 256.
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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."
We have shown in Isis that those who
based history on the Jewish Chronology (a race which had none of its own and
rejected the Western till the XIIth century) would lose themselves, for the
Jewish account could only be followed through Kabalistic computation, and with
a key to it in the hand. . . We had characterised the late George Smith's
chronology of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, made by him 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 G. Smith makes Sargon
I. (the prototype of Moses in his legend) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600
B.C. -- probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes 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. 3750." "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, in a few
years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well-known Oxford
lecturer remarked during his disquisitions upon "The origin and Growth of
Religion as illustrated by the Babylonian Religion" 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 and records were all esoteric. The
Babylonian priests did no more than the Priests of other ancient nations. Their
records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only
the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor
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Sayce's remarks are 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 to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the
year 4,000 B.C., as to make them pre-Kosmic in the judgment of every Bible
worshipper.
How much more would paleontology have
learned had not millions of works been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian
literary lore, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Caesar B.C.
48, in A.D. 390, and lastly in the year 640, A.D., by the general of Kaliph
Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the
primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on
the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again the destruction of
the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin
dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C.? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the
Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese
collections could have never contained such information as one of the aforesaid
"Atlantean" skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre
data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back
nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from
Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia,
have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in
Egypt. Unfortunately, dynasties and Pyramids have the fate of geological
periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the respective whims of the
men of science. Archaeologists know now, it is said, that the afore-mentioned
statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be 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"? Sanchoniathon's
and Manetho's Synchronistic tables and their figures have been rejected, or
whatever
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remained of these after holy
Eusebius' handling of them; and still 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 least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has found it out.
According to 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."*
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 the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the
Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods -- this is simply to make our facts more
comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed
and determined durations, 2 1/2 and 15 million years being assigned at
different times to one and the same age (the Tertiary) -- and since no two
geologists and naturalists seem to agree on this point -- Esoteric teachings
may remain quite indifferent to whether man is shown to appear in the Secondary
or the Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as 15
million years' duration -- well and good; for the Occult doctrine, jealously
guarding its real and correct figures as far as concerns the First, Second, and
two-thirds of the Third Root-Race -- gives clear information upon one point
only -- the age of "Vaivasvata Manu's humanity." (Vide Part I., Vol.
II., "Chronology of the Brahmins.")
Another definite statement is this:
It is during the so-called Eocene period that the continent to which the Fourth
Race belonged, and on which it lived and perished, showed the first symptoms of
sinking. And it was in the Miocene age, that it was finally destroyed -- save
the little island mentioned by Plato. It is these points that have to be
checked by the scientific data.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From a Report of the "Hibbert
Lectures, 1887. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, and Illustrated
by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians." By A. H. Sayce. (London:
Williams and Norgate.)
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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 work on "Comparative Geology: the
World-Life," by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes us with curious data. Here we
find an opponent of the Nebular theory, a reverend gentleman, smiting with all
the force of the hammer of his odium theologicum on the rather contradictory
hypothesis of the great stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and
cosmical phenomena based on their respective relations to terrestrial
durations. The "too imaginative physicists and naturalists" do not
fare very easily under this shower of their own speculative figures when placed
side by side, and cut rather a sorry figure. Thus he shows:--
"Sir William Thomson, on the
basis of the observed principles of cooling, concludes that no more than ten
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.*
Helmholz calculates that twenty million years would suffice for the original
nebula to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb
requires only ten millions to attain a temperature of 212 [[degrees]] Fahr.**
Croll estimates seventy million years for the diffusion of the heat, etc.***
Bischof calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to
cool from a temperature of 2,000 [[degrees]] to 200 [[degrees]] Centigrade.
Read, basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million
years since sedimentation began in Europe.**** 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 a 1,000
millions" (!!).
To this Prof. Winchell observes that
"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."***** Then he proceeds to give what he takes to
be more correct geological figures: a few will suffice.
According to Sir W. Thomson "the
whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000 years"; and agreeably with
Prof. Houghton's calculations of a minimum limit for the time since the
elevation of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nat. Philos. App. D., Trans. Royal
Soc., Edin.
** "Popular Astronomy," p.
509.
*** "Climate and Time," p.
335.
**** Read. Address, "Liverpool
Geolog. Society, 1876."
***** "World-Life," p. 180.
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Europe and Asia, three hypothetical
ages for three possible and different modes of upheaval are given: varying from
the modest figures of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous
figures 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 Brahmins.
Further calculations, the details of
which the reader may find in Prof. Winchell's work,* bring Houghton to an
approximation of the sedimentary age of the globe -- 11,700,000 years. These
figures are found too small by the author, who forthwith extends them to
37,000,000 years.
Again, according to Croll,**
2,500,000 years "represents the time since the beginning of the Tertiary
age" in one work; and according to another modification of his view,
15,000,000 only have elapsed since the beginning of the Eocene period;***
which, being the first of the three Tertiary periods, leaves the student
suspended between 2 1/2 and 15 millions. But if one has to hold to the former
moderate figures, then the whole incrusted age of the world would be
131,600,000 years.****
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 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell,
with reference to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race, "it is
generally believed to have made its appearance during the later decline of the
continental glaciers." Yet, he adds, this "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" (p. 379).
As a specimen of geological certainty
and agreement, these figures also may be added. Three authorities -- Messrs. T.
Belt, F.G.S.; J. Croll, F.R.S.; and Robert Hunt, F.R.S., -- in estimating the
time that has elapsed since the Glacial epoch, give absolutely different
figures, namely:--
Mr. Belt ... 20,000 years.
Mr. J. Croll ... 240,000 "
Mr. R. Hunt ... 80,000 "
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "World-Life," pp. 367-8.
** "Climate and Time."
*** Quoted in Mr. Ch. Gould's
"Mythical Monsters," p. 84.
**** According to Bischof, 1,004,177
years -- according to Chevandier's calculations 672,788 years -- were required
for the so-called coal formation. "The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet
in thickness, required for their development about 350,000 years." See
"Force and Matter," Buchner, J. F. Collingwood's edition.
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(But see "The Ice-Age Climate
and Time," Popular Science Review, Vol. xiv., p. 242.)
No wonder if 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"
(Vide supra, foot-note). A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the
gentlemen geologists: they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As
chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their
"Ancient and Primitive Rite" uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach
to reality.
The same uncertainty, contradictions
and disagreement reign on all other subjects.
The scientific authorities on the
Descent of Man are again, for all practical purposes, a delusion and a snare.
There are many anti-Darwinists in the British Association, and "Natural
Selection" begins to lose ground. Though at one time the saviour, which
seemed to rescue the learned theorists from a final intellectual collapse into
the abyss of fruitless hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley
is showing signs of truancy to "Selection," and thinks "natural
selection not the sole factor":--
"We greatly suspect that she
(Nature) does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and
that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in
the series of known forms" (Review of Kolliker's Criticisms).
Again, in "Fallacies of
Darwinism," (p. 160), C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering
the fatal gaps in 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' " -- wherein the Occultists are at one with
Mr. Darwin.
Esoteric teaching fully corroborates
the idea of nature's slowness and dignified progression. "Planetary
impulses" are all periodical. Yet this Darwinian theory, correct as it is
in minor particulars, agrees no more with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who,
in his "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," shows
pretty conclusively that something more than "natural selection" was
requisite to produce physical man.
Let us, meanwhile, examine the
scientific objections to this scientific theory, 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 deposition of the strata down
to and including the Upper Silurian. If,
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then, the evolutionary work done
during this deposition only represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we
shall require 2,500,000,000 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 this 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 own
work. . . . .
"Thus, then, we find a wonderful
(and on Darwinian principles all but inexplicable) absence of minutely
transitional forms. All the most marked groups . . . . . 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 infinitesimal
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." ("Genesis of Species," p. 142.)
"The internal laws of their
component substance." These are wise words, and the admission of the
possibility, a prudent one. But how can these internal laws be ever recognized,
if Occult teaching is discarded? As a friend 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 and as clearly
understood if present confusion would not be made still more perplexing. All
these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of night disappear before the
light of the rising Sun, if the following esoteric axioms were admitted: (a)
the enormous antiquity (and the existence) of our planetary chain; (b) the
actuality of the Seven Rounds; (c) the separation of human races (outside the
purely anthropological division) 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 the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of
texture, so every living (so-called) organic species of animals with vegetation
included, changes with every new Root-Race. Were this admitted, if even only
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along with other, and surely, on
maturer consideration, no less absurd, suppositions, if Occult theories have to
be considered "absurd" at present, then every difficulty would be
made away with. Surely, Science ought to try and be more logical than it now
is, as it can hardly maintain the theory of man's descent from an anthropoidal
ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to that man!
Once Mr. Huxley talks of "the vast intellectual chasm between the man and
ape," and "the present enormous gulf between the two,"* and if
he admits the 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 some approximate
figures, at least, and agree upon the probable duration of those Pliocene,
Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and about which nothing
definite is known -- if they dare not venture beyond. But no two scientists
seem to agree. Every period seems to be a mystery in its duration, and a thorn
in the side of the geologists; and, as just shown, they are unable to harmonize
their conclusions even with regard to the comparatively recent geological
formations. Thus, no reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give
any, for with them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!
That which is said may be
strengthened by the confessions made by themselves and the synopsis of it,
found in that "Circle of Sciences," the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
which shows the mean accepted in the geological and anthropological riddles. In
that work the cream of the most authoritative opinions is skimmed off;
nevertheless, we find in it the refusal to assign any definite chronological
date, even to such, comparatively speaking, late epochs as the Neolithic era,
though, for a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain
geological periods; at any rate of some few, the duration of which could hardly
be shortened any more, without an immediate conflict with facts.
Thus, it is surmised in the great
Encyclopaedia (Vol. X., art. "Geology," p. 227), that "100
million years have passed . . . . . since the solidification of our Earth, when
the earliest form of life appeared upon it.**"
But it seems quite as hopeless to try
to convert the modern Geologists and Ethnologists as it is to make Darwinian
Naturalists perceive their mistakes. About the Aryan Root-Race and its origins,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Man's Place in Nature,"
p. 102, note.
** "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 for the same 350 million years; Buffon was satisfied with 34
millions -- but there are those in the more modern schools who will not be
content under 500 million years.
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Science knows as little as of the men
from other planets. With the exception of Flammarion and 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 Aryan stock,
that they seem to have 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 geological cataclysms -- from the upheaval of oceans, deluges,
and shifting of continents, down to the present year's cyclones, hurricanes,
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary
weather and seeming shifting of seasons which perplexes all European and
American meteorologists -- are due to, and depend on the moon and planets; aye,
that even modest and neglected constellations have the greatest influence on
the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and within our earth, let us
give one moment's attention to our sidereal despots and rulers of our globe and
men. Modern Science denies any such influence; archaic Science affirms it. We
may see what both say with regard to this question.
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B.
ON CHAINS OF PLANETS AND THEIR PLURALITY.
Did the Ancients know of worlds
besides their own? What are the data of the 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 will be, "man-bearing," just as every
visible star or planet is? What do they mean by "a moral and physical
influence" of the sidereal worlds on our globes?
Such are the questions often put to
us, and they have to be considered from every aspect. To the first of the two
queries the answer is:-- We believe it because the first law in nature is
uniformity in diversity, and the second -- analogy. "As above, so
below." That time is gone by for ever, when, although our pious ancestors
believed that our earth was in the centre of the universe, the church and her
arrogant servants could insist that we should regard as a blasphemy the
supposition that any other planet could be inhabited. Adam and Eve, the
Serpent, and the Original Sin followed by atonement through blood, have been
too long in the way, and thus was universal truth sacrificed to the insane
conceit of us little men.
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Now what are the proofs thereof?
Except inferential evidence and logical reasoning, there are none for the
profane. To the Occultists, who believe in the knowledge acquired by countless
generations of Seers and Initiates, the data offered in the Secret Books are
all-sufficient. The general public needs other proofs, however. There are some
Kabalists and even some Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence
upon this point in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the
teaching. Even such "uniform evidence" will be forthcoming presently.
Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see whether
belief in it is so very absurd, as some scientists along with other Nicodemuses
would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a plurality of inhabited
"Worlds," we imagine them to be like the globe we inhabit and peopled
by beings more or less resembling ourselves. And in so doing we are only
following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long as the enquiry is confined to the
life-history of this globe we can speculate on this question with some profit,
and ask ourselves what were the "Worlds" spoken of in all the ancient
scriptures of Humanity, with some hope of at least asking an intelligible
question. But how do we know (a) what kind of Beings inhabit the globes in
general; and (b) whether those who rule planets superior to our own, do not
exercise the same influence on our earth consciously, that we may exercise
unconsciously -- say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the long
run, by our cutting the Earth to pieces, opening canals, and thereby entirely
changing our climates. Of course, like Caesar's wife, the planetoids cannot be
affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc., 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 cross the limits of the solar system,
then indeed we act as do presumptuous fools. For -- while accepting the old
Hermetic axiom: "As above, so below" -- we may well believe that as
Nature on Earth displays the most careful economy, utilizing every vile and
waste thing in her marvellous transformations, and withal never repeating
herself -- we may justly conclude that there is no other globe in all her
infinite systems so closely resembling this earth that the ordinary powers
should be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and containment.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are taught that the highest
Dhyan 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 and beneath the limits of our solar system.
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And indeed we find in the romances as
in all the so-called scientific fictions and spiritistic revelations from moon,
stars, and planets, merely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and
things, the passions and forms of life with which we are familiar, when even on
the other planets of our own system nature and life are entirely different from
ours. Swedenborg was pre-eminent in inculcating such an erroneous belief.
But even more. The ordinary man has
no experience of any state of consciousness other than that to which the
physical senses link him. Men dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too
deep for dreams to impress the physical brain; and in these states there must
still be consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can
we hope to speculate with profit on the nature of globes which, in the economy
of nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and quite
different from any which man experiences here?
And this is true to the letter. For
even great adepts (those initiated of course), trained seers though they are,
can claim thorough acquaintance with the nature and appearance of planets and
their inhabitants belonging to our solar system only. They know that almost all
the planetary worlds are inhabited, but can have access to -- even in spirit --
only 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 of consciousness
within our system, but differing from the states of consciousness possible on
this globe; i.e., on the three planes of the chain of spheres beyond our earth.
Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them because they have learned
how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed to the perceptions
of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their knowledge, the world would
be no wiser, because it lacks that experience of other forms of perception
which alone could enable them to grasp what was told them.
Still the fact remains that most of
the planets, as the stars beyond our system, are inhabited, a fact which has
been admitted by the men of science themselves. Laplace and Herschell believed
it, though they wisely abstained from imprudent speculation; and the same
conclusion has been worked out and supported with an array of scientific
considerations by C. Flammarion, the well-known French Astronomer. The
arguments he brings forward are strictly scientific, and such as to appeal even
to a materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those
of 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
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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"!*
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 the fact that these conditions must be much
more favourable on them than they are on our Earth.
Thus scientific reasoning, as well as
observed facts, concur with the statements of the seer and the innate voice in
man's own heart in declaring that life -- intelligent, conscious life -- must
exist on other worlds than ours.
But this is the limit beyond which
the ordinary faculties of man cannot carry him. Many are the romances and tales,
some purely fanciful, others bristling with scientific knowledge, which have
attempted to imagine and describe life on other globes. But one and all, they
give but some distorted 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 bottom the new
world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is this tendency that even
great natural, though non-initiated seers, when untrained, fall a victim to it;
witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to dress the inhabitants of Mercury,
whom he meets with in the spirit-world, in clothes such as are worn in Europe.
Commenting on this tendency,
Flammarion in his work "Sur la Pluralite des Mondes habites," 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Since no single atom in the entire
Kosmos is without life and consciousness, how much more then its mighty globes?
-- 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 to it and initiated, fancy that we can
penetrate the consciousness of the smallest of the animals around us?
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Those who have written on this
subject have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and fell
therefore into error." ("Pluralite des Mondes," p. 439.)
But Flammarion himself falls into the
very error which he here condemns, for he tacitly takes the conditions of life
on earth as the standard by which to determine the degree to which other
planets are adapted for habitation by "other Humanities."
Let us, however, leave these profitless
and empty speculations, which, though they seem to fill our hearts with a glow
of enthusiasm and to enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality
cause a factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not
only of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within
ourselves.
When, therefore, we find in the
Bibles of Humanity "other worlds" spoken of, we may safely conclude
that they not only refer to other states of our planetary chain and Earth, but
also to other inhabited globes -- stars and planets; withal, that the latter
were never speculated upon. The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality
of life. But no really initiated seer of any civilized nation has ever taught
that life on other stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life.
That which is generally meant by "earths" and worlds, relates (a) to
the "rebirths" of 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 Continents disappear, to make room for Oceans, and Oceans
and Seas are violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their
emplacements to new Continents.
We may begin with the Bible -- the
youngest of the World-Scriptures. In Ecclesiastes, chap. i., we read these
words of the King-Initiate:-- "One generation passeth away and another
generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever," and again, "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." Under
these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive cataclysms by
which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further back, to the
various transitions of the globe during the process of its formation. But if we
are told that this refers only to our world as we now see it, -- then we shall
refer the reader to the New Testament, where St. Paul speaks (in Hebrews i.) of
the Son (the manifested Power) whom (God) hath appointed heir of all things, by
whom also he made the worlds (plural.)*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This relates to the Logos of every
Cosmogony. The unknown Light -- with which he is said to be co-eternal and
coeval -- is reflected in the "First-Born," the Protogonos;
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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This "Power" is Hokhmah or
(Chochmah) the Wisdom and the Word. We shall probably be told that by this term
"worlds," the stars, heavenly bodies, etc., were meant. But apart
from the fact that "stars" were not known as "worlds" to
the ignorant editors of the Epistles, if even they must have been known to
Paul, who was an Initiate ("a Master-Builder"), we can quote on this
point an eminent theologian, Cardinal Wiseman. In Vol. I, p. 309, of his work
treating of the indefinite period of the six days -- or shall we say "too
definite" -- period of the six days of creation and the 6,000 years, he
confesses that we are in total darkness upon the meaning of that statement of
St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose that allusion is made in it, i.e.,
the period which elapsed between the first and second verses of chapter i. of
Genesis -- to those primitive revolutions, i.e., the destructions and the
re-productions (of the world) indicated in chapter i. of Ecclesiastes; or, to accept,
with so many others, and in its literal sense, the passage (Hebrews i. 1,) that
speaks of the creation of worlds -- in plural. . . . . It is very singular, he
adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest the same idea, and
preserve the tradition of a first series of revolutions, owing to which the
world was destroyed and again renewed.
