# The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4

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> The Secret Doctrine
> 
>             The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
> 
>                                     By
> 
>                         Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
> 
>                         Author of “Isis Unveiled.”
> 
>                         Third and Revised Edition.
> 
>                         SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
> 
>                 “There is no Religion higher than Truth.”
> 
>                                 Volume II.
> 
>                              Anthropogenesis
> 
>                     The Theosophical Publishing House
> 
>                                   London
> 
>                                    1893
> 
> CONTENTS
> 
> Preliminary Notes on The Archaic Stanzas, and the Four Pre‐Historic
> Continents.
> Part I. Anthropogenesis.
>    Text.
>       Stanza I.
>       Stanza II.
>       Stanza III.
>       Stanza IV.
>       Stanza V.
>       Stanza VI.
>       Stanza VII.
>       Stanza VIII.
>       Stanza IX.
>       Stanza X.
>       Stanza XI.
>       Stanza XII.
>    Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
>    Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
>       Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
>          Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
>       Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
>          Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
>       Stanza II.—_Continued._
>          The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
>       Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
>       Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
>          On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
>       Stanza IV.—_Continued._
>       Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
>          The Divine Hermaphrodite.
>       Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat‐Born.”
>          A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”
>       Stanza VII. From The Semi‐Divine Down To The First Human Races.
>          I. Fission.
>          II. Budding.
>          III. Spores.
>          IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
>          V. True Sexual Union.
>       Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
>          What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
>       Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
>          Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
>          The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”
>       Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
>          Archaic Teachings In The “Purânas” And “Genesis.” Physical
>          Evolution.
>          A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
>          Are Giants A Fiction?
>          The Races With The “Third Eye.”
>          The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
>       Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth
>       Races.
>          Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
>       Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
>          Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
>          The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
>          Our Divine Instructors.
>          The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
>          Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
>          The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
>          Continents.
>          Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic
>          Traditions.
>          The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.
>          Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza
>          XII.
>    Conclusion.
> Part II. The Archaic Symbolism Of The World‐Religions.
>    Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
>    Section II. Adam=Adami.
>    Section III. The “Holy of Holies.” Its Degradation.
>    Section IV. On the Myth of the “Fallen Angels” in its Various Aspects.
>       A. The Evil Spirit: Who, And What?
>       B. The Gods Of Light Proceed From The Gods Of Darkness.
>       C. The Many Meanings Of The “War In Heaven.”
>    Section V. Is Plerôma Satan’s Lair?
>    Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.
>       His Origin In Ancient India.
>    Section VII. Enoïchion‐Henoch.
>    Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery‐Names Iao and Jehovah, with
>    their Relation to the Cross and Circle.
>       A. Cross And Circle.
>       B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.
>    Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.
>    Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.
>    Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.
>       A. Saptaparna.
>       B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.
>       C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
>       D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.
>       E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.
>       F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.
> Part III. Addenda. Science And The Secret Doctrine Contrasted.
>    Section I. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
>    Section II. The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by Science.
>       Plastidular Souls, And Conscious Nerve‐Cells.
>    Section III. The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
>       A. Geological Facts Bearing On The Question Of Their Relationship.
>       B. Western Evolutionism: The Comparative Anatomy Of Man And The
>       Anthropoid In No Way A Confirmation Of Darwinism.
>       C. Darwinism And The Antiquity Of Man: The Anthropoids And Their
>       Ancestry.
>    Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the
>    Antiquity of Man.
>       A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe,
>       Animal Evolution, And Man.
>       B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.
>       C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.
>    Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.
>       A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric
>       Phylogeny.
>       B. The European Palæolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.
>    Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in
>    History.
>       A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The
>       Classics, Explained Esoterically.
>    Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of
>    Several Submerged Continents.
> Footnotes
> 
>                                [Cover Art]
> 
> [Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
> at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
> 
> Ἡ ἐμὴ διδαχὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμή, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πέμψαντός με.
> 
> My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
> 
> JOHN vii. 16.
> 
>     Modern Science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human
>     reason and the Secret Doctrine, and the idea is corroborated by
>     the ancient legends and myths, and even by the _Bible_ itself,
>     when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly
>     developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the
>     latter, with all its predetermined programme of physical
>     transformation, and its invisible, therefore _spiritual_, forces
>     which gradually develop its form, colour, and odour? The word
>     _evolution_ speaks for itself. The germ of the present human race
>     must have preëxisted in the parent of this race, as the seed, in
>     which lies hidden the flower of next summer, was developed in the
>     capsule of its parent flower; the parent may be but _slightly_
>     different, but it still differs from its future progeny. The
>     antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard were,
>     perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the
>     progenitors of our human race have been the “giants” of the
>     _Vedas_, the _Voluspa_, and the _Book of Genesis_? While it is
>     positively absurd to believe the “transformation of species” to
>     have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views
>     of the Evolutionists, it is but natural to think that each genus,
>     beginning with the molluscs and ending with monkey‐man, has
>     modified from its own primordial and distinctive form.—ISIS
>     UNVEILED, I. 152‐3.
> 
> PRELIMINARY NOTES ON THE ARCHAIC STANZAS, AND THE FOUR PRE‐HISTORIC
> CONTINENTS.
> 
> Facies totius universi, quamvis infinitis modis variet,
> Manet tamen semper eadem.—SPINOZA.
> 
> The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Volume, are drawn from
> the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Volume I. As far
> as possible a verbatim translation is given: but some of the Stanzas are
> too obscure to be understood without explanation, and therefore, as in
> Volume I, they are first given in full as they stand, and then, when taken
> verse by verse with their Commentaries, an attempt is made to make them
> clearer, by words added in foot‐notes, in anticipation of the fuller
> explanation of the Commentary.
> 
> As regards the Evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three
> new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to Modern Science as
> well as to current religious dogmas. It teaches: (_a_) the simultaneous
> evolution of seven human Groups on seven different portions of our globe;
> (_b_) the birth of the _astral_, before the _physical_ body, the former
> being a model for the latter; and (_c_) that man, in this Round, preceded
> every mammalian—the anthropoids included—in the animal kingdom.(1)
> 
> The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval Men born
> simultaneously on the seven divisions of our Globe. In the _Divine
> Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus, we find the same seven primeval Men(2)
> evolving from Nature and the Heavenly Man, in the collective sense of the
> word, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments of Chaldæan
> tablets, collected by George Smith, on which is inscribed the Babylonian
> Legend of Creation, in the first column of the Cutha tablet, seven human
> Beings “with the faces of ravens,” that is to say, of black swarthy
> complexions, whom “the [seven] Great Gods created,” are mentioned. Or, as
> explained in lines 16, 17 and 18:
> 
> In the midst of the earth they grew up and became great,
> And increased in number,
> Seven kings, brothers of the same family.(3)
> 
> These are the seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the
> _Kabalah_; the First Race, which was _imperfect_, that is to say, was born
> before the “balance” (sexes) existed, and which was therefore
> destroyed.(4)
> 
>     Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and begat children, 6,000 in
>     number were their peoples. The God Nergas [death] destroyed them.
>     “How did he destroy them?” By bringing into equilibrium [or
>     balance] those who did not yet exist.(5)
> 
> They were “destroyed,” as a Race, by being merged in their own progeny (by
> exudation): that is to say, the sexless Race reïncarnated in the
> (potentially) bisexual; the latter, in the androgynes; these again, in the
> sexual, the later Third Race. Were the tablets less mutilated, they would
> be found to contain word for word the same account as is given in the
> Archaic Records and in Hermes, at least as regards the fundamental facts,
> if not as regards minute details; for Hermes is a good deal disfigured by
> mistranslations.
> 
> It is quite certain that the seeming supernaturalism of these teachings,
> although allegorical, is so diametrically opposed to the dead‐letter
> statements of the Bible,(6) as well as to the latest hypotheses of
> Science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists, however,
> know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones,
> simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty.
> Besides, we have the Egyptian _Books of Thoth_, and _Book of the Dead_,
> and the Hindû _Purânas_ with their seven Manus, as well as the Chaldæo‐
> Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven primitive Men, or Adams, the
> real meaning of which name may be ascertained by means of the _Kabalah_.
> Those who know anything of the Samothracian Mysteries will also remember
> that the generic name of the Kabiri was the “Holy Fires,” which created on
> seven localities of the island of Electria, or Samothrace, the “Kabir born
> of the Holy Lemnos”—the island sacred to Vulcan.
> 
> According to Pindar, this Kabir, whose name was Adamas,(7) was, in the
> traditions of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man born from the bosom of
> the Earth. He was the archetype of the first males in the order of
> generation, and was one of the seven autochthonous ancestors or
> progenitors of mankind.(8) If, coupling with this the fact that Samothrace
> was colonized by the Phœnicians, and before them by the mysterious
> Pelasgians who came from the East, we also remember the identity of the
> “Mystery” Gods of the Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and Israelites, it will be
> easy to discover whence came also the confused account of the Noachian
> Deluge. It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their
> primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from the
> Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions, when
> rewritten by Ezra and others, from the Chaldæo‐Akkadian account. It is,
> therefore, sufficient to examine the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and
> other inscriptions to find also therein, scattered here and there, not
> only the original meaning of the name Adam, Admi, or Adami, but also the
> creation of seven Adams or roots of Men, born of Mother Earth, physically,
> and of the Divine Fire of the Progenitors, spiritually or astrally. The
> Assyriologists, ignorant of the Esoteric teachings, could hardly be
> expected to pay any greater attention to the mysterious and ever‐recurring
> number _seven_ on the Babylonian cylinders, than they pay to it on finding
> it in _Genesis_ and the rest of the _Bible_. Yet the numbers of the
> ancestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are on the
> cylinders, notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, and
> are to be found as plainly, as they are in _Pymander_ and in the _Book of
> the Concealed Mystery_ of the _Kabalah_. In the latter Adam Kadmon is the
> Sephirothal Tree, as also the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
> And that Tree, says verse 32, “hath around it seven columns,” or palaces,
> of the seven creative Angels operating in the Spheres of the seven Planets
> on our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a _collective_ name, so also is the name
> of the man Adam. Says George Smith, in his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_:
> 
>     The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is
>     evidently _not a proper name, but is only used as a term for
>     mankind_. Adam appears as a proper name in _Genesis_, but
>     certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the
>     Assyrian word.(9)
> 
> Moreover, neither the Chaldæan nor the Biblical Deluge, with their stories
> of Xisuthrus and Noah, is based on the universal or even on the Atlantean
> Deluges, recorded in the Indian allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. They are the
> exoteric allegories based on the Esoteric Mysteries of Samothrace. If the
> older Chaldæans knew the Esoteric truth concealed in the Purânic legends,
> the other nations were aware only of the Samothracian Mystery, and
> allegorized it. They adapted it to their astronomical and anthropological,
> or rather phallic, notions. Samothrace is known historically to have been
> famous in antiquity for a deluge, which submerged the country and reached
> the top of the highest mountains; an event which happened before the age
> of the Argonauts. It was overflowed very suddenly by waters from the
> Euxine, which had been regarded up to that time as a lake.(10) But the
> Israelites had, moreover, another legend upon which to base their
> allegory, the legend of the Deluge, that transformed the present Gobi
> Desert into a sea _for the last time_, some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago,
> and which drove many Noahs and their families to the surrounding
> mountains. As the Babylonian accounts are only now restored from hundreds
> of thousands of broken fragments—the mound of Kouyunjik alone having
> yielded from Layard’s excavations upwards of twenty thousand fragments of
> inscriptions—the proofs here cited are comparatively scanty; yet such as
> they are, they corroborate almost every one of our teachings; three most
> certainty, at the very least. These are:
> 
> (1) That the race which was the first to fall into generation was a dark
> race (zalmat‐qaqadi), which they call the Adamu or Dark Race, and that
> Sarku, or the Light Race, remained pure for a long while subsequently.
> 
> (2) That the Babylonians recognized two principal Races at the time of the
> Fall, the Race of the Gods, the Ethereal Doubles of the Pitris, having
> preceded these two. This is Sir H. Rawlinson’s opinion. These Races are
> our Second and Third Root‐Races.
> 
> (3) That these seven Gods, each of whom created a Man, or Group of men,
> were “the Gods imprisoned or incarnated.” These Gods were: the God Zi; the
> God Zi‐ku, Noble Life, Director of Purity; the God Mir‐ku, Noble Crown,
> “Saviour from death of the Gods [later on] imprisoned,” and the creator of
> “the dark races which his hand has made”; the God Libzu, “wise among the
> Gods”; the God Nissi; the God Suhhab; and Hea or Sa, their synthesis, the
> God of Wisdom and of the Deep, identified with Oannes‐Dagon, at the time
> of the Fall, and called, collectively, the Demiurge, or Creator.(11)
> 
> There are two “Creations” so‐called, in the Babylonian fragments, and as
> _Genesis_ has adhered to this, we find its first two chapters
> distinguished as the Elohite and the Jehovite Creations. Their proper
> order, however, is not preserved in these or in any other exoteric
> accounts. Now these “Creations,” according to the Occult Teachings, refer
> respectively to the formation of the primordial seven Men by the
> Progenitors, the Pitris, or Elohim, and to that of the human Groups after
> the Fall.
> 
> All this will be examined in the light of Science and comparisons drawn
> from the scriptures of all the ancient nations, the _Bible_ included, as
> we proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to the Anthropogenesis of the
> prehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree upon the names to be given to
> the Continents on which the four great Races, which preceded our Adamic
> Race, were born, lived, and died. Their archaic and Esoteric names were
> many, and varied with the language of the nation which mentioned them in
> its annals and scriptures. That which in the _Vendîdâd_, for instance, is
> referred to as Airyana Vaêjô(12) wherein was born the original
> Zoroaster,(13) is called in the Purânic literature Shveta Dvîpa, Mount
> Meru, the Abode of Vishnu, etc.; and in the Secret Doctrine is simply
> named the “Land of the Gods,” under their chiefs, the “Spirits of this
> Planet.”
> 
> Therefore, in view of the possible, and even very probable confusion, that
> may arise, it is considered more convenient to adopt, for each of the four
> Continents constantly referred to, a name more familiar to the cultured
> reader. It is proposed, then, to call the first Continent, or rather the
> first _terra firma_ on which the First Race was evolved by the divine
> Progenitors:
> 
> I. The Imperishable Sacred Land.
> 
> The reason for the name is that it is stated that: this “Imperishable
> Sacred Land” never shared the fate of the other Continents, because it is
> the only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of
> the Manvantara throughout each Round. It is the cradle of the first man
> and the dwelling of the last _divine_ mortal, chosen as a Shishta for the
> future seed of humanity. Of this mysterious and sacred land very little
> can be said, except, perhaps, according to a poetical expression in one of
> the Commentaries, that the “_Pole‐star has its watchful eye upon it, from
> the dawn to the close of the twilight of a Day of the Great Breath_.”(14)
> 
> II. The Hyperborean.
> 
> This will be the name chosen for the second Continent, the land which
> stretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole
> to receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known
> as Northern Asia. Such was the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far‐
> off and mysterious region, whither their tradition made Apollo, the
> Hyperborean, travel every year. Astronomically, Apollo is, of course, the
> Sun, who, abandoning his Hellenic sanctuaries, loved to annually visit his
> far‐away country, where the Sun was said to never set for one half of the
> year. “Ἐγγὺς γὰρ νυκτός τε καὶ ἤματος εἰσι κέλευθοι,” says a verse in the
> Odyssey.(15)
> 
> But historically, or better, perhaps, ethnologically and geologically, the
> meaning is different. The land of the Hyperboreans, the country that
> extended beyond Boreas, the frozen‐hearted God of snows and hurricanes,
> who loved to slumber heavily on the chain of Mount Rhipæus, was neither an
> ideal country, as surmized by the Mythologists, nor yet a land in the
> neighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.(16) It was a real Continent, a
> _bonâ fide_ land, which knew no winter in those early days, nor have its
> sorry remains more than one night and day during the year, even now. The
> nocturnal shadows never fall upon it, said the Greeks; for it is the “Land
> of the Gods,” the favourite abode of Apollo, the God of light, and its
> inhabitants are his beloved priests and servants. This may be regarded as
> poetized _fiction_ now; but it was poetized _truth_ then.
> 
> III. Lemuria.
> 
> The third Continent, we propose to call Lemuria. The name is an invention,
> or an idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who, between 1850 and 1860, asserted on
> zoological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a
> Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and
> Sumatra. It included some portions of what is now Africa; but otherwise
> this gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian Ocean to
> Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific,
> leaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are now
> islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the Naturalist, writes Mr. Charles Gould:
> 
>     Extends the Australia of Tertiary periods to New Guinea and the
>     Solomon Islands, and perhaps to Fiji, and from its marsupial types
>     infers a connection with the northern continent during the
>     Secondary period.(17)
> 
> The subject is treated at length elsewhere.(18)
> 
> IV. Atlantis.
> 
> Thus we name the fourth Continent. It would be the first historical land,
> were the traditions of the Ancients to receive more attention than they
> have hitherto. The famous island of Plato of that name was but a fragment
> of this great Continent.(19)
> 
> V. Europe.
> 
> The fifth Continent was America; but, as it is situated at the Antipodes,
> it is Europe and Asia Minor, almost coëval with it, which are generally
> referred to by the Indo‐Aryan Occultists as the fifth. If their teaching
> followed the appearance of the Continents in their geological and
> geographical order, then this classification would have to be altered. But
> as the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of evolution
> of the Races, from the First to the Fifth, our Âryan Root‐Race, Europe
> must be called the fifth great Continent. The Secret Doctrine takes no
> account of islands and peninsulas, nor does it follow the modern
> geographical distribution of land and sea. Since the day of its earliest
> teachings and the destruction of the great Atlantis, the face of the Earth
> has changed more than once. There was a time when the delta of Egypt and
> Northern Africa belonged to Europe, before the formation of the Straits of
> Gibraltar and a further upheaval of the Continent entirely changed the
> face of the map of Europe. The last serious change occurred some 12,000
> years ago,(20) and was followed by the submersion of Plato’s little
> Atlantic island, which he calls Atlantis after its parent continent.
> Geography was part of the Mysteries, in days of old. Says the _Zohar_:
> 
>     These secrets [of land and sea] were divulged to the _men of the
>     secret science_, but not to the geographers.(21)
> 
> The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre‐tertiary giant,
> and that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear
> preposterous to admirers of, and believers in, modern learning. The whole
> _posse comitatus_ of Biologists will turn away from the conception of this
> Third Race Titan of the Secondary Age, a being fit to fight successfully
> with the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and land; so his
> forefathers, the ethereal prototypes of the Atlantean, had little need to
> fear that which could not hurt them. The modern Anthropologist is quite
> welcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at the Biblical Adam, and as
> the Theologian laughs at the former’s pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists
> and their severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually
> squared their accounts by this time. Occult Sciences claim less and give
> more, at all events, than either Darwinian Anthropology or Biblical
> Theology.
> 
> Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten anyone; for, with regard to
> figures, the greatest authorities of the day are as fickle and as
> uncertain as the Mediterranean waves. As regards the duration of the
> geological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal Society are all
> hopelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions of
> years with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this
> comparison.
> 
> Take one instance for our present purpose—the calculations of Mr. Croll.
> Whether, according to this authority, 2,500,000 years represent the time
> since the beginning of the Tertiary Age, or the Eocene period, as an
> American geologist makes him say;(22) or whether again Mr. Croll “allows
> fifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene period,” as quoted by
> an English geologist,(23) both sets of figures cover the claims made by
> the Secret Doctrine.(24) For assigning as the latter does from four to
> five million years between the incipient and the final evolution of the
> Fourth Root‐Race, on the Lemuro‐Atlantean Continents; one million years
> for the Fifth, or Âryan Race, to the present date; and about 850,000 since
> the submersion of the last large peninsula of the great Atlantis—all this
> may have easily taken place within the 15,000,000 years conceded by Mr.
> Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking, the duration of
> the period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all, certain
> American Scientists to fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the
> fact that their assertions are called not only dubious but absurd, yet
> maintain that man existed so far back as in the Secondary Age. They have
> found human footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. de
> Quatrefages finds no valid scientific reason why man should not have
> existed during the Secondary Age.
> 
> The Ages and periods in Geology are, in sober truth, purely conventional
> terms, as they are still barely delineated, and, moreover, no two
> Geologists or Naturalists agree as to the figures. Thus, there is a wide
> margin for choice offered to the Occultist by the learned fraternity.
> Shall we take for one of our supports Mr. T. Mellard Read? This gentleman,
> in a paper on “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,” read by him in
> 1878 before the Royal Society, claims that the _minimum_ time required for
> the formation of the sedimentary strata and the elimination of the
> calcareous matter is in round numbers 600 million years;(25) or shall we
> ask support for our chronology from Mr. Darwin’s works, wherein, according
> to his theory, he demands for the organic transformations from 300 to 500
> million years? Sir Charles Lyell and Prof. Houghton were satisfied with
> placing the beginning of the Cambrian Age at 200 and 240 millions of years
> ago, respectively. Geologists and Zoologists claim the maximum time,
> though Mr. Huxley, at one time, placed the beginning of the incrustation
> of the earth at 1,000 million years ago, and would not surrender a
> millennium of it.
> 
> But the main point for us lies not in the agreement or disagreement of the
> Naturalists as to the duration of geological periods, but rather in their
> perfect accord on one point, for a wonder, and this a very important one.
> They all agree that during the Miocene Age—whether one or ten million
> years ago—Greenland and even Spitzbergen, the remnants of our second or
> Hyperborean Continent, “had an almost tropical climate.” Now the pre‐
> Homeric Greeks had preserved a vivid tradition of this “Land of the
> Eternal Sun,” whither their Apollo journeyed yearly. Science tells us:
> 
>     During the Miocene age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70°) developed an
>     abundance of trees, such as the yew, the redwood, the sequoia,
>     allied to the Californian species, beeches, planes, willows, oaks,
>     poplars and walnuts, as well as a magnolia and a zamia.(26)
> 
> In short Greenland had southern plants unknown to northern regions.
> 
> And now arises this natural question. If the Greeks, in the days of Homer,
> knew of a Hyperborean land, _i.e._, a blessed land beyond the reach of
> Boreas, the God of winter and of the hurricane, an ideal region which the
> later Greeks and their writers have vainly tried to locate beyond Scythia,
> a country where nights were short and days long, and beyond that a land
> where the Sun never set and the palm grew freely—if they knew of all this,
> who then told them of it? In their day, and for ages previously, Greenland
> must certainly have been already covered with perpetual snows, with never‐
> thawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show that the land of
> the short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond which
> was the blessed land of eternal light and summer. For the Greeks to know
> of this, the tradition must have descended to them from some people more
> ancient than themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details
> of which the Greeks themselves could know nothing. Even in our day,
> Science suspects that beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the
> Arctic Pole, there exists a sea which never freezes and a continent which
> is ever green. The Archaic Teachings, and also the _Purânas_—for one who
> understands their allegories—contain the same statements. Suffice, then,
> for us the strong probability that, during the Miocene period of Modern
> Science, at a time when Greenland was an almost tropical land, there lived
> a people, now unknown to history.
> 
> NOTE.
> 
> The reader is requested to bear in mind that the following Sections are
> not strictly consecutive in order of time. In Part I the Stanzas which
> form the skeleton of the exposition are given, and certain important
> points commented upon and explained. In the subsequent Sections of Parts
> II and III various additional details are gathered, and a fuller
> explanation of the subject is attempted.
> 
> PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS.
> 
> Twelve Stanzas From the “Book Of Dzyan,”(27)
> 
> With Commentaries.
> 
> In primeval times, a maiden,
> Beauteous Daughter of the Ether,
> Passed for ages her existence
> In the great expanse of Heaven.
> 
> Seven hundred years she wandered,
> 
> Seven hundred years she laboured,
> Ere her first‐born was delivered.
> 
> Ere a beauteous duck descending,
> Hastens toward the water‐mother,
> 
> Lightly on the knee she settles,
> Finds a nesting‐place befitting,
> Where to lay her eggs in safety.
> 
> Lays her eggs within, at pleasure,
> Six, the golden eggs she lays there,
> Then a Seventh, an egg of iron.
> 
> _Kalevala_ (CRAWFORD).
> 
> Text.
> 
> Stanza I.
> 
> 1. The Lha which turns the Fourth is Servant to the Lha(s) of the Seven,
> they who revolve, driving their Chariots around their Lord, the One Eye of
> our World. His Breath gave Life to the Seven. It gave Life to the First.
> 
> 2. Said the Earth: “Lord of the Shining Face, my House is empty.... Send
> thy Sons to people this Wheel. Thou hast sent thy Seven Sons to the Lord
> of Wisdom. Seven times doth he see thee nearer to himself, seven times
> more doth he feel thee. Thou hast forbidden thy Servants, the small Rings,
> to catch thy Light and Heat, thy great Bounty to intercept on its passage.
> Send now to thy Servant the same.”
> 
> 3. Said the Lord of the Shining Face: “I shall send thee a Fire when thy
> work is commenced. Raise thy voice to other Lokas; apply to thy Father,
> the Lord of the Lotus, for his Sons.... Thy People shall be under the rule
> of the Fathers. Thy Men shall be mortals. The Men of the Lord of Wisdom,
> not the Sons of Soma, are immortal. Cease thy complaints. Thy Seven Skins
> are yet on thee.... Thou art not ready. Thy Men are not ready.”
> 
> 4. After great throes she cast off her old Three and put on her new Seven
> Skins, and stood in her first one.
> 
> Stanza II.
> 
> 5. The Wheel whirled for thirty crores more. It constructed Rûpas; soft
> Stones that hardened, hard Plants that softened. Visible from invisible,
> Insects and small Lives. She shook them off her back whenever they overran
> the Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back:
> on her side.... She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of
> Wisdom. She created from her own Bosom. She evolved Water‐Men, terrible
> and bad.
> 
> 6. The Water‐Men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains
> of others. From the dross and slime of her First, Second, and Third, she
> formed them. The Dhyâni came and looked ... the Dhyâni from the bright
> Father‐Mother, from the White Regions they came, from the Abodes of the
> immortal Mortals.
> 
> 7. Displeased they were. “Our Flesh is not there. No fit Rûpas for our
> Brothers of the Fifth. No Dwellings for the Lives. Pure Waters, not
> turbid, they must drink. Let us dry them.”
> 
> 8. The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night‐Fires and the
> Day‐Fires. They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they
> quenched them. The Lhas of the High, the Lhamayin of Below, came. They
> slew the Forms which were two‐ and four‐faced. They fought the Goat‐Men,
> and the Dog‐Headed Men, and the Men with fishes’ bodies.
> 
> 9. Mother‐Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the
> Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.
> 
> 10. When they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare. She asked to be
> dried.
> 
> Stanza III.
> 
> 11. The Lord of the Lords came. From her Body he separated the Waters, and
> that was Heaven above, the First Heaven.
> 
> 12. The great Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the Airy Bodies:
> “Bring forth Men, Men of your nature. Give them their Forms within. She
> will build Coverings without. Males‐Females will they be. Lords of the
> Flame also....”
> 
> 13. They went each on his allotted Land; Seven of them, each on his Lot.
> The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not
> create.
> 
> Stanza IV.
> 
> 14. The Seven Hosts, the Will‐Born Lords, propelled by the Spirit of Life‐
> Giving, separate Men from themselves, each on his own Zone.
> 
> 15. Seven times seven Shadows of Future Men were born, each of his own
> Colour and Kind. Each inferior to his Father. The Fathers, the Boneless,
> could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their progeny were Bhûta, with
> neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ Race.
> 
> 16. How are the Manushya born? The Manus with minds, how are they made?
> The Fathers called to their help their own Fire, which is the Fire that
> burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.
> These Three produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It could stand,
> walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with
> no Sense....
> 
> 17. The Breath needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a
> Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life;
> the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of
> its Body; “We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânis. The Breath needed a
> Vehicle of Desires; “It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath
> needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; “We cannot give that!”—said the
> Fathers. “I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth. “The Form would
> be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.... Man remained
> an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those
> who became Men with Bones in the Third.
> 
> Stanza V.
> 
> 18. The First were the Sons of Yoga. Their sons, the children of the
> Yellow Father and the White Mother.
> 
> 19. The Second Race was the product by budding and expansion, the A‐sexual
> from the Sexless.(28) Thus was, O Lanoo, the Second Race produced.
> 
> 20. Their Fathers were the Self‐born. The Self‐born, the Chhâyâ from the
> brilliant Bodies of the Lords, the Fathers, the Sons of Twilight.
> 
> 21. When the Race became old, the old Waters mixed with the fresher
> Waters. When its Drops became turbid, they vanished and disappeared in the
> new Stream, in the hot Stream of Life. The Outer of the First became the
> Inner of the Second. The old Wing became the new Shadow, and the Shadow of
> the Wing.
> 
> Stanza VI.
> 
> 22. Then the Second evolved the Egg‐born, the Third. The Sweat grew, its
> Drops grew, and the Drops became hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the
> Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness. The White
> Swan from the Starry Vault overshadowed the big Drop. The Egg of the
> Future Race, the Man‐swan of the later Third. First male‐female, then man
> and woman.
> 
> 23. The Self‐born were the Chhâyâs, the Shadows from the Bodies of the
> Sons of Twilight. Neither water nor fire could destroy them. Their sons
> were.
> 
> Stanza VII.
> 
> 24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night, ready for rebirth, came down.
> They saw the vile forms of the First Third. “We can choose,” said the
> Lords, “we have wisdom.” Some entered the Chhâyâs. Some projected a Spark.
> Some deferred till the Fourth. From their own Rûpa they filled the Kâma.
> Those who entered became Arhats. Those who received but a Spark, remained
> destitute of knowledge; the Spark burned low. The Third remained mind‐
> less. Their Jîvas were not ready. These were set apart among the Seven.
> They became narrow‐headed. The Third were ready. “In these shall we
> dwell,” said the Lords of the Flame and of the Dark Wisdom.
> 
> 25. How did the Mânasa, the Sons of Wisdom, act? They rejected the Self‐
> born. They are not ready. They spurned the Sweat‐born. They are not quite
> ready. They would not enter the first Egg‐born.
> 
> 26. When the Sweat‐born produced the Egg‐born, the twofold, the mighty,
> the powerful with bones, the Lords of Wisdom said: “Now shall we create.”
> 
> 27. The Third Race became the Vâhan of the Lords of Wisdom. It created
> Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers,
> Ancestors of the Arhats....
> 
> Stanza VIII.
> 
> 28. From the drops of sweat, from the residue of the substance, matter
> from dead bodies of men and animals of the Wheel before, and from cast‐off
> dust, the first animals were produced.
> 
> 29. Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying Sarpas were added
> to the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of
> the long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the
> air.
> 
> 30. During the Third, the boneless animals grew and changed; they became
> animals with bones, their Chhâyâs became solid.
> 
> 31. The animals separated the first. They began to breed. The two‐fold man
> separated also. He said: “Let us as they; let us unite and make
> creatures.” They did....
> 
> 32. And those which had no Spark took huge she‐animals unto them. They
> begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. But their tongues
> untied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters they bred. A
> race of crooked red‐hair‐covered monsters going on all fours. A dumb race
> to keep the shame untold.
> 
> Stanza IX.
> 
> 33. Seeing which, the Lhas who had not built men, wept, saying:
> 
> 34. “The Amânasa have defiled our future abodes. This is Karma. Let us
> dwell in the others. Let us teach them better, lest worse should happen.”
> They did....
> 
> 35. Then all men became endowed with Manas. They saw the sin of the
> mindless.
> 
> 36. The Fourth Race developed speech.
> 
> 37. The one became two; also all the living and creeping things that were
> still one, giant fish, birds and serpents with shell‐heads.
> 
> Stanza X.
> 
> 38. Thus, two by two, on the seven Zones, the Third Race gave birth to the
> Fourth; the Sura became A‐sura.
> 
> 39. The First, on every Zone, was moon‐coloured; the Second yellow like
> gold; the Third red; the Fourth brown, which became black with sin. The
> first seven human shoots were all of one complexion. The next seven began
> mixing.
> 
> 40. Then the Third and Fourth became tall with pride. “We are the kings;
> we are the gods.”
> 
> 41. They took wives fair to look upon. Wives from the mindless, the
> narrow‐headed. They bred monsters, wicked demons, male and female, also
> Khado, with little minds.
> 
> 42. They built temples for the human body. Male and female they
> worshipped. Then the Third Eye acted no longer.
> 
> Stanza XI.
> 
> 43. They built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built. Out of
> the fires vomited, out of the white stone of the mountains and of the
> black stone, they cut their own images, in their size and likeness, and
> worshipped them.
> 
> 44. They built great images nine yatis high, the size of their bodies.
> Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers. The water threatened
> the Fourth.
> 
> 45. The first great waters came. They swallowed the seven great islands.
> 
> 46. All holy saved, the unholy destroyed. With them most of the huge
> animals, produced from the sweat of the earth.
> 
> Stanza XII.
> 
> 47. Few remained. Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red
> remained. The moon‐coloured were gone for ever.
> 
> 48. The Fifth produced from the holy stock remained; it was ruled over by
> the first Divine Kings.
> 
> 49. ... The Serpents who re‐descended, who made peace with the Fifth, who
> taught and instructed it....
> 
> Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
> Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
> 
> Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
> 
>     1. The Lha, or Spirit of the Earth. 2. Invocation of the Earth to
>     the Sun. 3. What the Sun answers. 4. Transformation of the Earth.
> 
> 1. THE LHA (_a_) WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH(29) IS SERVANT TO THE LHA(S) OF
> THE SEVEN(30) (_b_), THEY WHO REVOLVE, DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND THEIR
> LORD, THE ONE EYE(31) OF OUR WORLD. HIS BREATH GAVE LIFE TO THE SEVEN.(32)
> IT GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST (_c_).
> 
> “_They are all Dragons of Wisdom_,” adds the Commentary (_d_).
> 
> (_a_) “Lha” is the ancient term in Trans‐Himâlayan regions for “Spirit,”
> any celestial or _super‐human_ Being, and it covers the whole series of
> heavenly hierarchies, from an Archangel, or Dhyâni, down to an Angel of
> darkness, or terrestrial Spirit.
> 
> (_b_) This expression shows in plain language that the Spirit‐Guardian of
> our Globe, which is the fourth in the Chain, is subordinate to the chief
> Spirit (or God) of the Seven Planetary Genii or Spirits. As already
> explained, the Ancients had, in their Kyriel of Gods, seven chief Mystery‐
> Gods, whose leader was, _exoterically_, the visible Sun, or the eighth,
> and, _Esoterically_, the Second Logos, the Demiurge. The Seven—who have
> now, in the Christian religion, become the “Seven Eyes of the Lord”—were
> the Regents of the seven _chief_ planets; but these were not reckoned
> according to the enumeration devised later by people who had forgotten, or
> who had an inadequate notion of, the real Mysteries, and included neither
> the Sun, the Moon, nor the Earth. The Sun was the chief, exoterically, of
> the twelve Great Gods, or zodiacal constellations; and, Esoterically, the
> Messiah, the Christos—the subject “anointed” by the Great Breath, or the
> One—surrounded by his twelve subordinate powers, also subordinate, in
> turn, to each of the seven Mystery‐Gods of the planets.
> 
> “_The Seven Higher make the Seven Lhas create the world_,” states a
> Commentary; which means that our Earth—to leave aside the rest—was
> “created” or fashioned by Terrestrial Spirits, the Regents being simply
> the supervisors. This is the first germ of that which grew later into the
> Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The Higher Ones were the Cosmocratores,
> the fabricators of our Solar System. This is borne out by all the ancient
> Cosmogonies, such as those of Hermes, of the Chaldæans, of the Aryans, of
> the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. The Signs of the Zodiac—the “_Sacred
> Animals_” or “Heaven’s Belt”—are as much the Bne’ Alhim—Sons of the Gods
> or the Elohim—as the Spirits of the Earth; but they are prior to them.
> Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar Gods or Goddesses, called the
> Fathers and Mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these,
> in their turn, are subordinate to their “Fathers” and “Mothers”—the latter
> being interchangeable and varying with each nation—the Gods and their
> Planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Bel, Brihaspati, etc.
> 
> (_c_) “His Breath gave Life to the Seven,” refers as much to the Sun, who
> gives life to the Planets, as to the “High One,” the _Spiritual Sun_, who
> gives life to the whole Kosmos. The astronomical and astrological keys
> opening the gate leading to the mysteries of Theogony can be found only in
> the later glossaries, which accompany the Stanzas.
> 
> In the apocalyptic Shlokas of the Archaic Records, the language is as
> symbolical, if less mythical, than in the _Purânas_. Without the help of
> the later Commentaries, compiled by generations of Adepts, it would be
> impossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the ancient
> Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links of
> one and the same chain. As the Invisible Logos, with its Seven
> Hierarchies—each represented or personified by its chief Angel or
> Rector—form one POWER, the inner and the invisible; so, in the world of
> Forms, the Sun and the seven chief Planets constitute the visible and
> active potency; the latter Hierarchy being, so to speak, the visible and
> objective Logos of the Invisible and—except in the lowest grades—ever‐
> subjective Angels.
> 
> Thus—to anticipate a little by way of illustration—every Race in its
> evolution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the
> Planets; Race the First receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will
> be seen later on; while the Third Humanity—those who fell into generation,
> or from androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other
> female—is said to be under the direct influence of Venus, “_the
> __‘__little sun__’__ in which the solar orb stores his light_.”
> 
> The summary of the Stanzas in Volume I showed the genesis(33) of Gods and
> men taking rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One
> Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and Absolute UNITY. In its primary
> manifested aspect we have seen it become: (1) in the sphere of objectivity
> and Physics, PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE and FORCE—centripetal and centrifugal,
> positive and negative, male and female, etc.; (2) in the world of
> Metaphysics, the SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE, or Cosmic Ideation, called by
> some the LOGOS.
> 
> This Logos is the apex of the Pythagorean Triangle. When the Triangle is
> complete it becomes the Tetraktys, or the Triangle in the Square, and is
> the dual symbol of the four‐lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested
> Kosmos, and of its radical triple Ray in the unmanifested—its Noumenon.
> 
> Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic
> Ultimates, is more one of convenience than of absolute philosophical
> accuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahman manifests
> as Mûlaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the
> “Unconscious Universal Mind,” etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes
> the Basis of the _subject_‐side of manifested Being, and is the source of
> all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mûlaprakriti or Primordial
> Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the _object_‐side of things—the
> basis of all objective evolution and cosmo‐genesis. Force, then, does not
> emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmanic latency. It is the
> _transformation into energy of the supra‐conscious thought of the Logos_,
> infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of
> potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of
> Matter; hence the “primal impress” so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple.
