Book II, Part II — The Archaic Symbolism of the World-Religions

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.)

[[Vol. 2, Page 448]]

CONTENTS.

§ 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

[[Vol. 2, Page 449]]

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 450 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 451 THE VEDAS WRITTEN BY INITIATES.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 453 “NABATHEAN AGRICULTURE.”

“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 contents, 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 Quran — 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 455 MANY VIEWS OF MANY MINDS.

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 “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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 457 THE KABALISTIC FOUR ADAMS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 458 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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!

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 459 THE “GOD” SUB ROSA.

§ VII.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 460 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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, ; or meaning Jod (membrum Virile, see Kabala); (the womb); (Vau, a crook or a hook, a nail), and 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 ?” (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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 461 WHAT WAS THE CIRCLE-DANCE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 462 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 463 CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 464 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

“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 with and as determinatives given, as the Coptic I O H, or I O H. The Hebrew may also be used as I O H, for the letter yau, or , was used for o and for u, and for v or w. This, before the Massora, of which the . was used as = o, = u, and = 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 465 THE “FOUR-FACED” BRAHMA.

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 Byblus 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 = 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 466 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 to or h to n, then 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.

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 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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 467 THE ETYMOLOGY OF “SACRAMENT.”

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 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 468 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

Noah, or Jehovah is Noah in Hebrew would be , 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 (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: —

a variety reading of . Now, Moses is , 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: —

Add the numbers of these separate words and you have: —

(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,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 469 THE OLD AND THE NEW JEHOVAH.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 470 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page 471]] THE CRAFT OF THE RABBINS.

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 contents of the Bible, one of two hypotheses has to be admitted. Either behind the symbolic substitute — Jehovah — there was the unknown, incognizable Diety, 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 473 THE ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC TEXTS.

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 the Yodh (phallus), and He (the opening, or

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 474 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 (! !)… .”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 475 NATURE, A STONE-COLD MOTHER.

§ XVIII.

ON THE MYTH OF THE “FALLEN ANGEL,” IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 476 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 477 THE GENESIS OF THE DEVIL.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 478 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

“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! … [[continued on following page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 479 GOD AND DEVIL, BOTH METATRONS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 480 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 481 FRAUDULENT TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 483 VEDAS, ONCE UNIVERSAL.

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.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 485 THE SONS OF ETERNITY.

“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)]] -------------------------------------------------

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 487 THE SHADOWS OF THE SHADOWS.

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 [[continued on following page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 489 THE ONE PASSIVE DEITY.

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 Pyrnander, 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 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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Continued from preceding 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.)

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 491 THE ZOHAR ON THE FALLEN ONES.

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).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[This page continued in next section.]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

[[This page continued from previous section]]

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 495 VARIOUS NAMES FOR INITIATES.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 496 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 497 TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC STRIFES.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

See Dowson’s Classical Dictionary.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 499 ALLEGORIES ON THE “WAR IN HEAVEN.”

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 following 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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 501 SARPAS — SERPENTS — NAGAS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 503 THE MYTH OF BEL AND MERODACH.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 505 THE SACREDNESS OF THE SERPENT.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 506 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

§ 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 507 THE LIVING DEVILS.

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!

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 508 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 509 JEHOVAH, A PERSONATING SPIRIT.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 510 THE SECRET DOCTRINE

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 511 AKASA, THE “MYSTERIUM MAGNUM.”

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.”)

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 513 MIND, THE QUICKENING SPIRIT.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 515 THE LOGOS AND SATAN ARE ONE.

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?

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 517 BARESMA, THE DIVINE TWIG.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 519 THE “FATHER OF MORTALS.”

§ 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 521 THE POETRY OF MODERN ORIENTALISTS.

(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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 523 THE BOON GIVEN BY PROMETHEUS.

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: —

Old Northern skulls of the stone age … . 18.877 ins.
Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England … . 18.858 ”
Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales … . 18.649 ”
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)]] -------------------------------------------------

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 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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 525 GREEK IDEAS MISUNDERSTOOD.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 526 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to laws in our day.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 527 THE SIX BROTHERS OF KRISHNA.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 528 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 contents, 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 529 WHO INVENTED WRITING?

§ 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 Kuran (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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 530 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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, . It is a generic title; besides which his legend is

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 531 THE ADEPT DIES BUT TO LIVE.

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, ), 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 contents; 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 532 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 533 WHAT ENOCH IS, ESOTERICALLY.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 534 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 535 ST. AUGUSTINE AND ENOCH.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 536 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

§ 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)

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 537 THE JEWS ALONE THE HEIRLOOM OF JEHOVAH.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 538 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 539 A GROTESQUE VERSE EXPLAINED.

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 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:—

… 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 540 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 541 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CROSS.

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 and 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 , 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 , 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], 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 542 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 543 A PERSONAL, IS A FINITE GOD.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 544 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 545 A PLAGIARISM BY PASCAL.

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.

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”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 546 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

(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-te .”

Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid) “the sign , 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 , which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure of the earth’s path.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 547 VARIATIONS OF THE SYMBOLISM.