Had the Cardinal studied the Zohar
his doubts would have changed to certitude. Thus saith Idra Suta (in the
"Zohar," iii., 292, c.): "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,* the workman was not yet the 'Heavenly man.' "** Again in the
Midrash, written long before the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai, Rabbi Abahu
explains:-- "The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed
and destroyed sundry worlds before this one*** . . . Now this refers both to
the first races (the "Kings of Edom") and to the worlds
destroyed."**** "Destroyed" means here what we call
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] 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 Kabala, Hokhmah or Wisdom the
"Word."
* The form of Tikkun or the
Protogonos, the "first-born," i.e., the universal form and idea, had
not yet been mirrored in Chaos.
** The "Heavenly man" is
Adam Kadmon -- the synthesis of the Sephiroth, as "Manu Swayambhuva"
is the synthesis of the Prajapatis.
*** Bereshith Rabba, Parsha IX.
**** This refers to the three Rounds
that preceded our fourth Round.
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"obscurations." This
becomes evident when one reads further on the explanation given:-- "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).**
When, therefore, we read of the
destruction of the worlds, this word has many meanings, which are very clear in
several of the Commentaries on the Zohar and Kabalistic treatises. As said
elsewhere, it means not only the destruction of many worlds which have ended
their life-career, but also that of the several continents which have
disappeared, as also their decline and geographical change of place.
The mysterious "Kings of
Edom" are sometimes referred to as the "Worlds" that 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 never
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 explain as the First Root-Race. For, as, speaking of the
six Earths (the six "limbs" of Microprosopus) it is said that the
Seventh (our Earth) came not into the computation when the Six were created
(the six spheres above 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
permutation, in the "Chaldean 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 of the Edomites" (Gen. xxxvi.
43); i.e., Esau represents in the Bible the race which stands between the
Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the Aryan. "Two nations are in thy
womb," saith the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau was red and hairy. From verse
24 to 34, ch. xxv. of Genesis contains the allegorical history of the birth of
the Fifth Race.
"And the Kings of ancient days
died and their chiefs (crowns) were found no more," says Siphrah
Dzenioutha (3). . . . "The Head of a nation that has not been formed at
the beginning in the likeness of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This sentence contains a dual sense
and a profound mystery in the occult sciences the secret of which if, and when,
known -- confers tremendous powers on the Adept to change his visible form.
** Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 136, c.
"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.
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White Head: its people is not from
this Form," states the Zohar (iii.). . . . "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" (ibid 31 et seq.).
No Kabalist who has hitherto treated
of the symbolism and allegory hidden under these "Kings of Edom"
seems to have perceived more than one aspect of it. They are neither the
"worlds that were destroyed," nor the "Kings that died" --
alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no space at present.
Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the Zohar, we will return to the hard
facts of materialistic science; first, however, citing a few from the long list
of great thinkers who have believed in the plurality of inhabited worlds in
general, and in worlds that preceded our own. These are, the great
mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Isaac Newton himself, as can 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
Encyclopaedia. Following these come Kant, the founder of modern philosophy; the
poet philosophers, Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many astronomers, from Bode,
Fergusson and Herschell to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in
more recent years.
A brilliant list of honoured names
indeed; but the facts of physical astronomy speak even more strongly in favour
of the presence of life, even organised life, on other planets. Thus in four
meteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, the Cape of Good Hope,
in Hungary, and again in France, there was found, on analysis, graphite, a form
of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic life on this earth of
ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not due to any action occurring
within our atmosphere is shown by the fact that carbon has been found in the
very centre of a meteorite; while in one which fell at Argueil, in the south of
France, in 1857, there was found water and turf, the latter being always formed
by the decomposition of vegetable substances.
And further, examining the
astronomical conditions of the other planets, it is easy to show that several
are far better adapted for the development of life and intelligence -- even
under the conditions with which men are acquainted -- than is our earth. For
instance, on the planet Jupiter the seasons, instead of varying between wide
limits as do ours, change by almost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve
times
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as long as ours. Owing to the
inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost entirely to the
eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and regularly. We shall be
told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is in an incandescent state.
But not all astronomers agree with this. For instance what we say, is said by
M. Flammarion: and he ought to know.
On the other hand Venus would be less
adapted for human life such as exists on earth, since its seasons are more
extreme and its changes of temperature more sudden; though it is curious that
the duration of the day is nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury,
Venus, the Earth and 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 atmosphere. And as we see that life appears more
active on earth in proportion to the light and heat of the sun, it would seem
more than probable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.
Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense
atmosphere, as also has Mars and the snows which cover their poles, the clouds
which hide their surface, the geographical configuration of their seas and
continents, the variations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous
-- at least to the eye of the physical astronomer. But such facts and the
considerations to which they give rise, have reference only to the possibility
of the existence on these planets of human life as known on earth. That some
forms of life such as we know are possible on these planets, has been long
since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go into
detailed questions of the physiology, etc., etc., of these hypothetical
inhabitants, since after all the reader can arrive only at an imaginary
extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with the
three conclusions which M. C. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted,
formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known facts and laws of
science.
I. The various forces which were
active in the beginning of evolution gave birth to a great variety of beings on
the several worlds; both in the organic and inorganic kingdoms.
II. The animated beings were
constituted from the first according to forms and organisms in correlation with
the physiological state of each inhabited globe.
III. The humanities of other worlds
differ from us, as much in their inner organization as in their external
physical type.
Finally the reader who may be
disposed to question the validity of these conclusions as being opposed to the
Bible, may be referred to an Appendix in M. Flammarion's work dealing in detail
with this question; since in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to
point out the
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logical absurdity of those churchmen,
who deny the plurality of worlds on such grounds.
In this connection we may well recall
those days when the burning zeal of the Primitive Church opposed the doctrine
of the earth's rotundity, on the ground that the nations at the Antipodes would
be outside the pale of salvation; and again how long it took for a nascent
science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in whose grooves 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 the martyrdom of its discoverers --
because, besides depriving our orb of its dignified central position in space,
this theory produced an appalling confusion of ideas as to the Ascension -- the
terms "up" and "down" being proved to be merely relative,
thus complicating not a little the question of the precise locality of heaven.*
According to the best modern
calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 of stars of various
magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the distances
between them, they are incalculable. Is, then, our microscopical Earth -- a
"grain of sand on an infinite sea-shore" -- the only centre of
intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300 times larger than our planet, sinks
into insignificance beside that giant Sun -- Sirius, -- and the latter in its
turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in infinite Space. The self-centred
conception of Jehovah as the special guardian of a small and obscure
semi-nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside that which confines sentient existence
to our microscopical globe. The primary reasons were without doubt: (1)
Astronomical ignorance on the part of the early Christians, coupled with an
exaggerated appreciation of man's own importance -- a crude form of
selfishness; and (2) the dread that, if the hypothesis of millions of other
inhabited globes was accepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue -- "Was
there then a Revelation to each world?" involving the idea of the Son of
God eternally "going the rounds" as it were. Happily it is now
unnecessary to waste time and energy in proving the possibility of the
existence of such worlds. All intelligent persons admit it. That which now
remains to be demonstrated is, that if it is once proven that there are
inhabited worlds besides our own with humanities entirely different from each
other as from our own -- as maintained in the Occult
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 have reached even Sirius yet, 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.
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Sciences -- then the evolution of the
preceding races is half proved. For where is that physicist or geologist who is
prepared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in the
millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence; and changing
its "skin," as it is called in Occultism, that the Earth has not had
each time her special humanities adapted to such atmospheric and climatic
conditions as were entailed. And if so, why should not our preceding four and
entirely different mankinds have existed and thrived before our Adamic (Fifth
Root) Race?
Before closing our debates, however,
we have to examine the so-called organic evolution more closely. Let us search
well and see whether it is quite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology
agree up to a certain point with those of Science.
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C.
SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS ON ESOTERIC
GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY.
It seems, however, possible to
calculate the approximate duration of the geological periods from the combined
data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to
determine almost with certainty one thing -- the thickness of the several
deposits. Now, it also stands to reason that the time required for the
deposition of any stratum on a sea-bottom must bear a strict proportion to the
thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless the rate of erosion of land and
the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds has varied from age to age, and
cataclysmic changes of various kinds break the "uniformity" of ordinary
geological processes. Provided, however, we have some definite numerical basis
on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first
sight appear to be. Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit,
Professor Lefevre gives us the relative figures which sum up geological time.
He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years since the first bed of the
Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating that time as = X, he presents
us with the relative proportions in which the various periods stand to it. Let
us premise our estimate by stating that, 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 an 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
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Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3;
to the Quaternary 0.5 or one-half per cent." ("Philosophy," p.
481.)
Now, as it is certain, on occult
data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits =
320,000,000 years, we are able to infer that the:--
ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS.
Primordial lasted 171,200,000 years.
Laurentian
Cambrian
Silurian
Primary lasted 103,040,000 years
Devonian
Coal
Permian
Secondary lasted 36,800,000 years
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Tertiary lasted 7,360,000 years
(probably in excess)
Eocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Quaternary lasted 1,600,000 years
(probably in excess).
Such estimates harmonise with the
statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every particular. The Tertiary
Atlantean part-cycle, from the "apex of glory" of that Race in the
early Eocene to the great mid-Miocene cataclysm, would appear to have lasted
some 3 1/2 to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not
rather (as seems likely) overestimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be
post-Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too
long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very
far back into the Secondary Age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.
But the argument from geological
evidence being only in favour of 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims
and teachings with those of exact science.
Mr. Edward Clodd,* in reviewing M. de
Mortillet's work "Materiaux pour l'Histoire de Homme," which places
man in the mid-Miocene period,** remarks that "it would be in defiance of
all that the doctrine of evolu-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Knowledge, March 31, 1882.
** And who yet, in another work,
"La Prehistorique Antiquite 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 naif in his views.
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tion 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 by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the
reverse of infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of science,
e.g., de Quatrefages, in France, and Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in
Germany, and many others, the ranks of the anti-Darwinists growing stronger
with every year;* and (b) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth 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 never gain the favour
of the evolutionists, and vice versa. Truth must rest upon its own firm
foundations of facts, and take its chances for recognition, when every
prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully
considered in its main aspects, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every
so-called "scientific" objection as we go along, when making what are
regarded as heretical and "anti-scientific" statements.
Let us briefly glance at the
divergences between orthodox and esoteric science, on the question of the age
of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic tables before
him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance of these
divergences; and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not impossible --
nay, it is most likely -- that further discoveries in geology and the finding
of fossil remains of man will force science to confess that it is esoteric
philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.
-------
PARALLELISM OF LIFE.
[[First Column]]
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES.
Science divides the period of the
globe's history, since the beginning of life on earth (or the Azoic age), into
five main divisions or periods, according to Haeckel.**
[[First Column continued on next
page]]
[[Second Column]]
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 --
[[Second Column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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. Pffuger, the physiologists, besides other men of science as eminent as any,
find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in the doctrine.
** History of Creation, p. 20.
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[[First Column continued from
previous page]]
PRIMORDIAL EPOCH (Laurentian System,
Cambrian System, Silurian System)
The Primordial Epoch is, science
tells us, by no means devoid of vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian
deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon Canadense -- a chambered shell. In
the Silurian are discovered sea-weeds (algae), molluscs, crustacea, and lower
marine organisms, also the first trace of fishes. The primordial Epoch shows
algae, molluscs, crustacea, polyps, and marine organisms, etc., etc. Science
teaches, therefore, that marine life was present from the very beginnings of
time, leaving us, however, to speculate for ourselves as to how life appeared
on earth. If it rejects the Biblical "Creation" (as we do), why does
it not give us another, approximately plausible hypothesis?
PRIMARY (Devonian***, Coal, Permian)
[[First Column continued on next
page]]
[[Second Column continued from
previous page]]
"PRIMEVAL"* (Deva or Divine
men, the "Creators" and Progenitors.**)
The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with
the statement made by science (see parallel column), demurring, however, in one
particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see "Brahminical
Chronology") preceded the "Divine Men," or Progenitors. Also, no
teaching denies that there were traces of life within the Earth besides the
Eozoon Canadense in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation
belonged 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.
"PRIMARY" -- Divine
Progenitors, SECONDARY GROUPS, and the 2 1/2 races. "Fern-forests,
Sigillaria, Coniferae, fishes, first trace of reptiles." Thus saith modern
science; the esoteric doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all
relics of the preceding Round.**** Once, however, the prototypes are projected
out of the astral envelope of the earth, an indefinite amount of modification
ensues.
[[Second Column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The same names are retained as
those given by science, to make the parallels clearer. Our terms are quite
different.
** 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.
*** It may be said that we are
inconsistent in not introducing into this table a [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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[[First Column continued from
previous page]]
SECONDARY (Triassic. Jurassic. Chalk
or Cretaceous.)
This is the age of Reptiles, of the
gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, etc., etc. Science denies the
presence of man in that period. If so, it has to explain how men came to know
of these monsters and describe them before the 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 appear the first (marsupial) mammals***** --
Insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous; and (as Prof. Owen thinks) an
herbivorous hoofed mammal.
Science does not admit the appearance
of man before the close of the
[[First Column continued on next
page]]
[[Second Column continued from
previous page]]
SECONDARY -- According to every
calculation the Third Race had already made its appearance, as during the
Triassic there were already a few mammals, and it must have separated.
This, then, is the age of the Third
Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth may be perhaps also
discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely 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 Mammalia and pre-mammalia are shown in
their evolution merging from one kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are
the human races in their procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found
between the Monotremata, the Didelphia (or Marsupialia) and the placental
Mammals, divided in their turn into three orders******
[[Second Column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Primary-Age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological periods here
adopted, is, so far as the origin of 1st and 2nd 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.
**** During the interim from one
Round to 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.
***** 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 31, 1882, p 464.) Surely the marsupial or
didelphis (the only surviving animal of the family of those who 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.
****** 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 discoplacentaIia (or discoid). Haeckel sees in the Marsupialia
Didelphia, one of the connecting links genealogically between man and the
Moneron!!
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[[First Column continued from
previous page]]
Tertiary period.* Why? Because man
has to be shown younger than the higher mammals. But Esoteric philosophy
teaches us the reverse. And as science is quite unable to come to anything like
an approximate conclusion as to the age of man, or even the geological periods,
therefore, even accepted only as a hypothesis, the occult teaching is more
logical and reasonable.
No man is yet allowed to have lived
during this period:--
***Tertiary -- Eocene. Miocene.
Pliocene.
Says Mr. E. Clodd, in Knowledge:--
"Although the placental mammals and the order of Primates to which man is
related, appear in Tertiary times and the climate, tropical in the Eocene age,
warm in the Miocene and temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his
presence, the proofs of his existence in Europe before the close of the
Tertiary epoch . . . . are not generally accepted here."
[[First Column continued on next
page]]
[[Second Column continued from
previous page]]
like the First, Second, and Third
Root-Races of men.** But this would require more space than can be now allotted
to the subject.
Tertiary age -- The Third race has
now almost utterly disappeared, carried away by the fearful geological
cataclysms of the Secondary age, leaving behind it but a few hybrid races.
The Fourth, born millions of years
before**** the said cataclysm took place, perishes during the Miocene
period,****** when the Fifth (our Aryan race) had one million years of
independent existence. (See "Esoteric Buddhism," pp. 53-55. Fourth
Ed.) How much older it is from its origin -- who knows? As the
"Historical" Period has begun, with the Indian Aryans, with their
Vedas, for their multitudes,****** and far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it
is useless to establish here any parallels.
[[Second Column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Those who feel inclined to sneer at
that doctrine of Esoteric Ethnology, which pre-supposes the existence of Man 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 nothing impossible in the supposition that
he (Man) may have appeared on the globe with the first representatives of the
type to which he belongs in virtue of his organism." This statement
approximates most closely to our fundamental assertion that man preceded the
other mammalia.
Professor Lefevre 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," p. 499, chapter on Organic Evolution.) 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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Geology has now divided the periods
and placed man in the --
[[First Column continued from
previous page]]
Quaternary (Palaeolithic man.
Neolithic man, and Historical Period.)
[[Second Column continued from
previous page]]
If the Quaternary period is allowed
1,500,000 years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.
[[End of Columns]]
Yet, mirabile dictu! -- while the
non-cannibal Paleolithic man, who must have certainly antedated cannibal
Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years******* is shown to be a
remarkable artist, neolithic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] argument, but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact! Must
everything give place to the mere working-hypotheses of Western Evolutionists?
Surely not.
** 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. (Vide supra.)
*** 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 2 1/2 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 million 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 millions 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.
**** 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 (Genesis) to Enos or Henoch, son of Seth (ch. iv.).
***** Geology records the former
existence of a universal ocean, sheets of marine sediments uniformly present
everywhere testifying 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 from 2 to 8 in Part I.).
How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years 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.
****** We hope that we have furnished
all the Scientific data for it elsewhere.
******* It is conceded by Geology to
be "beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the
departure of Palaeolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic
successor." (See James Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," and Ch.
Gould's "Mythical Monsters," p. 98).
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man is made out almost an abject
savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.* For see what a learned geologist,
Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his "Mythical Monsters":--
"Palaeolithic 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., etc.
Yet, though "Implements of horn,
bone, and wood were in common use among both races . . . 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** on the part of Neolithic man." Let us give the reasons
for it.
(1) The oldest fossil man, the
primitive cave-men of the old Palaeolithic period, and of the Pre-glacial
period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus
man, and there are no fossil remains proving 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" ("Modern Science," p. 181).
(2) As to the so-called Palaeolithic
hatchet . . . "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" (Ibid, p. 112). This goes to prove that there have
been savages at all times; and the inference would be that there might have
been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with
those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Resembling in a manner the
pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
** "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 Palaeolithic man cannot be considered to
lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race; thus demolishing the
fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here
re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men, is traceable to their Atlantean
ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan 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 Palaeolithic Man, it is a remarkable fact that,
as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the
Mammoth era not. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time,
then? Not in this instance at any rate.
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(3) An obstacle which is the direct
consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palaeolithic
period, could not possibly have had the actual time to get transformed from the
"missing link" into what he is known to have been even during that
remote geological time, i.e., even a finer specimen than many of the now
existing races.
The above lends itself naturally to
the following syllogism: (1) The primitive man (known to Science) was, in some
respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey
known, the lemur, was less anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3)
Conclusion: even though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence
would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man made dumb by
some fortuitous circumstances,* than tending to show that man descends from a
pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
On the other hand, if the existence
of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is 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 . . . ." (Esoteric
Buddhism, p. 64) then some of the present difficulties of science might be
easily made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palaeolithic tools proves
nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived
nations highly 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
that "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" (p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along
with the rude haches of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of
workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a
modern peasant belonging to any European country -- unless in exceptional
cases. The "portrait" of the "Reindeer feeding," from the
Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two horse's
heads sketched close to him -- a work of the Reindeer period, i.e., at least
50,000 years ago -- are pronounced by Mr. Laing not only exceedingly well done,
but, especially the reindeer feeding, as one that "would do credit to any
modern animal painter"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On the data furnished by modern
science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous
creation, two negro human 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.