> Force thus is _not synchronous_ with the first objectivation of
> Mûlaprakriti. Nevertheless as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and
> necessarily inert—_a mere abstraction_—it is unnecessary to weave too fine
> a cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of the Cosmic
> Ultimates. Force _succeeds_ Mûlaprakriti; but, _minus_ Force, Mûlaprakriti
> is for all practical intents and purposes non‐existent.(34)
> 
> The Heavenly Man or Tetragrammaton, who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the
> Firstborn from the passive Deity and the first manifestation of that
> Deity’s Shadow, is the Universal Form and Idea, which engenders the
> Manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four‐lettered symbol, in the
> Kabalah, of the Universe itself, also called the Second Logos. The Second
> springs from the First and develops the Third Triangle;(35) from the last
> of which (the lower host of Angels) _Men_ are generated. It is with this
> third aspect that we shall deal at present.
> 
> The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the
> Logos and the Demiurgos, for one is _Spirit_ and the other is _Soul_; or
> as Dr. Wilder has it:
> 
>     Dianoia and Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely
>     in affinity with Τὸ Ἀγαθὸν, one being the superior apprehending,
>     the other the comprehending—one noëtic and the other phrenic.
> 
> Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the Third Logos. The
> Esoteric meaning of the word Logos—Speech or Word, Verbum—is the rendering
> in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The
> Logos is the mirror reflecting DIVINE MIND, and the Universe is the mirror
> of the Logos, though the latter is the _esse_ of that Universe. As the
> Logos reflects _all_ in the Universe of Plerôma, so Man reflects in
> himself all that he sees and finds in _his_ Universe, the Earth. It is the
> Three Heads of the Kabalah—“_unum intra alterum, et alterum super
> alterum._”(36) “Every Universe (World or Planet) has its own Logos,” says
> the Doctrine. The Sun was always called by the Egyptians the “Eye of
> Osiris,” and was himself the Logos, the First‐begotten, or Light made
> manifest to the world, “which is the Mind and divine Intellect of the
> Concealed.” It is only by the seven‐fold Ray of this Light that we can
> become cognizant of the Logos through the Demiurge, regarding the latter
> as the “Creator” of our Planet and everything pertaining to it, and the
> former as the guiding Force of that “Creator”—good and bad at the same
> time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This “Creator” is neither
> good nor bad _per se_, but its differentiated aspects in Nature make it
> assume one or the other character. With the invisible and the unknown
> Universes disseminated through Space, none of the Sun‐Gods had anything to
> do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the Books of Hermes, and in
> every ancient folk‐lore. It is symbolized generally by the Dragon and the
> Serpent—the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth
> by the right and the left‐hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the
> _Kalevala_,(37) the origin of the Serpent of Evil is given: it is born
> from the spittle of Suoyatar, and endowed with a Living Soul by the
> Principle of Evil, Hisi. A strife is described between the two, the “thing
> of evil,” the Serpent or Sorcerer, and Ahti, the Dragon of the white
> magician, Lemminkainen. The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar,
> the virgin “daughter of the air,” she “who fell from heaven into the sea,”
> before Creation, _i.e._, Spirit transformed into the matter of sensuous
> life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in the following few
> lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero
> Lemminkainen,
> 
>     Hews the wall with might of magic,
>     Breaks the palisade in pieces,
>     Hews to atoms _seven_ pickets,
>     Chops the _serpent‐wall_ to fragments.
> 
>     When the monster little heeding,
> 
>     Pounces with his mouth of venom
>     At the head of Lemminkainen.
>     But the hero, quick recalling,
>     Speaks the _master‐words of knowledge_,
>     Words that came from distant ages,
>     Words his ancestors had taught him.
> 
> (_d_) In China the men of Fohi, or the “Heavenly Man,” are called the
> twelve Tien‐Hoang, the twelve Hierarchies of Dhyânis or Angels, with human
> faces, and dragon bodies; the Dragon standing for Divine Wisdom or
> Spirit;(38) and they create men by incarnating themselves in seven figures
> of clay—earth and water—made in the shape of these Tien‐Hoang, a third
> allegory.(39) The twelve Æsers of the Scandinavian Eddas do the same. In
> the Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria—a legend which is repeated
> word for word by the oldest tribes about and around the Euphrates—men were
> created by the “Sons of God,” who descended on Earth, and after gathering
> seven Mandragoras, they animated the roots, which forthwith became
> men.(40)
> 
> All these allegories point to one and the same origin—to the dual and
> triple nature of man; dual, as male and female; triple, as being of
> spiritual and psychic essence _within_, and of a material fabric without.
> 
> 2. SAID THE EARTH, “LORD OF THE SHINING FACE,(41) MY HOUSE IS EMPTY....
> SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL.(42) THOU HAST SENT THY SEVEN SONS TO
> THE LORD OF WISDOM (_A_). SEVEN TIMES DOTH HE SEE THEE NEARER TO HIMSELF;
> SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL THEE (_B_). THOU HAST FORBIDDEN THY
> SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY
> TO INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE. SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME!”
> 
> (_a_) The “Lord of Wisdom” is Mercury, or Budha.
> 
> (_b_) The modern Commentary explains the words as a reference to a well‐
> known astronomical fact, that Mercury receives seven times more light and
> heat from the Sun than the Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which
> receives but twice the amount falling on our insignificant Globe. Whether
> the fact was known in antiquity may be inferred from the prayer of the
> “Earth Spirit” to the Sun as given in the text.(43) The Sun, however,
> refuses to people the Globe, as it is not ready to receive life as yet.
> 
> Mercury, as an astrological Planet, is still more Occult and mysterious
> than Venus. It is identical with the Mazdean Mithra, the Genius, or God,
> “established between the Sun and the Moon, the perpetual companion of the
> ‘Sun’ of Wisdom.” Pausanias (Bk. v.) shows him as having an altar in
> common with Jupiter. He had wings to express his attendance upon the Sun
> in its course; and he was called the Nuntius and Sun‐wolf, “_solaris
> luminis particeps_.” He was the leader and evocator of Souls, the great
> Magician and the Hierophant. Virgil depicts him as taking his wand to
> evoke from Orcus the souls plunged therein—_tum virgam capit, hac animas
> ille evocat Orco_.(44) He is the Golden‐coloured Mercury, the Χρυσοφαὴς
> Ἑρμῆς whom the Hierophants forbade to name. He is symbolized in Grecian
> mythology by one of the “dogs” (vigilance), which watch over the celestial
> flock (Occult Wisdom), or Hermes Anubis, or again Agathodæmon. He is the
> Argus watching over the Earth, mistaken by the latter for the Sun itself.
> It is through the intercession of Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed
> to the Occult Sun every night; for, as says Vossius:
> 
>     All the theologians assert that _Mercury and the Sun are one_....
>     He was the most eloquent and the most wise of all the Gods, which
>     is not to be wondered at, since _Mercury is in such close
>     proximity to the Wisdom and the Word of God_ [the Sun] that he was
>     confused with both.(45)
> 
> Vossius here utters a greater Occult truth than he suspected. The Hermes
> of the Greeks is closely related to the Hindû Saramâ and Sârameya, the
> divine watchman, “who watches over the golden flock of stars and solar
> rays.”
> 
> In the clearer words of the Commentary:
> 
> _The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six
> Assistants, gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium
> of the seven planetary Dhyânis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his
> messengers of Light and Life._
> 
> _Like each of the Seven Regions of the Earth, each of the seven_(_46_)_
> First‐born [the primordial Human Groups] receives its light and life from
> its own especial Dhyâni—spiritually, and from the Palace [House, the
> Planet] of that Dhyâni—physically; so with the seven great Races to be
> born on it. The First is born under the Sun; the Second under Brihaspati
> [Jupiter]; the Third under Lohitânga [Mars, the __“__Fiery‐bodied,__”__
> and also under Venus or Shukra]; the Fourth, under Soma [the Moon, our
> Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the Moon] and
> Shani, Saturn,_(_47_)_ the Krûra‐lochana [Evil‐eyed], and the Asita [the
> Dark]; the Fifth, under Budha [Mercury]._
> 
> _So also with man and every __“__man__”__ [every principle] in man. Each
> gets its specific quality from its Primary [the Planetary Spirit],
> therefore every man is a septenate [or a combination of principles, each
> having its origin in a quality of that special Dhyâni]. Every active power
> or force __ of the Earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords. Light
> comes through Shukra [Venus], who receives a triple supply, and gives one‐
> third of it to the Earth. Therefore the two are called __“__Twin‐
> sisters,__”__ but the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the
> __“__Lord__”__ of Shukra. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over,
> the other under the double Sign [the primeval Svastika bereft of its four
> arms, or the cross, ☩]._(48)
> 
> The “double sign” is, as every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of
> the male and the female principles in Nature, of the positive and the
> negative, for the Svastika or 卐 is all that and much more. All antiquity,
> ever since the birth of Astronomy—imparted to the Fourth Race by one of
> the Kings of the Divine Dynasty—and also of Astrology, represented Venus
> in its astronomical tables as a _Globe poised over a Cross_, and the
> Earth, as a _Globe under a Cross_. The Esoteric meaning of this is the
> Earth fallen into generation, or into the production of its species
> through sexual union. But the later Western nations have not failed to
> give it quite a different interpretation. They explained the sign through
> their Mystics—guided by the light of the Latin Church—as meaning that our
> Earth and all on it were redeemed _by the Cross_, while Venus—otherwise
> Lucifer or Satan—was trampling upon it. Venus is the most Occult,
> powerful, and mysterious of all the Planets; the one whose influence upon,
> and relation to, the Earth is most prominent. In exoteric Brâhmanism,
> Venus or Shukra—a male deity(49)—is the son of Bhrigu, one of the
> Prajâpati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya‐Guru, or the priest‐instructor
> of the primeval giants. The whole history of Shukra in the _Purânas_,
> refers to the Third and Fourth Races. As says the Commentary:
> 
> _It is through Shukra that the __“__double ones__”__ [the hermaphrodites]
> of the Third [__Root‐Race__] descended from the first __“__Sweat‐
> born.__”__ Therefore it is represented under the symbol [Symbol: circle
> with horizontal line through it] [the circle and diameter], during the
> Third [Race], and [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and
> another from center to bottom], during the Fourth._
> 
> This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle,
> stands for female Nature; for the first ideal World, _self‐generated_ and
> _self‐impregnated_ by the universally diffused Spirit of Life—thus also
> referring to the primitive Root‐Race. It becomes androgynous as the Races
> and all else on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the symbol is
> transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a vertical line,
> expressive of male and female, not separated as yet—the first and earliest
> Egyptian Tau; [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and another
> from center to bottom] after which it becomes ☩, or male female
> separated(50) and fallen into generation. Venus (the Planet), is
> symbolized by the sign of a globe over a cross, which shows the former as
> presiding over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians symbolized
> Ankh, “life,” by the ansated cross, or ☥, which is only another form of
> Venus (Isis), ♀, and meant, Esoterically, that mankind and all animal life
> had stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and had fallen into
> physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third
> Race, has the same phallic significance as the “_Tree_ of Life” in Eden.
> Anouki, a form of Isis, is the Goddess of Life; and Ankh was taken by the
> Hebrews from the Egyptians. It was introduced into the language by Moses,
> one learned in the Wisdom of the priests of Egypt, with many other
> mystical words. The word Ankh in Hebrew, with the personal suffix, means
> “my life”—my being—which “is the personal pronoun Anochi,” from the name
> of the Egyptian Goddess Anouki.(51)
> 
> In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras
> Presidency, the hermaphrodite Goddess Ardhanârî,(52) has the ansated
> cross, the Svastika, the “male and female sign,” right in the central
> part, to denote the pre‐sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now
> represented with a lotus growing out of his navel—or the Universe of
> Brahmâ evolving out of the central point, Nara—is shown in one of the
> oldest carvings as double‐sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmî) standing on a lotus‐
> leaf floating on the water, the water rising in a semicircle and pouring
> through the Svastika, “the source of generation,” or of the descent of
> man.
> 
> Pythagoras calls Shukra‐Venus the _Sol alter_, the “other Sun.” Of the
> “seven Palaces of the Sun,” that of Lucifer‐Venus is the third in
> Christian and Jewish Kabalah, the _Zohar_ making of it the abode of
> Samael. According to the Occult Doctrine, this Planet is our Earth’s
> _primary_, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Shukra’s car (Venus‐
> Lucifer’s) is said to be drawn by an _Ogdoad_ of “_earth‐born_ horses,”
> while the steeds of the chariots of the other Planets are different.
> 
> _Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Ushanas‐Shukra. The Guru of the
> Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on
> Shukra is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth._
> 
> Shukra, or Venus, is thus represented as the Preceptor of the Daityas, the
> giants of the Fourth Race, who, in the Hindû allegory, at one time
> obtained the sovereignty of all the Earth, and defeated the minor Gods.
> The Titans of the Western allegory also are as closely connected with
> Venus‐Lucifer, which was identified by later Christians with Satan. And,
> as Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with cow’s horns on her head,
> the symbol of mystic Nature—one convertible with, and significant of, the
> Moon, since all these were lunar Goddesses—the configuration of this
> Planet is now placed by theologians between the horns of the mystic
> Lucifer.(53) It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the archaic
> tradition, which states that Venus changes simultaneously (geologically)
> with the Earth, that whatever takes place on the one takes place on the
> other, and that many and great were their common changes—it is for these
> reasons that St. Augustine repeats it, applying the several changes of
> configuration, colour, and even of the orbital paths, to that
> theologically‐woven character of Venus‐Lucifer. He even goes so far in his
> pious fancy as to connect the last changes of the Planet with the Noachian
> and mythical Deluge alleged to have taken place 1796 B.C.(54)
> 
> As Venus has no satellites, it is stated allegorically, that Âsphujit
> (this “Planet”) adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, “_who overgrew
> its parent and gave much trouble_”—a reference to the Occult connection
> between the two. The Regent (of the Planet) Shukra(55) loved his adopted
> child so well that he incarnated as Ushanas and gave it perfect laws,
> which were disregarded and rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in
> the _Harivansha_, is that Shukra went to Shiva and asked him to protect
> his pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from the fighting Gods; and that to
> further his object he performed a Yoga rite “imbibing the _smoke_ of chaff
> with his _head downwards_ for 1,000 years.” This refers to the great
> inclination of the axis of Venus—amounting to fifty degrees—and to its
> being enveloped in eternal clouds. But it relates only to the physical
> constitution of the Planet. It is with its Regent, the informing Dhyân
> Chohan, that Occult Mysticism has to deal. The allegory which states that
> Vishnu was cursed by Shukra to be _reborn seven times_ on the Earth as a
> punishment for killing his (Shukra’s) mother, is full of Occult
> philosophical meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu’s Avatâras, since these
> number nine—the tenth being still to come—but to the Races on Earth.
> Venus, or Lucifer—also Shukra and Ushanas—the Planet, is the light‐bearer
> of our Earth, in both the physical and mystic sense. The Christians knew
> it well in early times, since one of the earliest popes of Rome is known
> by his pontiff‐name as Lucifer.
> 
> _Every world has its parent Star and sister Planet. Thus Earth is the
> adopted, child and younger brother of Venus, but its inhabitants are of
> their own kind.... All sentient complete beings [full septenary men or
> higher beings] are furnished, in their beginnings, with forms and
> organisms in full harmony with the nature and state of the Sphere they
> inhabit._(56)
> 
> _The Spheres of Being, or Centres of Life, which are isolated nuclei
> breeding their men and their animals, are numberless; not one has any
> resemblance to its sister‐companion or to any other in its own special
> progeny._(57)
> 
> _All have a double physical and spiritual nature._
> 
> _The nucleoles are eternal and everlasting; the nuclei periodical and
> finite. The nucleoles form part of the Absolute. They are the embrasures
> of that black impenetrable fortress, which is for ever concealed from
> human or even Dhyânic sight. The nuclei are the light of eternity escaping
> therefrom._
> 
> _It is that __LIGHT__ which condenses into the Forms of the __“__Lords of
> Being__”__—the first and the highest of which are, collectively,
> __JÎVÂTMÂ__, or Pratyagâtmâ [which is said figuratively to issue from
> Paramâtmâ. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers—appearing at the
> beginning of every new Manvantara]. From these downwards—formed from the
> ever‐consolidating waves of that Light, which becomes on the objective
> plane gross Matter—proceed the numerous Hierarchies of the Creative
> Forces; some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others,
> again, the lowest [Elementals], having no form of their own, but assuming
> every form according to the surrounding conditions._
> 
> _Thus there is but one Absolute Upâdhi [Basis] in the spiritual sense,
> from, on, and in which, are built for manvantaric purposes the countless
> basic centres on which proceed the universal, cyclic, and individual
> Evolutions during the active period._
> 
> _The informing Intelligences, which animate these various Centres of
> Being, are referred to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great
> Range_(_58_)_ as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris,_(_59_)_ the Prajâpati,
> and so on; and as Dhyâni‐Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas [Fire‐Gods],
> Bodhisattvas,_(_60_)_ and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call
> them Gods; the learned profane, the One God; and the wise, the Initiates,
> honour in them only the manvantaric manifestations of __THAT__ which
> neither our Creators [the Dhyân Chohans] nor their creatures can ever
> discuss or know anything about. The __ABSOLUTE__ is not to be defined, and
> no mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods
> of Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which
> lives perceive Absolute Life._
> 
> “Therefore, man cannot know higher Beings than his own Progenitors.” “_Nor
> shall he worship them_,” but he ought to learn _how_ he came into the
> world.
> 
> Number Seven, the fundamental figure among all other figures in every
> national religious system, from Cosmogony down to man, must have its
> _raison d’être_. It is found among the ancient Americans, as prominently
> as among the archaic Âryans and Egyptians. The question will be fully
> dealt with in the second Part of this Volume; meanwhile a few facts may be
> given here. Says the author of the _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and
> the Quiches, 11,500 years ago_:(61)
> 
>     Seven seems to have been the sacred number _par excellence_ among
>     all civilized nations of antiquity. Why? This query has never been
>     satisfactorily answered. Each separate people has given a
>     different explanation, according to the peculiar tenets of their
>     [exoteric] religion. That it was the number of numbers for those
>     initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt.
>     Pythagoras ... calls it the “Vehicle of life,” containing body and
>     soul, since it is formed of a quaternary, that is: _Wisdom and
>     Intellect_; and a Trinity, or _action_ and _matter_. The Emperor
>     Julian, in _Matrem_ and in _Oratio_,(62) expresses himself thus:
>     “Were I to touch upon the initiation into our secret mysteries,
>     which the Chaldees bacchized respecting the _seven‐rayed_ god,
>     lighting up the soul through him, I should say things unknown to
>     the rabble, very unknown, but well known to the blessed
>     Theurgists.”(63)
> 
> And who that is acquainted with the _Purânas_, the _Book of the Dead_, the
> _Zendavesta_, the Assyrian Tiles, and finally the _Bible_, and has
> observed the constant occurrence of the number seven in these records of
> people from the remotest times upwards unconnected and so far apart, can
> regard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same explorer of
> ancient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic number,
> among the inhabitants of the “Western Continent” of America, he adds that
> it is not less remarkable. For:
> 
>     It frequently occurs in the _Popul‐Vuh_. We find it besides in the
>     _seven families_ said by Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied
>     the mystical personage named _Votan_, the reputed founder of the
>     great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the
>     _seven caves_(64) from which the ancestors of the Nahualts are
>     reported to have emerged. In the _seven cities_ of Cibola,
>     described by Coronado and Niza.... In the _seven Antilles_; in the
>     _seven heroes_ who, we are told, escaped the Deluge.
> 
> Heroes, moreover, whose number is found the same in every Deluge
> story—from the seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to
> Noah’s ark, into which beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by
> “sevens.” Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because
> thoroughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and
> evolution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called “celestial
> numbers” in the canonical “Book of Changes”—_Yi King_, or
> _transformation_, as in “evolution.”
> 
> The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient
> Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from
> the Archaic Manuscript in the Proem of Volume I. [Symbol: circle with
> horizontal line through it, and another from center to bottom], the symbol
> of evolution and fall into generation or Matter, is reflected in the old
> Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the Kabalistic Sephiroth, and
> the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MS. (_Add. MSS._ Brit. Mus.
> 9789)(65); you will find it in a tree whose trunk is covered with _ten_
> fruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it,
> while from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the
> right and left, thus forming a perfect Τ (Tau), the ends of the two
> branches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird—the bird of
> immortality, Âtmâ or the Divine Spirit—sitting between the two, and thus
> making the _seventh_. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal
> Tree, _ten_ in all, yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving
> _seven_. These are the celestial fruits, the ten, or [Symbol: circle with
> “i” inside], 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds,
> making up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system
> contains the ·, the central point; the 3, or [symbol: triangle]; the 5,
> [symbol: 5‐point star]; and the 7, or [symbol: triangle in square]; or
> again [symbol: 6‐point star]; the triangle in the square and the
> synthesizing point in the interlaced double triangles. This for the world
> of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its culmination and the
> reflex of all in MAN. Therefore he is the mystic square—in his
> metaphysical aspect—the Tetraktys; and becomes the Cube on the creative
> plane. His symbol is the cube unfolded(66) and 6 becoming 7, or the
> [Symbol: cross], 3 crossways (the female) and 4 vertically; and this is
> man, the culmination of the deity on earth, whose body is the cross of
> flesh, _on_, _through_, and _in_ which he is ever crucifying and putting
> to death the divine Logos, or his HIGHER SELF. Says every Philosophy and
> Cosmogony:
> 
>     The universe hath a Ruler [Rulers collectively] set over it, which
>     is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen:
>     which two are the First Power after the ONE.
> 
> These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our Illusory Universe. The
> two inseparables remain in the _Universe of Ideas_ so long as it lasts,
> and then merge back into Parabrahman, the One ever changeless. “The
> Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self‐existent,” emanates a pure
> ethereal Light—a dual light not perceptible to the elementary
> senses—according to the _Purânas_, the _Bible_, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, the
> Greek and Latin Hymns, the _Book of Hermes_, the Chaldæan _Book of
> Numbers_, the Esotericism of Lao‐tse, and everywhere else. In the Kabalah,
> which explains the secret meaning of _Genesis_, this Light is the Dual‐
> Man, or the Androgyne (rather Sexless) Angels, whose generic name is Adam
> Kadmon. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by
> other divine, but far lower Beings, who solidify the body with clay, or
> the “dust of the ground”—an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any
> Darwinian evolution and more _true_.
> 
> The author of the _Source of Measures_ says that the foundation of the
> Kabalah and of all its mystic books is made to rest upon the _ten_
> Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth. He shows these Ten Sephiroth or
> the 10 Numbers as follows:
> 
> [Illustration: Circle with numbers 2 through 9, and vertical line through
>                                    it]
> 
> The circle is the _naught_; its vertical diameter line is the first or
> primal _One_ [the Word or Logos], from which spring the 2, the 3, and so
> on to 9, the limit of the digits. The 10 is the first Divine
> Manifestation,(67) which contains every possible power of exact expression
> of proportion—the sacred _Jod_. By this Cabbalah we are taught that these
> Sephiroth were the _numbers_ or emanations of the heavenly Light (20612 to
> 6561), they were the 10 Words, DBRIM, 41224, the light of which they were
> the flux was the Heavenly man, the Adam‐KDM (the 144‐144); and the Light,
> by the New Testament or Covenant (41224) created God; just as by the Old
> Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates Light (20612 to 6561).(68)
> 
> Now there are three kinds of Light in Occultism, as in the Kabalah. (1)
> The Abstract and Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the
> Manifested‐Unmanifested, called by some the Logos: and (3) The latter
> Light reflected in the Dhyân Chohans, the minor Logoi—the Elohim,
> collectively—who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But in
> the Kabalah—reëdited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by
> the Kabalists of the thirteenth century—the three Lights are described as:
> (1) The clear and penetrating, that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and
> (3) light _in the abstract_.
> 
>     This Light, abstractly taken, (in a metaphysical or symbolical
>     sense) is Alhim (Elohim, God), while the clear penetrating Light
>     is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in general, in
>     its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that
>     pertaining to the chiefest production, man, whom this light
>     penetrated to and made.(69)
> 
> The author of the _Source of Measures_ pertinently refers the reader to
> Inman’s _Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names_, ii. 648. There, an
> engraving of
> 
>     The _vesica piscis_, Mary, and the female emblem, copied from a
>     Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, which was printed at Venice,
>     1542,
> 
> and therefore, as Inman remarks, “with a licence from the Inquisition, and
> consequently orthodox,” will show the reader what the Latin Church
> understood by this “penetrating power of light and its effects.” How sadly
> disfigured—applied as they were to the grossest anthropomorphic
> conceptions—have, under Christian interpretation, become the noblest and
> grandest, as the most exalted, ideas of Deity of the Eastern Philosophy!
> 
> The Occultists in the East call this Light Daiviprakriti, and in the West
> the Light of Christos. It is the Light of the Logos, the direct reflection
> of the ever Unknowable on the plane of Universal Manifestation. But here
> is the interpretation thereof given by the modern Christians from the
> Kabalah. As declared by the author just cited;
> 
>     To the fulness of the world in general with its chiefest content,
>     man, the term Elohim‐Jehovah applies. In extracts from Sohar, the
>     Rev. Dr. Cassell [a Kabalist], to prove that the Cabbalah sets
>     forth the doctrine of the Trinity, among other things says:
>     “Jehovah is Elohim (Alhim)” ... By _three_ steps God, (Alhim) and
>     Jehovah become the same, and though separated, each and together
>     they are of the same One.(70)
> 
> Similarly, Vishnu becomes the Sun, the visible symbol of the Impersonal
> Deity. Vishnu is described as “striding through the seven regions of the
> Universe in _three steps_.” But with the Hindûs this is an _exoteric_
> account, a surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out
> as the Esoteric and final meaning. But to proceed:
> 
>     Now Light, as shown, is 20612 to 6561, as the proper enunciation
>     of the integral and numerical relation of diameter to
>     circumference of a circle. God (Alhim, that is, 31415 to One, a
>     modified form of the above) is the reduction of this, so as to
>     obtain a standard unit _One_, as the basis, in general, of all
>     calculation and all mensuration. But for the production of animal
>     life, and for especial _time measure_, or the lunar year, that
>     influence which causes conception and embryotic development, the
>     numbers of the Jehovah measure (the “_man even Jehovah_” measure),
>     viz., 113 to 355, have to be specialized.(71) But this last ratio
>     is but a modified form of Light, or 20612 to 6561, as a _pi
>     value_, being only a variation of the same (that is 20612 to 6561
>     is 31415 to one, and 355 to 113 is 31415 or Alhim or God), and in
>     such a manner that one can be made to flow into and be derived
>     from the other:—and these are the three steps by which the _Unity_
>     and sameness can be shown of the Divine names. That is, the two
>     are but variations of the same ratio, viz., that of _pi_. The
>     object of this comment is to show the same symbolic measuring use
>     for the Cabbalah, as taught, with that of the Three Covenants of
>     the _Bible_, and with that of Masonry as just noticed.
> 
>     First, then, the Sephiroth are described as _Light_, that is, they
>     themselves are a function of, indeed, the same as, the
>     manifestation of the Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that
>     “_Light_” represents the ratio 20612 to 6561, as part of the
>     “Words,” DBRIM, 41224, or, as to the Word, Dabar, 206 (= 10
>     cubits). “_Light_” is so much the burden of the Cabbalah as to
>     explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the
>     Cabbalah is called _Sohar_, or “_Light_.” In this we find
>     expressions of this kind: “The infinite was entirely unknown and
>     diffused no light before the luminous point violently broke
>     through into vision.” “When He first assumed the form (of the
>     crown, or the first Sephira), He caused 9 splendid lights to
>     emanate from it, which, shining through it, diffused a bright
>     light in all directions:”—that is, these 9 with his one (which was
>     the origin, as above, of the 9), together, made the 10, that is
>     [Symbol: circle with vertical line through it], or [Symbol: circle
>     with “x” inside], or the sacred Ten (numbers or Sephiroth), or
>     _Jod_—and these numbers were “_the Light_.” Just as in the Gospel
>     of St. John, God (Alhim, 31415 to one) was that Light (20612 to
>     6561) by which (Light) all things were made.(72)
> 
> In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, or “Number of Creation,” the whole process of
> evolution is given out in numbers. In its “thirty‐two Paths of Wisdom” the
> number 3 is repeated four times, and the number 4 five times. Therefore,
> the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or Sephiroth), for
> Sepher (or S‐ph‐r when unvowelled) means “to cipher.” And therefore, also,
> we find Plato stating that the Deity “geometrizes” in fabricating the
> Universe.
> 
> The Kabalistic book, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, opens with a statement of the
> hidden wisdom of Alhim in Sephrim, _i.e._, the Elohim in the Sephiroth.
> 
>     In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, IHVH,
>     Tzabaoth, Elohi of Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and
>     Mercy—exalted uplifted Dweller on high, and King of Everlasting,
>     and His name—Holy! in Three Sephrim, viz.:
> 
>     B—S’ph‐r, V—S’ph‐r, V—Siph‐o‐r.
> 
> Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:
> 
>     This comment sets forth the “_hidden wisdom_” of the original text
>     by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special
>     set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the
>     very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the
>     Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and
>     to finish out his detailed exposition in a general
>     postulate,—viz., the one word “_Sephrim_” (_Sephiroth_), of the
>     Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in
>     the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, _s‐ph‐r_,
>     or number.
> 
>     The prince Al‐Chazari(73) says to the Rabbi: “I wish now that thou
>     wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles
>     of _Natural Philosophy_, which, as thou sayest, were in former
>     times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);”—to which the
>     Rabbi makes answer: “To such principles appertains the Number of
>     Creation of our race‐father Abraham” that is Abram and Abraham, or
>     numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number
>     treats of teaching the “_Alhim_‐ness and _One_‐ness through
>     (DBRIM)” viz., the numbers of the word “_Words_.” That is, it
>     teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which
>     last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided
>     into two parts by the _two_ tables of stone, on which these DBRIM,
>     or 41224, were written or engraved—or 20612 × 2. He then comments
>     on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one
>     of them to make the comment, “and _Alhim_ (31415 to One) said let
>     there be Light (20612 to 6561).”
> 
>     The words as given in the text are:
> 
>     ספר ספר סיפור
> 
>     and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: “It teaches the
>     _Alhim_‐ness (31415) and _One_‐ness (the diameter to Alhim),
>     through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is
>     infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a
>     final harmonic tendency to _One_‐ness” (which, as everyone knows,
>     is the mathematical function of _pi_ of the schools, which
>     measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet
>     resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni‐verse)
>     “through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that
>     _One_‐ness that ordains them, and which consists in
> 
>     ספר ספר ספור ”
> 
>     that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the _jod_, or
>     _i_, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it
>     again. If we take the values of those subordinate words, we find
>     them to be 340, 340 and 346;—together these are 1026, and the
>     division of the general word into these has been to produce these
>     numbers—which by T’mura may be changed in various ways, for
>     various purposes.(74)
> 
> The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and
> Commentary,(75) to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065,
> the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the
> _Mahâbhârata_, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And
> this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the
> anthropomorphic Creator of _exoteric_ Judaism (since the _Esotericism_ of
> the Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the
> student to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a “lunar”
> and “generation” God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious
> student of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he
> feels convinced that unless the Kabalah—or what is left of it—is read by
> the light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the
> discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity,
> the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry,
> now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat
> that Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be
> comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless
> and negative. Hence the Ain Suph—the “Unknowable” and “UNNAMEABLE”—as It
> could not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers.
> It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can,
> deal. Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and
> replaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out
> of _nothing_, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between
> Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An _extra_‐cosmic God is
> fatal to Philosophy: an _intra_‐cosmic Deity—_i.e._, Spirit and Matter
> inseparable from each other—is a philosophical necessity. Separate them
> and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of
> emotionalism. But why “geometrize,” as Plato has it, why represent these
> Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question
> is well answered by the author just cited, who says:
> 
>     Mental perception, to become physical perception, must have the
>     cosmic principle of _Light_:—and, by this, our mental circle must
>     become visible through light; or, for its complete manifestation,
>     the circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself.
> 
>     Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the ground‐work of the
>     philosophy of the Divine manifesting in the universe.(76)
> 
> This is Philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in _Al‐Chazari_
> saying that:
> 
>     Under s’ph‐r is to be understood—_calculation_ and _weighing_ of
>     the created bodies. For the _calculation_, by means of which a
>     body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by which it must
>     be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the
>     object in design, consists at last in _number_, _extension_,
>     _mass_, _weight_;—co‐ordinate relation of movements, then harmony
>     of music, must consist altogether _by number_, that is s’ph‐r....
>     By Sippor (s’phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim (206—1
>     of 31415 to one), whereunto joins or adapts itself the design to
>     the frame or form of construction; for example—it was said “Let
>     Light be.” The work became as the _words_ were spoken, that is, as
>     the numbers of the work came forth.(77)
> 
> This is _materializing_ the _spiritual_ without scruple. But the Kabalah
> was not always so well adapted to anthropo‐monotheistic conceptions.
> Compare this with any of the six schools of India. For instance in
> Kapila’s Sânkhya Philosophy, unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha
> mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while
> the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must
> become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and
> the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness
> gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal
> forms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man.
> Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as “man,” but has
> to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever‐changing forms. _Evolution_,
> not _Creation_, by means of _Words_ is recognized in the Philosophies of
> the East, even in their exoteric records. _Ex oriente lux._ Even the name
> of the first man in the Mosaic _Bible_ had its origin in India, Professor
> Max Müller’s negation notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from
> Chaldæa; and Adam‐Adami is a compound word and therefore a manifold
> symbol, and proves the Occult dogmas.
> 
> This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be
> reminded that the words _Ad_ and _Adi_ mean in Sanskrit the “first”; in
> Aramæan, “one” (_Ad‐ad_, the “only one”); in Assyrian, “Father,” whence
> _Ak‐ad_ or “father‐creator.”(78) And once the statement is found correct,
> it becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic _Bible_ alone,
> and to see therein simply a Jewish name.
> 
> There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the Gods
> in their Theogonies, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that
> symbolical science, as given to the world by the half‐initiated writers,
> Brâhmanical and Biblical. Yet there could be no such confusion made by the
> earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the Divine Instructors;
> for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with
> cosmogonical symbols, the “Gods” being the life and animating “soul‐
> principle” of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no
> people was speculation allowed to range _beyond_ those _manifested_ Gods.
> The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin
> forbidden soil, untrodden by man’s thought, untouched by fruitless
> speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its
> diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or
> dilatation, and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable
> myriads of Systems and Worlds disappearing and reäppearing in eternity,
> the anthropomorphized Powers, or Gods, their Souls, had to disappear from
> view with their Bodies. As our _Catechism_ says:
> 
> “_The Breath returning to the Eternal Bosom which exhales and inhales
> them_.”
> 
> Ideal Nature, the Abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is
> mysteriously and invisibly generated, is the same female side of the
> procreative power in Nature in the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony.
> Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia of the Gnostics, and Isis, the Virgin
> Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the “Creative”
> Deity, there is a Superior Deity, a Planner, an Architect, of whom the
> Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, _over_ and _around_,
> _within_ and _without_, there is the Unknowable and the _Unknown_, the
> Source and Cause of all these Emanations.
> 
> It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why Adam‐Adami is found in
> the Chaldæan scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In
> Assyrian _Ad_ is the “father,” and in Aramæan _Ad_ is “one,” and _Ad‐ad_
> the “only one,” while _Ak_ is in Assyrian “creator.” Thus _Ad‐am‐ak‐ad‐
> mon_ became Adam‐Kadmon in the Kabalah (_Zohar_), meaning as it did, the
> “One (Son) of the divine Father, or the Creator,” for the words _am_ and
> _om_ meant at one time in nearly every language the _divine_, or the
> _deity_. Thus Adam‐Kadmon and Adam‐Adami came to mean “The first Emanation
> of the Father‐Mother or Divine Nature,” and literally the “first Divine
> One.” And it is easy to see that _Ad_‐Argat (or Aster’t, the Syrian
> Goddess, the consort of _Ad‐on_, the Lord God of Syria or the Jewish
> Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ister, Mylitta, Eve, etc., are identical with
> the Aditi and Vâch of the Hindûs. They are all the “Mothers of all living”
> and “of the Gods.” On the other hand—cosmically and astronomically—all the
> male Gods became at first “Sun‐Gods,” then, theologically, the “Suns of
> Righteousness,” and the Logoi, all symbolized by the Sun.(79) They are all
> Protogonoi—First‐born—and Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam‐Kadmon was the
> same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks—“the One _with_, and
> _of_ his Father”—the “Father” becoming during the later Races Helios, the
> Sun, as Apollo Karneios,(80) for instance, who was the “Sun‐born”; Osiris,
> Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves transformed
> later on into, still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified
> of Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, Sun‐Gods and Heroes, until
> all of them came to have no better significance than phallic symbols.
> 
> In the _Zohar_ it is said:
> 
>     Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim‐Javeh, also) and they
>     engendered by common power the _earthly_ Adam.
> 
> Therefore in _Genesis_ the Elohim say: “Behold Man is become _as one of
> us_.” But in Hindû Cosmogony or “Creation,” Brahmâ‐Prajâpati _creates_
> Virâj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are distinctly
> called the “Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ”; and this specified mode of
> _engendering_ precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the
> earlier human nations. This instance well illustrates the respective
> _spirituality_ of the two nations.
> 
> 3. SAID THE LORD OF THE SHINING FACE: “I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY
> WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; APPLY TO THY FATHER,
> THE LORD OF THE LOTUS(81) (_A_), FOR HIS SONS.... THY PEOPLE SHALL BE
> UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS.(82) THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF
> THE LORD OF WISDOM,(83) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA,(84) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY
> COMPLAINTS (_B_). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE.... THOU ART NOT READY.
> THY MEN ARE NOT READY” (_C_).
> 
> (_a_) Kumuda‐Pati is the Moon, the Earth’s parent, in his region of Soma‐
> loka. Though the Pitris, or Fathers, are Sons of the Gods, elsewhere Sons
> of Brahmâ and even Rishis, they are generally known as the Lunar
> Ancestors.
> 
> (_b_) Pitri‐Pati is the Lord or King of the Pitris, Yama, the God of Death
> and the Judge of mortals. The men of Budha, Mercury, are metaphorically
> “immortal” through their Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who
> credit every Star or Planet with being inhabited—and there are men of
> Science, M. Flammarion among others, who believe in this fervently, on
> logical as well as on astronomical data. The Moon being an inferior
> body—even to the Earth, to say nothing of other Planets, the terrestrial
> men produced by her Sons—the Lunar Men or Ancestors—from her shell or
> body, cannot be immortal. They cannot hope to become real, self‐conscious
> and intelligent men, unless they are “finished,” so to say, by other
> creators. Thus in the Purânic legend, the son of the Moon (Soma) is Budha
> (Mercury), the intelligent and the wise, because he is the offspring of
> Soma, the Regent of the visible Moon, not of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus
> Mercury is the elder brother of the Earth, metaphorically—his step‐
> brother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit—while she (the Earth) is the
> progeny of the Body. These allegories have a deeper and more scientific
> meaning—astronomically and geologically—than our modern Physicists are
> willing to admit. The whole cycle of the first “War in Heaven,” the
> Târakâ‐maya, is as full of philosophical as of cosmogonical and
> astronomical truths. One can trace therein the biographies of all the
> Planets by the history of their Gods and Rulers. Ushanas (Shukra, or
> Venus), the bosom‐friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the
> “Instructor of the Gods,” whose wife Târâ, or Tarakâ, had been carried
> away by the Moon, Soma—“of whom he begat Budha”—took also an active part
> in this war against the “Gods” and forthwith was degraded into a Demon
> (Asura) Deity, and so he remains to this day.(85)
> 
> Here the word “men” refers to the Celestial men, or what are called in
> India the Pitaras or Pitris, the Fathers, the Progenitors of men. This
> does not remove the seeming difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of
> the teaching, which shows these Progenitors or Ancestors creating the
> first human Adams out of their sides, as astral shadows. And though it is
> an improvement on Adam’s rib, still geological and climatic difficulties
> will be brought forward. Such, however, is the teaching of Occultism.