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 the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant … The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru 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 , 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 and the Coptic Ro, P.** The Ro, was carried into the Greek cross , 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 548 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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” 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 , which is “the Ru, ,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. 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 549 “GUHA,” THE MYSTERIOUS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 550 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 551 THE RISHIS AND THE PLEIADES.

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 . This manifested side is Taurus, the Symbol of ONE (the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (bull or ox) whose synthesis is ten (10), or 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 552 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 following page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 553 THE DEGRADATION OF THE SYMBOL.

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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 554 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

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.,

*** 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 555 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 556 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 ”,” 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 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 557 THE PRIMITIVE CROSS

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 (Tau), and the astronomical cross of Egypt 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 , but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross (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,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 558 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 , 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 (in Egypt) of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (thus: , not ) 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 559 ITS EARLY SIGNIFICANCE.

(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 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 561 THE MEANING OF THE CRUCIFIXION.

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 , “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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 563 THE SEVEN THUNDERS.

§ 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 () 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).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 565 WHEN TIME BE NO LONGER.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 566 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 567 TRUTH BETWEEN TWO CONTRASTS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 569 THE DIVINE SELF’S WISDOM.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 571 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE KAPILAS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 573 THE GNOSTICS AND PYTHAGORAS.

§ 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 , 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, , has a bull or an Ox for its symbol, 10, the perfect number, or One of the Kabala is a Yodh (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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 575 THE THREE SCIENCES.

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 (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 (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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 576 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 placed over vowels which have or have not to be aspirated. The first sign is called ‘Strong Spirit’ or superior Spirit, the spirit of God aspired (spiratus) and breathed by man. The second sign 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 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 577 POSEION’S FIVE MINISTERS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 579 THE PUZZLES OF SYMBOLISM.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 580 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 () 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, , 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 581 THE MASTER MASON’S GRIP.

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 — , 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).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 582 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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, , 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 583 THE MYSTERY OF THE NUMBER SIX.

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 — — 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 584 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 585 SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 586 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 587 THE CROSS, A CHRISTIAN 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 588 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

“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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 589 MAN, THE REVILER OF GOD.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 590 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

§ 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.)

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 (tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter [[G]] (gamma), was (see § “Cross and Circle”) the symbol of life,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 591 THE MEANING OF THE DOUBLE TRIANGLE.

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: —

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, . 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 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, 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)]] -------------------------------------------------

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 592 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

Society — that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad, whatever way this sign is examined, as all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, thus 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 ; the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or . 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]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 593 SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL CORRESPONDENCES.

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.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 594 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 595 NOAH, AN ASPECT OF THE CREATOR.

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 , triad — of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female angle — emanates the 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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 596 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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, ,and 4, on parallel lines with the “Cosmic” and “Human” principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of. Thus:

As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to scientific works. “Ararat = the mount of descent = , Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of composition by Areth = . Editor

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

NOTE. — For footnotes, see next page.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 597 NOAH IN A NEW DRESS.

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: , for (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 . The root derivations are the same with those of Ararat, of acre, of earth.” As by Hebrew metrology “Jared, is, literally in British Y R D; hence in Jared is to be found literally our English word yard (and also , 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 598 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 599 THE ROOTS OF THINGS.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 600 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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)

… 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 as the symbol of man, generation and life. In Egypt ank signified soul, life and blood. It is the ensouled, living man, the Septenary.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 601 THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

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,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 602 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 603 THE SEPTENARY DEMONSTRATED.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 604 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 [[Continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 605 THE VEDIC TEACHINGS.

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!

[[Page continued in next section]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 605 THE VEDIC TEACHINGS.

[[Page continued from previous section]]

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Continued fn 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 606 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 607 THE SEVEN EARTHS AND THE SEVEN RACES.

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?

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 608 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 609 THE ZOROASTRIAN SEPTENARY.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 610 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 611 THE SEPTENATE IN THE PURANAS.

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.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 612 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

” 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 613 WHO ARE THE MARUTS?

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.)

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 614 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 [[Continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 615 THE DOOM OF CONTINUAL REBIRTH.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 616 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 [[Continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 617 PERSIAN SYMBOLOGY.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 618 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 619 THE CYCLE OF THE NAROS.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 620 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 621 VARIOUS CYCLIC CALCULATIONS.

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” (tritiye), 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 622 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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 following page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 623 THE SEPTENATE IN PHYSIOLOGY.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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 “soothsaying” 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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 624 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 625 THE HAIRY SYMBOL.

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).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 626 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 627 THE NUMBER SEVEN IN 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.”

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 628 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 629 THE SEVEN PRIESTS OF THE ZUNIS.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Page continued in next section]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

[[Page continued from previouis section]]

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 [[Continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 631 THE SIDEREAL SEVEN.

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)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 632 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 633 THE “PRINCIPLES” IN THE EGYPTIAN METAPHYSICS.

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.

[[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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 634 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 635 MAN, THE PARENT OF ALL THE MAMMALS.

“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

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 636 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 637 AN ALLEGORY IN THE ANUGITA.

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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 638 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

“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.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 639 THE ALLEGORY EXPLAINED.

“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,t**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.”

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 640 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

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;

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 641 HYPNOTISM IS — SATANISM.

(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.

[[Vol. 2, Page 643]]