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-- by no means exaggerated praise, as
anyone may see (Vide infra). Now, since side by side with the modern Esquimaux,
who also have a tendency, like their Palaeolithic ancestors of the Reindeer
period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly drawing with the
point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the chase, etc., we have
our greatest painters of Europe, why could not the same have happened in those
days? Compared with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching --
"7,000 years ago" -- the "earliest portraits" of men,
horses' heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, are certainly superior.
Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have been a highly
civilized nation, whereas the Palaeolithic men are called savages of the lower
type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet extremely suggestive as showing
that every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories,
instead of the reverse. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in saying, "Time will
show." It will, and must vindicate Occultism.
Meanwhile, the most uncompromising
materialists are driven by necessity into the most occult-like admissions.
Strange to say, it is the most materialistic -- those of the German school --
who, with regard to physical development, come the nearest to the teachings of
the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgartner, who believes that "the germs
for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animals"; who
thinks that "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. -- thinks also
that "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 that "larva" was the
soulless astral form of the pre-physical Races. And we believe, as the German
professor does, with several other men of Science in Europe now, that the human
races "have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in
numerous races"; (Anfange zu einer Physiologischen Schopfungs-geschichte
der Pflanzen und Thierwelt, 1885). Therefore, when we read "Force and
Matter," and find that Emperor of Materialists, Buchner, repeating after
Manu and Hermes, that "the plant passes imperceptibly into the animal, and
the animal into man" (p. 85), we need only add "and man into a
spirit," to complete the Kabalistic axiom. The more so, since on page 82
of the same work we read the following admission: . . . "Produced in the
way of spontaneous generation . . . it is by the aid of intense natural forces
and endless periods of time (that) there has progressively arisen that rich and
infinitely modified organic world by which we are at present surrounded."
. . . And (page 84) "Spontaneous generation played, no doubt,
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a more important part in the primeval
epoch than at present; nor can it be denied that in this way beings of a higher
organization were produced than now,"* for this is the claim of Occultism.
The whole difference lies in this:
Modern Science places her materialistic theory 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 external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic
life, we are told, by Sir W. Thomson, came to our earth in some meteor? This
helps in no way and only shifts the difficulty from this earth to the supposed
meteor.
These are our agreements and
disagreements with Science. About the endless periods we are, of course, at one
even with materialistic speculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on
different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says: "If any form 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." But when
we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in
matter, force, according to modern views, being but a quality of matter, a
"mode of motion," etc.; and when we find Sir W. Thomson repeating in
1885 what was asserted by Buchner and his school thirty years ago, we fear all
our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin air! One can hardly help
thinking that materialism is, in certain cases, a disease. For when men of
Science, in the face of the magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron
particles through insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said
attraction is due to "molecular motion," or to the "rotation of
the molecules of the magnet," then, whether the teaching comes from a
"credulous" Theosophist innocent of any notion of physics, or from an
eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts
such a theory in the teeth of fact, is only one more proof that "When
people have not a niche in their minds in which to shoot facts, so much the
worse for the facts."
As present the dispute between the
spontaneous generationists and their opponents is at rest, having ended in the
provisional victory of the latter. But even they are forced to admit, as
Buchner did, and Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley still do -- that spontaneous
generation must have occurred once, under "special thermal
conditions." Virchow refuses even to argue the question; it must have taken
place sometime in the history of our planet: and there's an end of it. This
seems to look more natural than Sir W. Thomson's hypothesis just quoted, that
the germs of organic life fell on our earth in some meteor; or that other
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Force and Matter," by
Dr. Louis Buchner, translated and edited by J. Frederick Collingwood, F.R.S.,
F.G.S., 1864.
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scientific hypothesis coupled to the
recently adopted belief that there exists no "Vital principle"
whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular
forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not 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."
("Origin of the World," p. 39, by Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.)
The secret could be soon told, not
only from the esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world
over, without mentioning the Occultists. The "specialized skeleton"
is sought for in the wrong place, where it can never be found. It is expected
to be discovered in the physical remains of man, in some pithecoid
"missing link," with a skull larger than that of the ape's, and with
a cranial capacity smaller than in man, instead of looking for that specialization
in the super-physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can
hardly be excavated from any geological strata! Such a tenacious, hopeful
clinging to a self-degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
[[diagram]]
REINDEER ENGRAVED ON ANTLER BY
PALAEOLITHIC MAN. (After Geikie.)
Meanwhile, this is a specimen of an
engraving made by a Palaeolithic "savage": Palaeolithic meaning the
"earlier Stone-age" man, one supposed to have been as savage and
brutal as the brutes he lived with.
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Leaving the modern South Sea
Islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any grown-up schoolboy, or
even a European youth, one who has never studied drawing, to execute such an
engraving or even a pencil sketch. Here we have the true artistic raccourci,
and correct lights and shadows without any plane model before the artist, who
copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and
proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to
believe, to the primitive "semi-animal" savages (contemporaneous with
the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some over-zealous Evolutionists
once sought to picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their
hypothetical "pithecoid man"!
This engraved antler proves as
eloquently as any fact can that the evolution of the races has ever proceeded
in a series of rises and falls, that man, perhaps, is as old as incrustated
Earth, and -- if we can call his Divine ancestor "Man" -- far older
still.
Even de Mortillet himself seems to
experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern archaeologists, when
he writes:-- "The prehistoric is a new science, far, very far, from having
said its last word." ("Prehist. Antiq. of Man," 1883.) 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." ("Antiq. of
Man," p. 25.) Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is
thus offering for sale 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 utterance of Professor Max Muller, whose attack
on the Darwinian Anthropology from the standpoint of LANGUAGE has, by the way,
never been satisfactorily answered:--
"What do we know of savage
tribes beyond the last chapter of their history?" (Cf. this with the
esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of Palaeolithic 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. . . . How have they 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 Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (far older). . . .
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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." ("India," 1883, F. Max Muller.)
"The primeval savage is a
familiar term in modern literature," remarks Professor Rawlinson,
"but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather
all the evidence looks the other way." ("Antiq. of Man Historically
Considered.") In his "Origin of Nations," pp. 10-11, 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."
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 have disappeared, and some
archaeologist 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'?"
Another strange inconsistency in
scientific knowledge is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a
primitive savage than the Palaeolithic one. Either Lubbock's "Pre-historic
Man," or Evans' "Ancient Stone Implements" must be at fault, or
-- both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:--
(1) As we pass from Neolithic to
Palaeolithic Man, the stone implements become, from gracefully shaped and
polished instruments, rude lumbering makeshifts. Pottery, etc., disappear as we
descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!
(2) Palaeolithic Man lived in caves
which he shared with hyaenas and lions also,* whereas Neolithic man dwelt in
lake-villages and buildings.
Every one who has followed even
superficially the geological discoveries of our day, knows that a gradual
improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping
of the early Palaeolithic haches, to the relatively graceful stone celts of
that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But
this is in Europe, a few portions only of which were barely rising from the
waters in the days
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In such a case Palaeolithic 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 next that
it is that lion or hyaena which has engraved the deer on the antler, as be told
that this bit of workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
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of the highest Atlantean
civilizations. There were rude savages and highly civilized people then, as
there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some
African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in
the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason to maintain
that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the
Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us
all down as Palaeolithic savages? All the articles which geologists now
excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than from the close of the
Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before that
period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by theorists
telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by Palaeolithic man,
were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period -- for this
explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of the geologists'
ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches
distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls 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 . . . . altogether disappear in the age of the
mammoth and the reindeer." ("Mod. Science and Mod. Thought," p.
164.)
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, &c.) gradually brought the
worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu 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 . . . . 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" . . . . (p. 199 Ibid.)
And these may have been simply
statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many proofs of the cyclic rise and
fall of civilization and religion. The fact that no traces of human relics or
skeletons are so far found beyond post-tertiary or "Quaternary" times
-- though Abbe Bourgeois' flints may serve as a warning* -- seems to point to
the truth of another esoteric statement,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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which runs thus: "Seek for the
remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into
mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas." . .
. Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its
population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that
reappeared while their predecessors formed the floors of new Oceans -- deserted
that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of
gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter having since
"retreated" and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.
The most interesting example of this
progressive march is perhaps afforded by the celebrated Kent's Cavern at
Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by water out of the Devonian
limestone, we find a most curious record preserved for us in the geological
memoirs of the earth. Under the blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of
the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many
implements of the Neolithic period of fairly excellent workmanship, with a few
fragments of pottery -- possibly traceable to the era of the Roman
colonization. There is no trace of Palaeolithic man here. No flints or traces
of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate
still deeper through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the mould into the
red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat,
things assume a very different aspect. Not one implement fit to bear comparison
with the finely-chipped weapons found in the overlying stratum is to be seen;
only a host of the rude and lumbering little hatchets (with which the monstrous
giants of the animal world were subdued and killed by little man, we have to
think?) and scrapers of the Palaeolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the
bones of species now either extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of
climate. It is the artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who
sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above. In all
cases we meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from
Neolithic to Palaeolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane from
the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism -- in Europe again.
We are made also to face the "mammoth age" -- the extreme or earliest
division of the Palaeolithic age -- in which the great rudeness of implements
reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, such
as the Neanderthal, point to a very low type of Humanity. But they may
sometimes point also to something besides; to a race of men quite distinct from
our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] too short for him to have been transformed -- stretch it as you may. And
if he was, and if no monkey is found earlier, what follows?
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As said by an anthropologist in
"Modern Thought" (art. "The Genesis of Man"): "The
theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrere may be considered to be
equivalent to that which divided man in two species. Broca, Virey, and a number
of the French anthropologists have recognised 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" (Dr. C. Carter Blake). 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 the antiquity of man on this Earth nor
the age of his earliest civilizations.
It is time the Occultists should
disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire
of the men of science as much as the pop-guns of the profane, since it is
impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or disproof, while their theories
can stand the test better than the hypotheses of the Scientists at any rate. As
to the proof for the antiquity which they claim for man, they have, moreover,
Darwin himself and Lyell. 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."* This is a statement made by one of England's great
authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive,
and may well be remembered by the 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 (also Races) are periodically destroyed by fire
(volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and renewed, is a doctrine as
old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldees, all antiquity believed in this. Twice
already
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Antiquity of Man," p.
530.
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has the face of the globe been
changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs
rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water.
Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of
climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final
change in the axis. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a periodical change
in the behaviour of the globe's axis, and smile at the conversation given in
the Book of Enoch between Noah and his "grandfather" Enoch; the
allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact: there is a
secular change in the inclination of the earth's axis, and its appointed time
is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other questions,
Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward,
F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the Popular Science Review (New Series in Vol. I. p.
115), Art.: "Evidences of the Age of Ice." . . . . "If it be
necessary to call in extramundane 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 is essential to our cosmical condition as
a unit in the great solar system."
The following, quoted from a Lecture
by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in March, 1885, on "The extinct
Lake of Bovey Tracey" shows the hesitation, in the face of every evidence
in favour of Atlantis, to accept the fact. It is a quotation in the body of the
Lecture:--
"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[[degrees]] 20' and 70[[degrees]] 30' N. lat.; when we learn that among them
were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsiae, 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
[[degrees]] ' " (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.
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"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. . . . 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
Himalaya 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 leads 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.) See, however, "Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Reality
of Several Submerged Continents."
But nothing short of a pithecoid man,
will ever satisfy the luckless searchers after the thrice hypothetical
"missing link." Yet, if beneath the vast floors of the Atlantic, from
the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis,
all the submarine strata were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as
would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks
("Fallacies of Darwinism"), no missing links between man and ape
having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the tertiaries,
if they had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they
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might still be found "in those
beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom
of the sea." Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the
former. Were not preconceptions to fasten vampire-like on man's mind, the
author of "Antiquity of Man" would have found a clue to the
difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (530) and reading
over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston's work. This
physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the
human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we
ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development
theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an
improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the higher
intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the second part in a
progressive scheme.
This hypothesis is made in relation
to Evolution not being entirely due to "natural selection"; but it
applies as well to our case in hand. For we, 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 gradually built -- his Spirit,
intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature
grows and develops.
"Thus incorporeal Spirits to
smaller forms reduced their shapes immense," . . . and became the men of
the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men of
our Fifth Race, reduced from the still gigantic (in our modern sense) stature
of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that size at present.
Man is certainly no special creation,
and he is the product of Nature's gradual perfective work, like any other
living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human
tabernacle. That which lives and thinks 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,"
Sir C. Lyell quotes -- perhaps in rather a mocking spirit -- what Hallam says
(in Vol. iv., p. 162) in his "Introduction to the Literature of
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 forest of Sumatra. Thus standing on
the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he
should partake of both?"
An Occultist would have put it
otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in the image of a type
projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel-Force, or Dhyan Chohan; while
the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the
frame-
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work of the ape, we say again, is the
revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means of the actual form of the
Third-Round, and of the Fourth-Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in
nature, not an atom: this latter is at least certain on scientific data.
Analogy would appear to demand that form should be equally endowed with
permanency.
And yet what do we find:--
"It is significant," says
Sir W. Dawson, F.R.S., "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 that Haeckel 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 Palaeocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in
the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments even of
writings were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to
archaeology or geology." (See Wilson's "Prehistoric Man," op.
cit., vol. ii., p. 54. "Origin of the World," p. 393.)
Again in Dr. C. R. Bree's
"Fallacies of Darwinism," on page 160, 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.* 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, nor the drift-clay, nor the
fresh-water beds, 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 gravels and drift! . . . . . . the celebrated
Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to
this remote epoch (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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And how much more
"enormous" if we reverse the subjects and say during the monkey's
development from the Third Race Man.
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Our globe being convulsed each time
that it reawakens for a new period of activity, like a field which has to be
ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it --
it does seem quite hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should
be found in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata.
Every new Manvantara brings along with it the renovation of forms, types and
species; every type of the preceding organic forms -- vegetable, animal and
human -- changes and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has
received in this Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions
having formed the present vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation
and fauna having been utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and
determining the structure of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia.
And, finally, the form of the gigantic Ape-Man of the former Round has been
reproduced 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 pen, is assuredly more logical, more
consistent with facts, and far more probable than many "scientific"
theories; that, for instance, of the first organic germ descending on a meteor
to our Earth -- like Ain Soph on his Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter
descent is allegorical, as every one knows, and the Kabalists have never
offered this figure of speech for acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the
germ on the meteor theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an
eligible candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour
bound to accept, if they would be on a right level with modern Science. What
the next theory necessitated by the materialistic premises will be -- no one
can tell. Meanwhile, the present theories, as any one can see, clash together
far more discordantly among themselves than even those of the Occultists
outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now
that exact Science has made even of the Life-principle an empty word, a
meaningless term; and now insists that life is an effect due to the molecular
action of the primordial protoplasm! The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be
defined and summarized in a few words, in which Mr. Herbert Spencer has defined
"special creation" . . . "it is 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." (Principles of Biology, Vol. I., p. 345.)
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§ V.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE
CENTRES.
IT is argued that the Universal
Evolution, otherwise, the gradual development of species in all the kingdoms of
nature, works by uniform laws. This is admitted, and the law enforced far more
strictly in Esoteric than in modern Science. But we are told also, 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." It is
from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are
produced.
Esoteric Science agrees with it, but
adds that this law applies only to what is known to it as the Primary Creation
-- the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms, and the pre-primordial ATOM,
at the first differentiation of the former; and that during the period of
cyclic evolution in space and time, this law is limited and works only in the
lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from simple
to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the Third Round,
which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial activity
recommences.
No more than Science, does esoteric
philosophy admit design or "special creation." It rejects every claim
to the "miraculous," and accepts nothing outside the uniform and
immutable laws of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of force
(or spirit) and of matter, which, starting from the neutral centre of Being,
develops in its cyclic progress and incessant transformations. The primitive
germ from which all vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being
distinct from the primitive germ from which the vegetable and the animal life
have evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in
which the materials 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 that "primitive germ," and maintain that it is
shown beyond 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 (the design) is, in fact, involved in the primitive
germ," from which not only all vertebrate life, but, "probably all
life, animal and vegetable, have been slowly developed" (p. 94 of
"Modern Science and Modern Thought").
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This is as true of the
"primitive germ" as it is false that that "germ" is only
"very much farther back" than man is; for it is at an immeasurable
and inconceivable distance (in time, though not in space) from the origin even
of our Solar system. As the Hindu philosophy very justly teaches, the
"Aniyamsam Aniyasam," can be known only through false notions. It is
the "many" that proceed from the ONE -- the living spiritual germs or
centres of forces -- each in a septenary form, which first generate, and then
give the PRIMARY IMPULSE to the law of evolution and gradual slow development.
Limiting the teaching strictly to
this, our earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal forms of the first Men
are first projected on seven zones by seven Dhyan-Chohanic centres of Force, so
there are centres of creative power for every ROOT or parent species of the
host of forms of vegetable and 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 omnipotent nor
omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or
Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our
plane) Master Mason -- the ONE LIFE and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they
have no hand in, or possibility of working on any other, during the present
Manvantara, at any rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical
and mathematical scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply
demonstrate; that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side
animal issues, etc.) is what natural history has sufficient evidence for. In the
creation of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the Parent stock,
as in the great variety of the genus Felis -- like the lynx, the tiger, the
cat, etc. -- it is the "designers" who direct the new evolution by
adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or
becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature
provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak
correctly. For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the
aggregated Nature; which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to
be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a
differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone
conditioned and imperfect.
Were there no such thing as
evolutionary cycles, an eternal spiral progress into matter with a
proportionate obscuration of spirit -- though the two are one -- followed by an
inverse ascent into spirit and the defeat of matter -- active and passive by
turn -- how explain the discoveries of zoology and geology? How is it that, on
the dictum of authoritative science, one can trace the animal life from the
mollusc up
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to the great Sea Dragon, from the
smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary Period; and
that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those species
decreasing, dwindling down and being dwarfed. If the seeming process of
development working from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to
the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of being a very
imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great Cosmic
process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic
fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the
Plesiosauri and the Ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the
present sea and river reptiles, instead of giving place to their dwarfed modern
analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good-tempered elephant, that would
be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene age who
would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic megatherium would be
found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of South America, in which the
colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods would take the place of moss and
present trees -- dwarfs, even the giants of California, in comparison with the
Titan-trees of past geological periods. Surely the organisms of the
megasthenian world of the Tertiary and the Mesozoic Ages must have been more
complex and perfect than those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the
present age? The Dryopithecus, for instance, is found more perfect
anatomically, more fit for a greater development of brain power, than the modern
gorilla or gibbon? How is this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution
of all those colossal land and sea-dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles,
was not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards,
turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales -- in short, all those animals we
are acquainted with?