> 
> (_c_) Man’s organism was adapted in every Race to its surroundings. The
> first Root‐Race was as ethereal as ours is material. The progeny of the
> Seven Creators, who evolved the Seven Primordial Adams,(86) surely
> required no purified gases to breathe and live upon. Therefore, however
> strongly the impossibility of this teaching may be urged by the devotees
> of Modern Science, the Occultist maintains that the case was as stated
> _æons of years_ before even the evolution of the Lemurian, the first
> physical man, which took place 18,000,000 years ago. Archaic Scripture
> teaches that at the commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the Earth
> is reborn, and preliminary evolution is described in one of the _Books of
> Dzyan_ and the Commentaries thereon in this wise:
> 
> “_As the human Jîva [Monad], when passing into a new womb, gets recovered
> with a new body, so does the Jîva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and
> solid covering with each Round after reëmerging once more from the matrix
> of space into objectivity._”
> 
> This process is attended, of course, by the throes of the new birth, or
> geological convulsions.
> 
> The only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the
> _Book of Dzyan_ before us, where it says:
> 
> 4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE(87) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW
> SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE.
> 
> This refers to the growth of the Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of
> the First Round it is said in the Commentary:
> 
> “_After the changeless [Avikâra] immutable Nature [Essence, Sadaikarûpa]
> had awakened and changed [differentiated] into [a state of] causality
> [Avyakta], and from cause [Kârana] had become its own discrete effect
> [Vyakta], from invisible it became visible. The smallest of the small [the
> most atomic of atoms, or anîyânsam anîyasâm] became one and the many
> [Ekânekarûpa]; and producing the Universe produced also the fourth Loka
> [our Earth] in the garland of the seven lotuses. The Achyuta then became
> the Chyuta._”(88)
> 
> The Earth is said to cast off “her old _three_” Skins, because this refers
> to the three preceding Rounds she has already passed through; the present
> being the Fourth Round out of the seven. At the beginning of every new
> Round, after a period of Obscuration, the Earth—as do also the other six
> “Earths”—casts off, or is supposed to cast off, her old Skins as the
> Serpent does; therefore she is called in the _Aitareya‐Brâhmana_ the
> Sarpa‐Râjnî, the “Queen of the Serpents,” and “the mother of all that
> moves.” The “Seven Skins,” in the first of which she now stands, refer to
> the seven geological changes which accompany and correspond to the
> evolution of the Seven Root‐Races of Humanity.
> 
> Stanza II, which speaks of this Round, begins with a few words of
> information concerning the age of our Earth. The chronology will be given
> in its place. In the Commentary appended to the Stanza, two personages are
> mentioned, Nârada and Asuramaya, especially the latter. All the
> calculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and what follows
> will make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these figures.
> 
> Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
> 
> To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are
> indissolubly connected with mystic Astronomy, Chronology, and their
> cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like two giants in the
> Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to Yugas and
> Kalpas. When, at what period of pre‐history they lived, none save a few
> men in the world know, or ever can know, with that certainty which is
> required by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may
> have been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The
> mystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic
> East speaks of Nârada, the old Vedic Rishi, and of Asuramaya, the
> Atlantean.
> 
> It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in
> the _Mahâbhârata_ and the _Purânas_, Nârada, the son of Brahmâ in the
> _Matsya Purâna_, the progeny of Kashyapa and the daughter of Daksha, in
> the _Vishnu Purâna_, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the
> honourable title of Deva‐Rishi (Divine Rishi, rather than Demi‐God) by
> Parâshara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and even by Brahmâ. He informs
> Kansha that Bhagavân, or Vishnu in exotericism, would incarnate in the
> eighth child of Devakî, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian Herod upon
> Krishna’s mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated—invisible
> as a true Mânasaputra—he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatâr’s feat of
> killing the monster Keshin. Nârada is here, there, and everywhere; and
> yet, none of the _Purânas_ gives the true characteristics of this great
> enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in
> Hindû Esotericism, Nârada—who is called in Cis‐Himâlayan Occultism Pesh‐
> Hun, the “Messenger,” or the Greek Angelos—is the sole confidant and the
> executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi‐Budha: a kind of active
> and ever‐incarnating Logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the
> beginning to the end of the Kalpa.
> 
> Pesh‐Hun is a general not a special Hindû possession. He is the mysterious
> guiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the
> impetus of Cycles, Kalpas and universal events.(89) He is Karma’s visible
> adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest
> heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some
> very uncomplimentary names; such as Kali‐kâraka, Strife‐maker, Kapi‐
> vaktra, Monkey‐faced, and even Pishuna, the Spy, though elsewhere he is
> called Deva‐Brahmâ. Even Sir William Jones was strongly impressed with
> this mysterious character from what he gathered in his Sanskrit studies.
> He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and calls him “the eloquent
> messenger of the gods.”(90) All this, besides the fact that the Hindûs
> believe him to be a great Rishi, “who is for ever wandering about the
> earth, giving good counsel,” led the late Dr. Kenealy(91) to see in him
> one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track
> as some imagine.
> 
> What Nârada _really_ is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the
> modern generations of the profane gather much from the information. But it
> may be remarked, that if there be in the Hindû Pantheon a Deity which
> resembles Jehovah, in tempting by “suggestion” of thoughts, and
> “hardening” of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and
> victims, it is Nârada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a
> pretext for “plaguing,” and thus showing that “_I am_ the Lord God.” Nor
> is it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and
> guide universal progress and evolution.
> 
> Nârada is one of the few prominent characters, if we except some Gods, in
> the _Purânas_, who visit the so‐called nether or infernal regions, Pâtâla.
> Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand‐headed
> Shesha, the Serpent who bears the Seven Pâtâlas and the entire world like
> a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of Astronomy,(92)
> that Nârada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses
> Garga’s Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has
> charge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on
> wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas, Pesh‐Hun is credited
> with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic Cycles
> to come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the
> starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his
> astronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of
> all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of all the
> Cycles to come, till the end of this Life‐Cycle, or the end of the Seventh
> Race.
> 
> There is a work among the Secret Books, called the _Mirror of Futurity_,
> wherein all the Kalpas within Kalpas, and Cycles within the bosom of
> Shesha, or infinite Time, are recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh‐Hun‐
> Nârada. There is another old work which is attributed to various
> Atlanteans. It is these two records which furnish us with the figures of
> our Cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of Cycles to come.
> The chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however,
> those of the Brâhmans, as explained further on: but most of them are also
> those of the Secret Doctrine.
> 
> The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates are based upon
> the zodiacal records of India, and the works of the above‐mentioned
> Astronomer and Magician—Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot
> err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught
> Astronomy, among other things, to mankind.
> 
> But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty.
> We shall be told that our statement is contradicted by Science, in the
> person of a man regarded as a great authority (in the West) upon all
> subjects of Sanskrit literature—Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin. This,
> to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to maintain what
> is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the
> earliest Astronomer in Âryâvarta, one to whom “the Sun‐God imparted the
> knowledge of the stars,” _in propriâ personâ_, as Dr. Weber himself
> states, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the
> “Ptolemaios” of the Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this
> identification than that:
> 
>     This latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of
>     Piyadasi, became the Indian “Turamaya,” out of which the name
>     “Asura Maya” might very easily grow.
> 
> No doubt it “might,” but the vital question is: Are there any good proofs
> that it _has_ thus grown? The only evidence that is given for this is,
> that it _must_ be so:
> 
>     Since ... this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka‐pura in the
>     West.(93)
> 
> The Mâyâ is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans can tell where
> that locality of Romaka‐pura was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere
> “in the West.” In any case, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or
> Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brâhmanical teaching, it is
> useless to take the objections of European Orientalists into
> consideration. Romaka‐pura was “in the West,” certainly, since it was part
> and parcel of the lost continent of Atlantis. And it is equally certain
> that it is Atlantis, to which is assigned in the Hindû _Purânas_ the
> birth‐place of Asuramaya, “as great a Magician as he was an Astrologer and
> an Astronomer.” Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great
> antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the
> Hindûs never knew of a Zodiac at all till
> 
>     They had borrowed one from the Greeks.(94)
> 
> This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must
> therefore be ignored. We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the
> learned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work,
> that:
> 
>     In addition to the natural obstacles which impede investigation
>     [in India], there still prevails a dense mist of prejudice and
>     preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as
>     with a veil.(95)
> 
> Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have
> been led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better now.
> 
> Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who
> flourished in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or that which he is
> claimed to be by the Occultists, in any case his calculations agree
> entirely with those of the Secret Records.
> 
> From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean
> Astronomer, and found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere mentioned
> was compiled by two very learned Brâhmans(96) in 1884 and 1885. The work
> is proclaimed by the best Pandits as faultless—from the Brâhmanical
> standpoint—and thus far relates to the chronology of the orthodox
> teachings. If we compare its statements with those made several years
> earlier in _Isis Unveiled_, with the fragmentary teachings published by
> some Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books
> of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some
> details which may not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation—as
> unknown to the writer as they are to the reader—would have to be revealed,
> and that _cannot be done_.
> 
> Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
> 
>     5. After enormous periods the Earth creates monsters. 6. The
>     “Creators” are displeased. 7. They dry the Earth. 8. The forms are
>     destroyed by them. 9. The first great tides. 10. The beginning of
>     incrustation.
> 
> 5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES MORE.(97) IT CONSTRUCTED RÛPAS;(98)
> SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED,(99) HARD PLANTS THAT SOFTENED.(100) VISIBLE
> FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES.(101) SHE(102) SHOOK THEM OFF HER
> BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (_A_).... AFTER THIRTY CRORES, SHE
> TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE.... SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS
> OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN
> BOSOM. SHE EVOLVED WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD (_B_).
> 
> (_a_) This relates to an inclination of the axis—of which there were
> several—to a consequent deluge and chaos on Earth (having, however, no
> reference to Primeval Chaos), in which monsters, half‐human, half‐animal,
> were generated. We find it mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_, and also
> in the Chaldæan account of creation, on the Cutha Tablets, however
> mutilated.
> 
> It is not even allegory. Here we have _facts_, that are found repeated in
> the account of the _Pymander_, as well as in the Chaldæan tablets of
> creation. The verses may almost be checked by the Cosmogony, as given by
> Berosus, which has been disfigured out of recognition by Eusebius, but
> some of the features of which may yet be found in fragments left by
> ancient Greek authors—Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc. “The water‐
> men terrible and bad”—who were the production of Physical Nature alone, a
> result of the “evolutionary impulse” and the first attempt to create
> “man,” the crown, and the aim and goal of all animal life on Earth—are
> shown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do we not find the same in the
> Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the culmination of
> heathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that things in
> the beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as
> maintained in the _Purânas_, the Egyptian and Chaldæan fragments, and even
> in _Genesis_, there have not been two, and even more, “creations,” before
> the last formation of the Globe; which, changing its geological and
> atmospheric conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men?
> This claim agrees not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with
> Modern Science, and even, to a certain degree, with the theory of
> evolution, as may be demonstrated in a few words.
> 
> There is no “Dark Creation,” no “Evil Dragon” conquered by a Sun‐God, in
> the earliest World‐Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the Great Deep—the
> Watery Abyss, or Space—was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the
> incognizable infinite Deity. But with the Semites and the later Chaldæans,
> the fathomless Deep of Wisdom becomes gross Matter, sinful substance, and
> Ea is changed into Tiamat, the Dragon slain by Merodach, or Satan, in the
> astral waves.
> 
> In the Hindû _Purânas_, Brahmâ, the Creator, is seen recommencing _de
> novo_ several “Creations” after as many failures; and two great Creations
> are mentioned,(103) the Pâdma and the Vârâha, the present, when the Earth
> was lifted out of the water by Brahmâ, in the shape of a Boar, the Varâha
> Avatâra. Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lîlâ) of the Creative
> God. The _Zohar_ speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as soon as
> they came into existence. And the same is said in the _Midraish_, Rabbi
> Abahu explaining distinctly(104) that “the Holy One” had successively
> created and destroyed sundry Worlds, before he succeeded in the present
> one. This does not relate only to other Worlds in Space, but to a mystery
> of our own Globe contained in the allegory about the “Kings of Edom.” For
> the words, “This one pleases me,” are repeated in _Genesis_,(105) though
> in disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldæan fragments of Cosmogony in the
> cuneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two distinct creations of
> animals and men, the first being destroyed, as it was a failure. The
> Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our actual creation was preceded by
> others;(106) and as shown by the author of _The Qabbalah_, in the _Zohar_,
> _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, in _Jovah Rabba_, 128a, etc., the Kabalah states the
> same.
> 
> (_b_) Oannes, or Dagon, the Chaldæan “Man‐fish,” divides his Cosmogony and
> Genesis into two portions. First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein
> resided most hideous beings—men with wings, four and two‐winged men, human
> beings with two heads, with the legs and horns of a goat—our “goat‐
> men”(107)—hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of men, and dogs with tails
> of fishes. In short, combinations of various animals and men, of fishes,
> reptiles and other monstrous animals, assuming each other’s shapes and
> countenances. The feminine element they resided in is personified by
> Thalatth—the Sea, or “Water”—which was finally conquered by Belus, the
> male principle. And Polyhistor says:
> 
>     Belus came, and cut the woman asunder; and of one half of her he
>     formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the
>     same time destroyed the animals within her.(108)
> 
> As pertinently remarked by Isaac Myer:
> 
>     With the Akkadians each object and power of Nature had its _Zi_ or
>     Spirit. The Akkadians formed their deities into triads, usually of
>     males [sexless, rather?], the Semites also had triadic deities,
>     but introduced sex(109)
> 
> —or phallicism. With the Âryan and the earliest Akkadians all things are
> emanations _through_, not _by_, a Creator or Logos. With the Semites
> everything is _begotten_.
> 
> 6. THE WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD, SHE HERSELF CREATED FROM THE REMAINS
> OF OTHERS.(110) FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER FIRST, SECOND, AND
> THIRD,(111) SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYÂNI CAME AND LOOKED.... THE DHYÂNI
> FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER‐MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE(112) REGIONS THEY(113) CAME,
> FROM THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL MORTALS (_A_).
> 
> (_a_) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that
> which the legend of creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were
> it complete. What is preserved on it, however, corroborates them. For, in
> the tablet, the “Lord of Angels” destroys the men in the abyss, when
> “there were not left the carcases and waste” after they were slaughtered.
> After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of
> the desert, human beings, “seven kings, brothers of the same family,”
> etc., which is a reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary
> ethereal bodies of men, which could fly as well as they could walk,(114)
> but who “were destroyed” because they were not “perfect,” _i.e._, they
> “were sexless, like the Kings of Edom.”
> 
> Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will Science say to this idea of
> a primordial creation of species? It will object to the “Angels” and
> “Spirits” having anything to do therewith; but if it be Nature and the
> physical law of evolution that are the creators of all there is now on
> Earth, why could there be “no such abyss,” when the Globe was covered with
> waters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the
> “human beings” and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a
> point of the objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved
> from the brute species by an infinite series of transformations, why could
> not the “missing links” have had human heads attached to the bodies of
> animals, or, being two‐headed, have heads of beasts and _vice versâ_, in
> Nature’s early efforts? Are we not shown, during the geological periods,
> in the ages of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds’ wings,
> and serpents’ heads on animal bodies?(115) And, arguing from the
> standpoint of Science, does not even our modern human race occasionally
> furnish us with monster‐specimens: two‐headed children, animal bodies with
> human heads, dog‐headed babies, etc.? And this proves that, if Nature will
> still play such freaks now that she has been settled for ages in the order
> of her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by Berosus, were
> a possibility in her opening programme; a possibility which may even have
> existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species and
> began regular work upon them. And this indeed now admits of definite proof
> by the bare fact of “Reversion,” as Science puts it.
> 
> This is what the Doctrine teaches, and demonstrates by numerous proofs.
> But we shall not wait for the approval of either dogmatic Theology or
> Materialistic Science, but proceed with the Stanzas. Let these speak for
> themselves, with the help of the light thrown on them by the Commentaries
> and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be
> considered later on.
> 
> Thus Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and
> man, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as
> well as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man,
> spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his
> creation, besides the “coats of skin” and the “breath of animal life.” The
> human Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely
> physical materials with which to build their personalities, under the
> penalty of remaining even below any “Frankenstein” animal.(116)
> 
> 7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. “OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE.(117) NO FIT RÛPAS FOR
> OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.(118) PURE WATERS,
> NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (_A_). LET US DRY THEM.”(119)
> 
> (_a_) Says the _Catechism_ on the Commentaries:
> 
> _It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical
> man at the new Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha [Spirits], possessed of
> a dual body [an Astral within an Ethereal Form]. They are the fashioners
> and creators of our body of illusion_....
> 
> _Into the forms projected by the Lha [Pitris] the Two Letters_(_120_)_
> [the Monad, called also the __“__Double Dragon__”__] descend from the
> Spheres of Expectation._(_121_)_ But they are like a roof with no walls,
> nor pillars to rest upon_....
> 
> _Man needs four Flames and three Fires to become one on Earth, and he
> requires the essence of the forty‐nine Fires_(_122_)_ to be perfect. It is
> those who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,_(_123_)_
> who complete the Manu of illusion. For the __“__Double Dragon__”__ has no
> hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or
> branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is
> no agent of transmission [Manas, __“__Mind__”__] and the form knows it
> not._
> 
> _In the highest worlds, the three are one,_(_124_)_ on Earth [at first]
> the one becomes two. They are like the two [side] lines of a triangle that
> has lost its bottom line—which is the third Fire._(125)
> 
> Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so
> especially for the benefit of our Âryan Hindû brethren—whose Esoteric
> interpretations may differ from our own—we shall have to explain to them
> the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the
> _Purânas_. In the allegories of the latter, Brahmâ, who is collectively
> the Creative Force of the Universe, is thus described:
> 
>     At the beginning of the Yugas [Cycles] ... possessed of the desire
>     and of the power to create, and impelled by the potencies of what
>     is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a
>     Kalpa, put forth a similar creation.(126)
> 
> It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the _Vishnu Purâna_,
> and see how much it may agree or disagree with our Occult version.
> 
> Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
> 
> In the _Vishnu Purâna_, which is certainly the earliest of all the
> scriptures of that name, we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ, as the
> male God, assuming, for purposes of creation, “_four_ Bodies invested by
> _three_ qualities.”(127) It is said:
> 
>     In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan
>     (day), and Sandhyâ (evening [twilight]) are the four bodies of
>     Brahmâ.(128)
> 
> As Parâshara explains it, when Brahmâ wishes to create the world anew and
> construct progeny _through his will_, in the fourfold condition, or the
> four Orders of Beings, termed Gods (Dhyân Chohans), Demons(129) (_i.e._,
> more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and Men, “he collects [Yoga‐
> like] his mind into itself” (Yûyuge).
> 
> Strange to say, he begins by creating Demons, who thus take precedence
> over the Angels or Gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to
> inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound Esoteric meaning,
> quite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice. He who bears
> in mind that the principle Mahat, or Intellect, the “Universal Mind”
> (literally the “Great”), which Esoteric Philosophy explains as the
> “Manifested Omniscience”—the “first product” of Pradhâna, Primordial
> Matter, as the _Vishnu Purâna_ says, but the first Cosmic Aspect of
> Parabrahman or the Esoteric Sat, the Universal Soul,(130) as Occultism
> teaches—is at the root of SELF‐Consciousness, will understand the reason
> why. The so‐called Demons—who are Esoterically the Self‐asserting and
> intellectually active Principle—are the _positive pole of creation_, so to
> say; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated
> allegorically in the _Purânas_.
> 
>     Having concentrated his mind into itself and the Quality of
>     Darkness pervading Brahmâ’s assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from
>     his Thigh, were first produced; after which, abandoning this body,
>     it was transformed into Night.
> 
> Two important points are involved herein: (_a_) Primarily in the _Rig
> Veda_, the Asuras are shown as _spiritual divine Beings_; their etymology
> is derived from Asu, breath, the “Breath of God,” and they mean the same
> as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for
> purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahmâ’s
> Thigh, and that their name began to be derived from _a_, privative, and
> _Sura_, a God, or “not‐a‐God,” and that they became the enemies of the
> Gods. (_b_) Every ancient Theogony without exception—from the Aryan and
> the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod—in the order of Cosmogonical
> evolution, places Night before Day; even _Genesis_, where “darkness is
> upon the face of the deep” before the “first day.” The reason for this is
> that every Cosmogony—except in the Secret Doctrine—begins by the
> “Secondary Creation” so‐called; to wit, the _Manifested_ Universe, the
> Genesis of which has to begin by a marked differentiation between the
> eternal Light of “Primary Creation,” whose mystery must remain for ever
> “Darkness” to the prying finite conception and intellect of the profane,
> and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible Nature. The _Veda_
> contains the whole philosophy of that division, without having ever been
> correctly explained by our Orientalists, since it has _never been
> understood_ by them.
> 
> Continuing to create, Brahmâ assumes another form, that of the Day, and
> creates from his Breath the Gods, who are endowed with the Quality of
> Goodness (Passivity).(131) In his next body the Quality of great Passivity
> prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the side of that
> personage issued the Pitris, the Progenitors of men, because, as the text
> explains, Brahmâ “thought of himself [during the process] as the father of
> the world.”(132) This is Kriyâ‐shakti—the mysterious Yoga‐power explained
> elsewhere. This body of Brahmâ when cast off became the Sandhyâ, Evening
> Twilight, the interval between Day and Night.
> 
> Finally Brahmâ assumed his last form pervaded by the Quality of Foulness.
> 
>     And from this, Men, in whom foulness (or passion) predominates,
>     were produced.
> 
> This body when cast off became the Dawn, or Morning Twilight—the Twilight
> of Humanity. Here Brahmâ stands Esoterically for the Pitris. He is
> collectively the Pitâ, “Father.”
> 
> The true Esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahmâ
> here symbolizes personally the Collective Creators of the World and
> Men—the Universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and
> (seemingly) immovable.(133) He is collectively the Prajâpatis, the Lords
> of Being; and the four bodies typify the four Classes of Creative Powers
> or Dhyân Chohans, described in the Commentary on Shloka I, Stanza VII, in
> Volume I. The whole philosophy of the so‐called “Creation” of the good and
> evil in this World, and of the whole Cycle of Manvantaric results
> therefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these Four Bodies of
> Brahmâ.
> 
> The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the Esoteric
> significance of what follows. Moreover there is an important point to be
> cleared up. Christian Theology having arbitrarily settled and agreed that
> Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest creation, Satan
> being the first‐created, the wisest and most beautiful of God’s
> Archangels, the word was given, the key‐note struck. Henceforth all the
> Pagan Scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown
> to be demoniacal, and it _was_ and _is_ claimed that _truth and fact_
> belong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and
> Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but “infidels,” or men of
> Science, entered, unconsciously to themselves and by the mere force of
> association of ideas and habit, into the theological groove.
> 
> Purely Brâhmanical considerations, based on greed of power and ambition,
> allowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths; and the same
> causes led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent,
> while those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things,
> judging of the Hierarchy of “Angels” by their exoteric form. Thus, as the
> Asuras had become the rebellious inferior Gods fighting the higher ones in
> popular creeds, so the highest Archangel, in truth the Agathodæmon, the
> eldest benevolent Logos, became in theology the “Adversary” or Satan. But
> is this warranted by the correct interpretation of any old Scripture? The
> answer is: most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the _Zend
> Avesta_, the _Vendidâd_ and others correct and expose the later cunning
> shuffling of the Gods in the Hindû Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the
> Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony, so the recent discoveries of
> the Chaldæan tablets vindicate the good name of the first divine
> Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology is directly and
> solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from
> Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew
> not of any Angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not
> the impersonal Spirit). In the _Bible_ the only Angels spoken of are the
> “Sons of God” mentioned in _Genesis_ vi—who are now regarded as the
> Nephilim, the Fallen Angels—and several Angels in human form, the
> “Messengers” of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a closer analysis
> than heretofore given. As shown above, the early Akkadians called Ea
> Wisdom, which was disfigured by the later Chaldees and Semites into
> Tiamat, Tisalat and the Thalatth of Berosus, the female Sea Dragon, now
> Satan. Truly—“How art thou fallen [by the hand of man], O bright Star and
> Son of the Morning”!
> 
> Now what do the Babylonian accounts of “Creation,” as found on the
> Assyrian fragments of tiles, tell us; those very accounts upon which the
> Pharisees built their Angelology? Compare Mr. George Smith’s _Assyrian
> Discoveries_,(134) and his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_.(135) The Tablet
> with the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits, has the following
> account; we print the important passages in italics:
> 
>     1. In the _first days_ the evil Gods,
> 
>     2. the _angels who were in rebellion_, who _in the lower part of
>     heaven_
> 
>     3. _had been created_,
> 
>     4. they caused their evil work
> 
>     5. devising with wicked heads ... etc.
> 
> Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained
> unbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the “Rebellious
> Angels” had been created in the “lower part of heaven,” _i.e._, that they
> belonged and do belong to a _material plane of evolution_, although as it
> is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it
> remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective.
> Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our Visible
> World, and especially the Earth, had been created by _Lower_ Angels, the
> inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one?
> These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret
> Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known what it
> contained better than non‐initiated Christians, who took upon themselves,
> hundreds of years later, to remodel and _correct_ what was said. But let
> us see what the same Tablet says further on:
> 
>     7. There were seven of them [the wicked gods].
> 
> Then follows the description of these, the fourth being a “serpent,” the
> phallic symbol of the Fourth Race in human Evolution.
> 
>     15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu their king.
> 
> Now Anu belongs to the Chaldæan Trinity, and is identical with Sin, the
> “Moon,” in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabalah is the Argha of
> the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected,
> kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double‐sexed, as Anu is. They are
> both represented in Esotericism, and viewed, from a dual aspect: male or
> spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic
> principles. Hence the “Messengers of Anu,” who is Sin, the “Moon,” are
> shown, in lines 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin
> with the help of Bel, the Sun, and Ishtar, Venus. This is regarded as a
> contradiction by the Assyriologists, but it is simply _metaphysics_ in the
> Esoteric teaching.
> 
> There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the
> mystery of the “Fall.” Moreover there are two “Falls” in Theology: the
> rebellion of the Archangels and their “Fall,” and the “Fall” of Adam and
> Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a
> supposed crime. The word “supposed” is the true and correct term, for in
> both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in
> Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of
> Evolution—intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic
> on the other. The “Fall” is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end
> of the ladder of Evolution the “rebellion,” _i.e._, the action of
> differentiating intellection, or consciousness, on its various planes,
> seeking union with Matter; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion
> of Matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And here
> lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the
> intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original
> allegory it is Matter—hence the more material Angels—which was regarded as
> the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who “fell” on this plane.
> 
>     They of the _flaming sword_ [or animal passions] had put to flight
>     the Spirits of Darkness.
> 
> Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of the conscious and
> divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of
> Matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, “who
> is like unto God,” the representative of Jehovah, who is the Leader of the
> Celestial Hosts—as Lucifer, in Milton’s fancy, is of the Infernal
> Hosts—who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of Michael
> depends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may
> find out by carefully studying the allegory of the “War in Heaven” with
> the astronomical key. As shown by Bentley, the “War of the Titans against
> the Gods” in Hesiod, and also the War of the Asuras, or the Târakâmaya,
> against the Devas in Purânic legend, are identical in all save the names.
> The aspects of the stars show—Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the
> nearest date for such conjunction—that:
> 
>     All the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the
>     heavens as the Sun and Moon.
> 
> And hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish “Moon‐
> God,” who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and Moses, neither of
> whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became distorted.
> 
> Stanza II.—_Continued._
> 
> 8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT‐FIRES AND THE
> DAY‐FIRES (_A_). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT
> THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS(136) OF THE HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN(137) OF BELOW,
> CAME (_B_). THEY SLEW THE FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO‐ AND FOUR‐FACED. THEY
> FOUGHT THE GOAT‐MEN, AND THE DOG‐HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES’
> BODIES.
> 
> (_a_) The “Flames” are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not
> identical with, the “burning” fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by
> Isaiah(138) those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the “Throne of
> the Almighty.” Melha is the Lord of the “Flames.” When he appears on
> Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He
> is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.
> 
> (_b_) The word “Below” must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but
> simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because
> nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while
> the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital
> of Tibet, Lha‐ssa.
> 
> Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the
> evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning
> attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The “Flames,”
> or “Fires,” represent Spirit, or the male element, and “Water,” Matter, or
> the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit
> slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on
> the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a
> scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:
> 
> 9. MOTHER‐WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE
> MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH.
> 
> Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in
> the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern
> research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high‐
> tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin’s theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years
> ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth’s plastic
> mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz,
> Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal
> retardation of the Earth’s rotary motions far back into the very night of
> time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only “a
> fraction of its present distance.” In short, his theory was that it was
> the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring
> with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly
> equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass
> could thus separate completely from the Earth.(139)
> 
> The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the
> Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its
> being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact.
> Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid
> portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent.
> This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother‐Water “arose, she
> disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.”
> 
> 10. WHEN(140) THEY WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER EARTH REMAINED BARE.(141) SHE
> ASKED TO BE DRIED.(142)
> 
> The time for the Earth’s incrustation had arrived. The waters had
> separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life.
> This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of
> Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire” it calls it—and enters upon
> an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as
> minerals and earths. From the “Waters of Space,” the progeny of the male
> Spirit‐Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse
> on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as
> Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be
> based on a strictly scientific foundation.
> 
> Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which
> comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three
> mountains, rather like the letter “M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the
> Universal Matrix or the “Great Deep.” Venus, the great Mother‐Virgin,
> issues forth from the sea‐wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is
> the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its
> higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and metaphysically Aditi, and even
> Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.
> 
> Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or
> Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the
> prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power “Life‐Electricity,” or
> the Spirit of “Life‐giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter
> into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all
> things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys,
> the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the
> immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not
> the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case
> it is no longer Aditi‐Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya
> among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized.
> The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect
> only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem
> thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every
> nation.
> 
> Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of
> the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the _modus operandi_ at
> the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our
> Earth’s formation.
> 
> The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores,
> 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the
> duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician
> is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate
> accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained
> that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology
> of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.
> 
> The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
> 
> No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly
> insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and
> Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know of the duration of
> the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?
> 
> Nothing; absolutely nothing.
> 
> If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by
> those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly,
> the eminent Geologist, “We do not know.”(143) One will learn that, so far,
> no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could
> be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a
> student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of
> Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when
> reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed
> to arrive even at an approximate agreement?
> 
> It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the
> Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a
> labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit
> into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting
> speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern
> tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide
> them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender
> thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at
> perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to
> which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology
> as but “the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre‐historic
> period”—in the words of the writer of the article in the _Encyclopædia
> Britannica_.
> 
> At the same time it is confessed that “beyond that period stretches back a
> vast indefinite series of pre‐historic ages.”
> 
> It is with those specified “ages” that we shall begin. They are “pre‐
> historic” to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of
> the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne’s thread stretches beyond
> that “historic period” without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into
> the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop
> it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as
> fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted
> by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying
> refusal only from the official and collective body of _orthodox_ Science.
> And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the
> duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and
> contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.
> 
> Such computations as are given in _Manu_ and the _Purânas_—save trifling
> and most evidently _intentional_ exaggerations—are, as already stated,
> almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be
> seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.
> 
> The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched
> for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned
> Tamil calendar called the _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, compiled, as we are
> told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya’s
> data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is
> whispered to have also been the most powerful “Sorcerer” of the “White
> Island, which had become Black with sin,” _i.e._, of the islands of
> Atlantis.
> 
> The “White Island” is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived,
> as in the tradition of the _Jñâna‐bhâskara_, in Romaka‐pura, in the West;
> because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the “Sweat‐born”
> of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before
> Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant
> of the Wise Race, _the Race that never dies_. Many are the legends
> concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun‐God, himself, as the
> Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or
> another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr.
> Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka‐pura, in the West,
> being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the
> more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching
> about the Sweat‐born Races, the men born from the “pores of their
> parents.” “_Roma‐kûpas_” mean “hair‐pores” in Sanskrit. In the
> _Mahâbhârata_,(144) a people named Raumas are said to have been created
> from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha’s
> sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this
> way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third
> Root‐Races.
> 
> The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot‐note
> marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj
> school:
> 
> I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,(145) up to the Hindû year
> Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.
> 
> II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have
> taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.(146)
> 
> III. Time, from the first appearance of “Humanity” (on our Planetary
> Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.(147)
> 
> IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara(148)—or the
> _Human_ Period—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.
> 
> V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.
> 
> VI. Fourteen Manvantaras, _plus_ the period of one Satya Yuga make one Day
> of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.
> 
> Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.(149)
> 
> The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.
> 
> To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by
> Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the _Theosophist_ of
> November, 1885.
> 
>     360 days of mortals make a year
> 
>     Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000
> 
>     Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000
> 
>     Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000
> 
>     Kali Yuga contains 432,000
> 
>     The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000
> 
>     Seventy‐one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one
>     Manu, 306,720,000
> 
>     The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ
>     Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000
> 
>     Add Sandhis, _i.e._, intervals between the reign of each Manu,
>     which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000
> 
>     The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is
>     1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, _i.e._, one Day of
>     Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000
> 
>     As Brahmâ’s Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of
>     Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000
> 
>     360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to
>     3,110,400,000,000
> 
>     100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ’s Age,
>     _i.e._, Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000
> 
> These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they
> dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter,
> moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles,
> never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division
> of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The
> rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are,
> nevertheless, known to every “Twice‐born” (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman,
> and the _Purânas_ contain references to some of them in veiled terms,
> which no matter‐of‐fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor
> could he if he would.
> 
> These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of
> them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The
> latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian
> Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as
> Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil
> One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of “the faithful sons of
> the Church.” A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more
> harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean
> Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa,
> or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There
> were _good_ “giants” in days of old just as there are _bad_ “pigmies” now;
> and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern
> dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern
> wars. Nor are they myths.
> 
>     He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from
>     going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.
> 
> remarks somewhere a modern writer.
> 
> As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic
> calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully
> keep them in mind.
> 
> In the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ we find, as the last word of Science,
> that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch _only over_ “tens of
> thousands of years.” It becomes evident that as these figures may be made
> to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little
> if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the
> question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man
> in the “pre‐ or post‐ glacial drift,” if we are told at the same time that
> the so‐called “Ice Age” is simply a long succession of ages which
> 
>     Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the
>     human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods
>     having been the rule from the beginning of time.(150)
> 
> The latter “rule” only results in the still more puzzling, even if
> strictly scientific and correct, information, that:
> 
>     Even to‐day man is contemporary with the ice‐age in the Alpine
>     valleys and in the Finmark.(151)
> 
> Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and
> even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be
> left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite “Ages” of
> one school of Science, the “tens of thousands” of years of the other, and
> the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several
> reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of
> learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such
> questions of pre‐historic antiquity.
> 
> Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views.
> But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it
> has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing’s
> assurances that:
> 
>     In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and
>     later formations, there is no _theory_, they are based on positive
>     facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error
>     either way.(152)
> 
> Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very
> much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very
> passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness
> over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the
> admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:
> 
>     In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the
>     Silurian period(153) when the present order of things was fairly
>     inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] _facts_ and not
>     _theories_, while the astronomical conclusions are _theories_
>     based on _data_ so uncertain, that while in some cases they give
>     results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost
>     incredibly long.(154)
> 
> After which, the reader is advised that the “safest course”
> 
>     Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of
>     the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100
>     millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though
>     unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for
>     the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar
>     system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through
>     the habitable phase.(155)
> 
> Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt
> that, once called upon to answer “the absurd unscientific and preposterous
> claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,” the Scientist of the
> “results incredibly short,” _i.e._, only 15,000,000 years, and the
> Scientist, who “would require 600,000,000 years,” together with those who
> accept Mr. Huxley’s figures of 1,000,000,000(156) “since sedimentation
> began in Europe,” would all be as dogmatic the one as the other. Nor would
> they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern
> men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to
> fight “inaccuracy” and “superstition.”
> 
> The Earth is passing through the “habitable phase” only for the _present
> order_ of things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its
> actual “coats of skin” and phosphorus for bones and brain.
> 
> We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology,
> since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata
> Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no
> facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown,
> no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W.
> Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:
> 
>     It is at present, and perhaps always will be, _impossible_ to
>     reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even
>     into millenniums.
> 
> And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the
> _present form_—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or
> strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian.
> When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial
> protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of
> primordial man. If it is not very material to “the bearings of modern
> scientific discovery on modern thought,” whether
> 
>     Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for
>     the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last
>     500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,(157)
> 
> as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of
> the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a _possibility_, if not
> a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the
> _Secret Doctrine_ might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must,
> therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and
> men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in
> the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact
> that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a
> fiction based on no “actual” computation,(158) but simply a “childish
> boasting,” it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it
> yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been
> more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by
> cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.
> 
> As the whole Cycle of pre‐historic events, such as the evolution and
> transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the
> said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other
> existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at
> least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures
> of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max
> Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as
> to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies
> of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair
> chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a
> reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less
> reliable than its own.
> 
> We may here refer the reader to our earlier work, _Isis Unveiled_,(159)
> for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.
> 
> To‐day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which
> is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of
> 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which
> compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each
> and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether
> one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making
> 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these
> numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and
> record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They
> are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who
> studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan
> in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons,
> invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and
> reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and
> growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and
> depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic
> agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives
> and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara.
> Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and “endexoteric,” so to say.
> 
> In _Isis Unveiled_ we wrote that which we now repeat: _We are at the
> bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state_. Plato divides the
> intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile and
> barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various
> elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he
> says; “but their parts,” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and
> their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the
> realm of evil), “are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to
> (Divine) Nature.” When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls
> “currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in
> itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our
> Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult
> powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the
> “superior natures,” and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence
> with these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose
> their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind
> is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own
> Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during
> which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has
> entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine
> intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone “philosophizes.” And
> philosophizing alone, how can it understand the “Soul Doctrine”?