Let us admit, however, for argument's
sake, that all those cycles, races, septenary forms of evolution and the tutti
quanti of esoteric teaching, are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us
agree with Science and say that man, instead of being an imprisoned
"Spirit," and his vehicle, the shell or body, a gradually perfected
and now complete mechanism for material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the
Occultists -- is simply a more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from
one and the same primitive germ on this earth, as the flying dragon and the
gnat, the whale and the amoeba, the crocodile and the frog, etc., etc. In this
case, he must have passed through the identical developments and through the
same process of growth as all the other mammals? If man is an animal, and
nothing more, a highly intellectual ex-brute, he should be privileged, at
least, and allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a
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meganthropos in his day. It is just
this, that esoteric science shows as having taken place in the first three
rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is more logical and consistent
than modern science. It classifies the human body with the brute creation, and
maintains it in the path of animal evolution, from first to last, while science
leaves man a parentless orphan born of sires unknown, an "unspecialized
skeleton" truly! And this mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the
doctrine of cycles.
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A.
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE
MAMMALIA: SCIENCE AND THE ESOTERIC PHYLOGENY.
Having dealt almost exclusively with
the question of the origin of Man in the foregoing criticism of Western
Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to define the position of the Occultists with
regard to the differentiation of species. The pre-human fauna and flora have
been already generally dealt with in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the
truth of much of modern biological speculation admitted, e.g., the derivation
of birds from reptiles, the partial truth of "natural selection," and
the transformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of
the origin of those first mammalian fauna which M. de Quatrefages so
brilliantly endeavours to prove as contemporary with the Homo primigenius of
the Secondary Age.
The somewhat complicated problem
relating to the "Origin of Species," -- more especially of the varied
groups of fossil or existing mammalian fauna -- will be rendered less obscure
by the aid of a diagram. It will then be apparent to what extent the
"Factors of Organic Evolution," relied upon by Western biologists,*
are to be considered as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 an 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 unplacental to placental mammals" (p. 271); that
"we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the origin of
the mammals" (p. 268); and the repeated failures of the framers of
"hypothetical pedigrees," more especially of Haeckel. Nevertheless he
asserts on 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?
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adequate to meet the facts. The line
of demarcation between etherospiritual, astral and physical evolution must be
drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the possibility of the second
process, they would no longer have to lament the fact that "we are
referred to conjecture and inference for the origin of the Mammals"!! (The
Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, p. 268, by Professor O. Schmidt.) At present
the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous
vertebrates and mammalia, constitutes a hopeless crux to those thinkers who,
with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous
line of descent.
Let us take -- exempli gratia -- the
case of the ungulate mammals. "In no other division," it is said,
"do we possess such abundant fossil material." So much progress has
been made in this direction, that in some instances the intermediate links
between the modern and Eocene ungulates have been unearthed; a notable example
being that of the complete proof of the derivation of the present one-toed horse
from the three-toed Anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of
comparison between Western Biology and the Eastern doctrine could not,
therefore, be improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views
of scientists in general, is that of Schmidt based on the exhaustive researches
of Rutimeyer. Its approximate accuracy -- from the standpoint of evolutionism
-- leaves little to be desired:--
UNGULATE MAMMALS.
[[diagram]]
[[text in diagram]]
ANOPLOTHERIDAE
Hippopotami
Pigs
Tragulidae
Deer
Antelopes
Oxen
PALAEOTHERIDAE
Rhinoceruses
Tapirs
Anchitherium
Hipparion
Horse
Maerauchenidae
(EOCENE)
(Tertiary)
(Recent)
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The midway point of evolution.
Science comes to a standstill. "The root to which these two families lead
back IS UNKNOWN" (Schmidt).
[[diagram]]
[[text in diagram]]
The "ROOT" according to
occultism.
II.
ANOPLOTHERIDAE. PALAEOTHERIDAE.
One of the Seven primeveal
physico-astral and bi-sexual root-types of the Mammalian Kingdom (animal).
These were contemporaries of the early Lemurian races -- the "UNKNOWN
ROOTS" of Science.
No. I. represents the realm explored
by Western Evolutionists, the area in which climatic influences, "natural
selection," and all the other physical causes of organic differentiation
are present. Biology and palaeontology find their province here in investigating
the many physical agencies which contribute so largely, as shown by Darwin,
Spencer and others, to the segregation of species. But even in this domain the
sub-conscious workings of the Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom are at the root of all the
"ceaseless striving towards perfection," though its influence is
vastly modified by those purely material causes which de Quatrefages terms the
"milieux" and Spencer the "Environment."
The "midway point of
evolution" is that stage where the astral prototypes definitely begin to
pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies
now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes immediately on the
assumption of "coats of skin" -- i.e., the physiological equipment in
general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes* are
woven out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the
physical organisms, which eat, drink, digest, etc., etc., etc. The known
physiological contrivances in organisms were almost entirely evolved
subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7 Root-Types out of the
astral -- during the "midway halt" between the two planes of
existence. Hardly had the "ground-plan" of evolution been limned out
in these ancestral types, than the influence of the accessory terrestrial laws,
familiar to us, supervened, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species.
AEons of slow differentiation were, however, required to effect this end.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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No. II. represents the domain of the
purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into (gross) matter. Astral
matter, it must be noted, is fourth state matter, having, like our gross
matter, its own "protyle." There are several "protyles" in
Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub-physical
elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth state matter), as also
that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each and all evolved from one of the
six "protyles" which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The
three "states," so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the
"solid," "liquid," and "gaseous," are only, in
strict accuracy, SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the
physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable
testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic
"materializations."
In all these instances a complete
temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. The evolution
of physiological Man out of the astral races of early Lemurian age -- the
Jurassic age of Geology -- is exactly paralleled by the
"materialization" of "spirits" (?) in the seance-room. 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 differentiation of species from the primal astral root-types.
Whatever the whole posse comitatus of "natural selection," etc.,
etc., may effect, the fundamental unity of structural plan remains practically
unaffected by all subsequent modifications. The "Unity of Type"
common, in a sense, to all the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer
and others appear to hold, a proof of the consanguineity of all organic forms,
but a witness to the essential unity of the "ground-plan" Nature has
followed in fashioning her creatures.
To sum up the case, we may again
avail ourselves of a tabulation of the actual factors concerned in the
differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself need no further
comment here, being the basic principles underlying organic development, than
to enter on the domain of the biological specialist.
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FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF
SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.
BASIC ASTRAL PROTOTYPES PASS INTO THE
PHYSICAL.
-------
The Dhyan Chohanic Impulse
constituting Lamarck's "inherent and necessary" law of development.
It lies behind all minor agencies.{
1. Variation transmitted by heredity.
2. Natural Selection.
3. Sexual Selection.
4. Physiological Selection.
5. Isolation.
6. Correlation of Growth.
7. Adaptation to Environment.
(Intelligent as opposed to mechanical causation.)
[[diagram]]
SPECIES.
-------
B.
THE EUROPEAN, PALAEOLITHIC RACES. --
WHENCE, AND HOW DISTRIBUTED.
IS Science against those who maintain
that down to the Quaternary period the distribution of the human races was
widely different from what it is now? Is Science against those who, further,
maintain that the fossil men found in Europe -- although having almost reached
a plane of sameness and unity from the fundamental physiological and
anthropological aspects which continues till this day -- still differ,
sometimes greatly, from the type of the now existing populations. The late
Littre confesses it in an article published by him on the Memoir called
Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes by Boucher de Perthes (1849) -- in the
Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1,1859). He says in it (a) that in these periods
when the Mammoths, exhumed with the hatchets in Picardy, lived in the latter
region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning over all the
terrestrial globe*; nature was the contrary of what it is now -- thus leaving
an enormous margin for the antiquity of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Scientists now admit that Europe
enjoyed in the Miocene times a warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a
temperate climate. Littre'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.
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those "periods" and then
adds: (b) "Spring, professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liege, 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 offered a
great analogy with those of African negro races, according to Littre, while
others, discovered on the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, resembled the
skulls of the Caribs and those of the ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili.
Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical or Atlantean, was denied. But further
geological discoveries having made Gaudry write conclusively: "Our
forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus,
the hippopotamus major"; and add that the soil called diluvial in geology
"was formed partially at least after man's apparition on earth" --
Littre pronounced himself finally. He then showed the necessity, before
"the resurrection of so many old witnesses," of rehandling all the
origins, all the durations, and added that there was AN AGE 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 known: the orthognathous and the
prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types; such as are now found only
in the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor Heer -- who argues that
the facts of Botany necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis -- has shown that
the plants of the Neolithic lake-villagers are mainly of African origin. How
did the latter come to be in Europe if there was no former point of union
between Africa and Europe? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men
live whose skeletons were exhumed in the Department of the Haute Garonne, in a
squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and broken
crockery around them, and in company with the bear spelaeus, the Elephas
primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the
Megaceros hibernicus -- all antediluvian mammals? Certainly at a most distant
epoch, but not one which carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much
greater antiquity for Man has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late
President of the Anthropological Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of
science, at any rate, makes some approach to our esoteric computation, if we
leave the first two semi-human, ethereal races, and the early Third Race out of
the computation.
The question, however, arises -- who
were these Palaeolithic men of the European quaternary epoch? Were they
aboriginal, or the outcome of some immigration dating back into the unknown
past? The latter is the only tenable hypothesis, as all scientists agree in
eliminating Europe from the category of possible "cradles of
mankind." Whence, then, radiated the various successive streams of
"primitive" men?
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The earliest Palaeolithic men in
Europe -- about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very
characteristics are but imperfectly known, though expatiated on as
"ape-like" by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant Allen -- were of
pure Atlantean and "Africo"-Atlantean stocks.* (It must be borne in
mind that by this time the Atlantis continent itself was a dream of the past.)
Europe in the quaternary epoch was very different from the Europe of to-day,
being then only in process of formation. It was united to N. Africa -- or
rather what is now N. Africa -- by a neck of land running across the present
Straits of Gibraltar -- N. Africa thus constituting a species of extension of
Spain, while a broad sea washed the great basin of the Sahara. Of the great
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
forefathers** of the Palaeolithic cave-men are evidenced by the upturning of
fossil skulls (in Europe) reverting closely to the West Indian Carib and
ancient Peruvian type -- a mystery indeed to all those who refuse to sanction
the "hypothesis" of a former Atlantic continent to bridge the ocean
(Cf. "Scientific and geological proofs of the reality of several submerged
continents"). What are we also to make of the fact that while de
Quatrefages points to that "magnificent race," the TALL Cro-Magnon
cave-men and the Guanches of the Canary Islands as representatives of one type
-- Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way? Professor
Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American
dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in the chain
of evidence are securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be
adduced. As to the African tribes -- themselves diverging offshoots of
Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions -- they crossed into Europe over
the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many
of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be
expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period
allotted
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Whence they (the old
cave-men) came, we cannot tell" (Grant Allen).
"The palaeolithic 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).
** 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 downwards had been running down the
scale.
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by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age.*
The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted --
the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palaeolithic man
makes room for his successor -- and disappears almost entirely from the scene.
Professor Lefevre 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 Celts? But whether, again, the deterioration produced in the
populations of La Vezere 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 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 fusions and migrations.
. . . The primitive European populations are interrupted in their special
evolution and, without perishing, become absorbed in other races, engulfed . .
. by successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a
lost Atlantis [?? far too late by aeons of years] and from prolific Asia . . .
all FORERUNNERS OF THE GREAT ARYAN INVASION" (Fifth Race).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The artistic skill displayed by the
old cave-men renders the hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the
"pithecanthropus alalus" -- that very mythical Haeckelian monster --
an absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in their skill
in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically re-appearing. It will
be remembered that Donnelly regards modern European as a renaissance of Atlantean
civilization. ("Atlantis," pp. 237-264.)
-------
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§ VI.
GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED
CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY.
WHEN statements such as are comprised
in the above heading are brought forward, the writer is, of course, expected to
furnish historical instead of legendary evidence in support of such claims. Is
this possible? Yes; for evidence of this nature is plentiful, and has simply to
be collected and brought together to become overwhelming in the eyes of the
unprejudiced.
Once the sagacious student gets hold
of the guiding thread he may find it out for himself. We give facts and show
land-marks: let the wayfarer follow them. What is given here is amply
sufficient for THIS Century.
In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds
it quite natural that the sympathies of the "grand old invalid of
Ferney" should be attracted to the "representatives of knowledge and
wisdom, the Brahmans of India." He then adds a curious statement.
"But," he says, "your Brahmans are very young in comparison with
their ancient instructors."*
Bailly, who knew nought of the
esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, believed, nevertheless, unreservedly in the
lost Atlantis, and also in several pre-historic and civilized nations which had
disappeared without leaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient
classics and traditions extensively, and he saw that the arts and sciences
known to those 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." And that, notwithstanding the learning of the
Hindoos, their undeniable priority in the antiquity of their race had to be
referred to a people or a race still more ancient and more learned than were
even the Brahmans themselves.**
Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his
day, the materialist par excellence, 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." ("Lettres sur
l'Atlantide," p. 15).***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-----------------------------------------------
* Lettres sur l'Atlantide.
** Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne,
p. 25, et seq.
*** 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 bond fide deluge of water which swept
it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine
of the East.
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That which with Voltaire was the
shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly "a question of
historical facts." For "I make great case of ancient traditions
preserved through a long series of generations," he wrote. (Ibid.) It was
possible, he thought, that a foreign nation should, after instructing another
nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces behind. When asked how it
could have happened that this ancient, or rather archaic, nation should not
have left at least some recollection in the human mind, he answered that Time
was a pitiless devourer of facts and events. But, the history of the Past was
never entirely lost, for the Sages of old Egypt had preserved it, and "it
is so preserved to this day elsewhere." "You do not know which was
the best and most handsome generation of men which has ever lived on this
earth," said the priests of Sais to Solon, according to Plato. "Only
a weak seed of it, of which you (Greeks) are the descendants,* is all that
remains." "Their books," they added, "preserved the records
of a great nation, which emerging from the Atlantic sea had invaded Europe and
Asia (Timaeus). The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once
glorious nation. . . ."**
What was this nation? The secret
doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh sub-race of the Atlanteans,
already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races of the Aryan stock, one that
had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon
as they had begun to emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of
Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of
Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands.
The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil;
had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt
and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from
that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races -- the remnants of the
Atlanteans -- "yellow and red, brown and black," began to invade the new
continent. There were wars in which the new comers were defeated; and they
fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these lands became in
course of time -- owing to new geological convulsions -- islands. Being thus
forcibly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For a full discussion of the
relations between the old Greeks and Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, cf.
"Five Years of Theosophy."
** The story about Atlantis and all
the traditions thereon were told, as all know, by Plato in his "Timaeus
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 Dropidas'
friend -- Solon, one of the Grecian Seven Sages. No more reliable source could
be found, we believe.
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separated from the continents, the
result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean stock fell
gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.
Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola
expeditions meet with WHITE savage chiefs; and has not the presence of African
negro types in Europe in the pre-historic ages been now ascertained? It is this
presence of a type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the
Mongolian, which is the stumbling-block of anthropology. The individual who
lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium (Vide Dr.
Carter Blake's paper "On the Naudette Jaw," Anthrop. Review, Sept.,
1867), is an example. "The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South-Eastern
Belgium," says this Anthropologist, "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."
Thus Belgian man was extremely
ancient. That man who was antecedent to the great flood of waters -- which
covered the highlands of Belgium with a deposit of lehm or upland gravel 30
metres above the level of the present rivers -- must have combined the
characters of the Turanian and the negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man,
may have been black, and had nothing to do with the Aryan type whose remains
are contemporary with those of the cave bear at Engis. The denizens of the
Aquitaine bone-caves belong to a far later period of history, and may not be as
ancient as the former.
If the statement is objected to on
the ground that Science does not deny the presence of man on earth from an
enormous antiquity, though that antiquity cannot be determined, since that
presence is conditioned by the duration of geological periods, the age of which
is not ascertained; if it is argued that the Scientists object most decidedly
to the claim that man preceded the animals, for instance; or that civilization
dates from the earliest Eocene period, or, again, that there have ever existed
giants, three-eyed and four-armed and four-legged men, androgynes, etc., then
the objectors are asked in their turn, "How do you know? What proof have
you besides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by new
discoveries?" And these future discoveries are sure to prove that,
whatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists was in complexion,
he was in no respect apish. The Canstadt man, the Engis man alike possessed
essentially human attributes. (Vide de Quatrefages and Hamy. "Cranes des
Races Humaines.") People have looked for the missing link at the wrong end
of the chain; and the Neander valley man has long since been dismissed to the
"limbo of all hasty blunders" (Ibid.). Disraeli divided man into the
associates of the
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apes and the angels. Reasons are
given in the text in favour of an "angelic theory," -- as Christians
would say -- at least as applicable to some of the races of men. At all events,
if man exists only since the Miocene period, even then, humanity as a whole
could not be composed of the abject savages of the Palaeolithic age, as they
are now represented by the Scientists. All they say is mere arbitrary
speculative guess-work, invented by them to answer to and fit in with their own
fanciful theories.
We speak of events hundreds of
thousands years old, nay, even millions -- if man dates from the geological
periods* -- not of any of those events which happened during the few thousand
years of the pre-historic margin allowed by timid and ever-cautious history.
Yet there are men of science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the
brave confession of the Abbe 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" -- down to the latest palaeontologists and anthropologists,
the majority of scientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. Apropos
of Peru, has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological
affinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean
erections, 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." (Cf., the mass of evidence collected by Donnelly to prove the
Peruvian colony an offshoot of the Atlanteans.) A most suggestive fact is the
startling resemblance between the architecture of these colossal buildings and
that of the archaic European nations. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies
between the ruins of "Inca" civilization 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Haeckel's "Man-ape" of
the Miocene period is the dream of a monomaniac, which de Quatrefages (see his
"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 Haeckel's imagination),
rather than the traditions of antiquity.
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who devised these erections, from a
common centre in an Atlantic continent. The acceptance of the latter can alone
assist us to approach a solution of this and similar problems in almost every
branch of modern science.
Dr. Lartet, treating upon the
subject, settles the question by declaring that:-- "The truth, so long
contested, of the co-existence of man with the great extinct species (Elephas
primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, Hyaena spelaea, Ursus spelaeus, etc.,
etc.), appears to me to be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by
science." ("Cavernes de Perigord," p. 35.)
It is shown elsewhere that such is
also de Quatrefages' opinion. "Man has in all probability seen Miocene
times* and consequently the entire Pliocene epoch," he says, and there are
reasons for believing that "his traces will be found further back still, .
. . ." he adds ("The Human Species," p. 152.)
Egypt is far older than Europe as now
traced on the map. Atlanto-Aryan tribes began to settle on it, when the British
Islands** and France were not even in existence. It is well known that
"the tongue of the AEgyptian Sea," or the Delta of lower Egypt,
became firm land very gradually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia;
unlike the latter, which arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very
slowly formed, through long ages, from successive layers of sea slime and mud,
deposited annually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile.
Yet even the Delta as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more than
100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Aryan blood in them than their
predecessors, arrived from the East, and conquered it from a people whose very
name is lost to posterity, except in Secret works. It is this natural barrier
of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely every boat that approached these
inhospitable shores, that was, till within a few thousand of 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 Vina in the day of Visvamitra.
(See in "Isis Unveiled," vol. 1, p. 627, what Kulluka Bhatta says.)
So evident does the antiquity of man become
with every day that even the Church is preparing an honourable surrender and
retreat. The learned Abbe Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically
declared
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** As we know them, however. For not
only does Geology prove that the British islands have been four times submerged
and re-elevated, but that the straits between them and Europe were dry land at
a remote former epoch.
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that pre-historic palaeontology and
archaeology may, without any harm to the Scriptures, discover in the tertiary
beds . . . . . the traces of pre-adamite man as much as they like. "Since
it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but one, (that which
produced the diluvium, according to the Abbe), 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 in
regarding the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our
ancestors.*
The day when the Church will find
that its only salvation lies in the occult interpretation of the Bible, may not
be so far off as some imagine. Already many an abbe 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
of the Bible. But they commence, unfortunately for them, from the wrong end.
They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the metaphysical in their
Scriptures, to study and master that which relates to the purely physical --
e.g., its geological and ethnological hints. For such allusions to the
Septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the seven Rounds and Races,
abound in the New as in the Old Testaments, and are as visible as the sun in
the heavens to him who reads both symbolically. What do the laws in chapter
xxiii., v. 15, of Leviticus apply to? What is the philosophy of reason for all
such hebdomadic offerings and symbolical calculations as: "ye shall count
. . . . from the morrow after the Sabbath . . . . that ye brought the sheaf of
the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be completed" (15), "And ye
shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish" (18), etc. etc. 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, which Sabbaths are seven pralayas,
between seven manvantaras, or what we call Rounds -- for "Sabbath" is
an elastic word, meaning a period of Rest of whatever nature, as explained
elsewhere (Part II, "Sections on the Septenary.") And if this is not
sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which follows (16), and
which adds, "even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye
number fifty days" (forty-nine, 7 x 7, stages of activity, and forty-nine
stages of rest, on the seven globes of the chain, and then
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Les origines de la terre et
de l'homme," p. 454. To this, Professor N. Joly, of Toulouse, who quotes
the Abbe 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.
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comes the rest of Sabbath, the
fiftieth); after which "ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the
Lord," i.e., ye shall make an offering of your flesh or "coats of
skin," and, divesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure
spirits. This law of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution
that dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews via the
"Chaldees," who were the "wise men" of a caste, not of a
nation, a community of great adepts come from their "Serpent-holes,"
and who had settled in Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from
Leviticus (full of the disfigured laws of Manu) is found too far-fetched, then
turn to Revelation. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to the
famous Chapter xvii., with its riddle of the woman in purple and scarlet;
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 pronounce, in their
impartiality, that these words have applied from the first to all and every
exoteric Churchianity, that which was the "ceremonial magic" of old,
with its terrible effects, and is now the harmless (because distorted) farce of
ritualistic worship. The "mystery" of the woman and of the beast, are
the 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," the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous,
idolatrous faiths which have covered that symbol "with the blood of the
saints and the blood of the martyrs" 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" (v. 10). There are many such
Apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find them out for himself. These
five Kings were mentioned before.
If the Bible combines with
archaeology and geology to show that human civilization 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 logical and scientific too, to disbelieve, with Mr. Albert
Gaudry, in Miocene man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints*
"were carved by the Dryopithecus monkey"; or, with the Occultist,
that the anthro-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The flints of Thenay bear
unmistakable trace of the work of human hands." (G. de Mortillet,
"Promenades au Musee de St. Germain," p. 76.)
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pomorphous monkey came ages after
man? For if it is once conceded, and even scientifically demonstrated, that
"there was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species of
mammal identical with species now extant" (Albert Gaudry "Les
Enchainements du monde animal dans les temps geologiques" p. 240); and
that man was then just as he is now; only taller, and more athletic than we
are,* -- then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be the
descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the Miocene
epoch,** is, on the other hand, testified to by several eminent naturalists.
"Thus, in the savage of
quaternary ages who had to fight against the mammoth with stone weapons, we
find all those craniological characters generally considered as the sign of
great intellectual development" (de Quatrefages, "The Human Species,
p. 312.)
Unless man emerged spontaneously,
endowed with all his intellect and wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine
ancestor, he could not have acquired such brain within the limits of the
Miocene period, if we are to believe the learned Abbe Bourgeois (Vide infra,
footnote**).
As to the matter of giants, though
the tallest man hitherto found in Europe among fossils is the "Mentone
man" (6 ft. 8 in.), others may yet be excavated. Nilsson, quoted by
Lubbock, states that "in a tomb of the neolithic age . . . . a skeleton of
extraordinary size was found in 1807," and that it was attributed to a
king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
And if in our own day we occasionally
find men and women from 7 ft. to even 9 ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves
-- on the law of atavism, or the reappearance of ancestral features of
character -- that there was a time when 9 ft. and 10 ft. was the average height
of humanity, even in our latest Indo-European race.
But as the subject was sufficiently
treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see
what the old Greeks knew of these early races and what the moderns know now.
The great nation mentioned by the
Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age
of Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was
then, as we see, assuredly no race of Palaeolithic savages. Nevertheless,
already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and Initiates, no
one seems
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Speaking of the reindeer hunters of
Perigord, Joly says of them that "they were of great height, athletic,
with a strongly built skeleton . . ." etc. ("Man before Metals,"
p. 353).
** "On the shores of the lake of
Beauce," says the Abbe Bourgeois, "man lived in the midst of a fauna
which completely disappeared (Aceratherium, Tapir, Mastodon). With the
fluviatile sands of Orleanais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopithecus
antiquus); therefore, later than man." (See Comptes Rendus of the
"Prehistoric Congress" of 1867 at Paris.)
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to have preserved any distinct
recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated
from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended
from an alien race, and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before,* but
their Initiates had preserved all the records. Even so late as the time of
Herodotus, they had still in their possession the statues of 341 kings who had
reigned over their little Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race (Vide about the latter
"Esoteric Buddhism," p. 66, Fifth Edition.) If one allows only twenty
years as an average figure for the reign of each King, the duration of the
Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000
years.
Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an
antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern archaeologists will not give it more
than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 years; and generously concede to Thebes with
its hundred gates, 7,000 years from the date of its foundation. And yet there
are records which show Egyptian priests -- Initiates -- journeying in a
North-Westerly direction, by land, via what became later the Straits of
Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phoenician
settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac
(Morbihan) they turned to the West again and arrived, still travelling by land,
on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent.**
What was the object of their long
journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic
records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving
from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of
menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to
serve as receptables for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The
fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by land may give an idea of
the date when such a journey could have been performed on terra firma.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "In making soundings in the
stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked bricks were discovered, one at the
depth of 20, the other at 25 yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual
deposit formed by the river at 8 inches per century (more careful calculations
have shown no more than from three to five per century), we must assign to the
first of these bricks 12,000 years, and to the second 14,000 years. By means of
analogous calculations, Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since
the first appearance of man on 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! (See further.) Note well also that
Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
** Or on what are now the British
Islands, 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.)
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It was --
"When the level of the Baltic
and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it is now; when the valley of the
Somme was not hollowed to the depth it has now attained; when Sicily was joined
to Africa, Barbary to Spain," when "Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt,
the palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not 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* 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 . . . and
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 hemitaechus and even of the Machairodus
latidens, which is of still earlier date . . . . M. E. Lartet is of opinion
that there is nothing really impossible in the existence of man as early as the
Tertiary period."**
If "there is nothing
impossible" scientifically in the idea, and it may be admitted that man
lived already as early as the Tertiary period, then it is just as well to
remind the reader that Mr. Croll places the beginning of that period 2,500,000
years back (See Croll's "Climate and Time"); but there was a time
when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
And if all this may be said of
European man, how great is the antiquity of the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the
Atlanto-Aryan man? Every educated person who follows the progress of Science,
knows how all vestiges of man during the Tertiary period are received. The
calumnies that were poured on Desnoyers in 1863, when he made known to the
Institute of France that he had made a discovery "in the undisturbed
pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres, proving the co-existence of man and
the Elephas meridionalis" -- were equal to the occasion. The later discovery
(in 1867) by the Abbe Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the
reception it was given at the Pre-historic Con-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* He witnessed and remembered it too,
as "the final disappearance of the largest continent of Atlantis was an
event coincident 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
building their version on an event which took place later in
"Poseidonis."
** The Antiquity of the Human Race in
"Men before Metals," by M. Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of
Toulouse, p. 184.
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gress held at Brussels in 1872,
proves that the average man of Science will never see but that which he wants
to see.*
The modern archeologist, though
speculating ad infinitum upon the dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact,
nothing of them or their origin. Yet, these weird, and often colossal monuments
of unhewn stones -- which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks
placed together -- are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups
or rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously
upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People name
them "devil's altars," druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of
Carnac in the Morbihan, Brittany -- nearly a mile in length and numbering
11,000 ranged in eleven rows -- are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The
Conical menhir of Loch-Maria-ker in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length
and nearly two yards across. The Menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises
thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such dolmens
and prehistoric monuments are met with in almost every latitude. They are found
in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local tumuli from
twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height); in Shetland, and in Sweden, where
they are called ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in Germany, where they
are known as the giant tombs (Hunengraben); in Spain (see the dolmen of
Antiguera near Malaga), and Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia (see
the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei giganti, or tombs of giants); in Malabar, in
India, where they are called the tombs of the Daityas (giants) and of the
Rakshasas, the men-demons of Lanka; in Russia and Siberia, where they are known
as the Koorgan; in Peru and Bolivia, where they are termed the chulpas or
burial places, etc., etc., etc.
There is no country from which they
are absent. Who built them? Why are they all connected with Serpents and
Dragons, with Alligators and Crocodiles? Because remains of "palaeolithic
man" were, it is thought, found in some of them, and because in the
funeral mounds of America bodies of later races were discovered with the usual
paraphernalia of bone necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., hence
they are declared ancient tombs. But surely the two famous mounds -- one in the
Mississippi valley and the other in Ohio -- known respectively as "the
Alligator Mound" and "the Great Serpent
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The scientific "jury"
disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de Mortillet, Worsaae, 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.
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Mound," were never meant for
tombs* (Vide infra). Yet one is told authoritatively that the Mounds, and the
Mound or Dolmen Builders, are all "Pelasgic" in Europe, antecedent to
the Incas, in America, yet of "not extremely distant times." They are
built by "no race of Dolmen Builders," which never existed (opinion
of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp) save in the earlier archeological
fancy. Finally Virchow's opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted
as an axiom:-- "The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they
contain" -- says that German biologist; and archaeology has but to bow and
submit to the decision.**
That no gigantic skeletons have been
hitherto found in the "tombs" is yet no reason to say there never
were the remains of giants in them. Cremation was universal till a
comparatively recent period -- some 80, or 100,000 years ago. The real giants,
moreover, were nearly all drowned with Atlantis. Nevertheless, the classics, as
shown elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons still excavated in their day.
Besides this, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton
ever yet found is older than between 50, or 60,000 years,*** and man's size was
reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan
stock, which sub-race -- born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new
climates and conditions -- had become European. Since then, as said, it has
steadily been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone
are archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them;
and that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,****
or rather the ashes of generations of giants.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 its symbolism, however, of the Serpent -- the cycle of Time --
swallowing Kosmos, the egg.
** It might be better, perhaps, for
FACT had we more Specialists in Science and fewer "authorities" on
universal questions. One never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final
decisions in the matter of polypi, or the nature of an excrescence.
*** 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.
**** 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).
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Nor were all such cyclopean
structures intended for sepulchres. It is with the so-called Druidical remains,
such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great Britain, that the travelling
Initiates above alluded to had to do. And these gigantic monuments are all
symbolic records of the World's history. They are not Druidical, but universal.
Nor did the Druids build them, for they were only the heirs to the cyclopean
lore left to them by generations of mighty builders and --
"magicians," both good and bad.
It will always be a subject of regret
that history, rejecting a priori the actual existence of giants, has preserved
us so little of the records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every
mythology -- which after all is ancient history -- the giants play an important
part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against
whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of
deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants to be the
brethren of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the gods to the history of
the development of the Aryan race, will only receive credence amongst the
believers in the Aryan theory, as expounded by Max Muller. Granting that the
Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark,
round-headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair-faced
Scandinavians, or AEsir, the gods being like unto men, there still exists
neither in history nor any other scientific work any anthropological proof
whatever of the existence in time or space of a race of giants. Yet that such
exist, relatively and de facto side by side with dwarfs, Schweinfurth can
testify. The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, while their next
neighbours (several tribes of comparatively fair-complexioned Africans) are
giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and very tall even among Europeans,
for their women are all above 6 1/2 feet high. (Vide Schweinfurth's latest
works.)
In Cornwall and in ancient Britain
the traditions of these giants are, on the other hand, excessively common; they
are said to live even down to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that
giants lived to a later date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic
peoples.
If we turn to the New World, we have
traditions of a race of giants at 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 de los gigantes" -- "the fields of
giants," are always concomitant with the existence of pliocene mammalia
and the occurrence of pliocene raised beaches. "All the giants are not
under Mount Ossa," and it would be poor anthropology indeed that would
restrict the traditions of giants to Greek and Bible mythologies. Slavonian
countries, Russia especially, teem with legends about the bogaterey (mighty giants)
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of old; and their folklore, most of
which has served for the foundation of national histories, their oldest songs,
and their most archaic traditions, speak of the giants of old. Thus we may
safely reject the modern theory that would make of the Titans mere symbols
standing for cosmic forces. They were real living men, whether twenty or only
twelve feet high. Even the Homeric heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far
more recent period in the history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons
of a size and weight beyond 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 from Carson,
Indiana, U.S.A., are human, they indicate gigantic men. Of their genuineness
there can remain no doubt. It is to be deplored that the modem and scientific
evidence for gigantic men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again,
the skeletons of hypothetical giants have been identified with those of
elephants and mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of geology, and
even the traveller's tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants
56 feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of giants 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 have existed and left distinct traces. In
the journal of the Anthropological Institute (Vol. 1871, art. by Dr. C. Carter
Blake) such a race is shown as having existed at Palmyra and possibly in
Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different from those of the Jews. It is
not improbable that another such race existed in Samaria, and that the
mysterious people who built the stone circles in Galilee, hewed neolithic
flints in the Jordan valley and preserved an ancient Semitic language quite
distinct from the square Hebrew character -- was of a very large stature. The
English translations of the Bible can never be relied upon, even in their
modern revised forms. They tell us of the Nephilim translating the word by
"giants," and further adding that they were "hairy" men,
probably the large and powerful prototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently
described by the patristic fancy; some of the Church Fathers assuring their
admirers and followers that they had 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 pre-existing population far exceeding their own in stature, and called
it a race of giants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages
before the birth of Moses. This tall people existed in Canaan, and
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even in Bashan, and may have had
representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They were of far greater stature
than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years ago their cranial conformation
and large stature separated them from the children of Heber. Forty thousand
years ago their ancestors may have been of still more gigantic size, and four
hundred thousand years earlier they must have been in proportion to men in our
days as the Brobdingnagians were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the
middle period were called the Great Dragons, and the first symbol of their
tribal deities, when the "gods" and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken
them, was that of a giant Serpent.
The mystery veiling the origin and
the religion of the Druids, is as great as that of their supposed fanes is to
the modern Symbologist, but not to the initiated Occultists. Their priests were
the descendants of the last Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient
to allow the inference that they were eastern priests akin to the Chaldeans and
Indians, though little more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their
deity as the Hindus do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God,
and as the builders of the Ohio Great-Serpent mound worshipped theirs -- namely
under the form of the "mighty Serpent," the emblem of the eternal
deity TIME (the Hindu Kala). Pliny called them the "Magi of the Gauls and
Britons." But they were more than that. The author of "Indian
Antiquities" finds much affinity between the Druids and the Brahmins of
India. Dr. Borlase points to a close analogy between them and the Magi of
Persia*; others will see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of
Thrace: simply because they were connected, in their esoteric teachings, with
the universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric
worship of all.
Like the Hindus, the Greeks and
Romans (we speak of the Initiates), the Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids
believed in the doctrine of a succession of worlds, as also in that of seven
"creations" (of new continents) and transformations of the face of
the earth, and in a seven-fold night and day for each earth or globe (See "Esoteric
Buddhism"). Wherever the Serpent with the egg is found, there this tenet
was surely present. Their Dracontia are a proof 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 find it among the Aryan Hindus and Mazdeans,
the Greeks, the Latins, and even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose
modern stocks
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* But the Magi of Persia were never
Persians -- not even Chaldeans. 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.
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hardly comprehend now that which they
read in their Scriptures. See what Seneca says in Epistle 9, and Quaest. Nat.
III., c., ult.: "The world being melted and having re-entered the bosom of
Jupiter, this god continues for some time to remain absorbed in himself and
concealed, wholly immersed in contemplation. After which a new world springs
from him. . . . An innocent race of men and animals are produced anew . . .
etc." Then again when speaking of periodical mundane dissolution involving
universal death, he (Seneca) says 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 deities, who thus shall return into their original chaos" (Quoted in
"Book of God," p. 160.)
One might imagine oneself reading the
Puranic account by Parasara of the great 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, from verse iii. till the xivth, and he will find there the same ideas. .
. . "There shall come in the last days scoffers . . . saying, 'where is
the promise of his coming? . . . . Since the fathers fell asleep all things
continue as they were from the beginning of creation.' For, they are ignorant .
. . . 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 that are now,
are reserved unto the fire . . . . wherein the heavens . . . . shall be
dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat . . . . we
nevertheless look for new heavens and new earth, etc., etc." If the
interpreters chose to see in this a reference to creation, the deluge, and the
promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a new Jerusalem in heaven,
this is no fault of "Peter." What the writer of the Epistles meant
was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by subterranean fires and
inundations, and the appearance of new continents for the Sixth Root-Race. For
the writers of these Epistles were all learned in symbology if not in the
sciences.