> 
> In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some
> striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with
> our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.
> 
> Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
> 
>     11. The Descent of the Demiurge. 12. The Lunar Gods ordered to
>     create. 13. The Higher Gods refuse.
> 
> 11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND
> THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.(160)
> 
> Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version,
> repeated in the _Purânas_, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the
> first it is said:
> 
>     He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world
>     had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the
>     earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created
>     himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he
>     had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the
>     shape of a boar, etc.(161)
> 
> In the Elohistic “creation,”(162) “God” creates “a firmament in the midst
> of the waters,” and says “let _dry land_ appear.” And now comes the
> traditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic
> interpretation.
> 
> 12. THE GREAT CHOHANS(163) CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY
> BODIES: “BRING FORTH MEN,(164) MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM(165) THEIR
> FORMS WITHIN. SHE(166) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.(167) MALES‐FEMALES
> WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO....”
> 
> Who are the “Lords of the Moon”? In India they are called Pitris or “Lunar
> Ancestors,” but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the
> “Lord of the Moon,” collectively as the Host, and also as one of the
> Elohim. The Astronomy of the Hebrews and their “observance of _times_” was
> regulated by the Moon. A Kabalist, having shown that “Daniel ... told off
> God’s providence by set _times_” and that the _Revelation_ of John “speaks
> of a carefully measured _cubical_ city descending out of the heavens,”
> etc., adds:
> 
>     But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with _the moon_....
>     It was the Hebrew יהוה [Jehovah],—and St. Paul enjoins:—“Let no
>     man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of
>     _new moon,—which are a shadow of things to come_; but the body (or
>     substance) is of Christ,” _i.e._, Jehovah,—that function of this
>     power that “made the barren woman the joyful mother of
>     children,”—“for they are the gift of Jehovah,” ... which is a key
>     to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to
>     her going to the man of God:—“for it is neither the 7th day nor
>     the day of _new moon_.” The living spiritual powers of the
>     constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and
>     positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result
>     of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on
>     the Hindû “war between the gods and the giants,” as marked by the
>     eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, 945 B.C.
>     [!], at which time was born,(168) or produced from the sea, SRI
>     (Sarai), S‐r‐i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram(169), who was the
>     Venus‐Aphroditus [_sic_] of the Westerns, emblem “of the luni‐
>     solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see
>     foot‐note], the goddess of increase.”(170) ... [Therefore] the
>     grand monument and land‐mark of the exact period of the lunar year
>     and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun
>     and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount
>     Sinai,—the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon.... Paul speaks [then]
>     as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond
>     woman of Abraham:—“For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is
>     Mount Sinai in Arabia.” How could a woman be a mountain? and such
>     a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very
>     marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, הגר whose numbers read
>     235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal
>     19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and
>     similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of
>     this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and
>     month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed,
>     and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) “the Mountain of
>     the Moon (Sin).” So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could
>     have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, שרה, giving to
>     her the property of this lunar influence.(171)
> 
> This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a
> very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after
> studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai
> or Sarah, who was “fair to look upon,” and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî,
> or Shrî, Lakshmî‐Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and
> Water;—and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of
> the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who
> can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that
> _Genesis_ was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All
> in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably
> connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
> 
> 13. THEY(172) WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS
> LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD
> NOT CREATE.
> 
> The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven
> portions of the Globe “each on his lot”—_i.e._, each a different Race of
> men externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic
> claim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are “They” who
> create, and the “Lords of the Flame,” “who would not”? Occultism divides
> the “Creators” into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached
> “Liberation” to the end of the “Great Age,” the fifth is ready to reach
> it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are
> still under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man‐bearing Globes of
> our Chain.
> 
> Exoteric Hindû books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two
> distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the
> Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of
> it. Hindû ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with
> Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who
> have _not_ attended as they should to their household sacred fires in
> their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the
> _Vedas_. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are
> represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman‐householders,
> who, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt
> sacrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every
> right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the
> Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires,
> are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as
> devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
> 
> But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due
> to the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta
> Pitris are devoid of “fire” _i.e._, of creative passion, because they are
> too divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more
> closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the
> Adam of dust.
> 
> The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his
> first progeny:
> 
>     Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom,
>     estranged from the universe and _undesirous of progeny_.(173)
> 
> This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, “They would not
> create,” and is explained as follows:
> 
> “_The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the
> Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will
> develop only in the next and subsequent removes._”
> 
> This makes it plain. Hence Brahmâ is said to have felt wrathful when he
> saw that those
> 
>     Embodied spirits, produced from his limbs [_gâtra_], would not
>     multiply themselves.
> 
> After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven Mind‐born Sons(174)
> namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishtha, the
> latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the Creators.
> In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishtha‐Daksha are called the
> Seven Rishis of the _Third_ Manvantara; the latter referring both to the
> Third Round and also to the Third Root‐Race and its Branch‐Races in the
> Fourth Round. These are all the Creators of the various Beings on this
> Earth, the Prajâpati, and at the same time they appear as divers
> reïncarnations in the early Manvantaras or Races.
> 
> It thus becomes clear why the Agnishvâtta, devoid of the grosser “creative
> fire,” hence unable to create physical man, having no Double, or Astral
> Body, to project, since they were without any “form,” are shown in
> exoteric allegories as Yogîs, Kumâras (chaste youths), who became
> “rebels,” Asuras, fighting and opposing Gods,(175) etc. Yet it is they
> alone who could complete man, _i.e._, make of him a self‐conscious, almost
> a divine Being—a God on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of
> “creative fire,” were devoid of the higher Mahat‐ic element. Being on a
> level with the lower “Principles”—those which precede gross objective
> matter—they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model
> of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with
> the task by Brahmâ—the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind—the
> “Mystery of Creation” is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as
> in a _mirror_.
> 
> It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who
> project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as
> will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed
> themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to
> complete the _septenary man_, to add to his three lower Principles and
> cement them with the Spiritual Monad—which could never dwell in such a
> form otherwise than in an _absolutely latent state_—two connecting
> “Principles” are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual
> Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma.
> But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect)
> Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the
> First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have
> appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These
> are the active, and therefore—in Heaven—no longer “pure” Beings. They have
> become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as
> fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence—in the ordinary
> sense—“rebellious to the divine passive law.” These are then those
> “Flames”—the Agnishvâtta—who, as shown in the shloka, “remain behind,”
> instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the
> true Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as
> the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.
> 
> The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the
> intellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self‐
> conscious Egotism—in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer
> to it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sûtrâtmâ, which is the “golden
> thread” on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego
> are strung. If the reader were told, as in the _semi‐Esoteric_ allegories,
> that these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding
> Mahâ‐Manvantaras—Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in
> the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago—he would hardly
> understand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: “This is
> not so; the Nirvânî can never return”; which is true during the Manvantara
> he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said
> in the Sacred Shlokas:
> 
> “_The Thread of Radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in __
> Nirvâna, reëmerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law
> calls all things back into action._”
> 
> Hence, as the higher Pitris or Dhyânîs had no hand in his physical
> creation, we find Primeval Man—issued from the bodies of his _spiritually_
> “fireless” Progenitors—described as aëriform, devoid of compactness, and
> “mindless.” He had no middle Principle to serve him as a medium between
> the Highest and the Lowest—the Spiritual Man and the physical brain—for he
> lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those _empty_ Shells,
> remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete
> forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for Creation, or Self‐
> Consciousness, in a _pure_ Spirit on this our plane, unless its too
> homogeneous, perfect—because divine—nature is, so to say, mixed with, and
> strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower
> line of the Triangle—representing the first Triad that emanates from the
> Universal Monad—that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of
> differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this
> principle, must have originally been themselves “unconscious” (in our
> sense), be of any use in supplying the required Principle, as they could
> hardly have possessed it themselves?
> 
> The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with
> the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of
> Cosmic Re‐births, and becomes well impressed and familiarized with that
> immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and
> spiral—therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one
> Divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the _Vedas_, is the Universal
> Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its
> physical Atoms, can ever be at “Absolute Rest” except during the Nights of
> Brahmâ. Hence, also, the “First‐born” are those who are first set in
> motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into
> the lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology the
> “Thrones,” and are the “Seat of God,” must be the first incarnated men on
> Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of
> past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first
> last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless æons
> before, through the “Seven Circles,” and thus “robbed” them of the Sacred
> Fire; this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their
> past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom
> therefrom—the reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity. No
> Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of
> absolute purity, except through æons of suffering and the _knowledge_ of
> evil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain
> incomprehensible.
> 
> Between man and the animal—whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally
> identical—there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self‐
> consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it,
> if it be not a portion of the essence—and, in some rare cases of
> incarnation, the _very essence_—of a higher Being; one from a higher and
> divine plane? Can man—a God in the animal form—be the product of Material
> Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal which differs from man in
> external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric,
> and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad—seeing that the
> intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the
> glow‐worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an
> animal _plus a living God_ within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask
> ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms
> of both the materialistic and the psychological modern Sciences.
> 
> To some extent, it is admitted that even the Esoteric Teaching is
> allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average
> intelligence, the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form is needed.
> Hence the allegorical and semi‐mythical narratives in the exoteric, and
> the only _semi_‐metaphysical and objective representations in the Esoteric
> Teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are
> adapted only to the perceptions of those who “_see without eyes, hear
> without ears, and sense without organs_,” according to the graphic
> expression of the Commentary. The too puritan Idealist is at liberty to
> spiritualize the tenet, whereas the modern Psychologist would simply try
> to spirit away our “fallen,” yet still divine, human Soul—divine in its
> connection with Buddhi.
> 
> The mystery attached to the highly spiritual Ancestors of the _Divine_ Man
> within the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in
> the _Purânas_, though its Esoteric meaning can be approached only by
> collating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their
> symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the _Bible_, both in
> _Genesis_ and even in the _Epistles_ of Paul. For that “Creator,” who is
> called in the second chapter of _Genesis_ the “Lord God,” is in the
> original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of
> them makes the earthly Adam of Dust, the other breathes into him the
> Breath of Life, and the third makes of him a Living Soul, all of which
> readings are implied in the plural number of the word Elohim.(177) Or
> again, as Paul says:
> 
>     The first man is of the earth, the second [the last, or rather
>     highest] is the Lord from heaven.(178)
> 
> In the Âryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as
> holy Ascetics and Yogîs. Re‐born in every Kalpa, they generally try to
> impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the
> Prajâpatis or Creators, brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of
> peopling the world, Nârada—a son of Brahmâ, the great Rishi, and
> _virtually_ a Kumâra, if not so in name—interferes with, and twice
> frustrates Daksha’s aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy Ascetics
> and eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Nârada to be “re‐born as a
> man,” as Brahmâ had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain
> progeny, saying: “Perish in thy (present [Deva or Angelic] form); and take
> up thy abode in the womb”—_i.e._, become a man.(179)
> 
> Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy
> to see that Nârada belongs to that Class of Brahmâ’s “First‐born,” who
> have all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which
> they had to incarnate as _men_. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Nârada, as
> already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely
> connected with the Occult Doctrines—especially with the Secret Cycles and
> Kalpas.
> 
> Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the
> Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to “create” or have
> progeny, and even as calling his father Brahmâ a “false teacher” for
> advising him to get married, as related in the _Nârada‐Pancha‐Râtra_;
> nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajâpatis or Progenitors!
> In the _Nâradîya Purâna_, he describes the laws and the duties of the
> celibate Adepts; and as these Occult duties do not happen to be found in
> the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums,
> the Brâhmans are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the
> _Nâradîya_ is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not
> very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindû
> profane, those who are ready to sell any precious Olla for a red pottage.
> Suffice it to say, that Nârada is _the_ Deva‐Rishi of Occultism _par
> excellence_, and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyze, and
> study Nârada from his seven Esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom
> certain anthropological, chronological, and even cosmic Mysteries. He is
> one of the Fires above‐mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of
> this Kalpa from its incipient down to its final stage. He is an actor who
> appears in each of the successive acts, or Root‐Races, of the present
> Manvantaric drama, in the world‐allegories which strike the key‐note of
> Esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall
> we turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of
> the “Fires,” “Sparks,” and “Flames”? They are plentiful, if one only seeks
> for them in the right places.
> 
> In the Kabalistic _Book of the Concealed Mystery_ they are clearly
> enunciated, as also in the _Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha_, or “The Lesser Holy
> Assembly.” The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still
> comprehensible. In the latter, among the sparks of Prior Worlds,
> “vibrating Flames and Sparks,” from the divine flint, the “Workman”
> proceeds to create man, “male and female” (427). These “Flames and
> Sparks”—Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets—are said, figuratively,
> to become extinct and die, that is to say, remain “unmanifested” until a
> certain process of Nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from
> public view are the most important facts of Anthropogenesis, two passages
> are now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the _Ha Idra
> Zuta Qadisha_:
> 
>     429. From a Light‐Bearer [one of the Seven Sacred Planets] of
>     insupportable brightness proceeded a Radiating Flame, dashing off
>     like a vast and mighty hammer those sparks which were the Prior
>     Worlds.
> 
>     430. And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound
>     mutually together, but _only when they were conjoined together_,
>     even the Great Father and Great Mother.
> 
>     431. From _Hoa_, Himself, is AB, the Father; and from _Hoa_,
>     Himself, is Ruach, the Spirit; Who are hidden in the Ancient of
>     Days, and therein is that ether concealed.
> 
>     432. And It was connected with a light‐bearer [a Planet and its
>     Angel or Regent], which went forth from that Light‐Bearer of
>     insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima,
>     the Great Mother.(180)
> 
> Now the following extract from the _Zohar_,(181) under the heading, “The
> Pre‐Adamite Kings,” also deals with the same mystery:
> 
>     We have learned in the Siphrah D’Tznioothah: That the _At‐tee’ kah
>     D’At‐tee’ keen_, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared His Form,
>     built kings and engraved kings, and sketched out kings [men, the
>     “kings” of the animals], and they could not exist: till He
>     overthrew them and _hid them until after a time_, therefore it is
>     written; “And these are the kings which reigned in the land of
>     Edom.”... And they could not exist till _Resha’Hiv’rah_, the White
>     Head, the _At’‐tee’‐kah D’At‐tee’‐keen_, Ancient of the Ancients,
>     arranged Himself. When he arranged Himself He formed all forms
>     Above and Below.... Before He arranged Himself in His Form, had
>     not been formed all those whom He desired to form, and all worlds
>     have been destroyed.... They did not remain in their places,
>     because the form of the kings had not been formed as it ought to
>     be, and _the Holy City had not been prepared_.(182)
> 
> Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical
> disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and
> destroyed, _under the law of evolution_ and _from preëxisting material_,
> until both the Planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal
> and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle—opposite
> polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the
> positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could
> become male and female _physically_, his prototype, the creating Elohim,
> had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane _astrally_. That is to say,
> the Atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given
> differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so
> as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the
> Kabalah calls the “Balance,” through which everything that exists does so
> as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of
> materiality. Chokmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephira, had to diffuse itself
> _in_, and _through_, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding.
> Therefore the First Root‐Race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be
> overthrown and “hidden until after a time”; _i.e._, the First Race,
> instead of dying, disappeared _in_ the Second Race, as certain lower lives
> and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The
> First became the Second Root‐Race, without either begetting it,
> procreating it, or dying.
> 
>     “They _passed by_ together,” as it is written: “And he died” and
>     another “reigned in his stead.”(183)
> 
> Why? Because the “_Holy City_ had not been prepared.” And what is the
> “Holy City”? The Ma‐qom—the Secret Place or the Shrine—on Earth; in other
> words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly
> Matrix, the female Space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit
> fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe. So much so, that
> in the paragraph on “The Emanation of the Male and Female Principles” in
> the _Zohar_, it is said that, on this Earth, the Wisdom from the “Holy
> Ancient” “does not shine except in male and female.”
> 
>     (_Hokhmah_ Wisdom, is the Father, and _Binah_ Understanding, is
>     the Mother.)... And when they connect one with the other, they
>     bring forth and diffuse and emanate Truth. In the sayings of Rabbi
>     Ye‐yeva, Sabbah, _i.e._, the Old, we learned this; What is Binah
>     Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the י (Yod)
>     in the ה (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And,
>     therefore, it is called _Binah_, Understanding. It means BeN YaH,
>     _i.e._, Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the Whole.(184)
> 
> This is also the “completeness” of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect
> apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the
> grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in
> Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah—the Chaldæan _Book of
> Numbers_. We have said so already in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour
>     out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: “In a
>     multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming,
>     like the Grecian _batylos_, the brutally indecent form of the
>     _lingham_ ... the Mahâ Deva.” Before casting slurs on a symbol
>     whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern
>     champions of that religion of sensualism _par excellence_, Roman
>     Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their
>     oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own
>     temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore,
>     the minarets of Islam—either rounded or pointed—are the originals
>     of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester
>     Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these
>     steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the
>     reproductions of the primitive idea of the _lithos_, the upright
>     phallus.(185)
> 
> Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew
> Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the
> Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty‐nine Agnis of the ancient
> Âryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.
> 
> Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
> 
>     14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators
>     are perplexed how to create a _thinking_ man. 17. What is needed
>     for the formation of a perfect Man.
> 
> 14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL‐BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF
> LIFE‐GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.
> 
> They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being
> as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a
> hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors
> _breathed_ out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out
> the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third
> it is said that they, the newly‐created Men, were the “shadows of the
> Shadows.”
> 
> With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few
> more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first
> process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one
> which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and
> doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the
> present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor
> does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so
> difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is
> useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is
> minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking
> of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being
> misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found
> preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the
> ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been
> heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists
> in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of
> those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out
> of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his _left side_, can
> fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a _birth_? If there are
> in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose _incorporeal_
> essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence
> of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a
> God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living
> Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this
> doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will
> dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the
> miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of _nothing_, according to
> the dead letter of _Genesis_, or a first man born from a fantastic
> link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the
> “true ape.”(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in.
> It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi‐
> divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be
> considered as abnormal or even inconceivable—because obsolete in Nature at
> this point of evolution—it is yet proven possible on the authority of
> certain “spiritualistic” _facts_. Which, then, we ask of the three
> hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd?
> Certainly no one—provided he be not a soul‐blind Materialist—can ever
> object to the Occult Teaching.
> 
> Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not “created” the
> complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a
> spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the
> highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development—from the simple
> and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not
> quite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double
> evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers
> natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the
> being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and
> never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or
> Manvantara) to the other—ever furnishing an ascending scale for the
> manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ‐Mâyâ), but
> plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and
> then _redeeming it through flesh_ and liberating it—this law, we say, uses
> for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds
> (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.
> 
> At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian
> Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret
> Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
> 
> On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
> 
> The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are
> the “Creators” of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as
> the _first personalities_, and _we are they_. Primeval man would be “the
> bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,” if they had bones and
> flesh. As stated, they were “Lunar Beings.”
> 
> The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the “Solar
> Angels”—whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of
> the Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these
> Solar Angels is, literally, the “Lords” (Nâth) of “persevering ceaseless
> devotion” (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the _Fifth_ Principle (Manas)
> seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs
> who make of Pranidhâna their _fifth_ observance.(189) It has already been
> explained why the Trans‐Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently
> identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and
> the Barhishads.
> 
> How precise and true is Plato’s expression, how profound and philosophical
> his remark on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as “a compound
> of the _same_ and the _other_.” And yet how little this hint has been
> understood, since the world took it to mean that the Soul was the Breath
> of God, of Jehovah. It is “the _same_ and the _other_,” as the great
> Initiate‐Philosopher said; for the Ego—the “Higher Self” when merged with
> and in the Divine Monad—is Man, and yet the _same_ as the “_other_”; the
> Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal Mahat. The great
> classical writers and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that:
> 
>     There must be something within us which produces our thoughts.
>     Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it
>     is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection;
>     it is a number; it is harmony.(190)
> 
> All these are the Mânasas and Râjasas; the Kumâras, Asuras, and other
> Rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and
> various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
> 
> There are Seven Classes of Pitris, as shown below, three Incorporeal and
> four Corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishvâtta and the Barhishad. And we
> may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a
> triple set of Barhishad and Agnishvâtta. The former, having given birth to
> their Astral Doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the “Pitris of
> the Demons,” or Corporeal Beings, on the authority of Manu;(191) while the
> Agnishvâtta are reborn as Sons of Marîchi, a Son of Brahmâ, and are the
> “Pitris of the Gods.”(192)
> 
>     The _Vâyu Purâna_ declares the Seven Orders of Pitris to have been
>     originally the _first Gods_, the Vairâjas, whom Brahmâ, with the
>     eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the _gods
>     of the gods_.... The _Matsya_ ... adds, that the Gods worshipped
>     them.(193)
> 
> The _Harivamsha_ distinguishes the Vairâjas as one class of the Pitris
> only,(194) a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which,
> however, identify the Vairâjas with the _elder_ Agnishvâttas(195) and the
> Râjasas, or Âbhûtarajasas, who are Incorporeal without even an Astral
> Phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and
> through them.
> 
>     In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of
>     Sambhûti, as the divine Mânasa—originating with the deities called
>     Râjasas.(196)
> 
> Sambhûti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marîchi, the father of the
> Agnishvâtta, who, along with the Râjasas, are ever associated with
> Mânasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr.
> Fitzedward Hall:
> 
>     Mânasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the
>     Râjasas. We appear to have in it _mânasam_—the same as
>     _manas_—with the change of termination required to express male
>     personification.(197)
> 
> All the Sons of Virâja are Mânasa, says Nîlakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ,
> and, therefore, the Incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the
> Sons of Virâja, says _Vayu Purâna_.
> 
> We could multiply our proofs _ad infinitum_, but it is useless. The wise
> will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are
> thirty‐three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in
> India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_:
> 
>     They may be all devas, but are by no means all “gods,” in the high
>     spiritual sense one attributes to the term.
> 
>     This is an unfortunate blunder generally committed by Europeans.
>     Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is
>     used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that
>     we have and worship thirty‐three crores of gods. These beings, as
>     may be naturally inferred, have a _certain affinity_ with one of
>     the three component Upâdhis [basic principles] into which we have
>     divided man.(198)
> 
> The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every
> Manvantara. Thus the twelve Great Gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist
> him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who,
> lost in Samâdhi, neglected to create—whereupon they were cursed to be
> repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh—are respectively
> called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sâdhyas, and
> Adityas:(199) they are Tushitas, in the second Kalpa, and Âdityas in this
> Vaivasvata Period,(200) besides other names for each age. But they are
> identical with the Mânasas or Râjasas, and these with our incarnating
> Dhyân Chohans.
> 
> Yes; besides those Beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras,
> etc., taken in their _individualities_, inhabit the Astral Plane, there
> are real Devas, and to these classes belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the
> Kumâras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial Beings whom Occult
> teaching calls Manasvin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have
> made all men the _self‐conscious_ spiritually intellectual Beings they
> will be, had they not been “cursed” to fall into generation, and to be
> reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
> 
> Stanza IV.—_Continued._
> 
> 15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS(201) OF FUTURE MEN(202) (_A_) WERE(203)
> BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR(204) AND KIND (_B_). EACH(205) INFERIOR TO
> HIS FATHER.(206) THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS
> WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHÛTA,(207) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND.
> THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHÂYÂ(208) RACE(_C_).
> 
> (_a_) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root _man_, to think,
> hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung
> the Latin _mens_, Mind, the Egyptian _Menes_, the “Master‐Mind,” the
> Pythagorean _monas_, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our
> _manas_ or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are
> called _Amânasa_, “Mindless.”
> 
> With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the
> Progenitors,(209) or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this
> Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born
> unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than
> the worship of the Gods.(210)
> 
> May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of
> Progenitors?
> 
> The Pitris being divided into _seven_ Classes, we have here the mystic
> number again. Nearly all the _Purânas_ agree that three of these are
> Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual
> and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically,
> it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the
> Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of
> Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth,
> according to the _Vâyu Purâna_. The legends are purposely mixed up and
> made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in
> another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their
> own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men
> simultaneously on the seven Zones.
> 
> Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again
> divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That
> Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with
> the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân‐
> Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and
> made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious
> relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this
> angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic,
> and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the
> terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype _above_. Why, it is asked,
> should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the
> anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have _four lower_
> cavities and _three higher_ divisions, answering so strangely to the
> septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the
> higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the
> various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as
> already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and
> three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other
> name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate
> seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct
> layers in the human skin?
> 
> Says the Commentary:
> 
> _Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the
> Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ‐Loka, whence they descend periodically, when
> the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men._
> 
> _The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent
> of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not‐Gods]._
> 
> “Not‐Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the
> Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the
> intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four
> corporeal Classes creating only his body.
> 
> This is very plainly shown in various texts of the _Rig Veda_—the highest
> authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means
> “spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit,
> and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and
> Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the
> three _highest_ Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo‐Mythology distorted the true
> meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is
> now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.
> 
> In the _Zend Avesta_ the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian,
> religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or
> “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as
> Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows _Intelligence_”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura
> Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good
> authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as _sevenfold_.
> This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the
> sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow
> _Intelligence_,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our
> incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven
> informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.
> 
> Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric
> accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power
> of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already
> suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology
> has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against
> these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds
> of the ignorant and credulous.(212)
> 
> The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods
> into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to
> obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings
> who _refuse to create_, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are
> also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their
> intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are
> shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on
> blind faith—a hint now ignored by the _orthodox_ Brâhmans—and forthwith
> the former become _A_‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity
> refuse to create progeny, and are _cursed_ by Brahmâ to be _born as men_.
> They are hurled _down to Earth_, which, later on, is transformed, in
> theological dogma, into the _Infernal_ Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull
> created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial _illusive_ life, the
> “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die,
> in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal
> life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the
> opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in
> order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and
> Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of
> Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the
> latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐
> sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity
> through _self‐conscious_ efforts; and it is these worshippers of _form_
> who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.
> 
> Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that _one‐third_(213) of the
> Dhyânîs—_i.e._, the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with
> intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of _intellectual_ not
> elementary substances”(214)—was simply _doomed by the law of Karma and
> evolution to be re‐born_, or incarnated, on Earth.(215) Some of these were
> Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the
> _Purânas_, re‐appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third
> Root‐Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical
> and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated,
> disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the
> former through superstitious fear.
> 
> The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic
> law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, _had to incarnate_
> anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues
> projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused,
> because they had not in them the requisite materials—_i.e._, an astral
> body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their
> having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another
> mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for
> the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn,
> and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in
> irresponsible, animal‐like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a
> parable and an allegory _within an allegory_. Its solution is left to the
> intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his
> _spiritual_ eye.
> 
> As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric
> legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris,
> or the Pitri‐Devatâs, _i.e._, those possessed of the _physical creative
> fire_. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with
> their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and
> likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the _Creative_ Gods,
> entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.(216) Their
> creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means,
> Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared
> its destiny and further evolution. They _would_ not, simply because they
> _could_ not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into
> the flower of human reason and self‐consciousness, for they had it not to
> give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece
> under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the
> physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.
> 
> Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds
> his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes
> the Human Higher Self owing to the _personal exertion of the individual_;
> but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because
> sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of
> attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure
> and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no
> merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by
> the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have
> _refused_ to create, and man had to be formed by more material
> Creators,(217) who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their
> own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could
> only project out of themselves _shadowy_ men, a little less ethereal and
> spiritual, less _divine_ and _perfect_ than themselves—shadows still. The
> first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too
> material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too
> spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every _negative_
> (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of
> imperfection, the _incorruptible_ must grow out of the corruptible, having
> the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is
> absolute Darkness, and _vice versâ_. In fact, there is neither Light nor
> Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of
> Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one
> from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists _per se_, since
> each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come
> into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of
> perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.
> 
> Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a _lower_
> Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or
> to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were
> the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various
> systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one
> always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the
> ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its
> mortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their
> followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church
> Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and
> moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made
> responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,(218) to which Class they
> relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
> 
> Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient
> Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the _Phædrus_, of a “winged” race of men.
> Aristophanes, in Plato’s _Banquet_, speaks of a race androgynous and with
> round bodies. In _Pymander_, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed.
> Thus it is said:
> 
>     The circuit having been accomplished, _the knot was loosened_ ...
>     and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were _untied_
>     [separated] _together with man_ ... [for] ... the causes had to
>     produce effects on earth.(219)
> 
> Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the _Popol Vuh_—published by the
> late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race
> “whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing
> the _divine knowledge of Gods_, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine,
> correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts
> as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.
> 
> (_b_) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each
> also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a
> complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to
> the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In _Pymander_,
> the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all
> partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved
> Man—their own reflection and synthesis.
> 
> In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods,
> as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and
> personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret
> Doctrine; and we find them in the _Vedas_, the _Purânas_, the Mazdean
> Scriptures and the _Kabalah_. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the
> World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the
> World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores,
> the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of _Pymander_, the seven Rishis and Pitris
> of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven
> Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven
> Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the
> seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of
> the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from
> the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after
> Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes
> him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The
> Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation
> of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the _Popol Vuh_, out
> of which the Mexican _third_ race of men was created, are all one. This
> may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse
> Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and
> the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even
> with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the
> Western scholars can tell?(221) Nevertheless, the fruits of all those
> “Trees,” whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are
> the “plants of life,” in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were
> all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed _within and
> under_ the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;(222) and the mystery is half
> revealed in the _Dîrghotamas_, where it is said:
> 
>     Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come _spirits who
>     love the science_, and where the gods produce all marvels.
> 
> As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees,
> the “Serpent” dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of
> Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic
> Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All;
> the others are its _reflected_ parts. The “Tree” is man himself, of
> course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the
> connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.
> 
> Everywhere, it is the same. The “Creating” Powers produce Man, but fail in
> their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with _conscious_
> immortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they
> are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the
> attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment
> in the lower or nether region, which is _our Earth, the lowest_ in its
> Chain; an “Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life‐cycle—in the
> _darkness_ of Matter, or _within animal Man_. It pleased the half ignorant
> and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They
> took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn
> them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the
> darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his
> indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the
> glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself.
> Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the
> _forbidden_ fruit, and the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the voice of reason and
> consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which
> is the old Dragon, the Devil!
> 
> The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and
> mystic symbol in India, the “Jaina Cross” as it is now called by the
> Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the
> Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the
> “devil’s sign,” we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine
> on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand‐headed Shesha‐
> Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but
> what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of
> Time, and becomes _Infinite_ Time itself, when called Ananta, the great
> Seven‐headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the _Eternal Deity_, during
> Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical
> symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all
> symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines
> of the whole work of “creation,” or evolution as one should rather say,
> from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown
> Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose _genesis
> is as unknown_ to that Science as is that of the All‐Deity Itself. The
> Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is
> the “Worker’s Hammer” in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, the “Hammer,”
> above referred to, in the _Book of Concealed Mystery_, “which striketh
> sparks from the flint” (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor’s
> Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the
> Pre‐cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the
> region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal
> Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed
> out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the
> “Storm‐hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy
> Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and
> suffering in their life‐incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal
> peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of
> Hel—the Goddess‐queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer,
> for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.
> 
>     Surtur’s flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging
>     waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of
>     Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but
>     as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new
>     earth.(223)
> 
> Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the “Hammer of
> Creation,” with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the
> continual _motion_ and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In
> that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in
> the Cycles of Time of the world’s axes and their equatorial belts; the two
> lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks
> suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm,
> Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand
> being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the
> Earth. In the _Smaragdine Tablet_ of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is
> inscribed with the word “Solve,” the left with the word “Coagula.” It is
> at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and
> Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to
> say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of
> signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the
> mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very
> threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its
> spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval
> Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative
> Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also
> the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends
> its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ‐Mâyâ, the
> great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine
> Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of
> Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human
> schemes or fictions.
> 
> How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the
> ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round
> in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all
> written down in the “Scrolls of Wisdom,” of which many are lost but some
> still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the
> Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner’s _Asgard and the Gods_,
> concerning the “Renewal of the World,” which is a prophecy about the
> Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.
> 
> The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:
> 
>     On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth
>     Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and _in them their
>     fathers rose again_ [the Egos of all their past incarnations].
>     They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom
>     and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled.
>     Near them, but _unseen by them_, was the strong, the mighty One,
>     who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with
>     each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.
>     _They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power,
>     but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose
>     out of the waters_ [of Space]. To the south above the Field of
>     Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a
>     third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil’s cave a wondrous palace was
>     erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the
>     sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our
>     Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as _they used to be_, and
>     they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From
>     Gimil’s heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they
>     looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the
>     coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to
>     _climb up higher_, to _rise in knowledge and wisdom_, in piety and
>     in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until
>     they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house
>     of All father.(224)
> 
> He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so
> imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in
> the above.
> 
> Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader
> thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on,
> in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological
> symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire
> only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including
> Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The
> “friction” of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this
> image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom
> there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the
> Sanskrit‐speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the
> conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial
> ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the “divine artist
> and _carpenter_,”(225) and is also the Father of the Gods and of “Creative
> Fire” in the _Vedas_. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there
> is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being
> found. A number of such terra‐cotta discs, called _fusaïoles_, were found
> by Dr. Schliemann _under_ the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms,
> [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot
> in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being
> one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure
> Aryans.
> 
> (_c_) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this
> meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife
> of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic
> life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.
> 
> 16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA(226) BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY
> MADE? (_A_) THE FATHERS(227) CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE,(228)
> WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO
> HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE.(229) THESE THREE(230) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT
> EFFORTS A GOOD RÛPA. IT(231) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET
> IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHÂYÂ, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE. (_B_) ...
> 
> (_a_) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with
> the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas
> (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not
> meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary
> individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians.
> It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says
> the Commentary, “_who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man_”—_i.e._,
> the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as
> already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form, _i.e._, of the model
> according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive
> Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta(232) or “phantom.” This
> “creation” was a failure.
> 
> (_b_) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of
> _physical_ Nature’s unaided attempts to construct even a perfect
> animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature‐
> Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their
> own; but this is not enough to construct a _thinking_ man. “_Living_ Fire”
> was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self‐perception and
> self‐consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are
> the Animal‐Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus
> furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of
> man. The first Creators, then, were the Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they
> failed to animate the statue—_intellectually_.
> 
> This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of,
> and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self
> or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the
> former is endowed with _divine_ intelligence, the latter with
> _instinctual_ faculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and
> the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?
> 
> Says the Commentary:
> 
> _The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the
> Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that
> vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life
> Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only
> breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their
> abode._
> 
> This shows that not all men became incarnations of the “Divine Rebels,”
> but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply
> quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great
> difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not
> the “Sons of Mahat,” speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate
> Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would
> never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through
> self‐exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to
> be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if
> not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this
> rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure
> spirit, that we are what we are—self‐conscious, thinking men, with the
> capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil.
> Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over
> this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by
> the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and
> Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of
> self‐conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in
> Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible
> allegories, foolishly called “fables.”
> 
> It explains, to begin with, the statement made in _Pymander_, that the
> “Heavenly Man,” the “Son of the Father,” who partook of the nature and
> essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material
> World,
> 
>     Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of
>     the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the
>     downward‐borne nature.(233)
> 
> It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek
> allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many
> allegorical accounts about the “Wars in Heaven,” including that of
> _Revelation_ with respect to the Christian dogma of the “Fallen Angels.”
> It explains the “Rebellion” of the oldest and highest Angels, and the
> meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,
> _i.e._, Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the
> Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as
> follows:
> 
>     My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war
>     with the powers of evil _preceded_ the Creation; I now think it
>     followed the account of the Fall.(234)
> 
> In the same work,(235) Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early
> Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The
> Tree has seven branches; _three_ on the man’s side, _four_ on that of the
> female. These branches are typical of the seven Root‐Races, in the _third_
> of which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the
> so‐called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless,
> then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each
> other. As the writer tells us:
> 
>     The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads
>     man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the
>     sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the
>     creation of the world.(236)
> 
> This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus,
> personified, or rather _animalized_; and Tiamat, “the embodiment of the
> spirit of chaos,” of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the
> Womb. The “spirit of chaos and disorder” refers to the mental perturbation
> which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which
> fascinates and seduces, the ever‐living active element which throws the
> whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman,
> but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic
> curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George
> Smith:
> 
>     It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall,
>     and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay
>     becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on
>     the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity.
>     Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family
>     quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he
>     shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out _useless
>     prayer_, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines
>     continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it
>     only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers
>     of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).(237)
> 
> This account is omitted in _Genesis_, for monotheistic purposes. But it is
> a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion
> and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments by
> _Genesis_, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the
> fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
> 
> 17. THE BREATH(238) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED
> A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE;
> THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF
> ITS BODY;(239) “WE GAVE IT OUR OWN!”—SAID THE DHYÂNÎS. THE BREATH NEEDED A
> VEHICLE OF DESIRES;(240) “IT HAS IT!”—SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS.(241) BUT
> BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; “WE CANNOT GIVE THAT!”—SAID
> THE FATHERS. “I NEVER HAD IT!”—SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. “THE FORM
> WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE!”—SAID THE GREAT FIRE.(242)...
> MAN(243) REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHÛTA.... THUS HAVE THE BONELESS
> GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO(244) BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD.(245)
> 
> As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few
> remarks will now suffice. The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of
> his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is
> its “Mother,” because of that mysterious power in the Moon, which has as
> decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it
> regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or
> Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those
> influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon
> earth, is referred to as the “Nurse”;(246) while “Spiritual Fire” alone
> makes of man a divine and perfect entity.
> 
> Now what is that “Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general;
> while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds
> from its Noumenon, the “Dhyân of the First Element.” Hydrogen is _gas_
> only on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen “would be
> the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”(247) and is
> very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and
> generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water,
> and is “fire, air and water,” in fact: _one_ under three aspects; hence
> the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or
> Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the
> subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena.
> Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified
> it with, the To On, the “One” of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen
> is _not_ water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it
> manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a
> product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the
> aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.
> 
> If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of
> these “Fires” was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people,
> preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the
> Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great
> Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by
> Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and
> these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, the _personified sacred Fires
> of the most Occult Powers of Nature_. The several branches of the Âryan
> Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their
> best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case
> of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there
> were three or four only; others say seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus,
> and Casmilus may very well stand for the _alter egos_ of the four
> Kumâras—Sanat‐Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities,
> whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori,
> Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is
> Brahmâ—or rather, the “Flame of his Wrath,” which prompted him to perform
> the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva)
> and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the
> Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—_i.e._, correlative
> Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these “Fires” and their
> real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work
> is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.
> 
> The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal
> intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would
> learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works
> of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as
> do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered
> Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and
> inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or
> Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In
> exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the
> Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of our
> _five physical senses_, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult
> way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation
> than the one called in the _Purânas_ Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.”
> “_Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire_,” says an Occult axiom.