It was mentioned elsewhere that the
belief in the septenary constitution of our "chain" was the oldest
tenet of the early Iranians, who got it from the first Zarathustra. It is time
to prove it to those Parsis who have lost the key to the meaning of their
Scriptures. In the Avesta the earth is considered septempartite and tripartite
at one and the same time. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger, as an incongruity,
for the following reasons, which he calls discrepancies: the Avesta speaks
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of the three-thirds 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."* 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 the
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 ascending arc.
Thus, with reference to the six spheres or globes above our earth, the seventh
and the fourth, it is septempartite, while with regard to the planes over our
plane -- it is tripartite. This meaning is carried out and corroborated by the
text in the Avesta and Vendidad, and even by the speculations -- a most
laborious and unsatisfactory guess-work -- of the translators and commentators.
It thus follows that the division of the "earth," or rather the
earth's chain, into seven Karshvars is not in contradiction with the three
"zones," if this word is read "planes." As Geiger remarks,
this septenary division is very old -- the oldest of all -- since the Gathas
already speak of the "septempartite earth." (Bumi haptaiti, Yasna,
xxxii., 3.) For, "according to the Parsee Scriptures, the seven Karshvars
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 Karshvar to
another."** 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 consistently rendered by Dwipa, and especially Qaniratha by
Jambudwipa ("Neriosengh, the translator of the Yasna.")*** But this
fact is not taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even
such a learned Zoroastrian and Parsi by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger's
work passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of the
former on the "incongruities" of this kind abounding in the Mazdean
Scriptures. One of such "incongruities" and "coincidences"
concerns the similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to
the seven Dwipas (islands, or continents, rather) as met with in the Puranas,
namely: "The Dwipas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean,
surround Jambu Dvipa, which is situated in the centre" (p. 130, vol. I.),
and, "according to the Iranian view, the Karshvar Qaniratha is likewise
situated in the centre of the rest . . . . each of them (the other six
Karshvars) is a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* p. 129, "Civilization of the
Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times."
** Cf., e.g., Vol. I., 4, of the
Pahlavi Translation; Bdh. xxi., 2-3.
*** Footnote by Darab Dastur Peshotan
Sanjana, B.A., the translator of Dr. Wilhelm Geiger's work on the
"Civilization of the Eastern Iranians."
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peculiar individual space, and so
they group themselves round (above) Qaniratha" (Ibid. p. 131). Now
Qaniratha is not, as believed by Geiger and his translator, "the country
inhabited by the Iranian tribes," and the other names do not mean
"the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the North, South, West,
and East" (p. 132), but our globe or Earth. For that which is meant by the
sentence which follows the last quoted, namely, that "two Vorubarshti and
Voru-Zarshti 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:
[[diagram]]
[[text of diagram]]
N
(North) (North)
(West) Arzahi W E Savahi (East)
(South) Tradadhafshu S Vidadhafshu
(South)
Qaniratha.
The Mazdean names given above have
only to be replaced by those used in the Secret Doctrine to become an orthodox
tenet. The "Earth" (our World), therefore, is "tripartite,"
because the chain of the worlds is situated on three different planes above our
globe; and it is septempartite because of the seven globes or spheres which
compose the chain. Hence the further meaning given in Vendidad 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 of all other ancient beliefs.
The Druids understood the meaning of
the Sun in Taurus, therefore, when, while all the fires were extinguished on
the 1st of November, their sacred and inextinguishable fires alone remained to
illumine the horizon, like those of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And
like the early Fifth Race and later Chaldees, the Greeks, and again like the
Christians, who do the same to this day, without suspecting the real meaning,
they greeted the Morning Star -- the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. 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 boor standing by her
"Teach an Maddin Nag" (Behold the morning star), pointing to the
planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans."
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Strabo speaks of an island near to
Britannia, "where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites
as in Samothrace (lib. iv.) and this island was Sacred Ierna," where a
perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not as Lucian
explains: "that the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in
a different world," but in a series of re-incarnations in this same world;
for as Diodorus says, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate
periods, would pass into other bodies.*
These tenets came to the Fifth Race
Aryans from their predecessors of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had
piously preserved the teachings, which told them how their parent Root-Race,
becoming with every generation more arrogant, owing to the acquisition of
superhuman powers, had been gradually gliding toward its end. Those records
reminded them of the giant intellect of the preceding races as well as of their
giant size. One finds the repetition of those records in every age of history,
in almost every old fragment which has descended to us from antiquity.
AElian 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 old, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa
seemed like poor islands compared with it. It was the last to produce animals
and plants of gigantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the
size of the tallest man in his (the narrator's) time, and they lived to twice
as old an age. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such (cities)
held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver being found
there in great abundance. . . .
Grote's suggestion that Atlantis was
but a myth arisen from a mirage -- clouds on a dazzling sky taking the
appearance of islands on a golden sea -- is too disingenuous to be even
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 only 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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event which he located on one
comparatively small island 3000 stadia long by 2000 wide; (or about 350 miles
by 200, which is about the size of Ireland), whereas the priests spoke of
Atlantis as a continent vast as "all Asia and Lybia" put together.
But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato's narrative bears the impress
of truth upon it.* It was not he who invented it, at any rate, since Homer, who
preceded him by many centuries, also speaks of the Atlantes (who are our
Atlanteans) and of their island in his Odyssey. Therefore the tradition was
older than the bard of Ulysses. The Atlantes and the Atlantides of mythology
are based upon the Atlantes and the Atlantides of history. Both Sanchoniathon
and Diodorus have preserved the histories of those heroes and heroines, however
much these accounts may have become mixed up with the mythical element.
In our own day we witness the
stupendous fact that such comparatively recent personages as Shakespeare and
William Tell are all but denied, an attempt being made to show one to be a nom
de plume, and the other a person who never existed. What wonder then, that the
two powerful races -- the Lemurians and the Atlanteans -- have been merged into
and identified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the
same patronymic?
Herodotus speaks of the Atlantes -- a
people of Western Africa which gave its name to Mount Atlas; who were
vegetarians, and "whose sleep was never disturbed 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 physiological disturbance. The story of Atlas
(Vide supra) gives the key to it. If the Atlanteans never had their sleep
disturbed by dreams, it is because that particular tradition is concerned with
the earliest Atlanteans, whose physical frame and brain were not yet
sufficiently consolidated, in the physiological sense, to permit the nervous
centres to act during sleep. With regard to that other statement -- namely,
that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato's veracity has been so
unwarrantably impeached by even such friendly critics as Professor Jowett, when
the "story of Atlantis" is 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 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. 194.)
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they daily "cursed the Sun"
-- this again has nothing to do with the heat, but with the moral degeneration
that grew with the race. It is explained in our Commentaries. "They (the
sixth sub-race of the Atlanteans) used magic incantations even against the
Sun" -- failing in which, they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were
credited with 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
wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the gods. Thence the same traditions
taking form in the Bible about the antediluvian giants and the Tower of Babel,
found also in the "Book of Enoch."
Diodorus records another fact or two:
the Atlanteans boasted of possessing the land in which all the gods had
received their birth; as also of having had 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 symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to
Proteus, a superior wisdom and an universal knowledge, and especially a
thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean: because both continents
bore races instructed by divine masters, and because both were transferred to
the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reappearance
above the waters. Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is
Calypso -- "the watery deep," (See Hesiod's Theogony, 507-509, and
Odyssey 1, 51): Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the ocean,
and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean floors. The
Odyssey makes of him the guardian and the "sustainer" of the huge
pillars that separate the heavens from the earth (1, 52-53). He is their
"supporter." And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and
Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps,* Atlas is said
to have been compelled to leave the surface of the earth, and join his brother
Iapetos in the depths of Tartarus. Sir Theodore Martin is 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" . . . (Memoires de l'Academie des
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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, which earth, being overflowed, perished, but is now reserved unto
fire"; (See also the "Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers," p.
4, London, 1815).
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Inscriptions, p. 176). For Atlas is
Atlantis which supports the new continents and their horizons on its
"shoulders."
Decharme, in his Mythologie de la
Grece Antique, expresses a doubt as to the correctness of Pierron's translation
of the Homeric word [[echei]] 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 personifies a continent in the west said to support
heaven and earth at once (AEschylus, "Prometheus Vinctus," 351, 429,
etc.) -- i.e., the feet of the giant tread the earth while his shoulders
support the celestial vault, an allusion to the gigantic peaks of the Lemurian
and Atlantean continents -- the epithet "supporter" becomes very
correct. The term "conservator" for the Greek word [[echei]], which
Decharme, following Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning [[phulassei]]
and [[epimeleitai]], does not render the same sense.
The conception was certainly due to
the gigantic mountain chain running along the terrestrial border (or disc).
These mountain peaks plunged their roots into the very bottom of the seas,
while they raised their heads heavenward, their summits being lost in the
clouds. The ancient continents had more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas,
and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed relics of the two lost continents,
were thrice as lofty during 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 (IV., 184), and Pindar qualified the later
AEtna as "the celestial pillar" (Pyth. 1, 20; Decharme, 315). Atlas
was an inaccessible island peak in the days of Lemuria, when the African
continent had not yet been raised. It is the sole Western relic which survives,
independent, of the continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and
fell,* 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 two parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.
This again was known to the priests
of Egypt and to Plato himself, the solemn oath of secrecy, which extended even
to the mysteries of Neo-Platonism, alone preventing the whole truth from being
told.** So
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Had not Diocletian burned the
esoteric works of the Egyptians in 296, together with their books on alchemy --
"[[peri chumeias kai chrusou]]"; Caesar 700,000 rolls at Alexandria,
and Leo Isaurus 300,000 at Constantinople (viiith cent.); and the Mahomedans
all they could lay their sacrilegious hands on -- the world might know to-day
more of Atlantis than it does. For Alchemy had its birth-place in Atlantis
during the Fourth Race, and had only its renaissance in Egypt.
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secret was the knowledge of the last
islands of Atlantis, indeed, -- on account of the superhuman powers possessed
by its inhabitants, the last direct descendants of the gods or divine Kings, as
it was thought -- that to divulge its whereabouts and existence was punished by
death. Theopompus says as much in his ever-suspected Meropis, when he speaks of
the Phoenicians as being the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western
coast of Africa; and who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk
their own vessels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of
them.
There are those Orientalists and
historians -- and they form the majority -- who, while feeling quite unmoved at
the rather crude language of the Bible, and some of the events narrated in it,
show great disgust at the immorality in the pantheons of India and Greece.* We
may be told that before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the
same; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented --"those miserable
stories of the poets," as Euripides expresses it ([[haoidon hoide dustenoi
logoi]], Hercules furens, 1346, Dindorf's Edition).
But there may have been another
reason for this, perhaps. To those who knew that there was more than one key to
theogonic symbolism, it was a mistake to have expressed it in a language so
crude and misleading. For if the educated and learned philosopher could discern
the kernel of wisdom under the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter
concealed the greatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well
as the origin of all things -- not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the
dead letter was religion; the interpretation -- sacrilege. And this dead letter
could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an example was
given him by his gods. But
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor Max Muller's Lectures --
"on the Philosophy of Mythology" -- are before us. We read his
citations of Herakleitos (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 Adaimantos (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 Kronos) . . 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 Dr. Max Muller 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 authorised 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."
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to the philosopher -- especially the
Initiate -- Hesiod's theogony is as historical as any history can be. Plato
accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges
permitted him.
The fact that the Atlantes claimed
Uranos for their first king, and that Plato commences his story of Atlantis by
the division of the great continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranos, shows
that there were continents and kings before Atlantis. For Neptune, to whose lot
that continent fell, finds on a small island only one human couple made of clay
(i.e., the first physical human man, whose origin began 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 for his part the mountain and the
continent which was called by his name.
Now all the gods of Olympus, as well
as those of the Hindu Pantheon and the 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 Dhyan 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 forms the one that is meant, belonged at all times to the
Initiates, whose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and
allegorical system.
Thus while Uranos (or the host
representing this celestial group) reigned and ruled over the Second Race and
their (then) Continent; Kronos or Saturn governed the Lemurians; and Jupiter,
Neptune* and others fought in the 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 of Idaspati" (or Vishnu) in the mystic
language of the secret books -- lasted till about 12,000 years ago.** The
Atlantes of Diodorus were right in claiming that it was their country, the
region surrounding Mount Atlas, where "the gods were born" -- i.e.,
"incarnated." But it was after their fourth incarnation that they
became, for the first time, human Kings and rulers.
Diodorus speaks of Uranos as the
first king of Atlantis, confusing, either consciously or otherwise, the
continents; but, as shown, Plato indirectly corrects the statement. The first
astronomical teacher of men was Uranos, because he is one of the seven Dhyan
Chohans of that second period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindu
Idaspati, identical with Narayana (the mover on the waters) or Vishnu, and like
this Hindu god he is shown crossing the whole horizon in three steps. Idaspati
means also "the master of the waters."
** 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.
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(that of Swarochisha), among the
seven sons of the Manu, the presiding gods or Rishis of that race, we find
Jyotis,* the teacher of astronomy (Jyotisha), one of the names of Brahma. And
thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the sky, Ouranos), and name him as their
first teacher of astronomy. Uranos gave birth to the Titans of the Third Race,
and it is they who (personified by Saturn-Kronos) mutilated him. For as it is
the Titans who fell into generation, when "creation by will was superseded
by physical procreation," they needed Uranos no more.
And here a short digression must be
permitted and pardoned. In consequence of the last scholarly production of Mr.
Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century, "The Greater Gods of Olympos,"
the ideas of the general public about Greek Mythology have been still further
perverted and biassed. Homer is credited with an inner thought, which is
regarded by Mr. Gladstone as "the true key to the Homeric
conception," whereas this "key" was merely a blind. Poseidon
"is indeed essentially of the earth earthy . . . . strong and
self-asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive," -- but this
is because he symbolises the Spirit of the Fourth Root-Race, the ruler of the
Seas, that race which lives above the surface of the seas ([[limne]], Il.
xxiv., 79), which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon, the
race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan and one-eyed Cyclops. Though
Zeus reigns over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules, and who is the true
key to the triad of the Kronid 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, after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the
living race; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan
Race: and this is what the great Greek scholar of England has not yet
discovered, or even dimly perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon
the "artfulness" of Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose
designation we arrive . . . . only through the patronymic of the Nereids!
Thus the tendency of even the most
erudite Hellenists is to confine their speculations to the exoteric images of
mythology and to lose sight of their inner meaning: and it is remarkably
illustrated in the case of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, as we have shown.
While almost the most conspicuous figure of our age as a statesman, he is at
the same time one of the most cultured scholars England has given birth to.
Grecian literature has been the loving study of his life, and he has found time
amid the bustle of public affairs to enrich contemporary literature with
contributions to Greek scholarship which will make his name famous through
coming generations. At the same time, as his sincere
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Matsya Purana, which places him
among the seven Prajapatis of the period.
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admirer, the present writer cannot
but feel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound
erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which must then
shine upon the whole question of symbolism and mythology, judge that he has
failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which he has often
criticised from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that future day it will
be perceived that the esoteric key to the mysteries of the Christian as well as
of the Grecian theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret Doctrine of the
pre-historic nations, which, along with others, he has denied. It is that
Doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all human religious speculations
or even so-called Revelations, and it is this teaching which infuses the Spirit
of life into the lay figures on the Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or
Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a younger man, his admirers might hope that his
scholastic studies would be crowned by the discovery of this underlying truth.
As it is, he but wastes the golden hours of his declining years in futile
disputations with that giant free-thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with
the weapons of exoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorant LITERALISM.
These two great controversialists are equally blind to the true esoteric
meaning of the texts which they hurl at each other's head like iron bullets,
while the world alone suffers by such controversies: since the one helps to
strengthen the ranks of materialism, and the other those of blind Sectarianism
and of the dead letter. And now we may return once more to our immediate
subject.
Many a time Atlantis is spoken of
under another name, one unknown to our commentators. The power of names is
great, and was known since the first men were instructed by the divine masters.
And as Solon had studied it, he translated the "Atlantean" names into
names devised by himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is
desirable to bear 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
Great Continent and others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has
become customary to take them all as referring to the latter only, but that
this is incorrect is evident from the incompatibility of the various statements
as to the size, etc., of "Atlantis."
Thus, in the Timaeus and Critias,
Plato says, that the plain surrounding the city was itself surrounded by
mountain chains. . . . . And the plain was smooth and level, and of an oblong
shape, lying north and south, three thousand stadia in one direction and two
thousand in the other. . . . . They surrounded the plain by an enormous canal
or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and 1,250 miles in length.
Now in other places the entire size
of the island of Poseidonis is given as about the same as that assigned here to
the "plain around the
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city" alone. Obviously, one set
of statements refers to the great continent, and the other to its last remnant
-- Plato's island.
And, again, the standing army of
Atlantis is given as upwards of a million men; its navy as 1,200 ships and
240,000 men. Such statements are quite inapplicable to a small island state, of
about the size of Ireland!
The Greek allegories give to Atlas,
or Atlantis, seven daughters (seven sub-races), whose respective names are
Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope, Merope, Alcyone, and Celaeno. This
ethnologically, as they are credited with having married gods and with having
become the mothers of famous heroes, the founders of many nations and cities.
Astronomically, the Atlantides have become the seven Pleiades (?). In occult
science the two are connected with the destinies of nations, those destinies
being shaped by the past events of their early lives according to Karmic law.
Three great nations claimed in antiquity
a direct descent from the kingdom of Saturn or Lemuria (confused already
several thousands of years before our era with Atlantis): and these were the
Egyptians, the Phoenicians (Vide Sanchoniathon), and the old Greeks (Vide
Diodorus, after Plato). But the oldest civilized country of Asia -- India --
can be shown to claim the same descent likewise. Sub-races guided by Karmic law
or destiny repeat unconsciously the first steps of their respective
mother-races. As the comparatively fair Brahmins have come -- when invading
India with its dark-coloured Dravidians -- from the North, so the Aryan Fifth
Race must claim its origin from northern regions. The occult sciences show that
the founders (the respective groups of the seven Prajapatis) of the Root Races
have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find:--
"He who understands the age of
Dhruva* 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 locate its great progenitors and saints in
the Ursa Major, a northern constellation. It is 70,000 YEARS, HOWEVER, SINCE
THE POLE OF THE EARTH POINTED TO THE FURTHER END OF URSA MINOR'S TAIL; and many
more thousand years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the
constellation of Ursa Major.
The Aryan race was born and developed
in the far north, though after the sinking of the continent of Atlantis its
tribes emigrated further south into Asia. Hence Prometheus is son of Asia, and
Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah -- he who created men out of the stones of
mother
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The equivalent of this name is
given in the original.
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earth -- is called a northern Scythe,
by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of Atlas and is tied down to
Mount Caucasus amid the Snows.*
Greece had her Hyperborean as well as
her Southern Apollo. Thus nearly all 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 close of the Third Race, after its full physical and
physiological evolution had been completed.** All the "fables" of
Greece were built on historical facts, if that history had only passed
unadulterated by myths to posterity. The "one-eyed" Cyclopes, the
giants fabled 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" referring to the Wisdom eye***; for the two front eyes were
fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race.
The allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of
Ithaca was saved by putting out with a fire-brand the eye of Polyphemus, 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 a
"sage" in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the
opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.**** His adventure with the latter -- a savage
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 and physical culture of the
Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Deukalion is said to have brought
the worship of Adonis and Osiris into Phoenicia. Now the worship is that of the
Sun, lost and found again in its astronomical significance. It is only at the
Pole where the Sun dies out for such a length of time as six months, for in
latitude 68 [[degrees]] 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.
** The Hyperboreans, now regarded as
mythical, were described (Herod, IV., 33-35; Pausanias, 1, 31, 2; V., 7, 8; ad
X., 5, 7, 8) as the beloved priests and servants of the gods, and of Apollo
chiefly.
*** 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. (Geographie ancienne,
Vol. II, p. 321.) It is they whom Apollo destroyed with his shafts. (See
supra.)
**** Ulysses was wrecked on the isle
of AEaea, 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 (Odyssey and elsewhere). Now Calypso was a daughter of Atlas (Odys.
Book 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.
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the Third Race to lose their
all-penetrating spiritual eye. That other allegory, which makes Apollo kill the
Cyclops to avenge the death of his son Asclepios, does not refer to the three
races represented by the three sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean
Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the "Wisdom-eye."
The former have left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the south as much
as in the north; the latter, were confined to the north solely. Thus Apollo --
pre-eminently the god of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration --
killed them -- his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal -- and
hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions. (Hygin.
"Astron. Poetique," Book ii. c. 15). Cosmically and astronomically
this Hyperborean god is the Sun personified, which during the course of the
sidereal year (25,868 y.) changes the climates on the earth's surface, making
of tropical, frigid regions, and vice versa. Psychically and spiritually his
significance is far more important. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his
"Greater Gods of Olympos," "the qualities of Apollo (jointly
with Athene) 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" (Nineteenth Century, July, 1887.)
The history of Latona (Leto),
Apollo's mother, is most pregnant in various meanings. Astronomically, Latona
is the polar region and the night, giving birth to the Sun, Apollo, Phoebus,
etc. She is born in the Hyperborean countries wherein all the inhabitants were
priests of her son, celebrating his resurrection and descent to their country
every nineteen years at the renewal of the lunar cycle (Diod. Sic. II. 307).
Latona is the Hyperborean Continent, and its race -- geologically.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 naturalised all the gods they borrowed and made
Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. Thus also the mythologists have
tried to make of Eridan 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 Eridan 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 Eridan, 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 Eridan 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 ices. 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.
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When the astronomical meaning cedes
its place to the spiritual and divine -- Apollo and Athene transforming
themselves into the form of birds, the symbol and glyph of the higher
divinities and angels -- then the bright god assumes divine creative powers.
Apollo becomes the personification of Seership, when he sends the astral double
of AEneas to the battle field (II. 431-53), and has the gift of appearing to
his Seers without being visible to other persons present -- (Iliad, xvii.,
322-36) -- a gift, however, shared by every high 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 the seven sub-races of the Fourth Race
and their seven branches (see Apollodorus for this number) -- allegorizes 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 (See "The Sons of God and the Sacred Island"); and the
destruction of the "children of Niobe" by the children of Latona --
Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom and purity, or the Sun and Moon
astronomically, whose influence causes changes in the earth's axis, deluges and
other cosmic cataclysms -- is thus very clear.* The fable about the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 "cries, travailing in birth, pained to be
delivered." A great red Dragon, etc., 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 keep the commandment of God, etc. (See xii., 1, 17.) Anyone, who reads
the allegory of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognise
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, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" of
Revelation, 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), moved with 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 [[Delios]] 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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never-ceasing tears of Niobe, whose
grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain -- Atlantis covered with water
-- is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the daughter
of one of the Pleiades (or Atlantides) the grand-daughter of Atlas therefore,
(See "Metamorphoses of Ovid," Book VI.), because she represents the
last generations of the doomed continent.
A true remark, that of Bailly, which
says that Atlantis had an enormous influence on antiquity. "If these
names," he adds, "are mere allegories, then all that those fables
contain of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real tradition --
however altered -- then the whole of the ancient history is still in it."
(Lettres sur l'Atlantide, p. 137.)
So much so, that all ancient writings
-- prose and poetry -- are full of the reminiscences of the Lemuro-Atlanteans,
the first physical races, though the Third and the Fourth in number. Hesiod
records the tradition about the men of the age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made
out of ash-wood and who had hearts harder than diamond. Clad in bronze from
head to foot they passed their lives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed
with a terrible strength, invincible arms and hands descended from their
shoulders, says the poet (Hesiod, in oper. and dieb. v. 143). 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 Zoroaster as one of the "Sons of God." -- It says:
"Thou, O Zarathustra, didst make all demons (i.e., Sorcerers), who before
roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the earth" (i.e.,
helped them to get submerged).
The Lemurians, as also the early
Atlanteans, were divided into two distinct 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, when the former, leaving
their land of Darkness, from whence the Sun departed for long months, descended
from their inhospitable regions and "tried to wrench the lord of
light" from their better favoured brothers of the equatorial regions. We
may be told that the ancients knew nothing of the long night of six months' duration
in the Polar regions. Even Herodotus, more learned
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] chapter just cited of the Apocalypse. 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 7. He is born on the
seventh of the month, and the swans of Myorica swim seven times around 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 only in the astronomical
meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.
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than the rest, only mentions a people
who slept for six months in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet
the Greeks knew well that there was a country in the north where the year was
divided into a day and night of six months' duration each, for Pliny says so in
his Fourth Book, c. 12. They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans,
and draw a distinction between the two. The former inhabited the Palus Maeotis
(between 45 [[degrees]] and 50 [[degrees]] latitude). Plutarch explains that
they were but a small portion of a great nation driven away by the Scythians,
which nation stopped near Tanais, 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" (in Mario). As to the Hyperboreans, these
peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor (c. 16), "sow in the morning,
reap at noon, gather their fruits in the evening, and store them during the
night in their caves."
Even the writers of the Zohar knew of
the fact (as shown in iii., fol. 10a), as it is written: "In the Book of
Hammannunah, the Old, 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." (Isaac
Myer's "Qabbalah," p. 139).
The island of Delos, the Asteria of
the Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not
yet in existence, not even in its molecular form. Several writers have shown
that it represented a country or 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 it Basilea or "royal" (Vol. II., p. 225 of
Diod.); the other, Pliny, names it Osericta (Book xxxvii, c. 2), a word,
according to Rudbeck (Vol. I., p. 462-464), having had "a significance in
the northern languages, equivalent to the Island of the divine Kings or
god-Kings," or 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 place. Let geographers and geologists seek for it among
that group of islands discovered by Nordenskiold on his Vega voyage in the
arctic regions.* The secret books inform us that the climate has changed in
those regions more than once since the first men inhabited those now almost
inaccessible latitudes. They were a paradise before they became hell;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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," 67). The reply is given above in the text.
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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 sway deep down in Helheim and Niflheim."
Yet, it was the birth-place of Apollo, who was the brightest of gods, in heaven
-- astronomically -- as he was the most enlightened of the divine kings who
ruled over the early nations, in his human meaning. The latter fact is borne
out in the Iliad IV., 239-62, Vide "The Greater gods" -- wherein
Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the god of the
four races) and six times in human form, i.e., as connected with the divine
Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians.
It is those early mysterious peoples,
their countries (which have now become uninhabitable), as well as the name
given to man both dead and alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the
ignorant Church fathers for inventing a hell, which they have transformed into
a burning instead of a freezing locality.*
It is, of course, evident that it is
neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the
Scyths -- known to and communicating with the Greeks -- who were our
Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of their last sub-races. The Pelasgians
were certainly one of the root-races 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 came from pelagus, the great sea. Noah's Deluge is astronomical
and allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same
archaic tradition of men -- or rather of nations -- which were saved during the
cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that the
Chaldean Xisuthrus, the Hindu 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
identical as a personage. But their legends have all sprung from the catastrophe
which involved both the continent and the island of Atlantis.
The allegory about the antediluvian
giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no myth. Biblical events are
revealed indeed. But it is neither by the voice of God amid thunder and
lightning on Mount
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Renard en
Laponie I., 184). Mannus is the ancestor of the German race; the Hindu 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 root
or word.
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Sinai, nor by a divine finger tracing
the record on tablets of stone, but simply through tradition via pagan sources.
It was not surely the Pentateuch that Diodorus was repeating when he wrote upon
the Titans -- the giants born of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons
of God who took to themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor
was Pherecydes quoting from Genesis when giving details on those giants which
are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the Hyperboreans
were of the race of the Titans, which race descended from the earliest giants,
and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the birth-place of the first
giants. The Commentaries on the sacred books explain 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 Palaeolithic and Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the
events recorded in the book of the Beginnings. The theological tradition
identifies these Nephilim with hairy men or Satyrs, the latter being mythical
in the Fifth Race and the former historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races.
We have stated elsewhere what the prototypes of these Satyrs were, and have
spoken of the bestiality 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
dolphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive
Theophane, etc., etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and
Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and others
devote an enormous space to the meaning of the word Nephilim and explain very
little. But Esoteric records show these hairy creatures to be the last
descendants of those Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on 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 poetised record of actual traditions, or oral history,
speaks of three giants, called Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, living in a dark
country where they were imprisoned by Kronos for their rebellion against him.
All the three are endowed by myth with an hundred arms and fifty heads, the
latter standing for races, the former for sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind
that in mythology every personage almost is a god or derni-god, and also a king
or simple mortal in his second aspect;* and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Brahma are reborn
as mortals.
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that both stand as symbols for lands,
islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and sub-races, the esoteric
Commentary will become comprehensible. It says that the three giants are three
polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm, or
disappearance of one continent to make room for another. The whole globe is
convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the
First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed
thereby each time, the conformation of the arctic and antarctic poles has but
little altered. The polar lands unite and break off from each other into
islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore northern Asia is
called the "eternal or perpetual land," and the Antarctic the
"ever living" and "the concealed"; while the Mediterranean,
Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear and reappear in turn, into and above
the great waters.
From the first appearance of the
great continent of Lemuria, the three polar giants had been imprisoned in their
circle by Kronos. Their gaol is surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is
through gates fabricated by Poseidon (or Neptune, hence by the seas), which
they cannot cross; and it is in that damp region, where eternal darkness
reigns, that the three brothers languish. The Iliad (viii., 13) makes of it the
Tartaros. 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 in order to conquer the gods and Titans, and to precipitate
the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria hurled amid
thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for
Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.* The geological
upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great
cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by
them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. So, also, the war
between the Rakshasas of Lanka and the Bharateans, the melee of the Atlanteans
and Aryans in their supreme struggle, or the conflict between the Daevas and
Izeds (or Peris), became, ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into
two inimical camps, and still later the war between the angels of God and the
angels of Satan. Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious
scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest
issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
owing to the former cataclysmal process. The incessant earthquakes of this and
the past years may be a warning.
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thought of the world, and succeeded.
For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking 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 that of Bailly and Voltaire -- that
Hesiod's theogony was based upon historical facts (see Decharme's Mythol. de la
Grece Antique), it becomes easier for the occult teachings to find their way
into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these passages from
mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern learning in this
Addendum.
Such symbolisms as are found in all
the exoteric creeds, are so many landmarks of prehistoric truths. The sunny,
happy land, the primitive cradle of the earliest human races, has become
several times since then hyperborean and Saturnine*; thus showing the Golden
Age and reign of Saturn from multiform aspects. It was many-sided in its
character indeed -- climatically, ethnologically and morally. For, the Third,
Lemurian Race must be physiologically divided into the early androgynous and
the later bi-sexual race; and the climate of its dwelling places and continents
into that of an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity
and impurity. The Cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by
popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on its
way through many nations and through the countless minds which have added their
own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a while the Greek
interpretations we may seek for some more corroborations of the latter in the
scientific and geological proofs.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Denis, the geographer, tells us
that the great sea North of Asia was called glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35).
Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny (Book IV., c. 16) corroborate the statement by
showing that it is 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, Hindus,
Chinamen, Japanese, etc. Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans,
Norwegians, Russians, Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and the 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.
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§ 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 a lost Miocene Atlantis into an
"antiquated myth," to append a few scientific admissions on this
point. Science, it is true, is largely indifferent to such questions. But there
are Scientists ready to admit that, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to
geological problems concerning the remote past is far more philosophical than a
priori denial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.
Meanwhile two very interesting
instances, that have been lately met with, may be pointed out as
"confirming" certain passages in the letter of a Master, published in
"Esoteric Buddhism." The eminence of the authorities will not be
questioned:--
[[First Column]]
Extract from p. 61 of "Esoteric
Buddhism."
No. 1.
"The sinking of the Atlantis (the group
of continents and islands) began during the Eocene period . . . . and it
culminated in the Miocene, first in the final disappearance of the largest, an
event coincident with the elevation of the Alps, and second in the sinking of
the last of the fair islands mentioned by Plato."
[[First Column continued on next page]]
[[Second Column]]
Extract from a Lecture by W.
Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.
No. 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 2nd Ed. p. 256.) -- a
post-Miocene depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into
almost abysmal depths."*
[[Second Column continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 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 [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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[[First Column continued from
previous page]]
No. 2.
"Lemuria cannot any more be
confounded with the Atlantis continent than Europe with America. Both sank and
were drowned with all their 'gods'; yet, between the two catastrophes a short
period of about some 700,000 years elapsed; Lemuria flourishing and ending her
career just about that trifling lapse of time before the early Eocene Age,
since its Race was the Third. Behold the relics of that once great race in some
of the flat-headed aborigines of your AUSTRALIA." ("Esoteric
Buddhism," p. 55.)
[[Second Column continued from
previous page]]
No. 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 an article in
"Popular Science Review," Vol. V. p. 18, by Professor Seemann, Ph.D.,
F.L.S., P.A.S.).
Haeckel, 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 . . . Papuans and Hottentots . . . Australians
. . . one division of the Malays."
[[End of Columns]]
With regard to a former civilization,
of which a portion of these degraded Australians are the last surviving
offshoot, the opinion of Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the
religion and mythology of the tribes, he writes, "The statement that the
Australian civilization (?) indicates a higher grade, is nowhere more clearly
proved than here, where everything resounds like the expiring voices of a
previous and richer age. The idea that the Australians have no religion or
mythology is thoroughly false. But this religion is certainly quite
deteriorated." (Cited in Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent of
Darwinism," pp. 301-2.) As to his other statement, namely, that the Australians
are a "division of the Malays" (Vide his ethnological theories in the
"Pedigree of Man"), Haeckel is in error, if he classes the
Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a mixed stock, resulting
from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with the Seventh
sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of indirect
Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact -- to those concrete
thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma -- that the lowest races of men
are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an extraordinary
sterility setting in among the women, from the time that they were first
approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is taking
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] Philosophy," Vol. II., p. 304). Prof. Lefevre, again, gives us as
his estimate 100,000 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.
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place all over the globe, among those
races, whose "time is up" -- among just those stocks, be it remarked,
which esoteric philosophy regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic
nations. It is inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is
invariably due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet,
drunkenness, etc., etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as
offering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of
facts now so closely arrayed. "Nothing," says even the materialist
Lefevre, "can save those that have run their course. . . . It would be
necessary to extend their destined cycle. . . . The peoples that have been most
spared . . . Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less decimated than the tribes
massacred or tainted by European intrusion." ("Philosophy," p.
508.)
True; but is not the phenomenon here
confirmed of the operation 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 hour"? The answer that it is due to a
"mental disproportion" between the colonizing and aboriginal races is
obviously evasive, since it does not explain the sudden "checks to
fertility" which so frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians,
for instance, is one of the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will
sooner or later have to recognize with Occultists that the true solution has to
be sought for in a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lefevre remarks,
"the time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great
human types" (before the Sixth Root-Race dawns), the white (Aryan, Fifth
Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro -- with their crossings
(Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians,
Polynesians, etc., etc. -- all are dying out. Those who realize that every
Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc.,
will understand the "why." The tide-wave of incarnating EGOS has
rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile
stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some extraordinary
and unexplained statistics as to Race extinction are given in de Quatrefages'
"Human Species," p. 428 et seq. No solution, except on the occult
lines, is able to account 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," Nov.
4th, 1880: "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-
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Atlantic or Pacific sea-bed as big as
Europe, should have been uplifted as high as Mont Blanc, and have subsided
again, any time since the Palaeozoic epoch, if there were any grounds for
entertaining it."
That is to say, then, that there is
nothing which can militate against positive evidence to the fact; nothing,
therefore, against the geological postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr.
Seemann assures us in the "Popular Science Review" (Vol. V., p. 18),
article "Australia and Europe formerly one Continent,"* 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 large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by the great
oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present flora 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 on 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 late 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 rising (?) above the
ocean."
And in another number of the same
review (Vol. I., p. 143) Mr. Duppa Crotch, M.A., F.L.S., in an article entitled
"The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations," alludes 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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Undoubtedly a fact and a
confirmation of the esoteric conception of the 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.
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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* in the Atlantic
Ocean,** 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.*** . . . . 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
experiences."
(At certain periods, we learn,
multitudes of these animals swim to sea and perish. Coming, as they do, from
all parts of Norway, the powerful instinct which survives throughout ages as an
inheritance from their progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once
existing but now submerged 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 animals, etc. -- Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes
("Subsidence and Elevation," Geological Magazine, June, 1881):--
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cf. the published reports of the
"Challenger" expedition; also Donnelly's "Atlantis," p. 468
and pp. 46-56, chap. "The Testimony of the Sea."
** Even the cautious Lefevre 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," Eng. Ed., 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 delegated work of
Creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago" (Atlantis, p.
133). 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.
*** An equally "curious"
similarity is traced between some of the West Indian and West African fauna.