> 
> _The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and
> their union is Life._
> 
> In the Kabalah, Bath‐Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or
> Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the _Purânas_ and Hindû exotericism, Vâch,
> the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi,
> Primordial Light. And if Bath‐Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate
> præter‐natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the
> sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before
> Judaism, the “Mother of the _Vedas_,” who entered into the Rishis and
> inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath‐Kol is said to have
> inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High‐Priests. And both
> exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the
> Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which
> Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial
> Cosmic Trinity.
> 
>     I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle,
>     the _Light that radiates within Darkness_ [Chaos], and the shining
>     Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.(248)
> 
> Thus we have to study well the “Primary Creation” before we can understand
> the Secondary. The first Race had three _rudimentary_ Elements in it; and
> _no Fire_ as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and
> the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were
> subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this
> Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and
> sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so‐called Creative Deity
> himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in
> exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,
> “pregenetic,” and the other names connect him in their descending order
> more and more with Matter.
> 
> The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the
> Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial “Man” or “Spirit,” and
> mortal physical man:
> 
> 1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.
> 2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.
> 3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.
> 4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.
> 5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.
> 
> As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its
> predecessor; as each Root‐Race adds the characterizing sense of the
> preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary “creation” of man, who
> evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be
> shown further on.
> 
> Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the First
> Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and
> cannot be referred to as the “_First_ Cause,”—which First Cause is called
> in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad‐Yoni, the “Womb of the World,” mankind
> emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and
> Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely _rudiments_ of the
> future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi, “origin,” or the
> “original place whence sprang the Elements.” Hence they proceeded with all
> the rest from Prabhavâpyaya, “the place whence is the origination, and
> into which is the resolution of all things,” as explained by the
> Commentator on the _Vishnu Purâna_. Whence also our physical senses.
> Whence even the highest “created” Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one
> with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is
> a Manifested Deity—hence “created,” or limited and conditioned. This is
> easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.
> 
> After being called the _incognizable_, eternal Brahma (neuter or
> abstract), the Pundarîkâksha, “supreme and imperishable glory,” once that
> instead of Sadaika‐Rûpa, “changeless” or “immutable” Nature, he is
> addressed as Ekâneka‐Rûpa, “both single and manifold,” he, the Cause,
> becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric
> order, show the following descending scale:
> 
> Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.
> Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.
> Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the
>             senses).
> Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.
> Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.
> Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.
> 
> The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false
> and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only
> Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.
> 
> It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the
> spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân‐Chohanic
> Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected,
> in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; _every
> one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion
> of their various __“__Fires__”__ and Elements_.
> 
> Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
> 
>     18. The Sons of Yoga. 19. The Sexless Second Race. 20. The Sons of
>     the “Sons of Twilight.” 21. The “Shadow,” or the Astral Man,
>     retires within, and man develops a Physical Body.
> 
> 18. THE FIRST(249) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE
> YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
> 
> In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:
> 
> _The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of Ether [or the
> __“__Wind__”__] (a)_....
> 
> _They were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords (b). They [the shadows]
> expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the Solar Lhas warmed
> them [__i.e.__, preserved the Vital Fire in the nascent physical Forms].
> The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no Fire or Water
> of their own (c)._
> 
> (_a_) Remember in this connection the _Tabula Smaragdina_ of Hermes, the
> Esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro‐chemical is well
> known to students, the Anthropological may now be given. The “One Thing”
> mentioned in it is Man. It is said:
> 
>     The Father of that One Only Thing is the Sun; its Mother the Moon;
>     the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its Nurse is the Spirituous
>     Earth.
> 
> In the Occult rendering of the same it is added: “and _Spiritual_ Fire is
> its instructor [Guru].”
> 
> This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is
> eternally reïncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves,
> changing with every re‐birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a
> strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature
> should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge
> in the Âtman, the ALL‐SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence
> thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be
> thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the
> mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines—Spiritual, Psychic
> and Physical.
> 
> That which propels towards, and forces evolution, _i.e._, compels the
> growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (_a_) the Monad, or
> that which acts in it unconsciously through a Force inherent in itself;
> and (_b_) the lower Astral Body or the _Personal_ Self. The former,
> whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is
> indeed itself, that Force. Owing to its identity with the ALL‐FORCE,
> which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all‐potent on the Arûpa,
> or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains
> all‐potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, the rays
> of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select
> this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a
> piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not
> follow it. So with the Âtman: unless the Higher Self or Ego gravitates
> towards its Sun—the Monad—the Lower Ego, or _Personal_ Self, will have the
> upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness
> and animal desire to live a senseless life (Tanha), which is the “maker of
> the tabernacle,” as Buddha calls it in the _Dhammapada_.(250) Hence the
> expression, the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded
> them. To these “Spirits” belong temporarily the human Astral Selves; and
> it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the
> Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the “Solar”
> Lhas, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true;
> metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true
> that the Âtman alone _warms_ the Inner Man; _i.e._, it enlightens it with
> the Ray of Divine Life and alone is able to impart to the Inner Man, or
> the Reïncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, we shall find, for the first
> three and a half Root‐Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the
> Astral Shadows of the “Progenitors,” the Lunar Pitris, which are the
> formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the
> evolution of the physical form towards perfection—this, at the cost of a
> proportionate loss of Spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is
> the Higher Ego, or Incarnating Principle, the Nous or Mind, which reigns
> over the Animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the
> latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or
> physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its
> evolution, only when the selfishness of the Personality has so strongly
> infected the real Inner Man with its lethal _virus_, that the upward
> attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober
> truth, vice and wickedness are an _abnormal, unnatural_ manifestation, at
> this period of our human evolution—at least they ought to be so. The fact
> that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now—civilized
> nations having succeeded in making of the former an ethical
> characteristic, of the latter an art—is an additional proof of the
> exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
> 
> The entire scheme is in the _Chaldæan Book of Numbers_, and even in the
> _Zohar_, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints.
> First comes Ain Suph, the “Concealed of the Concealed,” then the _Point_,
> Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a _World of
> Emanations_ that gives birth to three other Worlds—the first the Briatic
> World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the _World
> of Formation_, or Jetziratic, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the
> Third, or _World of Action_, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or
> _our_ World; and yet it is said of this World—also called Kliphoth,
> containing the (six other) Spheres, נלגלים, and Matter—that it is the
> residence of the “Prince of Darkness.” This is as clearly stated as can
> be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first
> habitable World, means Messenger, Ἄγγελος, Angel, called the great
> Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic,
> whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,(251) of whom it is said
> that:
> 
>     They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [_entities_ and]
>     _intelligences_, and their _correlates_ and logical _contraries_
>     inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.
> 
> These “contraries” are called the “Shells,” קליפות, or Demons,(252) who
> inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the
> seven Zones of our Globe.(253) Their prince is called in the Kabalah
> Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but
> this Satan is also Lucifer, the bright Angel of Light, the Light‐ and
> Life‐bringer, the “Soul” alienated from the Holy Ones, the other Angels,
> and for a period, _anticipating the time_ when they would descend on Earth
> to incarnate in their turn.
> 
> The _Book of Wisdom_ teaches that:
> 
>     All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of
>     Emanations.(254)
> 
> And the _Zohar_ teaches that in the “Soul” is the _real man_, _i.e._, the
> Ego and the conscious _I am_, the Manas.
> 
> Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes,
> 
>     [Souls] descend from the pure air to be _chained to bodies_.(255)
> 
> And Philo states that:
> 
>     The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the
>     earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to
>     bodies, being desirous to live in them.(256)
> 
> Because through, and in, the human form they will become _progressive_
> Beings, whereas the nature of the Angel is purely _intransitive_;
> therefore Man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the
> Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brâhman, the
> Twice‐born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his
> _Epistle to the Corinthians_:
> 
>     Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?(257)
> 
> Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man
> evolved primarily as a _luminous incorporeal form_, over which, like
> molten brass poured into the model of the sculptor, the physical frame of
> his body was built by, through and from, the lower forms and types of
> animal terrestrial life. Says the _Zohar_:
> 
>     The Soul and the _Form_ when descending on Earth put on an earthly
>     garment.
> 
> His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal
> frames are fashioned.
> 
>     When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the
>     celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ...
>     _light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden_.(258)
>     Man [the Heavenly Adam] was _created_ by the ten Sephiroth of the
>     Jetziratic World, and by their _common power_ the seven Angels of
>     a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël
>     fell, and then _deceiving_ (?) man, caused his fall also.
> 
> (_b_) The sentence, “they were the shadows of the Shadows of the
> Lords”—_i.e._, the Progenitors created man out of their own Astral
> Bodies—explains a universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East
> with having no “shadows” of their own. “The Devas cast no shadows,” and
> this is the sure sign of a _good holy Spirit_.
> 
> (_c_) Why had they “no Fire or Water of their own”?(259) Because that
> which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its
> Noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its
> trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from
> the three higher principles in man, namely, Spirit, Soul, and Mind, or
> Âtmâ, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human
> basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the “Air” or the “Wind,”
> becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of “Spiritual
> Fire,” the Noumenon of the “Three in One” within his Self, he acquires
> from his Inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self‐Consciousness,
> which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again Divine Spirit
> is symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both
> standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind,
> symbolized by the Wind or Air, for Pneuma, means “Breath.”
> 
> Hence in the _Smaragdine Tablet_, disfigured by Christian hands:
> 
>     The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the
>     Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful work—[which is Man].
> 
> For the Secret Work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabalah, “one in
> essence, but three in aspect,” is the Universal Agent or Lapis
> Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect
> Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three Elements is the Occult
> Solvent in the “Soul of the World,” the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at
> the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to
> the other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE “whom no person has seen except
> the Son”; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical
> Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter
> understand the TO ON, the “One Father,” if his Manas, the “Son,” does not
> become (_as_) “One with the Father,” and through this absorption receive
> enlightenment from the divine “Instructor,” or Guru—Âtmâ‐Buddhi?
> 
> As says the Commentary:
> 
> _If thou would’st understand the_ SECONDARY [“Creation,” so‐called], _O
> Lanoo, thou should’st first study its relation to the_ PRIMARY.(260)
> 
> The First Race had three Elements, but no _Living_ Fire. Why? Because:
> 
> “We say _four_ Elements, my Son, but ought to say three,” says Hermes
> Trismegistus. “In the Primary Circle,” or Creation that which is marked
> [Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes
> above and below] reads “Root,” as in the Secondary likewise.
> 
> Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism—a variant on Eastern Esotericism—we
> find:
> 
> Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus
> Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua
> Salt ... Mater ... Sanguis
> 
> And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The
> Spirit, beyond Manifested Nature, is the Fiery BREATH in its absolute
> Unity. In the Manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the
> electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit
> of Nature, the terrestrial God. And in, on, and around the Earth, the
> fiery spirit thereof—Air, fluidic Fire; Water, liquid Fire; Earth, solid
> Fire. All is Fire—Ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of
> which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind.
> “Pro‐Metor” is divine Fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the
> Preserver. The primitive names of the Gods are all connected with fire,
> from Agni, the Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a “consuming fire.” In
> India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and
> Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name
> of Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis),
> Vâyu, and Sûrya—Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In
> the Hebrew, אזא (Aza) means to “illuminate,” and אשא (Asha) is “Fire.” In
> Occultism, to “kindle a fire” is synonymous to evoking one of the three
> great Fire‐powers, or to “call on God.” In Sanskrit the root Ush is fire
> or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by
> Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a “fire‐enchanter.”
> Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of
> the _Vedas_. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who
> quotes the _Bhagavad Gitâ_ to the effect that:
> 
>     Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his
>     supernatural powers, all things which mount on the wheel of time.
> 
> It is the Creator and the Destroyer, truly.
> 
>     The primitive Fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for
>     devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw
>     into the fire combustible matter crying, _Devour, O Lord!_ In the
>     Irish language _easam_, or _asam_, means to _make_ or _create_.
> 
>     [And] _Aesar_ was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods;
>     the literal meaning of the word is “to kindle a fire.”(261)
> 
> The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured
> _Pymander_—prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in
> the 16th century—divide the Elements in the following way:
> 
> _The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the
> Salts of Nature represented by_:
> 
> [Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel‐Man ... Water (Jesus‐
>             Christ, Angel‐Man, Mikael)
> Α‐Ω ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire
> Ε‐Υ ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth
> Ι‐Ο ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air(262)
> Η ... _The Quintessence_, Ἡ ΦΛΟΞ, _Flamma‐Virgo_ [Virgin Oil], _Flamma
>             Durissima_, _Virgo_, _Lucis Æterna Mater_.
> 
> The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles,
> of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities
> from a preceding though _lower_ Sphere, the shell of which is now our
> Moon. But even this shell is all‐potential, for, the Moon having generated
> the Earth, its _phantom_, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form
> its first inhabitants, the pre‐human monsters. To assure himself of this,
> the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan Fragments, and read what
> Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the
> male‐female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the
> androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother‐Space), its
> reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan
> Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which
> Esoterically and even exoterically is the _Moon_. It was the Moon
> (Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings
> which were slain by the Dhyânîs.(263)
> 
> Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic
> condition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at
> the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine
> nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms
> destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose
> turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms” are called “Sons of Yoga,” because
> Yoga—union with Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the
> passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is
> the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything
> through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful
> energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the
> same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan
> text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that
> abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni‐Buddhas create their
> celestial sons, the Dhyâni‐Bodhisattvas.
> 
>     All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This
>     superior, whose inner pleasure it is _to emanate into them_,
>     cannot impart efflux until they have adored [_i.e._, meditated as
>     during Yoga].(264)
> 
> 19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A‐
> SEXUAL(265) FROM THE SEXLESS.(266) THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE
> PRODUCED.
> 
> What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A‐sexual
> Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat‐born” so‐called, and perhaps
> still more the Third Race, the “Egg‐born” Androgynes. These two modes of
> procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the
> Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those
> who are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words
> to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution,
> things which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there
> are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical
> evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous
> generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms.
> Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any
> particular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:
> 
>     The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the
>     course of its life‐cycle, during some of which it may be _sexual_,
>     and in others _a‐sexual_, _i.e._, it may reproduce itself
>     alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and
>     also by fissure or _budding_ from one being only, which is of no
>     sex.(267)
> 
> “Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs
> reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since
> they were ethereal, a‐sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of
> desire, or Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved
> the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the
> Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed,
> the cell‐theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to
> Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the
> microscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent
> living beings—just as Occultism regards the “Fiery Lives”—there is no
> difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
> 
> Consider the first stages of the development of a germ‐cell. Its nucleus
> grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X
> with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] _within_ the cell. This
> spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is
> _extruded_ in the form of what are called the “polar cells.” These polar
> cells _now_ die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation
> of the remaining part of the nucleus which is _nourished_ by the substance
> of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created
> in _this_ way—at the very beginning of _human and mammalian evolution_?
> 
> This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by
> which the Second Race was formed from the First.
> 
> The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its
> egg‐shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the
> germ‐cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then,
> instinct with the Principle of Life.
> 
> When the season of reproduction arrives, the _Sub_‐astral “extrudes” a
> miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding Aura. This germ grows and
> feeds on the Aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually
> separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of Aura; just
> as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent
> division into two.
> 
> The analogy with the “polar cells” would seem to hold good, since their
> death would _now_ correspond to the change introduced by the separation of
> the sexes, when gestation _in utero_, _i.e._, within the cell, became the
> rule.
> 
> As the Commentary tells us:
> 
>     _The early Second [Root] Race were the Fathers of the __“__Sweat‐
>     born__”__; the later Second [Root] Race were __“__Sweat‐born__”__
>     themselves._
> 
> This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the
> beginning of a Race to its close. The “Sons of Yoga,” or the Primitive
> Astral Race, had seven stages of evolution _racially_, or collectively; as
> every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only
> who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself.
> Thus the first Sub‐races of the Second Race were born at first by the
> process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually,
> _pari passu_ with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise.
> The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each
> covering æons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can tell whether the
> present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older
> than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of
> observation began hardly half a century ago?
> 
> Primeval human Hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the
> Ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is
> certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that
> hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early Races; while on the
> grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in
> physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant,
> animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and
> the descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, are
> fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on
> Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the
> insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition—if the
> terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity—can
> alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic
> axiom:
> 
>     If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the
>     visible.
> 
> In the _Descent of Man_ occurs the following passage, which shows how near
> Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
> 
>     It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex
>     bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the
>     reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex....
>     Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to
>     have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter
>     a singular difficulty. _In the mammalian class the males possess
>     rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ
>     prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male
>     marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac._ Other analogous facts
>     could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely
>     ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the
>     chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had
>     diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This
>     seems very improbable,(269) _for we have to look to fishes, the
>     lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous
>     forms_.(270)
> 
> Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which
> the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem
> from which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:
> 
>     That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a
>     rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by
>     such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and
>     then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the
>     other.(271)
> 
> He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired
> for battle or ornament by male birds” and only _partially_ inherited by
> their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the
> need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so
> much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial
> details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the
> argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old
> fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most
> comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock
> must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs
> equally mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of
> functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal
> and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general
> economy of primeval life.
> 
> The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that
> of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of
> the first man.
> 
> Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which
> the Darwinists call Protoplasm, put forward a theory half Occult and half
> scientifico‐materialistic. He made Adam, the A‐sexual, spring suddenly
> from the _clay_, as it is called in the _Bible_, the Blastema of Science.
> As Naudin explains:
> 
>     It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force
>     effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this
>     great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility
>     and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of
>     animals undergoing metamorphosis.(272)
> 
> For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but _mankind_,
> which remained
> 
>     Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all
>     others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them.
> 
> He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by
> 
>     A process of germination similar to that of medusæ and ascidians.
> 
> Mankind, thus constituted physiologically,
> 
>     Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production
>     of the various great human races.
> 
> De Quatrefages criticizes this position in _The Human Species_. It is
> _unscientific_, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “do not
> form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in
> his theory with the “_first cause_,” which is credited with having made
> potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus
> of having in reality _created_ these beings _en masse_; moreover, Naudin
> does not even consider the “_second causes_,” or their action in this
> evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with
> “second causes,” has thus
> 
>     Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.(273)
> 
> Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to
> some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “Primordial
> Blastema” the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris,
> which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite
> in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our
> teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden
> leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and
> his Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts—a kind of
> _unconscious_ First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos—which is an absurdity.
> Whereas it is our Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence—the _Causality_ of the Primal
> Cause which creates _physical_ man—which is the living, active and
> potential Matter (pregnant _per se_ with that animal consciousness of a
> superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces
> the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his
> “ancient and general process of _creation_” from Proto‐organisms is as
> Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
> 
> Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The _Zohar_,
> for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the
> invisible Universe.
> 
>     All that which is in the Lower (our) World is found in the Upper.
>     The Lower and the Upper act and reäct upon each other.(274)
> 
> 20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF‐BORN. THE SELF‐BORN, THE CHHÂYÂ FROM THE
> BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.
> 
> The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the “Self‐born,” as the
> latter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will,
> whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be
> also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material
> plane. The name “Sons of Twilight” shows that the “Self‐born” Progenitors
> of our Doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brâhmanical System,
> as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being
> stated to have issued from Brahmâ’s “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the
> _Purânas_.
> 
> 21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS
> (_A_). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE
> NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE
> INNER OF THE SECOND (_B_). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE
> SHADOW OF THE WING (_C_).
> 
> (_a_) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one
> with it.
> 
> (_b_) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution
> of mankind. The material of the first Forms—shadowy, ethereal, and
> negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the
> Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as
> the First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative
> Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its
> own—the Race _never died_. Its “Men” melted gradually away, becoming
> absorbed in the bodies of their own “Sweat‐born” progeny, more solid than
> their own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the
> new Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a
> period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent,
> material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and
> even the inner or _lower_ Principles or Bodies of the progeny.
> 
> (_c_) When the “Shadow” retires, _i.e._, when the Astral Body becomes
> covered with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The “Wing,”
> or the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow
> of the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and
> original.
> 
> As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well
> to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing
> upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several
> variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each
> of which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the _Odyssey_,
> Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband
> “to two sons of valiant heart”—Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with
> a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi‐immortal; they live and
> die, each in turn, and every alternate day (ἑτερήμεροι(275)). As the
> Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day
> and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or
> the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.(276) Again, in the
> allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes—born from the
> Egg to which Leda gives birth—the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates
> to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born
> from an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when
> uniting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma‐Kalahamsa. Leda is the
> mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the
> Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all
> lay golden Eggs.(277) In the _Kalevala_, the Epic Poem of Finland, the
> beauteous daughter of the Ether, the “Water‐Mother,” creates the World in
> conjunction with a “Duck”—another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa—who
> lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an “egg of iron,” in her lap. But
> the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic
> man is found in Pindar(278) only, with a slighter reference to it in the
> Homeric Hymns.(279) Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of
> Apollodorus(280); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual
> man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen,
> they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from
> the Animal‐man into a God‐man with only an animal body.
> 
> Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and
> also to the Father of the Gods—Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal,
> Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the
> occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the
> Apharides,(281) Pollux kills Lynceus—“of all mortals he whose sight is the
> most penetrating”—but Castor is wounded by Idas, “he who sees and knows.”
> Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the
> last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.(282) In his despair
> he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. “Thou canst not die altogether,”
> answers the master of the Gods; “thou art of a divine race.” But he gives
> him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in
> Olympus; or, if he would share his brother’s fate in all things, he must
> pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden
> heavenly abodes. This semi‐immortality, which is also to be shared by
> Castor, is accepted by Pollux.(283) _And thus the twin brothers live
> alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night._(284)
> 
> Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those “solar myth”
> interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to
> soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the “Egg‐born”
> Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, _i.e._, unconscious in its
> Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;(285) and the
> latter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of
> its Fifth Principle being called to life by the _Informing Gods_, and thus
> connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor
> represents the _personal_, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior
> kind, when unlinked from the divine _Individuality_. “Twins” truly; yet
> divorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship,
> bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine
> nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.
> 
> Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The
> widely spread modern interpretation of it—so celebrated in antiquity,
> Plutarch tells us,(286) as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that
> it was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature,
> is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact
> that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and
> could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be
> identified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of
> all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest Deity, would not
> have personified it by Pollux, a demi‐god only.(287)
> 
> If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we
> shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under
> another form. Unable to trace in them the “Egg‐born,” we shall still
> unmistakably find in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ the Androgynes
> and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most
> ingenious symbology.
> 
> The Divine Hermaphrodite.
> 
> An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious
> Mysteries, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean Race,
> some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so
> desecrated. Of these Sciences several have now become exoteric—such as
> Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspects.
> But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole
> guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the
> meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the Hermaphrodite in
> the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such
> unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
> 
> Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment,
> or rather the reëstablishment of the Religious Mysteries, in which ancient
> truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of
> allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution
> of the Human Races from the Divine, and especially from the Androgynous
> Race—the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine Wisdom
> incarnating on Earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal
> experience of pain and suffering, generated on Earth only under the shade
> of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—a secret first known only to
> the Elohim, the Self‐Initiated, “Higher Gods.”(288)
> 
> In the _Book of Enoch_ we have Adam,(289) the first Divine Androgyne,
> separating into man and woman, and becoming Jah‐Heva in one form, or Race,
> and Cain and Abel(290)—male and female—in its other form or Race—the
> double‐sexed Jehovah,(291) an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ‐Vâch.
> After which come the Third and Fourth Root‐Races of mankind(292)—that is
> to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no
> longer sexless Semi‐spirits and Androgynes, as were the two Races which
> precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in
> fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and
> tradition. For, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from
> hoary antiquity, this is _one of the greatest_. It accounts for the bi‐
> sexual element found in every Creative Deity, in Brahmâ‐Virâj‐Vâch, as in
> Adam‐Jehovah‐Eve, also in Cain‐Jehovah‐Abel. For “The Book of the
> Generations of Adam” does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only:
> 
>     Male and female created he them; ... and called their name
>     Adam.(293)
> 
> Then it proceeds to say:
> 
>     And Adam ... begat a son in _his own likeness_, after his image;
>     and called his name Seth.(294)
> 
> After which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and
> Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive
> _Human_ Race, especially in its cosmo‐sidereal sense. Not so, however, in
> its theo‐anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah‐
> Hovah, meaning _male life_ and _female life_—first androgynous, then
> separated into sexes—is used in this sense in _Genesis_ from Chapter V
> onwards. As the author of the _Source of Measures_ says:
> 
>     The two words of which _Jehovah_ is composed make up the original
>     idea of male‐female, as the birth originator.(295)
> 
> For the Hebrew letter _Jod_ was the _membrum virile_ and _Hovah_ was Eve,
> the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author
> believes, therefore, that:
> 
>     It is seen that the _perfect one_ [the perfect female circle or
>     Yoni, 20612, numerically], as _originator of measures_, takes also
>     the form of _birth_ origin, as _hermaphrodite one_; hence the
>     phallic form and use.
> 
> Precisely; only “the phallic form and use” came long ages later; and the
> first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the first Race
> born in the present usual way from man and woman—for Seth is no man, but a
> _race_. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first
> result (physiologically) after the “Fall,” he is also the first _man_;
> hence his son Enos is referred to as the “Son of _Man_.” Seth represents
> the _later_ Third Race.
> 
> To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph—the Boundless and Endless No‐
> Thing—the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute‐
> appellation of one of the personal Creative Elohim, whose name was Yah or
> Jah—the letters _i_ or _j_ or _y_ being interchangeable—or Jah‐Hovah,
> _i.e._, _male_ and _female_;(296) Jah‐Eve a hermaphrodite, or the _first
> form of humanity_, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose
> “Mind‐born Son” is the earthly Jah‐Hovah, mystically. And knowing this,
> the crafty Rabbin‐Kabalist has made of it a name so _secret_, that he
> could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus
> he was obliged to make it _sacred_.
> 
> How close is the identity between Brahmâ‐Prajâpati and Jehovah‐Sephiroth,
> between Brahmâ‐Virâj and Jehovah‐Adam, the _Bible_ and the _Purânas_
> compared alone can show. Analyzed, and read in the same light, they afford
> cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original—made at two
> periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this
> subject _Genesis_ iv. 1 and 26 and _Manu_ i. 32 and they will both yield
> their meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in _Genesis_, is
> both man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in
> his Esoteric meaning, for the symbolical personification of creative and
> _generative_ power, both divine and human. The _Zohar_ affords still more
> convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word
> certain original Paurânic expressions; _e.g._, the “creation” of the world
> is generally considered in the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the
> delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator.
> 
>     Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and
>     time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening
>     to his frolics.(297)
> 
> Now compare this with what is said in the Book, _Nobeleth ’Hokhmah_:
> 
>     The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds
>     happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in
>     Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are
>     all called delight.(298)
> 
> Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,” as the author just
> quoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain
> Suph a Creator?
> 
> The “Divine Hermaphrodite” is, then, Brahmâ‐Vâch‐Virâj; and that of the
> Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah‐Cain‐Abel. Only the “Heathen”
> were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israëlites and
> Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The
> Jews regard the name given to them—the Yah‐oudi—as an insult. Yet they
> have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call
> themselves the ancient Yah‐oudi, “Jah‐hovians,” as the Brâhmans have to
> call themselves Brâhmans _after their national deity_. For Jah‐hovah is
> the generic name of that Group or Hierarchy of Creative Planetary Angels,
> under whose Star their nation has evolved. He is one of the Planetary
> Elohim of the Regent Group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Chapter iv of _Genesis_,
> when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the
> new Race of men—sprung from Seth and Enos—_Jehovah_, something quite
> different from the translation adopted in the _Bible_, which ought to
> read:
> 
>     To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call
>     themselves Jah, or Yah‐hovah,
> 
> to wit, _men and women_, the “Lords of Creation.” One has but to read the
> above‐mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the
> Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated,
> the correct translation should be:
> 
>     Then began men to _call themselves_ Jehovah;
> 
> and not:
> 
>     Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord
> 
> the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the
> well‐known passage:
> 
>     I have gotten a man from the Lord,
> 
> should read:
> 
>     I have gotten a man, even Jehovah.(299)
> 
> Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite
> differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it:
> 
>     Cain—_I have gotten—Kain_, from _Kâ’nithi, I have gotten_.
> 
> Luther:
> 
>     I have gotten a man—even the Lord [Jehovah].
> 
> And the author of _The Source of Measures_:
> 
>     I have _measured a man_, even _Jehovah_.
> 
> The last is the correct rendering for—(_a_) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist,
> explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (_b_) this
> rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with
> regard to Brahmâ.
> 
> In _Isis Unveiled_,(300) it was explained by the writer that:
> 
>     Cain ... is the son of the “Lord” not of Adam.
> 
> The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, the “Father” of Yod‐Heva, “Adam‐Eve,” or
> Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood.
> Seth, on the other hand, is the _leader and the progenitor of the Races of
> the Earth_; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but Esoterically he
> is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the
> counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective
> name for man and woman:
> 
>     Male and female (_zachar va nakobeh_) created he them ... and
>     called _their_ name Adam.
> 
> The verses in _Genesis_ from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for
> Kabalistic reasons. After the “Man” of _Genesis_ i. 26, and Enos, the Son
> of Man, of iv. 26; after Adam, the first Androgyne; after Adam Kadmon—the
> sexless (the first) Logos—Adam and Eve once separated, come finally
> Jehovah‐Eve and Cain‐Jehovah. These represent distinct Root‐Races, for
> millions of years elapsed between them.
> 
> Hence the Âryan and the Semitic Theo‐anthropographies are two leaves on
> the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages
> standing in relation to each other in the following way:
> 
> I. The “Unknowable” referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such
> as “_Nought_ was,” called, later on, Parabrahman—the אין, Ain, No‐thing,
> or Ain Suph of the Kabalists—and again, the “Spirit” (of God) that moves
> upon the face of the Waters, in _Genesis_. All these are _identical_.
> Moreover, in _Genesis_ i, verse 2 is placed as verse 1 in the _secret_
> Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim “creating the Heaven
> and the Earth.” This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was
> necessary for _monotheistic_ and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah’s curse
> against those Elohim (Gods) who _have not created_ the Heavens and the
> Earth,(301) shows that there were other Elohim who had.
> 
> II. The Heavenly Manu‐Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhû‐Nârâyana, the
> “Self‐existent,” the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne
> “Man,” of _Genesis_ i, are also identical.
> 
> III. Manu‐Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who
> in _Genesis_, iv. 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female,
> thus becoming Jah‐Hovah or Jehovah‐Eve; as Manu‐Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ,
> separates himself to become “Brahmâ‐Virâj and Vâch‐Virâj,” male and
> female. All the rest of the texts and versions are “blinds.”
> 
> IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata‐Rûpâ, “the hundred‐
> formed,” and Sâvitrî, Generatrix, the Mother of the Gods and of all
> living. She is identical with Eve, “the Mother [of all the Lords or Gods
> or] of all living.” Besides this there are many other Occult meanings.
> 
> What is written on the subject in _Isis Unveiled_, although scattered
> about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct.
> 
> Explaining Esoterically Ezekiel’s Wheel, it is said of Jodhevah or
> Jehovah:
> 
>     When the Ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it
>     expresses the Divine Creation _spiritually_, _i.e._, without any
>     carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it
>     is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of
>     the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or
>     Yod; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The
>     Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure
>     androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the
>     second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling
>     into “generation,” or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem
>     of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely
>     Spiritual Races, or the ten Prediluvian Patriarchs, the Prajâpatis
>     and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam
>     Kadmon or Yodcheva, [spiritually,] the lower one [Jehovah] is that
>     of the Terrestrial Races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh;
>     who, because he is half‐divine, half‐terrestrial, is said to have
>     been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.(302)
> 
> This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar
> that Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like
> the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as
> well as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate
> they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even _fourteen_, and they have
> the same Esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.
> 
> Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only
> those are _true_ which are found in the Kabalah. יהוה (Ieve) is the _Old
> Testament_ term, and was pronounced Ya‐va. Inman suggests that it is
> contracted from the two words יהו יה, Yaho‐Iah, Jaho‐Jah, or Jaho is Jah.
> Punctuated it is יְהוֶֹה, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to
> associate it with the name Adoni, or אֲדנָי, which has the same points. It
> is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read
> the name יהוה Adoni, when they had so many names of which Jeho, and Jah,
> and Iah, constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us
> the so‐called fragment of Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters Ιευω,
> Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and
> the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus:
> יֵהִוֶה (Ye‐hou‐vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true Occult
> meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means “he
> will—be.”(303) It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb הֲוָא, or הִוָה,
> eue (eve), or eua (eva), “to be.” And so it was, since from Enosh, the
> “Son of Man,” only, were the truly human Races to begin and “to be,” as
> males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch
> as Parkhurst makes the verb הוה to mean, (1) “to fall down” (_i.e._ into
> generation or Matter); and (2) “to be, to continue”—as a _race_. The
> aspirate of the word eua (Eva), “to be,” being הוה, Heve (Eve), which is
> the feminine of יהוה, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian Goddess of youth
> and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still
> more clearly in its primitive double‐sexed form.
> 
> Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, _e.g._, Jâh‐navî,
> “Ganges,” and Jagan‐nâtha, “Lord of the World,” it becomes clear why Mr.
> Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Âryan or Vedic influence
> on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to be much wondered at that
> the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity period,
> without leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews
> had _de facto_ but two tribes—those of Judah and of Levi. The Levites,
> moreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants
> have only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into thin,
> sidereal air. There were _Brahms_ and _A‐brahms_, in days of old, truly,
> and before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first God
> and Gods to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded
> their distant primeval progenitors, their dual‐sexed ancestors, as divine
> Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine
> in one sense, as also was their first human progeny, the “mind‐born”
> primitive humanity, which was most assuredly bi‐sexual, as all the more
> ancient symbols and traditions show.
> 
>     Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the
>     priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet
>     undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a
>     scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the
>     Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He
>     has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the
>     picture‐writing he is examining fits, to a line, _certain fixed
>     geometrical figures_ which are the hidden keys to such records,
>     before he ventures on an interpretation.
> 
>     But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we
>     may include the double‐sexed first creators of every Cosmogony.
>     The Greek Zeus‐Zên (Æther), and Chthonia (the Chaotic Earth) and
>     Metis (Water), his wives; Osiris and Isis‐Latona—the former God
>     also representing Æther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity,
>     Amun, the primeval source of Light; the Goddess Earth and Water
>     again; Mithras, the rock‐born God, the symbol of the male Mundane
>     Fire, or the personified Primordial Light, and Mithra, the Fire‐
>     Goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of Fire
>     (the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in
>     conjunction with Earth and Water, or Matter (the female or passive
>     element of cosmical generation).(304)
> 
> All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
> 
> Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat‐Born.”
> 
>     22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second
>     Race creates the Third and perishes.
> 
> 22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG‐BORN, THE THIRD.(305) THE SWEAT GREW,
> ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT;
> THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE
> WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT(306) OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG
> OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN‐SWAN(307) OF THE LATER THIRD (_A_). FIRST
> MALE‐FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (_B_).
> 
> (_a_) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was
> nourished _ab extra_ by Cosmic Forces, and that the “Father‐Mother”
> furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a “sweat‐
> born egg,” to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from
> the “double” parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous
> humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “egg‐born.” Magendie,
> moreover, in his _Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie_, citing
> 
>     A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly
>     cicatrized,
> 
> yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:
> 
>     How was the circulation carried on in this organ?
> 
> On the next page he says:
> 
>     Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the
>     fœtus.
> 
> And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:
> 
>     What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the fœtus?
>     Physiological works contain only _vague conjectures_ on this
>     point.
> 
> “Ah, but,” the sceptic may urge, “Magendie’s book belongs to the last
> generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of
> ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.” Indeed; then let us
> turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster,
> and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:
> 
>     Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities
>     of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely
>     anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental
>     qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into
>     the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to
>     explain.(308)
> 
> The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the
> statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and
> Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants.
> One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent
> about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French
> _confrère_.
> 
> (_b_) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries.
> To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,”
> as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself
> is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently
> procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method,
> presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub‐races of
> the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of
> moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform
> ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the
> generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the
> later sub‐races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of
> the earlier sub‐races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one
> knows;(309) but those of the later sub‐races were born androgynous. It is
> in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being
> previously a‐sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi‐
> sexual; and finally the man‐bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually
> and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to
> beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to
> distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these
> statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the
> “Egg‐born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most
> prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ’s Mind‐born Son;
> and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other
> beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi‐divine beings which have a human
> face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be
> a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadrû, Kashyapa’s
> wife, for _the purpose of peopling Pâtâla_, which is undeniably America,
> as will be shown; and there was a Nâga‐Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions
> of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who
> are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be _historical_, and to have
> left many a trace behind them to this day.
> 
> Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be
> claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as
> all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a
> “solitary hermaphrodite,” a bi‐sexual being; and (3) finally separated and
> became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms,
> though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of
> a‐sexual multiplication”; why, then, should man be excluded from that law
> of Nature? Bi‐sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and
> perfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of
> reproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early
> history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals”; nor is the
> history of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of
> time, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand
> by that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal
> cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the
> other hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom—we may say Pansophia
> even—of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates,
> who have perfected them into an almost faultless system—thus supported, we
> venture to state the doctrine clearly.
> 
> In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and
> respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute
> logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double‐Sexed,” and
> gives a number of scientific reasons for it.(310) He argues firstly, that
> a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi‐
> sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants.
> This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as
> much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and
> ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the
> moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries
> the great secret was expressed—_Taurus __ Taurus Draconem genuit, et
> Taurum Draco_. The coral‐producing family, which, according to Agassiz,
> has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present
> geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their
> offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees
> are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like
> Amazons, and _virgin parents_ perpetuate the race for ten successive
> generations.
> 
> What say the old Sages, the Philosopher‐teachers of antiquity?
> Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato’s _Banquet_:
> 
>     Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was
>     _androgynous_; the form and name partaking of, and being common to
>     both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the
>     manner of their running circular.(311) They were terrible in force
>     and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each
>     of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction,
>     closed up the skin.
> 
> Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.
> 
>     They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life,
>     growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a
>     subsequent modification of the human form.
> 
> In the Book of the Generations (_Toleduth_) of Adam, the verse:
> 
>     God created (_bara_, brought forth) man in his image, in the image
>     of God created he him, male and female created he them,
> 
> —if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:
> 
>     The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification]
>     man in their image ... created they _him_ [collective Humanity, or
>     Adam], male and female created _he_ [collective Deity] them.(312)
> 
> This will show the Esoteric point. The _Sexless_ Race was their first
> production, a modification _of_ and _from_ themselves, the pure Spiritual
> Existences; and this was Adam _solus_. Thence came the _Second_ Race:
> Adam‐Eve, or Jod‐Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the _Third_, or
> the “_Separating_ Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth,
> Seth‐Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi‐spiritual Race, which was
> also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the
> Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The _Fourth_, which had tasted of the
> fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and
> therefore _impure_, intelligence(313)—had consequently to acquire that
> Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and
> Intelligence, the former _ruling_ the latter, is called in the Hermetic
> books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”
> 
> Mystically Jesus was held to be man‐woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns,
> sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal
> maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half.
> Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and
> Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su‐dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata’s progeny.
> 
> Says Professor Wilder:
> 
>     The name _Adam_, or man, itself implies this double form of
>     existence. It is identical with _Athamas_, or _Thomas_ (Tamil,
>     _Tam_), which is rendered by the Greek _Didumos_, a twin; if,
>     therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first
>     man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.”
>     Accordingly we read: “And the _side_ which the Lord God [Elohim]
>     had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is
>     _Tzala_, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to
>     trace the legend in Berosus, who says that _Thalatth_ (the
>     _Omorôka_, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was
>     also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....
> 
>     The two memorable twin‐births of _Genesis_, that of Cain and Abel,
>     and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name _Hebel_ is
>     the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine.
>     “Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and
>     thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to
>     Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
>     thee.”
> 
> Thus the pristine bi‐sexual unity of the human Third Root‐Race is an axiom
> in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,”
> because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are
> satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created
> Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind
> were “male _and_ female.”
> 
> As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and on
> parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being
> physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is
> rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you
> will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We
> men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but
> the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they
> subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught,
> men lived down to the close of the Third Root‐Race, when eternal spring
> reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of
> Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:
> 
>     Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to
>     abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the
>     treasures of eternal spring.(314)
> 
> Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in
> our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this
> learned French Astronomer.(315) It must, however, be always borne in mind
> that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition _cognized as
> such by the Jovians_. It is not “spring,” _as we know it_. In this
> reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories
> here cited. Both embrace _partial_ truths.
> 
> It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into
> its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and
> neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full
> accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with
> their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal
> beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate
> conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs,
> as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:
> 
>     Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an
>     infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which
>     has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of
>     scientific testimony.(316)
> 
> And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as
> has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was
> formed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully
> corroborated in the _Zohar_:
> 
>     In the _Tzelem_, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam
>     (man).(317)
> 
> It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree
> of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had
> nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged,
> being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can
> be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in the Secret
> Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors
> open the _Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ_ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of
> ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a
> transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian
> theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:
> 
>     From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread
>     themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These
>     souls undergo many transformations; those which are already
>     creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic
>     animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds.
>     From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born.
>     On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of
>     (conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir
>     of Gods.
> 
> 23. THE SELF‐BORN WERE THE CHHÂYÂS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE
> SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS
> WERE.(318)
> 
> This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It
> means that the First Root‐Race, the “Shadows” of the Progenitors, could
> not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little
> human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or
> fire. But their “Sons,” the Second Root‐Race, could be and were so
> destroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies,
> which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants,
> the “Sweat‐born.” These were the Second Humanity—composed of the most
> heterogeneous gigantic semi‐human monsters—the first attempts of material
> nature at building human bodies. The ever‐blooming lands (Greenland, among
> others) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens
> with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was
> due to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans
> changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this
> first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during
> the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been
> four.(319) And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
> 
> A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”
> 
> The accounts in the various _Purânas_ about our Progenitors are as
> contradictory, _in their details_, as everything else. Thus while, in the
> _Rig Veda_, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu,
> Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the
> _Shatapatha Brâhmana_ shows her to be the Manu’s daughter, an offspring of
> _his sacrifice_, and later on, his (Vaivasvata’s) _wife, by whom he begat
> the race of Manus_. In the _Purânas_ she is, again, Vaivasvata’s daughter,
> yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma)
> and the planet Jupiter’s (Brihaspati’s) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems
> a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the
> Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning
> is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that
> the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the
> events in their proper order.
> 
> The story as told in the _Mahâbhârata_ strikes the key‐note, and yet it
> needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the _Bhagavad
> Gîtâ_. It is the _prologue_ to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While
> Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his
> protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where,
> growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the
> forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well‐known Matsya Avatâra, the first
> Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon(320) of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many
> other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition.
> Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the
> seven Rishis, according to the _Mahâbhârata_; this, however, being absent
> from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the
> seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double
> mystery involved in this manifold allegory.
> 
> We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that
> it referred, as also does the “Fall,” to both spiritual and physical, both
> cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or
> Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female generative Principle,
> is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both
> being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the
> Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First
> Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and
> the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “Flood,”
> and the Moon for the “Mother,” from whom proceed all the life‐germs.(321)
> But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In
> one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from
> utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the
> human seed at the end of the Third Race,(322) and in the other to the real
> and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the “Host”—or the Manu
> which saved the “seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity
> between the Paurânic and other versions; while in the _Shatapatha
> Brâhmana_, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of
> Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by
> Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the
> Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as
> their creator’s “daughters.” The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the
> wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean
> Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root‐Race
> from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.
> 
> This is shown very clearly in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, where Krishna is made
> to say:
> 
>     The seven Great Rishis, the _four preceding_ Manus, partaking of
>     my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born)
>     the human race and the world.(323)
> 
> Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four Races(324)
> which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death
> having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya,
> the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the “Seed of
> Life,” both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of
> all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.
> 
> The “Deluge” is undeniably a “universal tradition.” “Glacial Periods” were
> numerous, and so were the “Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and
> Croll enumerate some half‐dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the
> earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000
> years ago.(325) But which was _our_ Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one
> which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples
> from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last
> peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the
> comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the
> agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its
> gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen
> found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had
> nothing to do with either the _semi_‐universal Deluge, or Noah’s Flood—the
> latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with
> the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with
> them only a moral connection.
> 
> Our Fifth Race—the non‐initiated portions of it—hearing of many Deluges,
> have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole
> aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.
> 
> We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:
> 
>     The Incas, _seven_ in number, have repeopled the earth after the
>     deluge.(326)
> 
> Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses
> somewhat the details of the still‐preserved legend concerning the American
> Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions _twice seven_
> companions and the “divine bird” which preceded the boat of the Aztecs,
> and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This
> was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is
> said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their
> grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and
> translated “alive” to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim,
> or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has _seven_ figures
> which sail with him and which he will “animate” when he lands, and use for
> “human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes _seven_
> Rays with him, etc.
> 
> Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with
> Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with
> Noah;(327) further, it is suspected that the name “Titan” is derived from
> Tit‐Ain,—the “fountains of the chaotic abyss”(328) (Tit‐Theus, or Tityus
> is the “divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who are _seven_, are shown
> to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata
> Manu.(329)
> 
> These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as
> Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the
> seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos‐Saturn, the
> Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his
> conclusions when he wrote:
> 
>     I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also
>     as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to
>     have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the
>     family.(330)
> 
> But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:
> 
>     The Hindoos, in their wild _legends_ have variously perverted the
>     _history_ of the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they
>     seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:(331) hence
>     Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, “perhaps, the seven
>     Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same,
>     and make only seven individual persons.(332) The seven Brahmâdicas
>     were _prajâpatis_, or lords of the _prajas_, or creatures. From
>     them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the
>     seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were
>     ... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with
>     inhabitants.”(333) The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the
>     Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be
>     the effect of mere accident.(334)
> 
> Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory
> concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet
> is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns.
> According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber
> refuses to identify with the _impious_ Titans, their descendants—were
> Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and _Iapetus_.
> 
>     Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,
>     Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.(335)
> 
> But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for
> one of Noah’s sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes
> and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.(336) The Hindûs can
> therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and
> that Mania is the _female_ Manu of the _Râmâyana_. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ,
> the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “he begat the race of
> Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana
> making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and
> repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females;
> Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the “female Virâj,” turning into a woman
> in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and
> divine Theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of
> Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins
> and disfigured by them.
> 
> Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to
> all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized
> Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with
> other people’s property, that the Pseudo‐Berosus,(337) shows that Titæa—of
> whom Diodorus Siculus(338) makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was
> the _wife of Noah_. Faber calls him the “Pseudo‐Berosus,” yet accepts the
> information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have
> borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal
> material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs
> possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show,
> that it is the Biblical pseudo‐personages which are all borrowed from
> Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus
> was well aware of the source of _Genesis_, and that it bore the same
> cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis‐Osiris, and the
> Ark, and other older “Arkite” symbols. For, Berosus says that “Titæa
> Magna” was afterwards called Aretia,(339) and worshipped with the Earth;
> and this identifies Titæa, Noah’s consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the
> Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and
> the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan‐Kabiri. And Titæa‐Aretia was
> worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of
> Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.
> 
>     Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ
>     Horchiam.(340)
> 
> Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention
> the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or
> another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island.
> Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:
> 
>     From its deep‐rooted base the Phlegyan isle
>     Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves
>     Its impious inhabitants.(341)
> 
> Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such
> allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about
> that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though
> gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like
> all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It
> refers, in Theogony, to _pre‐cosmic transformations_, to _spiritual
> correlations_—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and
> also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in
> Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit‐Rays which were swamped by,
> and _perished_ in, the mysterious differentiation—a pre‐cosmic mystery,
> the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam
> Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded
> Vaivasvata and the rest.(342)
> 
> All this goes to show that the _semi_‐universal deluge known to
> Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time
> allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round
> numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time
> assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period:
> _i.e._, about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is
> attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to “an extreme eccentricity of
> the earth’s orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same
> source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the
> Earth’s axis—a proof of which may be found in the _Book of Enoch_,(343) if
> the veiled language of the _Purânas_ be not understood—all this should
> tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the “modern discoveries”
> of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “the great inclination of the Earth,”
> which “is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.
> 
>     Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_ in his
>     ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the
>     feminine Principle; Noah is the “Spirit” falling into Matter. We
>     find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a
>     vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, _i.e._,
>     the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally
>     imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is only
>     another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “And
>     darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
>     moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said: “And
>     the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit]
>     upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the
>     Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is
>     Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the
>     Babylonian legend (the pre‐cosmical blended with the terrestrial
>     event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is
>     shut up in the ark and sends out a _dove_ in search of dry
>     land.(344)
> 
>     George Smith notes in the “Tablets,” first the creation of the
>     Moon, and then that of the Sun: “Its beauty and perfection are
>     extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being
>     considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If
>     this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm‐even were
>     this latter universal‐why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth,
>     the Moon, speak of the _creation of the sun_ after the deluge? The
>     waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the
>     Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the
>     Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even
>     the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the
>     Sun; the _Bible_ itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is
>     evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had
>     another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical
>     than that of a _universal_ deluge, of which there are no
>     geological traces whatever.(345)
> 
> As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata
> figures as a _generic_ character, under various circumstances and events,
> there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first
> “great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it
> happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “Age of Truth,” when the Second
> Root‐Race, “the Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as the
> “Sweat‐born.”
> 
> The Second Flood—the so‐called “universal”—which affected the Fourth Root‐
> Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as “the accursed race of
> giants,” the Cainites, and the “sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first
> perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the
> various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations,
> it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given
> in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first
> account, “there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata
> lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him
> company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and
> Cosmic Flood before the so‐called “Creation,” the others treat, one of the
> Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In
> the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all
> living creatures, and he alone was left—_i.e._, _the seed of life_ alone
> remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya,
> after a “Day of Brahmâ”; and the _Mahâbhârata_ refers simply to the
> geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make
> room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three
> distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:(346) as the “Root‐Manu,” on
> Globe A, in the First Round; (_b_) as the “_Seed_ of Life,” on Globe D, in
> the Fourth Round; and (_c_) as the “Seed of Man,” at the beginning of
> every Root‐Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the
> latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,(347) the destruction of the
> accursed sorcerers;
> 
>     Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the
>     Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was
>     an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of
>     another _large continent_ [America].
> 
> It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and
> this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil”
> of Colonel Wilford,(348) as already shown. It may well be remarked here
> that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit
> texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that
> it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took place. Again, these
> figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists,
> who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.
> 
> The _Shatapatha_ then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu
> and declared _herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the
> offspring of Manu_. This refers to the physiological transformation of
> sexes during the Third Root‐Race. And the allegory is too transparently
> clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the
> separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body
> into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and
> Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he
> will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his
> [and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our
> Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and
> amazing nonsense,” as some call the _Purânas_, that a reference to a Yuga
> may mean a Round, a Root‐Race, and often a sub‐race, as well as form a
> page torn out of pre‐cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is
> proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently,
> under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events
> divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first
> represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it
> is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a
> sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating
> Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the
> favour of the two deities,” her _sex is changed_ and she becomes a man,
> Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable
> adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male
> one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third
> Root‐Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned
> Orientalists(349) think and have declared that:
> 
>     Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence
>     a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.
> 
> The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,”
> or “a stream of praise,” should be _male_ and _female_ by turn: unless,
> indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to
> perceive.
> 
> In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch‐
> Shata‐Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the
> dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a
> third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root‐Life, the Germ from
> which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For,
> as says Vishnu:
> 
>     From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:
>     By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.
> 
> But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and
> Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our
> teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may
> not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri
> Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote,
> and we will invite them to read their own _Purânas_ a little more
> carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat
> again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent
> allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works.
> One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of
> the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat‐born.” This allegory is
> regarded as a fairy‐tale, and yet it conceals a psycho‐physiological
> phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.
> 
> But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to
> ask:
> 
> COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
> 
> To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all
> scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata‐
> Manu Man, _i.e._, the male and female entity already separated into
> distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have
> lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the
> geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not
> exist for the _primeval, ethereal_ Man of the Occult Teachings. _The whole
> issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends
> upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body
> within the Physical_, the former independent of the latter. Paul d’Assier,
> the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,(350) not to
> speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern
> “Spiritualists” and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this
> fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.
> 
> The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms
> and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its
> being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth
> Round is the middle‐point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more
> terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the
> Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi‐ethereal
> conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000
> years.(351) This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral
> and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the
> theory of a “boneless,” purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which
> knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic
> Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable
> grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always
> existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a
> tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought
> forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind
> (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human
> beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are
> consequently, the best of their kind.(352)
> 
> The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother‐
> Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They
> maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must
> have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with successive
> floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters
> and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human
> life and organization, such _as is assigned by them_ to early mankind.
> Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases,
> nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and
> Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous,
> or the Silurian Age itself.
> 
> Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new
> transformation. They had passed their phases of “immetalization,” of plant
> and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for
> their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers
> do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by
> the biblical dead‐letter, form, “Lord‐God”‐like, or as Pygmalion in the
> Greek allegory, Adam‐Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living
> Soul” into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its
> Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Pygmalion, who fails to _animate his
> statue_, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct
> “a human soul in the creature,” are, as conceptions, far more
> philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead‐letter sense, or
> the biblical Elohim‐Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches
> spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the
> seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to construct
> _physical_ man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved
> the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to
> evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called,
> protoplasmic, model.
> 
> This will again be objected to; “spontaneous generation” is an exploded
> theory, we shall be told. Pasteur’s experiments disposed of it twenty
> years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He
> ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven
> impossible in our present world‐period and actual conditions—which the
> Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have
> taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the
> Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be
> interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of
> species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both
> the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur’s observations,
> however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud
> reject their importance, and, in fact, show that they have none. The
> question is so far left _sub judice_, as well as the other as to when, at
> what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel’s
> Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it
> is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh‐pooh the
> theory of the “Self‐existent,” the “Self‐born Heavenly Man,” represented
> as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing,
> in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most
> learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither
> animal nor plant, but both, and that it has _no ancestors_ among either of
> these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for
> all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are _their
> own ancestors_. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical
> also; too much so, even for the Occultist.
> 
> If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to
> accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was,
> nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the
> simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature
> proceeds. The scale‐bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the
> Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are
> the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom
> found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the
> above enumerated “antediluvian” monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria
> without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and
> reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the
> architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings
> of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the
> same law in his growth, _i.e._, gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced
> person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an
> Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly‐like Form, evolved
> by Gods or natural “Forces,” which grew, condensed throughout millions of
> ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it
> settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than
> believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some
> unknown anthropoid ancestor.
> 
> Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first
> appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to _Knowledge_
> (Dec. 23, 1881):
> 
>     Evolution—rather nature, in the light of evolution—has only been
>     studied for some _twenty‐five years or so_. That is, of course, a
>     mere fractional space in the history of human thought.
> 
> And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic
> Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric
> Teachings—if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too
> metaphysical elements.
> 
> Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As
> Processor Huxley says:
> 
>     Each such answer to the great question [man’s real place in
>     nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder,
>     if not by himself, to be _complete and final_, remains in high
>     authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for
>     twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a
>     _mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on account of
>     the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly
>     intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their
>     successors_.(353)
> 
> Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his “Pithecoid
> Ancestry” being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,” in
> the “larger knowledge” of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising
> to the civilized state” does not account for the evolution of form.
> 
> In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,” Dr. Wilson makes other strange
> confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to
> _Knowledge_, by “G. M.”:
> 
>     “Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If
>     not, why not?”... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man
>     was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there
>     exists only another supposition—that of evolution. If man has
>     arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is
>     evolution. _We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult
>     to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences
>     as those of lower animals._ But there is little doubt that
>     elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies
>     “evolution,” and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man’s
>     evolution cannot be doubted; the ever‐widening sphere of thought
>     has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself.
>     But man’s ways of life, his power of adaptation to his
>     surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the
>     facts and course of his “evolution” very difficult to trace.
> 
> This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in
> their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a
> perfect being, and then became degraded”? At best it can only apply to the
> _outward, physical man_. As remarked in _Isis Unveiled_, Darwin’s
> evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as
> for everything else, from universals. The Aristotle‐Baconian method may
> have its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its
> defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards,
> are now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was
> Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution
> of the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:
> 
>     Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its
>     uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the
>     philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the
>     Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.
> 
> This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive
> method. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained
> of those who taught that:
> 
>     The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth
>     was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same
>     centre, produces night and day.(354)
> 
> The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and
> now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity
> of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still
> greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime‐salt, the ex‐
> protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.
> 
> _Analogy_ is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread
> that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her
> primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite,
> and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having
> exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon
> which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of “fire‐mist”—as it
> rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a
> Planet, a self‐luminous Globe, to settle into a _man‐bearing_ World or
> Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock‐bound
> Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non‐nucleated
> jelly‐speck that becomes the Sarcode(355) of the Moneron, then passes from
> its protistic state(356) into the form of an animal, to grow into a
> gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again
> into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to
> tropical regions, and the universally common lizard(357)—if we can
> conceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? “There
> were giants on earth in those days” says _Genesis_, repeating the
> statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded
> on an anthropological and physiological fact.
> 
> And, as the hard‐shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly‐speck, a
> “thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive
> condition,” so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat
> of skin,” _plus_ an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form
> and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost
> impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just
> what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly an “organism without organs,” an
> entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within,
> and a human form only outwardly.
> 
> No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of
> the Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own
> calculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This
> may easily be shown.
> 
> Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of
> 2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than
> 350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to
> allow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William
> Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to
> 100,000,000 years ago—a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic
> Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science.
> Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation.
> Volger calculates:
> 
>     That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us
>     must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.
> 
> Both time and space are infinite and eternal.
> 
>     The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the
>     changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite
>     periods of time....
> 
>     We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in
>     space, which no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without
>     beginning or end; that it never was created, and is
>     imperishable.(358)
> 
> Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists,
> we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:
> 
>     They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.
> 
> To this the _Vishnu Purâna_ contains a reply, which has forced certain
> Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.
> 
>     The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and
>     over against mid‐night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya.
>     But the rising and the setting _of the sun_ being perpetually
>     opposite _to each other_,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal
>     points, and so the cross‐points, Maitreya, people speak of the
>     rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears,
>     there, _to them_, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always _in
>     one and the same place_, there is neither setting nor rising; for
>     what is called rising and setting are _only_ the seeing and the
>     not seeing the sun.(359)
> 
> To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:
> 
>     The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is
>     contradicted, however, a little further on.(360)
> 
> Contradicted _purposely_, because it was a secret temple‐teaching. Martin
> Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to
> calumniate the Âryans any longer.
> 
> To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are
> afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the
> views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the
> highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary
> strata; only in the uppermost, the so‐called alluvial layer,” is all that
> can be urged, so far. That man was _not the last member in the mammalian
> family_, but the _first_ in _this_ Round, is something that Science will
> be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been
> mooted in France on very high authority.
> 
> That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid‐Tertiary Period, and in a
> geological age _when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the
> now known species of mammals_, is a statement that Science _cannot_ deny
> and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.(361) But even supposing
> his existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of
> time has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We are aware of the fact
> that only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the
> Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and
> periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation
> and wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the
> subject being compelled to answer to the question: “We do not know.” This
> ought to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this
> matter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, “the time
> represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of
> years,”(362) how many more millions would be required to cover the time
> from the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so‐called Reptilian
> Age—when the Third Race appeared—up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the
> Fourth Race was submerged?(363)
> 
> The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages
> of the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer
> majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority
> rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone
> for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were
> in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to
> this day—in the Encyclopædias—along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a
> charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have
> vindicated Mesmer’s claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of
> “Hypnotism”—a false nose on a very old face—is accepted by Science, it
> does not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease
> and unconcern with which its members treat of “Hypnotism,” of “telepathic
> impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they
> had believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few
> years ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors!(364)
> 
> The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years
> which Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological
> mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: “_The Mind‐born, the
> boneless, gave being to the Will‐born with bones_;”—adding that this took
> place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago—has yet a
> chance of being accepted by future Scientists.
> 
> As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even
> by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the
> shifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much
> more improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the
> antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this
> again. For, although the exact figures are withheld—and it is out of the
> question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races
> with _certainty_ to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of
> Geology—one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which
> embrace the duration of _sexual, physical_, man, have to be enormously
> increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical
> development is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that
> the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of
> such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions
> whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his
> reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date
> carries us far back into the Secondary or “Reptilian” Age, may refer to M.
> de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote
> antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root‐Races the case is very
> different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic
> acid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the
> atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal
> obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be
> asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in
> reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative
> had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the _ethereal
> astral_ Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has
> the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of
> physical evolution—the plane of gross material causation. In those early
> ages, _astral_ evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the
> astral and the physical,(365) though developing on parallel lines, had no
> direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow‐like
> _ethereal_ man is related by virtue of his organization—if such it can be
> called—only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is
> derived.
> 
> There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far‐seeing—but not
> _all‐seeing_—eyes of our modern Naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who
> undertakes to furnish the missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers
> have to choose between the version given by the Secret Doctrine of the
> East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical accounts of
> the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the
> Occult doctrine which repudiates “special creation” and the “Evolutionist”
> anthropogenesis equally.
> 
> Again, to take up the question of “spontaneous generation”; life—as
> Science shows—has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. There was
> a time when even the Hæckelian Moneron—that simple globule of
> Protoplasm—had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the
> _Impulse_ which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to
> group themselves into the Urschleim of Oken, that organic “Slime,” now
> christened Protoplasm? What were the prototypes of the Monera? They, at
> least, could not have fallen in meteorites from other Globes already
> formed, Sir William Thomson’s wild theory to this effect notwithstanding.
> And even if they had so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life‐germs
> from other Planets; who, or _what_, had carried them on to these Planets?
> Here, again, unless the Occult Teaching is accepted, we are compelled once
> more to face a _miracle_—to accept the theory of a personal,
> anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as
> formulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as
> they degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal Deity, before whose
> incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed.
> Let not the modern Philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the
> highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself
> spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the
> ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than
> the Philosophers of Eastern Âryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when
> philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the
> only possible escape from idiotic Atheism based on lethal materiality, and
> the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the Monotheists;
> between which it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism
> _demands_ absolute Divine Thought, which would _pervade_ the numberless
> active, creating Forces, or “Creators,” which _Entities_ are moved by, and
> have their being in, from, and through, that Divine Thought; the latter,
> nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or _their_
> creations, than the Sun has in the sun‐flower and its seeds, or in
> vegetation in general. Such active “Creators” are known to exist and are
> believed in, because perceived and sensed by the _Inner_ Man in the
> Occultist. Thus the latter says that an Absolute Deity, having to be
> unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an
> active, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the
> ideal.(366) A Deity that manifests in Space and Time—these two being
> simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL—can be but a fractional
> part of the whole. And since that “All” cannot be divided in its
> absoluteness, therefore that _sensed_ Creator (we say Creators) can be at
> best but the mere _aspect_ thereof. To use the same metaphor—inadequate to
> express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand—these Creators
> are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of,
> and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become
> the instrumental media every spring—the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth—in
> fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its
> differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even
> the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct
> creation would be quite unbecoming to God—ἀπρεπὲς τῷ Θεῷ. Plato and other
> philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to
> creation—αὐτουργεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “Hylozoism.” As old Zeno
> is credited by Laërtius with having said:
> 
>     Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal
>     principles; perfecting and containing those several things which
>     in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to
>     that from which it was secreted.(367)
> 
> Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there
> was vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then
> deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic
> organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of
> Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical
> form, _i.e._, in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and
> its surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the
> real length of geological periods.
> 
> But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that,
> from the time of that which is called the Azoic Age, there ever was such
> an atmosphere as that hypothesized by the Naturalists. Not all the
> Physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to corroborate
> the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact Science, it would be easy to
> show, on the admission of more than one Physicist, that the atmosphere has
> changed little, if at all, since the first condensation of the
> oceans—_i.e._, since the Laurentian Period, the Pyrolithic Age. Such, at
> any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof—as
> the experiments of the last Scientist with basalts have shown. For were we
> to take the word of the majority of Scientists as to the quantity of
> deadly gases, and of elements entirely saturated with Carbon and Nitrogen,
> in which the vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived,
> thriven, and developed, then one would have to come to the curious
> conclusion that there were, in those days, oceans of _liquid carbonic
> acid_, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether
> the Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the
> oceans of the Primary Age—let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by
> Blanchard.
> 
> The conditions that were necessary for the earliest Race of mankind,
> however, require no elements, whether simple or compound. That which was
> stated at the beginning is maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which
> lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the first sidereal “jelly‐speck”
> evolved in the Ocean of crude Cosmic Matter—billions and trillions of
> years before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being
> and generated the Monera in its drops, called oceans—needed no “elements.”
> The “Manu with soft bones,” could well dispense with Calcium Phosphate, as
> he had no bones, save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera,
> however homogeneous their organism, still required physical conditions of
> life that would help them toward further evolution, the Being which became
> Primitive Man and the “Father of Man,” after evolving on planes of
> existence undreamed of by Science, could well remain impervious to any
> state of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in
> Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Popol Vuh_, who—in the Mexican legends—could act
> and live with equal ease under ground and water as upon the earth, answers
> only to the Second and early Third Races in our texts. And if the three
> kingdoms of Nature were so different in pre‐diluvian ages, why should not
> man have been composed of materials and combinations of atoms now entirely
> unknown to Physical Science? The plants and animals now known, in almost
> numberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to
> scientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why
> should not the same have occurred in the case of man, the elements, and
> the rest? As the Commentary says:
> 
> _Universal Genesis starts from the One, breaks into Three, then Five, and
> finally culminates in Seven, to return into Four, Three, and One._
> 
> Stanza VII. From The Semi‐Divine Down To The First Human Races.
> 
>     24. The higher Creators reject in their pride the Forms evolved by
>     the “Sons of Yoga.” 25. They will not incarnate in the early Egg‐
>     born. 26. They select the later Androgynes. 27. The first man
>     endowed with mind.
> 
> 24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT,(368) READY FOR REBIRTH, CAME
> DOWN. THEY SAW THE VILE(369) FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD(370) (_A_). “WE CAN
> CHOOSE,” SAID THE LORDS, “WE HAVE WISDOM.” SOME ENTERED THE CHHÂYÂS. SOME
> PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH.(371) FROM THEIR OWN RÛPA
> THEY FILLED(372) THE KÂMA.(373) THOSE WHO ENTERED BECAME ARHATS. THOSE WHO
> RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE;(374) THE SPARK
> BURNED LOW (_B_). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND‐LESS. THEIR JÎVAS(375) WERE NOT
> READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN.(376) THEY BECAME NARROW‐
> HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. “IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL,” SAID THE LORDS OF
> THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (_C_).
> 
> This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil,
> the so‐called Fall of the Angels, and the many problems that have puzzled
> the brains of the Philosophers from the time that the memory of man began.
> It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities or intellectual
> capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to
> the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the æons which followed. The
> best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the
> subject, will now be attempted.
> 
> (_a_) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race
> in this Round, _Man_—if the ever‐changing forms that clothed the Monads
> during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half Races of the
> present Round can be given that misleading name—is, so far, only an animal
> intellectually. It is only in the present _midway_ Round that he entirely
> develops in himself the Fourth Principle as a fit vehicle for the Fifth.
> But Manas will be relatively _fully_ developed only in the following
> Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until
> the end of the Rounds. As Christian Schœttgen says in _Horæ Hebraicæ_,
> etc., the first terrestrial Adam “had only the breath of life,”—Nephesh,
> _but not the living Soul_.
> 
> (_b_) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues
> left—as the Australians, now fast dying out, and some African and Oceanic
> tribes—are meant. “They were not ready” signifies that the Karmic
> development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of
> men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is
> explained later on.
> 
> (_c_) The _Zohar_ speaks of “Black Fire,” which is Absolute Light—Wisdom.
> To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: But the
> Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods—hence Devils, and
> the Spirits of Evil—it is answered: Esoteric Philosophy admits neither
> good nor evil _per se_, as existing independently in Nature. The cause for
> both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or
> contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and
> passions. There are no Devils or the utterly depraved, as there are no
> Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be Spirits of Light and of
> Darkness; thus Lucifer—the Spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and
> Freedom of Thought—is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man
> to find his way through the rocks and sand‐banks of Life, for Lucifer is
> the Logos in his highest, and the “Adversary” in his lowest aspect—both of
> which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of
> Christ, makes the Logos, the Word, “the _first‐born brother of Satan_, and
> _the first of all creatures_.”(377)
> 
> The _Vishnu Purâna_ describes these primeval creatures (Tiryaksrotas) with
> _crooked_ digestive canals:
> 
>     [They were] endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in
>     ignorance _about their kind and nature_.(378)
> 
> The twenty‐eight kinds of Badhas, or “imperfections,” do not apply, as
> Wilson thought, to the animals now known, which are specified by him, for
> they did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain from
> the said work, in which the first created are the “five‐fold (immovable)
> world,” minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals,
> Tiryaksrotas—the monsters of the Abyss, slain by the “Lords,” of Stanzas
> II and III; then the Ûrdhvasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed
> on ambrosia; and lastly, the Arvâksrotas, human beings—Brahmâ’s seventh
> “creation” so‐called. But these “creations,” including the latter, did not
> occur on this Globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not
> Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the Chief and Lord of
> the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation. “Obeying the
> command of Brahmâ,” Daksha—the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the
> Terrestrial Creators and Progenitors, the Pitris included—made superior
> and inferior (vara and avara) things, “referring to putra” progeny, and
> “_bipeds_ and _quadrupeds_, and subsequently, by his will [referring to
> the Sons of Will and Yoga], gave birth to females”(379)—_i.e._, separated
> the androgynes. Here, again, we have “bipeds” or men, created before the
> “quadrupeds” as in the Esoteric Teachings.
> 
> Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first Beings created
> from the “Body of Night,” while the Pitris issue from that of “Twilight”;
> the “Gods” being placed by Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, between the
> two, and shown to evolve from the “Body of the Day,” it is easy to
> discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the
> Arvâksrota coming from the “Body of the Dawn”; and elsewhere, man is again
> referred to, when the Creator of the World, Brahmâ, is shown “creating
> fierce beings, who were denominated Bhûtas, and eaters of flesh,” or as
> the text has it, “fiends, frightful from being monkey‐coloured and
> carnivorous.”(380) Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by “evil
> Spirits” and “enemies of the Gods,” which identifies them with the Asuras.
> In the _Râmâyana_, when Hanumân is reconnoitering the enemy in Lankâ, he
> finds there Râkshasas, some hideous, “while some were beautiful to look
> upon,” and, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, there is a direct reference to their
> becoming the Saviours of “Humanity,” or of Brahmâ.
> 
> The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are
> a two‐edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good.
> When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a
> footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the
> attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian
> purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all
> events, the absence of self‐consciousness and intellect will make of man
> an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat, the Universal Mind;
> hence the too selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become
> possessed of it all—to “devour” Mahat. The allegory is transparent.
> 
> At any rate, Esoteric Philosophy identifies the pre‐Brâhmanical Asuras,
> Rudras,(381) Râkshasas and all the “Adversaries” of the Gods in the
> allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man
> of the Third Race, made him _consciously_ immortal. They are, then, during
> the cycle of Incarnations, the true _dual_ Logos—the conflicting and two‐
> faced Divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next
> Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but
> the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession
> of Races, however, the Commentary says:
> 
> _First come the __SELF‐EXISTENT__ on this Earth. They are the
> __“__Spiritual Lives__”__ projected by the absolute __WILL__ and __LAW__,
> at the Dawn of every Rebirth of the Worlds. These Lives are the divine
> __“__Shishta__”__ [the Seed‐Manus, or the Prajâpatis and the Pitris]._
> 
> From these proceed:
> 
> 1. _The First Race, the __“__Self‐born,__”__ which are the [Astral]
> Shadows of their Progenitors. The Body was devoid of all understanding
> [mind, intelligence, and will]. The Inner Being [the Higher Self, or
> Monad], though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The
> link, the Manas, was not there as yet._
> 
> 2. _From the First [Race] emanated the Second, called the __“__Sweat‐
> born__”_(_382_)_ and the __“__Boneless.__”__ This is the Second Root‐Race,
> endowed by the Preservers [Râkshasas]_(_383_)_ and the Incarnating Gods
> [the Asuras and Kumâras] with the first primitive and weak Spark [the germ
> of intelligence]...._
> 
> And from these in turn proceeds:
> 
> 3. _The Third Root‐Race, the __“__Two‐fold__”__ [Androgynes]. The first
> Races thereof are Shells, till the last is __“__inhabited__”__ [i.e.,
> informed] by the Dhyânîs._
> 
> The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of
> itself, at its beginning, the Third, Androgyne Race by an analogous, but
> already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very
> earliest of that Race were:
> 
> _The __“__Sons of Passive Yoga.__”_(_384_)_ They issued from the Second
> Manushyas [Human Race], and became oviparous. The emanations that came out
> of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small
> spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg‐like vehicle,
> gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the
> young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our Race._
> 
> This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is
> strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which Science perceives in
> the development of the living animal species. First the moneron‐like
> procreation by “self‐division”; then, after a few stages, the oviparous,
> as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then,
> finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their
> young ones.
> 
> If the term “ovoviviparous” is applied to some fish and reptiles, which
> hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to
> female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after
> impregnation, the development of the fœtus takes place, is an egg.
> 
> At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with
> a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the “apple,”
> when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.
> 
> Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as
> unveiled by Science, is a brilliant confirmation of Esoteric Ethnology, It
> is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our
> assertion.(385)
> 
> I. Fission.
> 
> (_a_) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of Protoplasm,
> known as Moneron or Amœba, into two.
> 
> (_b_) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell‐
> nucleus splits into two sub‐nuclei, which either develop within the
> original cell‐wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent
> entities. (_Cf._ the First Root‐Race.)
> 
> II. Budding.
> 
> A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and
> finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism;
> _e.g._, many vegetables, the sea‐anemone, etc. (_Cf._ the Second Root‐
> Race.)(386)
> 
> III. Spores.
> 
> A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a
> multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, _e.g._,
> Bacteria and mosses.
> 
> IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
> 
> Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; _e.g._, the
> majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (_Cf._
> Second and early Third Root‐Races.)
> 
> V. True Sexual Union.
> 
> (_Cf._ later Third Root‐Race.)
> 
> We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of
> the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the _Spiritual_, Dhyânîs had become
> “intellectual” through their contact with Matter, because they had already
> reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect
> which enabled them to become independent and self‐conscious entities, _on
> this plane_ of Matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects.
> They _entered_ those who were “ready,” and became the Arhats, or Sages,
> alluded to above. This needs explanation.
> 
> It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already
> were. They were “Essences,” “Intelligences,” and Conscious Spirits;
> Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more
> developed Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the
> Universal Essence; but their “Egos,” or Manas (since they are called
> Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human
> experiences to become _all‐wise_, and be able to start on the returning
> ascending cycle. The Monads are not _discrete_ principles, limited or
> conditioned, but rays from that one universal _absolute_ Principle. The
> entrance of one ray of sunlight following another through the same
> aperture into a dark room will not constitute _two_ rays, but one ray
> intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become
> a _perfect_ Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round.
> Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it
> part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should
> receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such
> prematurely developed intellects (on the _spiritual_ plane) in our Race
> are _abnormal_; they are those whom we have called the “Fifth‐Rounders.”
> Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while
> our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be
> only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the
> spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was
> reached during the Fourth Root‐Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,”
> who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to
> acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution,
> after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the
> “Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest
> Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower
> animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow‐
> brained” of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees
> of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and
> the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are
> very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly
> disinherited, or the “unfavoured,” as some may think—nothing of the kind.
> They are simply those _latest arrivals_ among the human Monads, which
> “were not ready”; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also
> on the three remaining Globes—hence on four different planes of being—so
> as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth
> Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in
> this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the
> “narrow‐brained”(387) savage South‐Sea Islander, the African, the
> Australian—_had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more
> favoured brethren in intelligence had_. The former are spinning out Karma
> only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In
> this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of
> _civilized countries_.
> 
> Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and
> find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the
> possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are
> found in our Anthropogenesis.
> 
> Recapitulating that which has been said, we find that the Secret Doctrine
> claims for man: (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of
> procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation;
> (3) that the evolution of animals—of the mammalians at any rate—follows
> that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to
> the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man
> from an animal ancestor.
> 
> Let us, giving to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, examine, first of all, the
> chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of Science.
> 
> Now the majority of the Darwinian Evolutionists incline to a polygenetic
> explanation of the origin of races. On this particular question, however,
> as in many other cases, Scientists are at sixes and sevens; they agree to
> disagree.
> 
>     Does man descend from one _single couple_ or from _several
>     groups_—monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to
>     pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses [?] will never be
>     known [?], the second hypothesis is far the most probable.(388)
> 
> Abel Hovelacque, in his _Science of Language_, comes to a similar
> conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
> 
> In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H.
> Flower remarked on this question:
> 
>     The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of
>     the characters and distribution of the races of man ... is a
>     modification of the monogenistic hypothesis[!]. Without entering
>     into the difficult question of the method of man’s first
>     appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity,
>     at all events as measured by any historical standard. _If we had
>     any approach to a complete palæontological record, the history of
>     man could be re‐constructed, but nothing of the kind is
>     forthcoming._
> 
> Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the
> Physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to Occult
> speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still
> remain, polygenists. Such “intellectual giants” as John Crawford and James
> Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day
> there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It
> was only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of
> unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphæi.
> 
> As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in
> the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really
> the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very
> impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for
> the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint,
> all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral—which is light itself,
> crystallized and immetallized—from plants to the creatures which preceded
> the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical
> structures by means of the “cast‐off dust” of those minerals, and _the
> refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which
> they fed and which gave them their outer bodies_. In his turn also, man
> grew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given
> out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through
> which it had passed, owing to Nature’s alchemical transmutations. There
> were animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never
> dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man—the giants of those
> times—the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity
> separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child‐bearing engines, it
> ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of
> the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on
> the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this
> vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the
> production of the first mammal‐animal forms. Evolution is _an eternal
> cycle of becoming_, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused.
> Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become
> Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are
> directed towards one point—_Man_. The progress in the succession of
> beings, says Agassiz:
> 
>     Consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and
>     among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance
>     to man. Man is the end towards which all _animal_ creation has
>     tended from the first appearance of the first palæozoic
>     fishes.(389)
> 
> Just so; but the “palæozoic fishes” are at the lower curve of the arc of
> the evolution of _forms_, and this Round began with Astral Man, the
> _reflection_ of the Dhyân Chohans, called the “Builders.” Man is the
> _alpha and the omega_ of objective creation. As said in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally
>     begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse,
>     as taught in the Darwinian theory.(390)
> 
> Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent Naturalist above quoted
> is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of
> evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern
> theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
> 
> But in citing the passage from Agassiz’ work with approval, it must not be
> understood that the Occultists are making any _concession_ to the theory
> which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he
> preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that
> the latter follow in the wake of man.
> 
> 25. HOW DID THE MÂNASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF‐
> BORN.(391) THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE SWEAT‐BORN.(392) THEY ARE
> NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST EGG‐BORN.(393)
> 
> To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological
> idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret
> Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in _half‐
> ready_ physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than
> metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The
> Incarnating Powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.
> 
> By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent
> on which the first Androgynes, the Third Root‐Race, separated, the writer
> chose, on geographical considerations, that of “Lemuria,” invented by Mr.
> P. L. Sclater. It was only later that, on reading Hæckel’s _Pedigree of
> Man_, it was found that the German “Animalist” had chosen the name for his
> late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution
> to Lemuria, but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that
> “cradle of mankind,” he pictures the gradual transformation of the
> anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in
> America man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, _independently_
> of the origination of the African and Asian root‐stocks from the old world
> catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this
> question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of
> Esoteric Philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments
> of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to
> the laws of Evolution.
> 
> Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub‐races of the
> Third Human Race, by those who found themselves endowed with the “Sacred
> Fire” from the Spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the
> psychic and spiritual Parents of Man, as the lower Pitri Devatâs (the
> Pitris) were the Progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy
> Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as “towering
> giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the
> mysteries of Heaven and Earth.” Have they likewise _fallen_, if, then,
> incarnation was the “Fall”?
> 
> Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the
> chief Gods and Heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later
> antiquity, are the _deified images of these Men of the Third_. The days of
> their physiological purity, and those of their so‐called Fall, have
> equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence,
> the dual nature shown in these Gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to
> their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were
> the Pre‐Adamite and the Divine Races, with which even Theology, in whose
> sight they are all the “accursed Cainite races,” now begins to busy
> itself.
> 
> But the action of the “Spiritual Progenitors” of that Race has first to be
> disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with
> regard to Shlokas 26 and 27.
> 
> 26. WHEN THE SWEAT‐BORN PRODUCED THE EGG‐BORN, THE TWO‐FOLD,(394) THE
> MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: “NOW SHALL WE
> CREATE.”
> 
> Why “now”—and not earlier? This the following Shloka explains.
> 
> 27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VÂHAN(395) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT
> CREATED SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, BY KRIYÂSHAKTI IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY
> FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS....
> 
> How did they “create,” since the “Lords of Wisdom” are identical with the
> Hindû Devas, who refuse to “create”? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the
> Hindû Pantheon and _Purânas_, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:
> 
>     Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created
>     by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired
>     with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.(396)
> 
> The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused
> them to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil
> Spirits, of Satan and his Host—created in their turn by the unclean fancy
> of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine
> power, latent in the _will_ of every man, which, if not called to life,
> quickened and developed by Yoga‐training, remains dormant in 999,999 men
> out of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the
> “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,”(397) as follows:
> 
>     _Kriyâshakti_:—The mysterious _power of thought_ which enables it
>     to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own
>     inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest
>     itself _externally_, if one’s attention [and _will_] is deeply
>     concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be
>     followed by the desired result.
> 
>     A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti
>     (Will‐power) and Kriyâshakti.
> 
> The Third Race had thus created the so‐called “Sons of Will and Yoga,” or
> the “Ancestors”—the _Spiritual_ Forefathers—of all the subsequent and
> present Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly _immaculate_ way. They were indeed
> _created_, not _begotten_, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who
> were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “Fall of Man.”
> For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the
> calling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They
> were the “Holy Seed Grain” of the future Saviours of Humanity.
> 
> Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult
> points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such
> interruptions.(398)
> 
> The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the
> Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:
> 
> _The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the __“__Sweat‐born__”__ (2);
> the Third, __“__Egg‐born,__”__ and the holy Fathers born by the power of
> Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi]
> (4)._
> 
> Of course such primeval modes of procreation—by the evolution of one’s
> image; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what
> people will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)—are doomed beforehand to be
> regarded as fairy‐tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending
> with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything
> which may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.
> 
> 1. Chhâyâ‐birth, or that primeval mode of _sexless_ procreation—the First
> Race having _oozed out_, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris—is
> hinted at in a cosmic allegory in the _Purânas_.(399) It is the beautiful
> allegory and story of Sanjñâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman—married to the
> Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her Lord,” gave him her Chhâyâ
> (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle
> to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to
> be his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith—an _ethereal
> shadow_ also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster
> millions of years ago.
> 
> But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of
> the Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized
> forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain
> mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid—the
> “creation” of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind
> of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the
> mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any
> greater—while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true
> metaphysical thinker—than the mystery of the conception of the fœtus, its
> gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.
> 
> Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the _Purânas_
> about the “Sweat‐born.”
> 
> 2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious
> austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are
> represented in the Hindû Scriptures as being in never‐ending strife with
> the Ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,”(400) finally sends one of his
> female Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending
> Sarah, Abraham’s wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods
> (and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose
> the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting
> demons,” instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras,
> whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don
> Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the
> Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
> 
> The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named
> Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her
> unholy purpose and “nine hundred and seven years six months and three
> days”(401) spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this
> psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the
> creature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart,
> begone!” he cries, “vile bundle of delusions!” And Pramlochâ, terrified,
> flies away, _wiping the perspiration __ from her body_ with the leaves of
> the trees as she passes through the air.
> 
>     The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots
>     that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had
>     conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in
>     drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the
>     winds collected them into one mass. “This,” said Soma [the Moon],
>     “I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till
>     the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely
>     girl named Mârishâ.”(402)
> 
> Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one
> “devoid of mind,” a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period
> of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so
> easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in
> _Genesis_, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lord God”
> breathes the “breath of life” but not of intellect and discrimination,
> which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of
> Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of
> Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the
> earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the
> Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindû Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ,
> the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “Sweat‐born,”
> and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.
> 
> It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the _Purânas_, but Kâmadeva,
> the God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well
> as the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king
> and lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when
> Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: “Thou hast performed the office assigned by
> the monarch of the gods, go!”—he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not
> Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in
> the _Rig Veda_(403) the personification of that feeling which leads and
> propels to creation. He was the _First Movement_ that stirred the ONE,
> after its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.
> 
>     Desire first arose in IT, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and
>     which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be
>     the bond which connects Entity with Non‐Entity.
> 
> A Hymn in the _Atharva Veda_ exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator,
> and says:
> 
>     Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris]
>     nor Men have equalled.
> 
> The _Atharva Veda_ identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to
> that God. The _Taittirîya Brâhmana_ makes him allegorically the son of
> Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith).
> Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhû
> “Self‐Existent,” and Aja, the “Unborn.” His sending Pramlochâ has a deep
> philosophical meaning; sent by Indra—the narrative has none. As Erôs was
> connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation, and only
> afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic
> character; the _Harivamsha_ making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The
> allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological,
> before the birth of Daksha—_the progenitor of real physical men_—who is
> made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men
> were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga,” as will be
> shown.
> 
> This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or
> the “Sweat‐born.” The same for the Third Race in its final development.
> 
> Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the
> Prachetases, the production of the “Mind‐born” sons of Brahmâ also,(404)
> from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha—a son of Brahmâ also in a former
> Kalpa or life, explain and add the _Purânas_, in order to mislead, yet
> speaking the truth.
> 
> 3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “Sweat,” which,
> after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more
> difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the fœtus from an
> imperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then
> into a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of
> procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a
> _vis formativa_, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater
> drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies—huge eggs. In these
> the human fœtus gestated for several years. In the _Purânas_, Mârishâ, the
> daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the
> mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first _human‐like_
> Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The
> evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the
> macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the
> animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.
> 
> Then the Third Race becomes:
> 
> 4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men‐bearing explains,
> perhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato’s _Banquet_, describes the nature of
> the old race as “androgynous,” the form of every individual being rounded,
> “having the back and sides as _in a circle_,” whose “manner of running was
> circular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.”
> Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them [in the Third Root‐
> Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the
> skin.”
> 
> The Madagascans—the island belonged to Lemuria—have a tradition about the
> first man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food,
> a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a
> female, who became the mother of their race. Truly, “we have our sciences
> of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet
> open.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the
> buds and ramifications of a tree....” Why not the primitive _human_ polyp?
> The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation
> into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows
> merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately
> develop into a sea‐nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to
> its parent‐organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself
> differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once
> more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to
> understand that a form may be evolved—as in the _sexual_ Lemurians from
> _hermaphrodite_ parentage—quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is,
> moreover, unquestionable that in the case of _human_ incarnations the law
> of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of
> Heredity, its servant.
> 
> The meaning of the last sentence in the above‐quoted Commentary on Shloka
> 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find
> its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of _Esoteric
> Buddhism_:
> 
> _The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub‐race of the Fourth
> Root‐Race—the above‐mentioned Chinamen and their off‐shoots and branchlets
> (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux
> are all remnants of this last offshoot)._
> 
> Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now,
> Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine
> regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor
> (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni‐Avalokiteshvara is called
> _esoterically_ Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, “the
> powerful and all‐seeing.” He is considered now as the greatest protector
> of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the
> Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the
> world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age
> to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins
> to die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the “Lotus‐bearer,” emits a
> brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two
> great Lamas—the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he
> will incarnate as the “most perfect Buddha” in Tibet, instead of in India,
> where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the
> beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric
> appearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He
> is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and
> the progenitor of all the _human_ Races after the Third—the first complete
> one—and thus is represented as the _culmination_ of the _four_ Primeval
> Races in his _eleven‐faced_ form. This is a column built in four rows,
> each series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the
> three faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental
> physiological transformations. The first is white (moon‐coloured); the
> second is yellow; the third, red‐brown; the fourth, in which are only two
> faces—the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end
> of the Atlanteans—is brown‐black. Padmapâni (Daksha) is seated on the
> column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân
> Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races.
> For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus—Padmapâni, the
> “Lotus‐bearer”; the flower symbolizing generation—and the fourth holds a
> serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and
> on his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave‐like
> symbols]—matter, deluge—while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva’s
> eye, that of spiritual insight. His name is “Protector” (of Tibet),
> “Saviour of Humanity.” On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is
> Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, “he who holds a
> white lotus.” His other name is Chantong, “he of the thousand eyes,” when
> he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which
> is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a
> forest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha,
> “Lord of the World”; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, “Protector and Saviour”
> against evil of any kind.(405)
> 
> Padmapâni, however, is the “Lotus‐bearer” symbolically only for the
> profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of
> which is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ.
> Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, “great,” because it
> comprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the
> Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in
> Space and Time, each division—down to the smallest—having its own Dhyânî
> as patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his
> female aspect, Kwan‐yin, “who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to
> save mankind.” The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the
> constellations on the respective “birthdays” of these Dhyânîs—Amitabha
> (the A‐mi‐to Fo, of China), included: _e.g._, on the 19th day of the
> second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of
> the third month,(406) etc.—gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for
> performing what are called “magic” feats. The future of an individual is
> seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a _magic_ mirror
> placed under the ray of certain constellations. But—beware of the reverse
> of the medal, SORCERY.
> 
> Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
> 
>     28. How the first mammals were produced. 29. A quasi‐Darwinian
>     evolution. 30. The animals get solid bodies. 31. Their separation
>     into sexes. 32. The first sin of the mindless men.
> 
> 28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT, FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE, MATTER
> FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE,(407) AND FROM
> CAST‐OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS(408) WERE PRODUCED.
> 
> The Occult Doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a
> later work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in Cycles. The great
> Manvantaric Cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with the
> mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the
> descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the
> close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then—the
> Fourth Sphere and the lowest—and in the present Round, that this middle
> point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its first
> “immetallization” on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal
> worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last
> degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid‐
> point of evolution,” it is but logical and natural that at the beginning
> of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and
> also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is
> compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins
> its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the
> descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the reäscending
> curved line of the Sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the
> spiritual which gradually transforms into the material. On the middle line
> of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending
> arc, Spirit is slowly reässerting itself at the expense of the physical,
> or Matter, so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round,
> the Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its qualities as it
> was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom,
> the fruitage of all its personal lives, without their evil and
> temptations.
> 
> This order of evolution is found also in the first and second chapters of
> _Genesis_, if one reads it in its true esoteric sense; for Chapter i
> contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the
> first Three Races of the Fourth, up to the moment when Man is called to
> conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In Chapter i, animals, whales and
> fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.(409) In Chapter
> ii, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him.
> Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two
> Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the
> second chapter of _Genesis_, by the _deep sleep of Adam_. It is the
> dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind,
> which is meant by that “sleep,” and not at all the physiological process
> of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin,
> imagined.
> 
> The _Purânas_, the Chaldæan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese
> traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the
> process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of
> almost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the
> oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less
> innocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. “_Gigantic,
> transparent, dumb and monstrous they were_,” says the Commentary. Study in
> this connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious
> progeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas—an oviparous
> brood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of
> Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the
> parent of cows and buffaloes, etc.
> 
> In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas—Beings wiser than Serpents—are the
> “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born before the complete separation of the sexes,
> “matured in the man‐bearing eggs(410) produced by the power (Kriyâshakti)
> of the holy Sages” of the early Third Race.(411)
> 
> “In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds—the
> various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who
> are Âdityas;” for, as explained by Parâshara: “There are a hundred
> appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras.”
> 
> Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom,
> peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the
> great Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu‐dvîpa, not
> of Bhârata‐varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends—the latter
> _always more true than history_, as says Augustin Thierry—and even the
> identity in the names of certain “medicine men” and priests, who exist to
> this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the
> Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called “devil‐worship” by the missionaries.
> 
> In almost all the _Purânas_, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha” is
> given, the oldest account of which is to be found in the _Vâyu Purâna_.
> Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in
> it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo‐scientific vagaries, which are
> regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.
> 
> Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out
> as the creator of _physical man_, in the “fable” which makes him lose his
> head from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas.
> This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the _head of a ram_,
> according to the Kâshi Khanda of the _Skanda Purâna_. Now the ram’s head
> and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive
> force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the
> era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did
> not occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages
> before it became the one “natural” way. Therefore, Daksha’s sacrifice to
> the Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva—the _Destroying_
> Deity, _Evolution and Progress personified_, who is the _Regenerator_ at
> the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to
> life under another more perfect type. Shiva‐Rudra creates the terrible
> Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the “thousand‐headed, thousand‐armed”
> monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha.
> Then Vîrabhadra, “abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ...
> created from _the pores of his skin_ (Roma‐kûpas) powerful Raumas.”(412)
> Now, however mythical the allegory, the _Mahâbhârata_(413)—which is as
> much history as is the _Iliad_—shows the Raumas and other races springing
> in the same manner from the Roma‐kûpas, hair or skin pores. This
> allegorical description of Daksha’s “sacrifice” is full of significance to
> the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat‐born.”
> 
> In the _Vâyu Purâna’s_ account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to
> have taken place in the presence of creatures _born from the egg_, from
> the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the
> womb.(414)
> 
> Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an
> Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore,
> commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command,
> he made “inferior and superior” (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), _bipeds_
> and _quadrupeds_; and by his _will_, gave birth to females, to the Gods,
> the Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake‐gods, animals, cattle
> and the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.
> 
>     From that period forward, _living creatures were engendered by
>     sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously
>     propagated_—by the _will_, by sight, by touch, and by the
>     influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and
>     holy saints.(415)
> 
> And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.
> 
> 29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS(416) WERE
> ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS.
> THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF
> THE AIR.
> 
> This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation
> are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition
> process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot,
> especially in the Ornithoscelidæ, Hesperornis, and the Archæopteryx of
> Vogt.
> 
> 30. DURING THE THIRD,(417) THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED; THEY
> BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHÂYÂS BECAME SOLID.(418)
> 
> Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also
> ethereal proto‐organisms, just as man was.
> 
> 31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.(419) THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO‐
> FOLD MAN(420) SEPARATED ALSO. HE(421) SAID: “LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE
> AND MAKE CREATURES.” THEY DID....
> 
> 32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK(422) TOOK HUGE SHE‐ANIMALS UNTO THEM.
> THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY(423) WERE THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR
> TONGUES UNTIED.(424) THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS
> THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED‐HAIR‐COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL
> FOURS.(425) A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.(426)
> 
> The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of
> sexes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof.
> Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:
> 
>     Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] _the
>     separation of the sexes_, and the existence, otherwise totally
>     incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata
>     especially, _each sex possesses such distinct traces of the
>     reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other_, that even
>     antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primæval condition
>     of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual
>     organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals,
>     actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole
>     period of their development they drag along with them these
>     residues, borne by _their unknown ancestry_, no one can say how
>     long.(427)
> 
> “The animals separated the first,” says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at
> that period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are
> now; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not
> told what the “huge she‐animals” were; but they certainly were as
> different from any we now know, as were the “men” from the men of to‐day.
> 
> This was the first physical “fall into matter” of some of the then
> existing and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The “Sons of Wisdom” had
> spurned the _early_ Third Race, _i.e._, the non‐developed, and are shown
> incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the _later_ Third
> Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless” Races, who had no
> “spark” and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them
> their Karmic duty.
> 
> What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
> 
> Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or
> even from an ancestor common to both; but, on the contrary, traces some of
> the most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean
> Period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a
> few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness,
> however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Volume I,
> Stanza VI.
> 
> Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had,
> at one time, built round the human astral form an _ape‐like external_
> shape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the
> “missing link,” than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral
> form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms
> of Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that
> such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third
> Rounds, when Man was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal” until he
> became what he was in the First Root‐Race of present Humanity. The real
> line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are
> irreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of “natural
> selection” and the like. Indeed, between the Moneron of Hæckel and the
> Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the
> Jîva; for the “human” Monad, whether “immetallized” in the stone‐atom, or
> “in‐vegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still
> ever a divine, hence also a _human_ Monad. It ceases to be human only when
> it becomes _absolutely divine_. The terms “mineral,” “vegetable” and
> “animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is
> no such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having
> once been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has
> to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad
> is a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, _within_,
> the plane of primæval differentiation. It is _divine_ in its higher and
> _human_ in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being
> used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains at all times, save in
> the Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms.
> As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested
> Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it
> repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its
> incarnations, to reflect in itself every _root‐form_ of each kingdom.
> Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “Man becomes a stone, a plant,
> an animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God,” thus accomplishing his cycle
> or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the
> _Heavenly Man_. But by “Man” the Divine Monad is meant, and not the
> Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try
> to trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a
> series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth,
> all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of
> which the Stanzas speak. The animals—the creeping beasts and those in the
> waters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those
> contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are
> posterior to the Third and Fourth Races—all are either directly or
> indirectly the mutual and correlative product, _physically_, of Man. It is
> correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, _i.e._, of the three
> preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he
> was “a stone, a plant, an animal.” But (_a_) these stones, plants, and
> animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth
> Round; and (_b_) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the
> astral shadows, as the Occultists express it, of the present stones,
> plants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either
> man, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral
> prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round,
> which _preceded_ the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still
> very ethereal _sheaths_ of the still more ethereal forms, or models,
> produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in
> _Esoteric Buddhism_; produced “from the residue of the substance; matter
> from dead bodies of men and [other _extinct_] animals of the Wheel
> before,” or the previous _Third_ Round—as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while
> the nondescript “animals” that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of
> this Life‐cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the
> Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence,
> in a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present
> anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless
> Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the
> level of an animal.
> 
> The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought
> forward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man
> from the animals.
> 
> The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “The history of
> the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.” That:
> 
>     Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a
>     series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors
>     have passed in the long course of earth’s history.(428) The
>     history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of
>     that of the race. _This conception forms the gist of our
>     fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the
>     head of the study of the fundamental law of organic
>     development._(429)
> 
> This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically
> expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage
> from _Isis Unveiled_ may here be cited to furnish a few points of
> comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists
> were unable to explain teratological phenomena?
> 
>     Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the
>     embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much
>     brain‐work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes
>     show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a
>     facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the
>     spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have
>     had the idea of applying to the development of the human
>     being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ
>     to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric
>     doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics.
>     The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a
>     plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another
>     place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men
>     on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter
>     clearer.
> 
>     What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a
>     corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the
>     ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or
>     otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed?
>     Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter,
>     deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and
>     united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this
>     infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same
>     elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the
>     man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as
>     authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make
>     a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as
>     a stone.
> 
>     At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant‐
>     like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the
>     other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be
>     composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats,
>     enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower
>     end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost
>     like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed,
>     by “metempsychosis,” into a plant. Then the embryonic creature
>     begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and
>     develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the
>     ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a
>     pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into
>     an animal‐like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and, like an
>     amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad
>     has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists
>     tell us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.” One by one the
>     fœtus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first
>     flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves;
>     ... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it
>     will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes
>     a spirit.
> 
>     This mysterious process of a nine‐months’ formation, the Kabalists
>     call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the
>     fœtus develops amidst the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the
>     Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or Astral Fluid, in the
>     Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy
>     inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature;
>     and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable,
>     animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the
>     imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the
>     cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle
>     merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series.
>     The embryo evolving in its pre‐natal sphere, the individual in his
>     family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth
>     in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe
>     in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE—the Boundless and
>     Endless.(430)
> 
> Thus runs _their_ philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that
> of Hæckel.
> 
>     All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
>     Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.
> 
> These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But
> how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this
> case? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, _argumenti gratiâ_,
> a common ancestor—in the way modern speculation puts it—how did the two
> groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity?
> True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what
> Science repeats; it gives a _common_ ancestor to ape and man, since it
> makes the former issue from Primæval Man. Aye, but that “Primæval Man” was
> _man_ only in external form. He was _mindless_ and _soulless_ at the time
> he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of
> apes. This speculation—if speculation it be—is at least logical, and fills
> the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and
> explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact—of which
> Science is almost certain—that, in the present stage of evolution, no
> issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and
> explained elsewhere.
> 
> Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so)
> conclusions—as enunciated in _The Pedigree of Man_—that man and ape have a
> common ancestor, and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this
> conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have
> originated from one common source? Materialistic Science makes man evolve
> gradually to what _he is now_. Starting from the first protoplasmic speck
> called Moneron—which we are told has, like the rest, “originated in the
> course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, _spontaneously
> arising_ original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution”—he is made
> to pass through “unknown and unknowable” types up to the ape, and thence
> to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are
> not told; for the simple reason that no “missing‐links” between man and
> the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men
> like Hæckel from inventing them _ad libitum_.
> 
> Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which
> unites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane
> and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the
> microscope and dissecting knife _within_ the animal tabernacle of man
> himself. We repeat what we have said in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally
>     begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse,
>     as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been
>     a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of
>     debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of
>     modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis.
>     Arrived at this period we shall find it easier to understand
>     Hæckel’s _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man “from
>     its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed
>     before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,”
>     according to Mr. Huxley’s exposition. We may more easily still
>     believe man (of the Third Round) evolved “by gradual modification
>     of an [astral] mammal of ape‐like organization,” when we remember
>     that the same theory, in a more condensed and less elegant, but
>     equally comprehensible, phraseology, was said by Berosus to have
>     been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man‐
>     fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi‐demon of Babylonia(431) (though on
>     somewhat modified lines).
> 
>     But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as
>     Darwin is concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as
>     he puts it, he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some
>     few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian
>     system was deposited.”(432) He does not attempt to show us what
>     these “few beings” were. But it answers our purpose quite as well,
>     for, in the bare admission of their existence, recourse to the
>     ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives
>     the stamp of scientific approbation.(433)
> 
> Truly, as we said in our first work, if we accept Darwin’s theory of the
> development of species, we find that his starting‐point lies in front of
> an open door. We are at liberty either to remain within with him, or cross
> the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible,
> or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express
> what our spirit—while on this earth—dimly foresees in the great “Beyond,”
> it _must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity. But what lies
> “beyond” Hæckel’s theory? Why Bathybius Hæckelii, and no more!
> 
> Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
> 
>     33. The creators repent. 34. They atone for their neglect. 35. Men
>     become endowed with minds. 36. The Fourth Race develops perfect
>     speech. 37. Every androgynous unit is separated and becomes
>     bisexual.
> 
> 33. SEEING WHICH,(434) THE LHAS(435) WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN,(436) WEPT,
> SAYING:
> 
> 34. “THE AMÂNASA(437) HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET
> US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD
> HAPPEN.” THEY DID....
> 
> 35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS.(438) THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE
> MINDLESS.
> 
> But they had already _separated_, before the ray of divine reason had
> enlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had
> _sinned_. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by
> producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive
> brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated
> race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on
> account of the _sin_ committed—even this race will find itself _on the
> last day_ on one of the Seven Paths. For:
> 
>     The Wise(439) guard the home of nature’s order, they assume
>     excellent forms in secret.(440)
> 
> But we must see whether the “animals” tampered with, were of the same kind
> as those known to Zoölogy.
> 
> The “Fall” occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the
> old records, as soon as Daksha—the reïncarnated Creator of men and things
> in the early Third Race—disappeared to make room for that portion of
> mankind which had “separated.” This is how one Commentary explains the
> details that preceded the “Fall”:
> 
> _In the initial period of man’s Fourth Evolution, the human kingdom
> branched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its
> first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles [the egg‐like, external
> shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated] were often
> tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now
> unknown, and belonging to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was
> that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were
> produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long
> and live, although, the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over
> physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the __“__Egg‐
> born__”__ Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as
> mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human
> races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated, and mated no
> longer. Man created no more—he begot. But he also begot animals as well as
> men, in days of old. Therefore the Sages [or wise men], who speak of males
> who had no more will‐begotten offspring, but begat various animals along
> with Dânavas [Giants] on females of other species—animals being as [or in
> the manner of] sons putative to them; and they [the human males] refusing
> in time to be regarded as [putative] fathers of dumb creatures—spoke
> truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this [state of things], the Kings and
> Lords of the last Races [of the Third and the Fourth] placed the seal of
> prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it
> developed new [Karma]_(_441_)_. They [the Divine Kings] struck the
> culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races._(442)
> 
> In another we find:
> 
> _There were blue and red‐faced animal‐men even in later times; not from
> actual intercourse [between the human and animal species], but by
> descent._
> 
> And still another passage mentions:
> 
> _Red‐haired, swarthy men going on all‐fours, who bend and unbend [stand
> erect and fall on their hands again], who speak as their forefathers, and
> run on their hands as their giant fore‐mothers._
> 
> Perchance in these specimens Hæckelians might recognize, not the “Homo
> Primigenius,” but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the
> Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the
> anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi‐human mothers, or, to
> speak more correctly, from human monsters—those “failures” mentioned in
> the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hæckel’s Catarrhini and
> Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The Orang‐
> Outang, the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and Cynocephalus are the latest and
> purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a
> spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not
> one drop of pithecoid(443) blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and
> universal tradition.
> 
> How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe
> in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief
> is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana
> without any reservation; as the former hides an Esoteric truth under a
> fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire
> to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when
> we read in _Genesis_ that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that
> the Race “with bones” was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which
> were “boneless.” This is an Esoteric tenet spread far and wide. It is
> almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that
> man was created out of Aræa, “red earth.” Taaroa, the Creative Power, the
> chief God, “put man to sleep for long years, for several lives.” This
> means racial periods, and is a reference to his _mental sleep_, as shown
> elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and
> she became a woman.(444)
> 
> Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may signify, even its exoteric meaning
> necessitates a _divine_ Builder of man—a “Progenitor.” Do we then believe
> in such “supernatural” Beings? We say: No. Occultism has never believed in
> anything, whether animate or inanimate, _outside_ Nature. Nor are we
> Cosmolaters or Polytheists for believing in “Heavenly Man” and Divine Men,
> for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying
> evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of
> the Ancients and _universal_ tradition. We reject, however, such
> groundless and baseless traditions as have outgrown strict allegory and
> symbolism, although they may have found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But
> that which is preserved in _unanimous_ tradition, only the wilfully blind
> could reject. Hence we believe in races of Beings other than our own in
> far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following
> _incorporeal_ (Arûpa) Men, with form but no solid substance, giants who
> preceded us pigmies; in Dynasties of Divine Beings, those Kings and
> Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which
> our little Modern Science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic
> with geometry.
> 
> No, certainly not. We do not believe in _supernatural_ but only in
> _superhuman_, or rather _interhuman_, intelligences. One can easily
> appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to
> being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the
> great truth uttered by Renan when he says that:
> 
>     The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that
>     everyone seems ashamed of—even those most religious persons who
>     refuse in our day to accept be it a minimum of Bible miracles in
>     all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the
>     minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the
>     past.(445)
> 
> But the “supernatural” of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It
> has nought to do with its spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature.
> If Theology asks us to believe that it was only four or five thousand
> years ago that men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind,
> the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants
> and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature
> only five _thousand_ years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and
> starts, and logic and common sense, besides Geology, Anthropology and
> Ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if this same
> Theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived
> 969 years—the age of Methuselah—five _million_ years ago, we should have
> nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of
> men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to
> a common lizard.
> 
> A Naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species
> which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no
> question of selection between _human races_,” say the anti‐Darwinists, and
> no Evolutionist can deny the argument—one which very triumphantly proves
> _specific unity_. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the
> Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi‐
> human, if not quite an animal, race; the hybrids resulting from which
> union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern
> anthropoid apes? Esoteric Science replies to this that it was in the very
> beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and
> sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality. But we have
> even to‐day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the _specific
> unity of mankind_ is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or
> rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half‐animal tribes
> or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro‐Atlantean origin. The world
> knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders,
> etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which
> struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it.
> This fact deserves notice.
> 
> De Quatrefages and other Naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the
> very fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every
> other, have left out of their calculations _exceptions_, which do not in
> this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule
> from the time of the separation of sexes, but this does not prevent
> another law asserting itself, viz., sterility between two human races,
> just as between two animal species of different kinds, in those rare cases
> when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a
> mate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes.(446) Darwin notes
> such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with
> sterility, _en masse_, some time after the arrival among them of European
> colonists. The great Naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of
> diet, food conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the
> mystery. For the Occultist it is very evident. “Crossing,” as it is
> called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women—_i.e._, the representatives of a
> race, whose progenitors were a “soulless”(447) and mindless monster, with
> a real human, though still as mindless a man—brought on sterility; and
> this, not only as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a
> decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the
> abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe
> _as yet_—but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric Philosophy, let us
> remember, only fills the gaps left by Science and corrects her false
> premisses.
> 
> Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the
> Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the
> Australian native—coëxisting as he does with an _archaic fauna and
> flora_—must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of
> this mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a
> testimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says:
> 
>     It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals
>     [the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone‐field Slates], but
>     several of the shells—as for instance, the Trigonias and even some
>     of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks—much more nearly
>     resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of
>     any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the
>     supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period _less change
>     has taken place in Australia than elsewhere_, and that the
>     Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the
>     Oolitic type, _while it had been altogether supplanted and
>     replaced on the rest of the globe_ [! !].(448)
> 
> Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is
> the _raison d’être_ for such a “curse of retardation”? It is simply
> because the nature of the environment develops _pari passu_ with the race
> concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those
> later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the
> main Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the
> present native tribes. Being a very low sub‐race, begotten originally of
> animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the
> sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly
> subjected to the _law of retardation_. Australia is one of the oldest
> lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its
> “_virgin_ soil” notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless
> helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.
> 
> To return once more, however, to the history of the Third Race, the
> “Sweat‐born,” the “Egg‐bearing,” and the “Androgyne.” Almost sexless, in
> its early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of
> course. The passage from the first to the last transformation required
> numberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the
> earliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being;
> and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual
> creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the five
> hitherto developed Races. The mystery of the “How” of the generation of
> the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the
> business of an embryologist and a specialist; the present work giving only
> faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the
> Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre‐natal shells, or
> eggs,(449) and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes,
> ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on
> its geological periods, the newly born sub‐races began to lose their natal
> capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub‐race of the Third Race, the
> babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and
> by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by
> identically the same process as our historical generations. This required,
> of course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the
> approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations.(450)
> 
> We are approaching the turning‐point of the evolution of the Races. Let us
> see what Occult Philosophy says on the origin of language.
> 
> 36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.
> 
> The Commentaries explain that the First Race—the ethereal or astral Sons
> of Yoga, also called “Self‐born”—was, in our sense, speechless, for it was
> devoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a “sound‐language,” to
> wit, chant‐like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed
> in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on
> the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the
> first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the
> “Sweat‐born” or the _early_ Third Race. In its second half, when the
> “Sweat‐born” gave birth to the “Egg‐born,” the _middle_ Third Race; and
> when these, instead of “hatching out”—may the reader pardon the rather
> ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age—as
> androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and
> when the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind
> sexually—an act which forced the Creative Gods, compelled by Karmic law,
> to incarnate in _mindless_ men; then only was speech developed. But even
> then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race
> was at that time of “one language and of one lip.” This did not prevent
> the last two sub‐races of the Third Race(451) from building cities, and
> sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of
> their Divine Instructors,(452) and their own already awakened minds. Let
> the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven Races is divided
> into four Ages—the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age—so is every
> smallest division of such Races. Speech then developed, according to
> Occult Teaching, in the following order:
> 
> I. _Monosyllabic speech_: that of the first approximately fully developed
> human beings at the close of the Third Root‐Race, the “golden‐coloured,”
> yellow‐complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full
> awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what
> would now be called “thought‐transference,” though, with the exception of
> the Race called the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—the first in whom the “Sons of
> Wisdom” had incarnated—thought was but very little developed in nascent
> physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their
> physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher
> plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full
> acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This
> monosyllabic speech was the vowel‐parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic
> languages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow
> races which are known to the Anthropologist.(453)
> 
> II. _Agglutinative speech_: these linguistic characteristics developed
> into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean
> races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother‐
> language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood,
> purity, growth, _fall into matter_, admixture with other languages,
> maturity, decay and finally death,(454) so the primitive speech of the
> most civilized Atlantean races—that language, which is referred to as
> Râkshasî Bhâshâ, in old Sanskrit works—decayed and almost died out. While
> the “cream” of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of
> physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the
> nascent Fifth (the Âryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed
> languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil
> idiom, now scattered, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of
> America.
> 
> III. _Inflectional speech_: the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously
> called the “elder sister” of the Greek, instead of its mother—was the
> first language, now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth
> Race. The “Semitic” languages are the bastard descendants of the first
> phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The
> Occult Doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Âryan and the Semite,
> and accepts even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites,
> especially the Arabs, are later Âryans—degenerate in spirituality and
> perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The
> former are a tribe descended from the Chandâlas of India, the outcasts,
> many of them ex‐Brâhmans, who sought refuge in Chaldæa, in Scinde, and
> Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A‐Bram (No‐Brâhman)
> some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those
> Âryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of
> nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan
> and Kabul(455) and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and
> invaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a
> continent.
> 
> We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the
> gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly
> arrested evolution of certain sub‐races, and their forced and violent
> diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross‐breeding, truly
> analogous to the hybridization which we have now learned to utilize in the
> vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the
> anthropoids.
> 
> In these red‐haired and hair‐covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural
> connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom” did not
> incarnate, as we see. Thus through a long series of transformations due to
> unnatural cross‐breeding—unnatural “sexual selection”—originated in due
> course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality
> and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a
> species which developed into mammalian apes ages later.(456)
> 
> As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may
> think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.
> 
> 37. THE ONE(457) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT
> WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH, BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL‐HEADS.
> 
> This relates evidently to the so‐called age of amphibious reptiles, during
> which Science denies that man existed! But what could the Ancients know of
> antediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters? Nevertheless, in Book VI of
> the Commentaries is found a passage which, freely translated, says:
> 
> _When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men‐animals, these
> [the animals] became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive.
> Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After [the separation] the
> Satya [Yuga] was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and
> seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing.
> Then man appealed to the superior Fathers [the higher Gods or Angels]. The
> Nirmânakâyas,  of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light, came,
> and the precursors of the Enlightened [the Buddhas]. Divine Kings
> descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer
> in the first land [Âdi‐Varsha, the Eden of the first Races], which had
> turned into a white frozen corpse._
> 
> The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief
> statement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is
> apparent at first sight.
> 
> Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
> 
> Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term “Eden”? Christians will
> maintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place
> _desecrated by the sin_ of Adam and Eve; the Occultist will deny this
> dead‐letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One need not believe in
> the _Bible_ and see in it divine revelation, to say that this ancient
> book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions as
> the other ancient scriptures. What Eden was is partially shown in _Isis
> Unveiled_, where it is said that:
> 
>     The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to
>     those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the
>     student that the _Bible_ is not all mere allegory. “Eden, or the
>     Hebrew גן עדן, Gan‐Eden, meaning the Park or the Garden of Eden,
>     is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its
>     many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian sea.”(458)
>     In the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, its location is designated in
>     numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count
>     St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian _Tablets_ it
>     is rendered Gan‐duniyas. “Behold,” say the אלהִם, Elohim, of
>     _Genesis_, “the man is become as one of us.” The Elohim may be
>     accepted in one sense for _gods_ or powers, and in another for
>     Aleim, or priests—the hierophants initiated into the good and evil
>     of this world; for there was a college of priests called the
>     Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the
>     hierophants, was known as Java‐Aleim. Instead of becoming a
>     neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a
>     regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his intuitional
>     faculties and, prompted by the serpent—_Woman_ and Matter—tastes
>     of the Tree of Knowledge, the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine,
>     unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel‐karth, the “Lord” of
>     the Eden, all wore “coats of skin.” The text says: “And Java‐Aleim
>     made for Adam and his wife, כתנותעור. Chitonuth‐our.” The first
>     Hebrew word, Chiton, is the Greek Χιτὼν (Chitôn). It became a
>     Slavonic word by adoption from the _Bible_, and means a _coat_, an
>     upper garment.