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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 Chile and Polynesia* and Great Britain and Florida, shadowed by the
submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is urged that renders the
more direct connection 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
sub-tropical American plants in our Eocene flora, 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 times, 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, 'utterly gratuitous and
entirely opposed to all the evidences at our command.' "
The "Father" of English
Geology -- Sir Charles Lyell -- was an Uniformitarian in his views of
continental formation. On page 492 of his "Antiquity of Man" we find
him saying:--
"Professor Unger (Die versunkene
Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora Tertiaria Helvetiae) have admitted 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 central Asia between the fiftieth and
sixtieth parallels of latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the
direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have made their way,
at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the Glacial
Epoch, to Amoorland, on the East coast of North Asia."
The unnecessary difficulties and
complications here incurred in order to avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic
Continent, are really too
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Pacific portion of the giant
Lemurian Continent christened by Dr. Carter Blake, the anthropologist,
"Pacificus."
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apparent to escape notice. If the
botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism would be half legitimate; but in
this case all branches of science converge to one point. Science has made
blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors than the admission of our
two now invisible continents, would lay it open to. It has denied even the
undeniable, from the days of the mathematician Laplace down to our own, and
that only a few years ago.* We have Professor Huxley's authority for saying
that there is no a priori improbability whatever against possible evidences
supporting the belief. (Vide supra.) But now that the POSITIVE EVIDENCE is brought
forward, will that eminent scientist admit the corollary?
Touching on the problem in another
place ("Principles of Geology," pp. 12-13), 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 present period of the
Magnus Annus, or great year -- a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun,
moon, and planets, and terminating when these return together to the sign
whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to set out. We learn
particularly from the Timaeus of Plato that the Egyptians believed the world to
be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges. The sect of the Stoics
adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at intervals to destroy
the world. These, they taught, were of two kinds -- the cataclysm, or
destruction by water, and the Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire (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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 thunderbolts
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! ` "
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termination of each era the gods
could no longer bear with the wickedness of man, and a shock of the elements,
or a deluge, overwhelmed them; (vide degeneracy into magical practices and
gross animality of the Atlanteans) after which calamity, Astraea again
descended on the earth to renew the golden age." (Dawn of a new
Root-Race.)
Astraea, the goddess of justice, is
the last of the deities to forsake the earth, when the gods are said to abandon
it and be taken up into heaven by Jupiter again. But, no sooner does Zeus carry
away from earth Ganymedes (the object of lust, personified) than the father of
the gods throws down Astraea back on the earth again, on which she falls upon
her head. Astraea is Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it
has a very plain significance, and one which gives the Key to the occult
meaning. But it is inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from
the Pleiades and their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant
leader. All of these are connected with the periodical renovations of the
earth, with regard to its continents -- even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is
Aquarius. It was already shown that while the South Pole is the pit (or the
infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is
geographically the first continent; while astronomically and metaphorically the
celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven, is Meru, or the seat of Brahma,
the throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the gods forsook the earth and
were said to ascend into heaven, the ecliptic had become parallel with the
meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to descend from the north pole to the
north horizon. Aldebaran was in conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000
years ago, at the great festival in commemoration of that Magnus Annus, of
which Plutarch was speaking. Since that year (40,000 years ago) there has been
a retrograde motion of the equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in
conjunction with the vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus,
even in Christian mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous
Orphic hymn on the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole esotericism of
the event. 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, and when
her head, down to the waist, is below the South horizon -- she is inverted. On
the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge constellations; and Aldebaran
(he who follows, or succeeds the daughters of Atlas, or the Pleiades) looks
down from the eye of Taurus. It is from this point of the ecliptic that the
calculations of the new cycle were commenced. The student has to remember also,
that when Ganymedes (Aquarius) is raised to
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heaven (or above the horizon of the
North Pole) Virgo or Astraea, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards
below the horizon of the South Pole, or the pit; which pit, or the pole, is
also the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by
placing these facts together; no more can be said.
"The connection," comments
Lyell, "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."
True; but was it not owing to the
fact that all esoteric truths were given out to the public by the Initiates of
the temples under the guise of allegories? "Jupiter," is merely the
personification of that immutable Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward
tendency of each Root-Race, after attaining the zenith of its glory.* Unless we
hold with Prof. John Fiske's singularly dogmatic opinion** that every 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." We
venture to say the language of the Initiated few was far more
"plain," and their science-philosophy far more com-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Vierges; 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. (Verb. Sap.)
** "Myths and Myth-Makers,"
p. 21.
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prehensive and satisfying alike to
the physical and spiritual wants of man, than even the terminology and system
respectively elaborated by Mr. Fiske's Master -- Herbert Spencer. What,
however, is Sir Charles Lyell's "explanation" of the
"myth"? Certainly, he in no way countenances the idea of its
"astronomical" origin, as asserted by some writers.
The two interpreters are entirely at
variance with one another. Lyell's solution is as follows. A disbeliever in
cataclysmal changes, from the absence (?) of any reliable historical data on
the point, as well as from a strong bias to the Uniformitarian conceptions of
geologic changes,* he attempts to trace the Atlantis "tradition" to
the following sources:--
(1) Barbarous tribes connect
catastrophes with an avenging God, who is assumed 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 continent subject to violent
earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus be handed down the ages.
(4) Egypt, being herself free from
earthquakes, nevertheless based her not inconsiderable geologic knowledge on
these cataclysmal traditions.
An ingenious "explanation,"
as all such are. But proving a negative is proverbially a difficult task.
Students of esoteric science, who know what the resources of the Egyptian
priesthood really were, need no such laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an
imaginative theorist is always able to furnish a reasonable solution of
problems which, in one branch of science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of
periodical cataclysmic changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial
critic, who is not a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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,
Himalayas 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 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 80,000 Malays).
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specialist, will recognise the
immense difficulty of explaining away the cumulative evidences, -- namely, the
archaeological, ethnological, geological, traditional, botanical, and even
biological -- in favour of former continents now submerged. When each science
is fighting for its own hand, the cumulative force of the evidence in its
collectivity is almost invariably lost sight of.
In the "Theosophist"
(August, 1880), we wrote: "We have as evidences 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 cataclysm was engulfed
by the sea,* (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, and
never 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 proof that New
Zealand, the 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, the
Pacific Ocean itself being unknown to Europe till the days of Columbus, and as
these islanders have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the
Europeans first set
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
Vierges: Peuples et Continents disparus," p. 308.
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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."
"A great series of
animal-geographical facts," declares Professor Schmidt, writing in defence
of the hypothesis of a former Lemuria, "is explicable only on the theory
of the former existence of a Southern Continent of which Australia 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."*
Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his "Malay
Archipelago," arrives at the following conclusion 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 Borneo and
Sumatra do essentially form part of a former Australian or Pacific Continent .
. . This continent must have been broken up 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."
According to Haeckel:--
"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." ("Pedigree of Man," Eng.
Trans. p. 73.) In one sense Haeckel is right as to Lemuria -- the "cradle
of the Human race." That continent was the home of the first physical
Human Stock -- the later Third-Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were
far less consolidated and physiologically quite different. (Haeckel makes
Lemuria extend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to
Upper India.)
Professor Rutimeyer, the eminent
Palaeontologist, 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 sight the ancient forests of Smith's Sound and
Spitzbergen." (Cited in Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent and
Darwinism," p. 237.)
Having now dealt generally with the
broad scientific attitude on the two questions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an
agreeable brevity, if we sum up the more striking isolated facts in favour of
that fundamental contention of Esoteric Ethnologists -- the reality of Atlantis.
Lemuria
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Doctrine of Descent and
Darwinism," p. 236. (Cf. also his lengthy arguments on the subject, pp.
231-7.)
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is so widely accepted, that further
pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard, however, to the former, it
is found that:--
(1) The Miocene flora of Europe have
their most numerous and striking analogues in the flora of the United States.
In the forests of Virginia and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip-trees,
evergreen oaks, plane trees, etc., etc., 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 fact that a large number of these flora only appear EAST of the
Rocky Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a trans-Pacific migration.
They are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.
(2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of
the Danube and Rhine bear a striking similarity to those of the Caribs and Old
Peruvians (Littre). Monuments have been exhumed in Central America, which bear
representations of undoubted negro heads and faces. How are such facts to be
accounted for except on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N. W. Africa was
once connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.
(3) According to Farrar
("Families of Speech") the "isolated language" of the
Basques has no affinities with the other languages* of Europe, but with
"the aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent (America) and
those alone." Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
Palaeolithic European man of the
Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure Atlantean, as we have previously stated.
The Basques are, of course, of a much later date than this, but their
affinities, as here shown, go far to prove the original extraction of their
remote ancestors. The "mysterious" affinity between their tongue and
that of the Dravidian races of India will be understood by those who have
followed our outline of continental formations and shiftings.
(4) Stones have been found in the
Canary Islands bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on the shore
of Lake Superior. Berthollet was induced
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* For further facts as to the
isolation of the Basques in Europe and their ethnological relations, cf. 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.
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by such evidence to postulate the
unity of race of the early men of Canary Islands and America (Cf. Benjamin, the
"Atlantic Islands," p. 130.)
The Guanches of the Canary Islands
were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This fact will account for the great
stature evidenced by their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European
congeners the Cro-Magnon Palaeolithic men.
(5) Any experienced mariner has but
to navigate the fathomless ocean along the Canary Islands to ask himself the
question when or how that group of volcanic and rocky little islands has been
formed, surrounded on every side by that vast watery space. Such frequent
questions led finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which
took place in the first quarter of the present century. Some geologists
maintained that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of
the ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies
from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these groups,
including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verdes -- the
remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united Africa
with America. The latter men of science supported their hypothesis by a mass of
evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient "myths." Hoary "superstitions,"
such as the fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of Hesperides, Atlas
supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them mythoi connected with the
peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical Science. The identity of
animal and vegetable species -- showing either a previous connection between
America and the remaining groups of the islands -- (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 consideration. But it is only quite
lately, and after Donnelly's book had been published several years, that the
theory has greater chances than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils
found on the Eastern Coast of South America have now been proved to belong to
the Jurassic formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of
Western Europe and Northern Africa. The geological structure of both coasts is
also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller marine animals
dwelling in the more shallow waters of South America, the Western African, and
the South European coasts, is also very great. All such facts are bound to
bring naturalists to the conclusion that there has been, in distant
pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of Venezuela,
across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa, and from
Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
(6) The great resemblance between the
Jurassic fossils of South
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America, North Africa, and Western
Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and admits of no explanation,
unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis. But why, also, is there so marked
a similarity between the fauna (animal life) of the -- now -- isolated Atlantic
islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna dredged 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, 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), ("Westminster Review," Jan., 1872).
The horse, according to Science,
originated in America. At least, a large proportion of the once "missing
links" connecting it with inferior forms have 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 New World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc.,
get into America in the first instance on the migration hypothesis?
Again "Buffon had . . . remarked
in the repetition of the African in the American fauna, how, for example, the
lama is a juvenescent and feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New
represented the lion of the Old World" (Schmidt, "Doctrine of Descent
and Darwinism," p. 223).
(7) The following quotation runs with
No. (2), but its significance is such and the writer cited so authoritative,
that it deserves a place to itself:--
"With regard to the primitive
dolichocephalae 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-Atlantidae. 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." (Professor Retzius, "Smithsonian Report," 1859,
p. 266.)
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 aborigines of America. This is the conclusion
which the independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages
necessitate. The Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.
(8) The sea-soundings undertaken by
H.M.S. "Challenger" and the "Dolphin," have established the
fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in length, projecting upwards from
the abysmal depths of the
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Atlantic, extends from a point near
the British Islands southwards, curving round near 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 rises above the waves at the Azores,
Ascension, and other places. In the ocean depths around the neighbourhood of
the former the ribs of a former massive piece of land have been discovered
(vide investigations of United States Ship "Dolphin" and others).
"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." -- (Scientific American,
July 28th, 1877). It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed
knitting Atlantis to 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
unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly. (Vide his chart, "Atlantis,"
p. 47, Eng. Ed., 1884, though he deals with only a fragment of the real
continent.) Whether the latter existed or not, is of no consequence, as 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 be 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 needless, in view of the manner in
which the subject has now been developed on the lines of esoteric knowledge, to
swell the mass of testimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the
most intuitive writers of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the
opinions of 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."*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Donnelly, "Atlantis; the
Ante-Diluvian World," p. 480.
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And now to conclude.
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We have concerned ourself with the
ancient records of the nations, with the doctrine of chronological and psychic
cycles, of which these records are the tangible proof; and with many other
subjects, which may, at first sight, seem out of place in this volume.
But they were necessary in truth. In
dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose very
origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than inferential
suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more than prehistoric
races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject matter as it would be
if only the philosophy of one special race, and its evolution, were concerned.
The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men
born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and
to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of
Geology and Anthropology. The birth and evolution 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 scattered hither and thither throughout ancient
classical literature -- is, in almost every case, attributed by modern
criticism to lack of observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition
born out of the ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat
this subject as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some
well-known historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an
abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every
condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every nation
made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical system and
its fundamental traditions -- that he can be made to see that so many streams
of the same water must have had a common source from which they started. What
was this source? If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past
events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them. It is, then, by those
shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external
screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go
along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There
must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and
made the foundation 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 heard but
one side -- or rather the two one-sided views of two diametrically opposed
classes of men, whose prima facie propositions or respective premises differ
widely, but whose final conclusions are the same -- Science and Theology. And
now our
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readers have an opportunity to hear
the other -- the defendants' -- justification on and learn the nature of our
arguments.
Were the public to be left to its old
opinions: namely, on one side, that Occultism, Magic, the legends of old, etc.,
were all the outcome of ignorance and superstition; and on the other, that
everything outside the orthodox groove was the work of the devil, what would be
the result? In other words, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained
a hearing for the few last years, the present work would have had a poor chance
of impartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed -- and by many will
still be so proclaimed -- a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised
in, and based on the air; built of soap bubbles, bursting at the slightest touch
of serious reflection, with no foundation, as it would be alleged, to stand
upon. Even "the ancient superstitious and credulous classics" have no
word of reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols
themselves fail to yield a hint at the existence of such a system. Such would
be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that the claim of
the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an esoteric history of the
world, is based on fact; that, though hitherto unknown to the masses and a
veiled mystery even to the learned, (because they never had the key to a right
understanding of the abundant hints thrown out by the ancient classics), it is
still no fairy tale, but an actuality -- then the present work will become but
the pioneer of many more such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys
discovered by some great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they
were but the silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil
which are unreachable without a new key -- is borne out by too many proofs to
be easily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the
history of Freemasonry.
In his "Franc-maconnerie
Occulte," rightly or wrongly, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian
Mason, reproaches the English Masons with having materialized and dishonoured
Masonry, once based upon the Ancient Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a
mistaken notion of the origin of the craft, the name of Free Masonry and Free
Masons. The mistake is due, he says, to those who connect Masonry with the
building of Solomon's Temple, deriving its origin from it. He derides the idea,
and says: . . "The Franc Mason (which is not macon libre, or free masonry)
knew well when adopting the title, that it was no question of building a wall,
but that of being initiated into the ancient Mysteries veiled under the name of
Francmaconnerie (Freemasonry); that his work was only to be the continuation or
the renovation of the ancient mysteries, and that 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
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of a city, meant thereby the
establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, the god of reasoning, and Apollo,
the god of the 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." (Maconnerie Orthodoxe, p. 44.)
Such veiled sentences with double
meaning abound in ancient classical writers. Therefore, had an attempt been
made to show that, e.g., Laomedon was the founder of a branch of archaic
mysteries in which the earth-bound material soul (the fourth principle), was
personified in Menelaus' faithless wife (the fair Helen), if Ragon had not come
to corroborate what we asserted, we might be told that no classical author
speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a city, not an esoteric
worship or MYSTERIES! And who are those left now, save a few Initiates, who
understand the language and correct meaning of such symbolical terms?
But after having pointed to many a
misconceived symbol bearing on our thesis, there still remains more than one
difficulty to be overcome. Most important among several such obstacles is that
of chronology. But this could hardly be helped.
Wedged in between theological
chronology and that of the geologists, backed by all the materialistic
Anthropologists who assign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own
theories alone -- what could the writer do except what is being done? Namely, since
theology places the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the World's Creation only 5890 years
ago; and since the accurate researches by the methods of exact Science, have
led the geologists and physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our Globe
between 10 million and 1,000 million of years* (a trifling difference,
verily!): and the Anthropologists to vary their divergence of opinion as to the
appearance of man -- between 25,000 and 500,000 of years -- what can one who
studies the Occult doctrine do, but come out and bravely present the esoteric
calculations before the world?
But to do this, corroboration by even
a few "historical" proofs was necessary, though all know the real
value of the so-called "historical evidence." For, whether man had
appeared on earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years ago, can make no difference to
profane History, since it begins hardly a couple of thousand years before our
era, and since, even then, it grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of
contradictory and mutually-destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view
of the respect the average reader has been brought up in for exact science,
even that short Past would remain meaningless, unless the esoteric teachings
were corroborated and supported on the spot --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vide Sir W. Thomson and Mr. Huxley.
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whenever possible -- by references to
historical names of a so-called historical period. This is the only guide that
can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start among the (to him)
unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the pre-historic ages. This
necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that the desire to do so,
which has led the writer to be constantly bringing ancient and modern evidence
as a corroboration of the Archaic and quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on
her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up without order or method the
various and widely-separated periods of history and tradition. But literary
form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.
To accomplish the proposed task, the
writer had to resort to the rather unusual means of dividing each volume or
Book into three Parts; the first of which only is the consecutive, though very
fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this globe.
But these two volumes had to serve as a PROLOGUE, and prepare the reader's mind
for those which shall now follow. In treating of Cosmogony and then of the
Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that no religion, since
the very earliest, has ever been entirely based on fiction, as none was the
object of special revelation; and that it is dogma alone which has ever been
killing primeval truth. Finally, that no human-born doctrine, no creed, however
sanctified by custom and antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion
of Nature. The Key of Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the
arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only: and
that bosom is in the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century
Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the heart of nature, that shrine whence issued
the early races of primeval Humanity, and which is the cradle of physical man.
Thus far have proceeded the rough
outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic, earliest Races contained in
their hitherto secret Scriptural records. But our explanations are by no means
complete, nor do they pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read
by the help of more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of
esoteric interpretation, and even this has only been partially accomplished.
The work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to
accomplish. Our main concern was simply to prepare the soil. This, we trust we
have done. These two volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has
forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of
the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made to fell and uproot the
deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited ignorance, so that
these two
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volumes should form for the student a
fitting prelude for Volumes III. and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is
cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are
dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third
Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the
reception with which Volumes I. and II. will meet at the hands of Theosophists
and Mystics, whether these last two volumes will ever be published, though they
are almost completed.
Satyat Nasti paro dharmah.
THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN
TRUTH.
End of Vol. II.
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