> 
>     Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does
>     every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the
>     marks of a double origin. Its _Genesis_ is purely a reminiscence
>     of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even
>     objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldæans and
>     the Akkadians, the progenitors and Âryan instructors of the
>     former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldæa,
>     Babylonia and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brâhmans of
>     Hindûstan; but there are more proofs in favour of this opinion
>     than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have
>     been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated
>     Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the
>     imagination of some Philologists and Ethnologists, they certainly
>     would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists
>     have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on
>     their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and
>     their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a
>     barbarian people. Halévy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania
>     in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved
>     that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in
>     that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were
>     Brâhmanical Hindûs.(459)
> 
> And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated
> by Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert Lecture that the culture
> of the Babylonian city Eridu was of “foreign importation.” It came from
> India.
> 
>     Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non‐
>     Semitic Akkadians or Proto‐Chaldæans, whom they supplanted, and
>     whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power to
>     uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races,
>     Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and
>     worship of the gods blending insensibly together.
> 
> Here, the Akkadians are called “non‐Semitic,” as we had insisted they were
> in _Isis Unveiled_, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right
> in always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation
> of _historical_ facts, arranged from other people’s history in Jewish
> garb—_Genesis_ excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is
> really from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search
> for the cradle—or rather one of the chief cradles—of mankind and the sons
> of Ad‐ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed‐en on the
> Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.
> 
> But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a
> faint reminiscence of the Âdi‐Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is
> the etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is ἡδονὴ,
> signifying “voluptuousness.” In this aspect it is no better than the
> Olympus of the Greeks, Indra’s Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the
> Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden
> of Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be
> suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a
> primitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the “Dragons of Wisdom,” the
> Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from
> a Japanese Cyclopædia in the book of _Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki_(460) places its “Garden
> of Wisdom” on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the
> Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central
> Asia, shows the four rivers—Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo—flowing from a
> common source, the “Lake of the Dragons.”
> 
> But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of
> Eden. For the former—Eden Illa‐ah—means in one sense Wisdom, a state like
> that of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to
> Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the
> Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.
> 
> Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves “on the most solid
> inductions,” think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the
> cradle of humanity “in the region of the Timaus.” Finally, the _Journal
> Asiatique_(461) concludes that:
> 
>     All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive
>     families at the region of their birth‐place, show them to us
>     grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the
>     Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their
>     Airyana Vaêjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by
>     the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan,
>     or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the
>     abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.
> 
> That “primitive humanity” was in its Fifth Race, when the “Four‐mouthed
> Dragon,” the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of
> the “Sons of Wisdom,” the first Mind‐born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it
> was neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was
> the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking _divine_ Man. It was
> the Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit‐speaking people, the
> Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the “Bower of
> Voluptuousness” of the Chaldæans, for the latter was but the reminiscence
> of it; nor again was it there that the “Fall of Man” occurred after the
> “separation.” The Eden of the Jews was _copied_ from the Chaldæan _copy_.
> 
> That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion
> of what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is
> evidenced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of
> which is explained in the _Zohar_. The question is not whether Eve’s
> incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one
> can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the
> symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a
> universal idea.
> 
> Now we find in the _Zohar_ a very strange assertion, one that is
> calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous
> absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the
> supposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of “flying
> camel”—καμηλόμορφον.(462)
> 
> A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal‐minded F.R.S.
> Nevertheless, the _Zohar_, which can hardly be expected to use the
> language of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called
> in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the _Avesta_ is represented
> as having after the Fall lost its _nature_ and its _name_, and is
> described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.
> 
> Salverte asserts that:
> 
>     There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons....
>     Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks _winged serpents_, and
>     this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence
>     of winged serpents.(463)
> 
> There are none _now_; but there is no reason why they should not have
> existed during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their
> skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple
> fossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:
> 
>     If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose
>     figures were so often repeated by mediæval historians, it is
>     incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)
> 
> We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further _mea
> culpa_, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against
> archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a _flying_
> saurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy‐eight feet long, and
> carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is
> described as a reptile, the _little fingers of whose hands_ are so
> elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying
> camel” of the _Zohar_ is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of
> the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still
> better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to
> build a “flying camel,” or a long‐necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of
> Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a
> winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebræ, which
> indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
> 
> And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never
> claimed Palæontography and Palæontology among its arts and sciences; and
> it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old
> Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in
> the Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized
> perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform
> Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the _Bible_ of the
> flying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the
> following questions are put very directly:
> 
> I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of
> the Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them
> orally and pictorially, unless they had either _seen those monsters
> themselves_ or _possessed descriptions of them in their traditions_; which
> descriptions necessitate _living and intelligent eye‐witnesses_?
> 
> II. And if such eye‐witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective
> clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palæolithic men
> be no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear
> in mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared
> before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the
> Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which
> disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described
> by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly
> have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the
> Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must
> be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
> 
> It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend
> Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called “flying
> camels” in the translations of the _Zohar_, we therefore as readily
> believe in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons.
> Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third
> Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to
> credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock‐and‐bull stories of
> their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons,
> respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their
> assertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise
> than as a “poetical license” the story told of Petrarch, who, while
> following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is
> credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his
> dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of
> his heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in
> the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have
> existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea‐serpent is
> one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority
> because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and
> rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping
> invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing
> as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped
> detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and
> exists no more.
> 
> The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly,
> because the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity
> of the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real
> zoological meaning of the words “Dragon,” “Nâga,” and “Serpent,” and the
> metaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who
> knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of
> these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the _quidproquos_
> and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.
> 
> “Sed et Serpens?” Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics
> intuitionally see in the serpent of _Genesis_ an animal emblem and a high
> spiritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a “great fallen
> light,” a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, “whose
> influence circumambulates the globe” (_qui circumambulat terram_), as De
> Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead‐letter, has it, and which
> only “manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better
> with its moral and intellectual _coils_”—_i.e._, under the ophidian form.
> 
> But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the “Divine Healer,”
> if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the
> “Evil One” itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when
> it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the
> followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Æsculapius, or
> Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are “devils and sons of devils,” and
> the wand and serpent of the latter, the “Devil’s wand”; how about the
> Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen “wand”
> and the Jewish “serpent” are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of
> Mercury, son of Apollo‐Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews
> adopted the ophidian shape for their “seducer.” With them it was purely
> _physiological_ and _phallic_; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on
> the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once
> that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are
> read numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the
> Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the
> astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two
> Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when
> _generalized_, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two
> most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is
> sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source,
> the astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the
> conqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back
> the devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent
> religious dogmas—it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the
> author simply has his eye on Christian religion and _Revelation_. We call
> this the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous
> decision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:
> 
>     From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has
>     full power over him, and possesses him _by right_—_diabolum
>     dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos
>     possidere_.(471)
> 
> To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil
> _as an entity_, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A
> very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be
> sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any
> reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical
> sense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed
> and even possessed by the wicked—hence by the bulk of mankind. It is
> humanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty,
> unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth
> to, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.
> 
>     The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having
>     adored the serpent.
> 
>     The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The
>     _Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_
>     ... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga]
>     has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ...
>     prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the
>     sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its
>     assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of
>     the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine
>     and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded
>     of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of
>     the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it
>     [the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with
>     care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence!
>     The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing,
>     as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in
>     person.”(472)
> 
> Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the
> prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the
> matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed
> to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans
> of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of
> Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the
> serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from
> the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_
> signified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or “the being who excels in
> intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is
> it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it
> not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning
> may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to
> apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons?
> These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were
> the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short,
> the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth
> Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era
> would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.
> 
> The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:
> 
>     Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human
>     legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable
>     Agathodæmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred
>     animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found
>     engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent
>     has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters
>     ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ.(474)
> 
> Agathodæmon was endowed “with the knowledge of good and evil,” _i.e._,
> with Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475)
> Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:
> 
>     The deity called Εἰχτῶν [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods—the
>     Great Thot‐Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes
>     the invention of magic.(477)
> 
> The “invention of magic”! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling
> of the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be _invented_! As well
> attribute, millenniums hence, the _invention_ instead of the discovery of
> radiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the
> discoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot‐Hermes is a
> generic name, as is Enoch—Enoïchion, the “inner, spiritual eye”—Nebo, the
> prophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man,
> but a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in
> symbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and
> Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are
> all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son
> of the Sun‐God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel‐Merodach;
> Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat—the Sun or Sûrya,
> etc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the
> Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and
> Devas, are the Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in
> theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and
> Men—when incarnated in the _Nether_ World. Let the reader be reminded, in
> this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist
> Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas
> ethnologically, but “wise men.”
> 
> The _Bible_, from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_, is but a series of historical
> records of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the
> Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the
> Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism,
> though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely
> upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales
> of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose
> between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and
> Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the “Sons of
> God,” is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of
> Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is
> shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well
> to quote a few sentences from _Isis Unveiled_.(478)
> 
>     The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: “Dan,” he says, “shall be
>     a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the path, that biteth the
>     horse‐heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [_i.e._, he
>     will teach candidates _Black_ Magic]. I have waited for thy
>     salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that
>     they “are brethren; instruments of _cruelty_ are in their
>     habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their _secret_; unto
>     their _assembly_.”(479) Now in the original, the words “their
>     secret” read—“their Sod.”(480) And Sod was the name for the great
>     Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun‐Gods and
>     had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of
>     the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the
>     tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was
>     the chief of the Sodales.(481)
> 
> It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the “Dragon‐Slayers”
> has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.
> 
> Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was
> the Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the
> Prophets thundering against the “abominations” of the people of Israël,
> that there were two Schools. “Fiery serpents” was, then, simply the
> epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had
> departed from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all
> those who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the “rebellious
> children” who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come
> “the viper and _fiery_ flying _serpent_,”(482) or Chaldæa and Egypt, whose
> Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the
> sorcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished
> from the “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”
> 
> In the _Great Book of the Mysteries_ we are told that:
> 
> _Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were
> holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs
> [phantoms] of the Fathers were as they._
> 
> This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into
> seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to
> be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The
> Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the
> human Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in
> their genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the
> Mexican local _Genesis_ has “four _good_ men,” described as the four real
> ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten by the Gods nor
> born of woman”; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative
> Powers, and who were made only after “_three attempts at manufacturing men
> had failed_.” The Egyptians in their theology had only “four Sons of
> God”—whereas in _Pymander_ _seven_ are given—thus avoiding any mention of
> the evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set‐
> Typhon, he began to be called the “seventh son”; whence probably arose the
> belief that “the seventh son of the seventh son” is always a natural‐born
> magician—though at first only a _sorcerer_ was meant. Apap, the serpent
> symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent;(484) therefore Set‐
> Typhon could not be that evil. In the _Book of the Dead_, it is commanded
> that Chapter clxiii should be read “in the presence of a serpent on two
> legs,” which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram’s
> horns(485) that adorn his “serpent’s” head in the hieroglyphics of the
> title of the said chapter, denote this. Over the “serpent” are represented
> the two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden “Mystery God.” The above
> passages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word “serpent”
> really meant in antiquity.
> 
> But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names
> between the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?
> 
>     The Nargal was the Chaldæan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab‐
>     Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians.
>     Both derive their names from Nergal‐Serezer, the Assyrian god, and
>     the Hindû Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to
>     have an attendant Dæmon, with whom they identify themselves
>     completely. The Chaldæan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dæmon, in
>     the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the
>     Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the neighbouring lake,
>     or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household
>     animal.(487)
> 
> Such similarity cannot be attributed to _coincidence_. A new world is
> discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it
> was already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna’s companion and Chelâ, is
> said to have descended into Pâtâla, the “antipodes” and therein married
> Ulûpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas,
> Kauravya.(489)
> 
> And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven.
> It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is,
> indeed, the ΣΕΜΕΣ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the “Eternal Sun Abrasax,” the Central
> Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the
> circle of Tiphereth.
> 
> And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into
> further explanations.
> 
>     From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah,
>     the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals.
>     This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a
>     grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to
>     follow the spirals, lies the Serpent—emblem of Wisdom and
>     Eternity—the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the
>     Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must
>     assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodæmon, the Ophis, the
>     _Shadow_ of the Light (non‐eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light
>     on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as
>     Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and
>     Evil.(490)
> 
> Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not
> appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to
> manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not
> evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes
> Light or Good; it is its _creator_ on Earth.
> 
> According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable
> Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed
> through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there
> are manifested worlds.
> 
>     This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the
>     Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf,
>     or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are
>     the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the
>     other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find
>     Ophis urging the first human couple—the material production of
>     Ilda‐baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia‐
>     Achamoth—to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents
>     divine Wisdom.
> 
>     The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree
>     of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The
>     Arasa‐maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since
>     Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
>     shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the
>     Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting
>     foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils
>     their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the
>     mysteries of life and death. The Java‐Aleim of the Sacerdotal
>     College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the
>     sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh‐
>     tchou(491) who lives in his Foh‐Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on
>     the top of the Kouin‐Long‐Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces
>     his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese
>     Sung‐Ming‐Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for
>     ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This
>     marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense
>     concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy
>     place.(493)
> 
> Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or
> the “Wise Men,” who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries
> of Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were
> named the “Serpents of Wisdom” and “Dragons”; and also how the first
> physiologically complete couples—after being initiated into the Mystery of
> Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by
> eating of the fruit of knowledge—gradually began to be accused by the
> material spirit of posterity of having _committed sin_, of having
> disobeyed the “Lord God,” and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
> 
> So little have the first Christians—who despoiled the Jews of their
> _Bible_—understood the first four chapters of _Genesis_ in their esoteric
> meaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended
> in this disobedience, but that the “Serpent” was actually the “Lord God”
> himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative
> wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never
> realized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent,
> and thus became the _salvation of mankind_. By this it would become the
> very first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to
> numbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to
> the _Kabalah_, _the curse on man came with the formation of woman_.(495)
> The circle was separated from its diameter line.
> 
>     From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the
>     Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was
>     made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever
>     after, to seek reünion into the original _one_ condition. The
>     curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded
>     the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from
>     that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to
>     recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by
>     this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature
>     lives.(496)
> 
> The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means,
> Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the
> mystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the
> _Zohar_ shows, Matronethah—Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically—“is
> the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree,” and Shekinah is
> Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is
> hidden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man).
> From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept’s knowledge
> aspires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept’s Ego on
> earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the
> night, _i.e._, revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance,
> which is night.(497) As says the Commentary:
> 
> _The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots
> of the Tree of Life._
> 
> But then also, as the author of _The Source of Measures_ writes:
> 
>     In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the “Tree of Life”
>     was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the “Tree of
>     Knowledge” was the separation and the coming together again to
>     fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values
>     of the letters composing the word Otz (עץ), tree, are 7 and 9, the
>     seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of
>     the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of
>     the Egyptian _female‐male_, Isis‐Osiris, the germinal principle in
>     all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all
>     directions and in all senses.
> 
> This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from
> the more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The
> separation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural
> evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of
> Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity,
> from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined
> plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that
> the _relative_ truth of such legends, if not their absolute
> exactness—vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon,
> Pythagoras, Plato, and others—begins to dawn upon more than one modern
> Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs
> that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way
> of solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless
> he begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we
> believe absolutely in ancient records and _universal_ legends, we need
> hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more
> learned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern
> Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do—in
> “dragons,” for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their
> actual existence at one time.
> 
>     It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty
>     years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection
>     of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them
>     the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
>     tales, time‐honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of
>     the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less
>     distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a
>     less hazardous proceeding.(499)
> 
> Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work
> by Mr. Charles Gould, called _Mythical Monsters_. He boldly states his
> belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:
> 
>     Many of the so‐called mythical animals, which throughout long ages
>     and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and
>     fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter‐of‐fact
>     Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the
>     outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once
>     existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and
>     inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very
>     much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of
>     creatures _once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird
>     and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible_....
> 
>     For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but
>     objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a
>     creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the
>     contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he
>     tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once
>     lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....
> 
>     To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible,
>     and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its
>     origin to a lunar myth.(500)...
> 
>     For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the
>     contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It
>     seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled
>     the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original
>     appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages
>     should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far
>     beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present
>     day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods
>     and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
>     descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be
>     _inventions_.(501)
> 
> It is shown by the same Geologist that:
> 
>     Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man
>     to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one
>     million_ years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which
>     have long since become extinct.(502)
> 
> These animals, “weird and terrible,” were, to give a few instances: (1)
> The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have
> attained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such
> monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the
> Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus
> Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in
> the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic
> proportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over
> six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in
> length. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the
> discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh‐
> bone over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous
> Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four‐horned stag, as large as an
> elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium;
> of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s
> head, etc. _All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked
> man, as man attacked them._ And we are asked to believe that the said man
> was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that,
> surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a
> colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is
> it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a
> gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one
> great man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why
> man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and
> go back _as far as the Secondary Period_.”(504)
> 
> The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:
> 
>     It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a
>     real existence in former ages of the world.(505)
> 
> And the author goes on to ask.
> 
>     Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
>     embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we
>     in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
>     years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and China,
>     shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition,
>     and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from
>     others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been
>     submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed
>     them with all their civilization?(506)
> 
> The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants—themselves smaller than
> their ancestors the Mastodons—and hippopotami, are the only surviving
> relics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have
> already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in
> size in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy
> elephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the
> same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy
> hippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also
> the still existing Hippopotamus (Chœropsis) Liberiensis, “which M. Milne‐
> Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.”(507)
> 
> Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy‐
> tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese
> philosopher Chuang, who said that:
> 
>     The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically
>     speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)
> 
> Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
> 
> The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”
> 
> The “legend” given in _Isis Unveiled_(509) in relation to a portion of the
> globe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of
> humanity—though it was but one of the _seven_ cradles, in truth—runs as
> follows:
> 
>     Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ (the _Book of
>     Dzyan_) explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his
>     inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and
>     desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which
>     extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and
>     its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its
>     unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by
>     the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.
> 
> “The last remnant” means the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” who, with a few
> tribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race,
> inhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and
> complete human Races—the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in
> _Isis Unveiled_ that:
> 
>     This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for
>     it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the
>     “Sons of God”; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the
>     real Elohim, though in the oriental _Kabalah_ they have another
>     name. It was they who imparted Nature’s most weird secrets to men,
>     and revealed to them the ineffable, and now _lost_ “word.”
> 
> The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis
> surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose
> sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”
> 
>     This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe,
>     and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some
>     privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
>     were aware of the existence of this island; but the “word” was
>     known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or
>     chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only
>     at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old
>     classical authors speak of them.
> 
>     There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but
>     subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with
>     it in all directions.(510)
> 
> Tradition asserts, and Archæology accepts the truth of the legend, that
> there is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on
> several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven
> stories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being
> found even in Europe, _e.g._, in Florence, which is built on several
> defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta,
> Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and
> passages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which
> are known to every European, whether _de visu_ or by hearsay,
> notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by
> modern Archæology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India
> and especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave‐temple in the
> country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and
> that these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn
> _their_ caves and corridors.
> 
>     Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis—which is also mentioned in
>     the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the
>     sacred language—did not still exist in those days?—
> 
> we went on to ask. It _did_ exist most assuredly, for it was approaching
> its greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian
> continents went down.
> 
>     The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south
>     of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the
>     hypothesis—now so much doubted, and positively denied by some
>     learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato—is ever
>     verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the
>     description of the God‐inhabited continent was not altogether a
>     fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato’s guarded hints
>     and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian
>     priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the
>     world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and
>     fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the
>     obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.
> 
>     To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of
>     hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those
>     who were instructed by the “Sons of God” of the island, and who
>     were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and
>     others who inhabited the lost Atlantis—if such must be its
>     name—and who, being of another race (produced _sexually_ but of
>     _divine_ parents), were born with a sight which embraced all
>     hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material
>     obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in
>     the _Popol Vuh_, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all
>     things at once.
> 
> In other words, they were the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first who had a
> Dynasty of Spirit‐Kings; not of Manes, or “Ghosts,” as some believe,(514)
> but of actual living Devas, or Demi‐gods or Angels, again, who had assumed
> bodies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in
> arts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rûpa or material Spirits,
> they were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and
> it is under the evil influence of this King‐Demon that the Atlantis‐Race
> became a nation of wicked “magicians.”
> 
>     In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would
>     be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the
>     disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of
>     Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the
>     submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories
>     of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians “and
>     all flesh died ... and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah,
>     who are substantially identical with the great Father of the
>     Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat
>     like the Hindû Noah Vaivasvata.
> 
>     If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
>     story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the
>     hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean
>     Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one
>     side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its
>     numerous “Saviours,” and great hierophants; on the other hand, its
>     “_natural_ magicians” who, through lack of the restraining power
>     of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to
>     evil purposes.
> 
> We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In
> _L’Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, Louis
> Jacolliot says:
> 
>     One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples
>     by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred
>     thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense
>     continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the
>     fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
>     Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.
> 
>     The high plateaux of Hindûstan and Asia, according to this
>     hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant
>     epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent....
>     According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high
>     civilization, and the peninsula of Hindûstan, enlarged by the
>     displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm,
>     has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in
>     this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples
>     which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their
>     speech _was derived the Sanskrit_. The Indo‐Hellenic tradition,
>     preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from
>     the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and
>     a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides,
>     and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of
>     the Tropics.
> 
>     Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in
>     those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the
>     volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the
>     Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical
>     probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond
>     the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the
>     mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories
>     preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian
>     legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the
>     sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan
>     Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter
>     Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents
>     preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most
>     important of all.
> 
>     A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to
>     say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms
>     “that all these islands once formed two immense countries,
>     inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the
>     gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify
>     them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then,
>     it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone,
>     the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the
>     power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had
>     committed.”
> 
>     Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have
>     been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of
>     Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is
>     certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
>     important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and
>     fugitive they may be.(516)
> 
> This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the “Records of
> the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black
> men, relates to a struggle between the “Sons of Gods” and the “Sons of
> Giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.
> 
> The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands
> of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language,
> and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
> 
>     As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of
>     the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such
>     proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
> 
>     The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New
>     Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen
>     to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate
>     islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea
>     (? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the
>     Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from
>     seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
> 
>     All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central
>     groups could never have communicated in view of their actual
>     geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at
>     hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a
>     pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without
>     provisions.
> 
>     On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of
>     Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti,
>     etc., _had never known each other, had never heard of each other_,
>     before the arrival of the Europeans. _And yet each of these people
>     maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an
>     immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the
>     side of Asia._ And all, brought together, were found to speak the
>     same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same
>     religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of
>     your race?” for sole response, _extended their hand toward the
>     setting sun_.(517)
> 
> Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the
> Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is
> all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition
> must be based on some approximate truth.
> 
> In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the
> above and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two
> lost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most
> astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as
> grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the
> colossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance
> the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race
> giants. They seem of one cast though different in features—of a distinctly
> sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and “Atalantians”) are
> said to have had in the Esoteric Hindû books. Compare these with the faces
> of some other colossal statues in Central Asia—those near Bamian, for
> instance—the portrait‐statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to
> _previous_ Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in
> the Buddhist and Hindû works, as men of fabulous size,(518) the good and
> holy brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as
> Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all
> descendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like “Titan and his
> enormous brood,” all “Heaven’s first‐born.” These “Buddhas,” though often
> spoilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a
> suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their
> faces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race—but
> the former are “Sons of Gods”; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers.
> All these are reïncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable
> exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are _historical
> characters_.(519) When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races,
> the Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the
> Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured
> by the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly
> exaggerated in the _Purânas_ and other Hindû Scriptures. We feel quite
> prepared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have
> occasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one
> way, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance
> of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists’
> deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the
> Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found
> more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist’s
> curtailing—even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a
> personal hobby—is regarded by Western public opinion as “a _cautious_
> acceptance of facts,” whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a
> “_liar_.” But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled
> to see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it
> otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify
> both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindû Âryans wrote for their
> Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they
> did mix up events and confuse Ages _intentionally_, it was not with the
> view of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from
> the prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the
> _generations_ from the Manus, and the _series of incarnations_ specified
> in the cases of some heroes,(520) in the _Purânas_, the meaning and
> chronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he
> must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods
> used by archaic Esotericism.
> 
> But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon
> before the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber’s and Prof. Max
> Müller’s favourite theories—namely, that writing was not known in India,
> even in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindûs had all their arts and
> sciences—even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)—from the
> Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock‐and‐bull hypotheses, are
> threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldæa that comes to the
> rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of
> Oxford, speaking of newly‐discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders,
> refers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes
> of Berosus, the half‐man, half‐fish, who taught the Babylonians culture
> and the _art of writing_. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical
> Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is
> now spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:
> 
>     The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the
>     shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means “the good city,” a
>     particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the
>     earliest Chaldæan civilization made its way to the north. As the
>     culture‐god was represented as coming from the sea, it was
>     possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of
>     foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a
>     very early period between Chaldæa and the Sinaitic peninsula, as
>     well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel‐
>     loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made of the extremely
>     hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated
>     the diorite to have been brought from Magan—_i.e._, the Sinaitic
>     peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are
>     known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren,
>     the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie,
>     the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one
>     of the Tel‐loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that
>     employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has been found at
>     Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian
>     special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of
>     clothing mentions _sindhu_ or “muslin,” explained as “vegetable
>     cloth.”(521)
> 
> Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldæa as Hindu
> (Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years B.C., and yet the Hindûs, to whom
> Chaldæa owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans
> Kennedy, were _ignorant of the art of writing_ before the Greeks taught
> them their alphabet—if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!
> 
> Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
> 
>     38. The birth of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race. 39. The sub‐races of
>     the Fourth Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the
>     first mixed races of various colours. 40. The superiority of the
>     Atlantean over other Races. 41. They fall into sin and beget
>     children and monsters. 42. The first germs of anthropomorphism and
>     sexual religion. They lose their “third eye.”
> 
> 38. THUS, TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE
> FOURTH; THE SURA BECAME A‐SURA.(522)
> 
> 39. THE FIRST,(523) ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON‐COLOURED;(524) THE SECOND
> YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH
> SIN.(525) THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION.(526)
> THE NEXT SEVEN,(527) BEGAN MIXING.(528)
> 
> To understand Shloka 38, it must be read together with the Shlokas of
> Stanza IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical
> than physical Nature. It is only after the so‐called “Fall,” that the
> Races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. In order that
> the student may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall—so
> mystic and transcendental in its real significance—he must at once be told
> the details which preceded it, seeing that modern Theology has made of the
> event a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs
> are made to turn.
> 
> The Archaic Commentaries, as the reader may remember, explain that, of the
> Host of Dhyânîs, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the
> immortal, but, _on this plane_, senseless Monads—some “obeyed” (the Law of
> Evolution) immediately the men of the Third Race became physiologically
> and physically ready, _i.e._, when they had separated into sexes. These
> were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and
> will to their inherent divine purity, “created” by Kriyâshakti the semi‐
> divine man, who became the Seed on Earth for future Adepts. Those, on the
> other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom—unfettered as it
> then was by the bonds of Matter—said: “We can choose, ... we have
> wisdom,”(529) and so incarnated far later—these had their first Karmic
> punishment prepared for them. They got bodies inferior (physiologically)
> to their Astral Models, because their Chhâyâs had belonged to Progenitors
> of an inferior degree in the seven Classes. As to those “Sons of Wisdom”
> who “deferred” their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already
> tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, these produced a terrible
> cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was
> produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of
> iniquity for æons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had
> become defiled through their own procrastination.(530)
> 
> This was the “Fall of the Angels,” owing to their rebellion against Karmic
> Law. The “fall of _man_” was no fall, _for he was irresponsible_. But
> “creation” having been invented on the dualistic system as the
> “prerogative of God alone”—the legitimate _attribute_ patented by Theology
> in the name of an _infinite_ Deity of their own making—the power of
> Kriyâshakti had to be regarded as “Satanic,” and as a usurpation of divine
> rights. Thus, in the light of such narrow views, the foregoing must
> naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, “created in the
> image of God,” and a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the
> dead‐letter dogma. “Your doctrine,” the Occultists have already been told,
> “makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle
> of the Devil, from the first.” “Why do you make of your God a Devil—both,
> moreover, created in _your own_ image?”—is our reply. The Esoteric
> interpretation of the _Bible_, however, sufficiently refutes this
> slanderous invention of Theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become
> the just Karma of the Churches—more anti‐Christian than the representative
> assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
> 
> The true meaning of the old doctrine of the “Fallen Angels,” in its
> anthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the _Kabalah_, and
> explains the _Bible_. It is found preëminently in _Genesis_ when the
> latter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma,
> and in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In _Genesis_ (vi),
> the “Sons of God”—B’ne Aleim—become enamoured of the daughters of men,
> marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them
> in Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the “Fall of the Angels.”(531)
> But what, in reality, is the _Book of Enoch_ itself, from which the author
> of _Revelation_ and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel(532) have so
> profusely quoted? Simply a _Book of Initiation_, giving out in allegory
> and cautious phraseology the programme of certain Archaic Mysteries
> performed in the _inner_ Temples. The author of the _Sacred Mysteries
> among the Mayas and Quichés_ very justly suggests that the so‐called
> “Visions” of Enoch relate to his (Enoch’s) experience at Initiation, and
> what he learned in the Mysteries; while he very erroneously states his
> opinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity
> (! !); furthermore, he believes that this book was written “at the
> beginning of the Christian era, when ... the customs and religion of the
> Egyptians fell into decadency”! This is hardly possible, since Jude, in
> his Epistle,(533) quotes from the _Book of Enoch_; and, therefore, as
> Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the _Book of Enoch_ from the
> Ethiopic version, remarks, it “could not have been the production of a
> writer who lived after ... or was even coëval with” the writers of the
> _New Testament_, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that
> follows, were also a production of the already established Church—which,
> some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the
> “Fallen Angels” of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.
> 
> In Indian exotericism, these Angels (Asuras) are also denounced as the
> “enemies of the Gods”; those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the
> Devas. In Christian Theology they are broadly referred to as the “Fallen
> Spirits,” the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends,
> gathered from Pagan sources. The _coluber tortuosus_, the “tortuous
> snake”—a qualification said to have originated with the Jews—had quite
> another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it; among others, _a
> purely astronomical_ signification.
> 
> The “Serpent” fallen from on high (_deorsum fluens_) was credited with the
> possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead (τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή) to the
> day when Jesus saw it fall “as lightning ... from heaven,”(534)
> notwithstanding the Roman Catholic interpretation of “_cadebat ut
> fulgur_.” It means indeed that even “the devils are subject” to the
> Logos—who is Wisdom, but at the same time, as the opponent of ignorance,
> Satan or Lucifer. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like
> lightning on, and so quickening, the intellects of those who fight the
> devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the
> shape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to
> animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life—Humanity, if it can
> be so called in its animal, senseless state, was of course doomed to
> _moral_ as well as to physical death. The Angels _fallen into generation_
> are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the
> other hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour,
> like Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who
> believed in the Secret Teachings, from “eternal death,” and to have
> conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This
> is the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also—because the
> Logos is Christos—that “principle” of our inner nature which develops in
> us into the Spiritual Ego—the Higher Self—formed of the indissoluble union
> of Buddhi, the sixth, and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth
> “principle.”(535) “The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and conscious,
> self‐active Wisdom on Earth,” we are taught. It is the Marriage of the
> “Heavenly Man” with the “Virgin of the World,” or Nature, as described in
> _Pymander_; the result of which is their progeny—immortal man. It is this
> which is called in St. John’s _Revelation_(536) the marriage of the Lamb
> with his Bride. This “wife” is now identified with the Church of Rome
> owing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to
> forget that her “linen” may be “clean and white” _outwardly_, like the
> “whited sepulchre,” but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with,
> is not the “righteousness of saints,”(537) but rather the blood of the
> saints she has “slain upon the earth.”(538) Thus the remark made by the
> great Initiate, in _Luke_—referring allegorically to the ray of
> enlightenment and reason, _falling like lightning_ from on high into the
> hearts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom‐Religion, then
> presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)—was distorted out
> of all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in
> with one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological
> dogmas.
> 
> But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan—in
> all the dogmatic horror of that fiction—other nationalities and religions
> have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which
> is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of
> ancient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct
> meaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the
> semi‐esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindûism failed to evolve very suggestive
> symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The
> _Purânas_ teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the
> frequent allusions of Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, to all those
> Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have _to be born in every
> age_—to reïncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent
> to saying that the “Flames” born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to
> the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary
> Law, had—without any gradual transition—landed on this Earth, after
> having, as in _Pymander_, broken through the “Seven Circles of Fire,” or,
> in short, the seven intermediate Worlds.
> 
> There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re‐births, and the series is headed at
> every new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from
> reïncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons—by the highest and
> the earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these “Gods” to incarnate in the
> present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing
> allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The
> Gods who had “_fallen_ into generation,” whose mission it was to complete
> _Divine_ Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and
> Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one
> Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the
> Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended
> by these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)
> 
> The true Esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by
> the whole of philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an
> Appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A.
> Kingsford’s _Perfect Way_.(542) No better and clearer indication of the
> truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore
> quoted here at some length:
> 
>     1. And on the seventh day [seventh creation of the Hindûs],(543)
>     there went forth from the presence of God a _mighty Angel_, full
>     of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the
>     outermost sphere.(544)
> 
>     2. Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit;
>     Being descended into generation.(545)
> 
>     4. _Among the Gods is none like unto him_, into whose hands are
>     committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:
> 
>     5. Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,(546) the fall of
>     nations, the birth of churches, the triumphs of Time.
> 
> For, as is said in Hermes:
> 
>     20. Satan is the door‐keeper of the _Temple of the King_; he
>     standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth _the Keys of the
>     Sanctuary_;
> 
>     21. That no man may enter therein save the anointed, having the
>     arcanum of Hermes.
> 
> These suggestive and majestic verses had reference, with the ancient
> Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity, to the _creative and
> __ generative Light of the Logos_—Horus, Brahmâ, Ahura Mazda, etc., as
> primeval manifestations of the Ever‐unmanifested Principle, whether called
> Ain Suph, Parabrahman, or Zeruâna Akerne, or Boundless Time, Kâla—but the
> meaning is now degraded in the _Kabalah_. The “Anointed”—who has the
> secrets and mysteries of Hermes, or Budha, Wisdom, and who alone is
> entrusted with the “Keys of the Sanctuary,” the Womb of Nature, in order
> to fructify it and call to active life and being the whole Kosmos—has
> become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the “God of Generation” on the Lunar
> Mountain—Sinai, the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). The “Sanctuary” has become
> the “Holy of Holies,” and the arcanum has been anthropomorphized, and
> “phallicized,” and dragged down into Matter, indeed. Hence arose the
> necessity of making of the “Dragon of Wisdom,” the “Serpent” of _Genesis_;
> of the conscious God who needed a body to clothe his too subjective
> divinity, Satan. But the “innumerable incarnations of Spirit,” and “the
> ceaseless pulse and current of Desire,”(547) refer, the first, to our
> doctrine of Karmic and Cyclic Rebirths, the second—to Erôs, not the later
> God of material, physiological love, but to the Divine Desire in the Gods,
> as well as in all Nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the
> Rays of the one “Dark,” because invisible and incomprehensible, “Flame”
> could achieve only by themselves descending into Matter. Therefore, as
> continued in the Appendix:
> 
>     12. Many names hath God given him [Satan], names of mystery,
>     secret and terrible.
> 
>     13. ... The Adversary, because Matter opposeth Spirit, and Time
>     accuseth even the saints of the Lord.
> 
>     28. Stand in awe of him, and sin not: speak his name with
>     trembling....
> 
>     29. For Satan is the magistrate of the Justice of God [Karma]; he
>     beareth the balance and the sword.
> 
>     31. For to him are committed _Weight and Measure and Number_.
> 
> Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabalah to
> the Prince in the Book of _Al Chazari_, says, and it will be found that
> Weight and Measure and Number are, in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the
> attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers),
> covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the
> collective Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” or the Logos. Thus Satan and
> the Anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore:
> 
>     33. Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of
>     Hades, the Angel of the manifest Worlds.
> 
> The seven Lokas, or Saptaloka, of the Earth with the Hindûs; for Hades, or
> the Limbo of Illusion, of which Theology makes a region bordering on Hell,
> _is simply our Globe_, the Earth, and thus Satan is called the “Angel of
> the _manifest_ Worlds.”
> 
> It is “Satan who is the God of our planet and _the only_ God,” and this
> without any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity. For he
> is one with the Logos.
> 
>     The first and “eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic
>     [divine] evolution, Saturn (Satan) [astronomically] is the
>     _seventh and last_ in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being
>     the circumference of the Kingdom of which Phœbus [the Light of
>     Wisdom, also the Sun] is the centre.
> 
> The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish God an “Angel of
> Matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and whose Planet
> was Saturn.
> 
>     34. And God hath put a girdle about his loins [the rings of
>     Saturn], and the name of the girdle is Death.
> 
> In Anthropogony this “girdle” is the human body with its two lower
> principles. These three die, while the innermost Man is immortal. And now
> we approach the _secret_ of Satan.
> 
>     37. ... Upon Satan only _is the shame of generation_.
> 
>     38. He hath lost his virginal estate [so hath the Kumâra, by
>     incarnating]: _uncovering heavenly secrets_, he hath entered into
>     bondage.
> 
>     39. He encompasseth with bonds and limits all things....
> 
>     42. Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael;
>     in the abyss [the manifested world] the legions of Satan.
> 
>     43. These are the Unmanifest and the Manifest; the free and the
>     bound [in Matter]; the virginal and the fallen.
> 
>     44. And both are the ministers of the Father, fulfilling the Word
>     divine.
> 
> Therefore:
> 
>     55. Holy and venerable is the Sabbath of God: _blessed and
>     sanctified is the name of the Angel of Hades_ [Satan].
> 
> For:
> 
>     41. The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord [God in the
>     manifested World]: the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai
>     [the whole Kosmos].
> 
> When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the Kosmic reflection
> of God; it anathematizes God made manifest in Matter or in the objective;
> it maledicts God, or the ever‐incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as
> Light and Shadow, Good and Evil in Nature, in the only manner
> comprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.
> 
> This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael,
> or Satan, the Adversary in the _Kabalah_; the same tenets and spirit being
> found in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion.
> This philosophical view does not interfere, however, with the historical
> records connected with it. We say “historical,” because allegory and
> mythical ornamentation round the kernel of tradition, in nowise prevent
> that kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the _Kabalah_, repeating
> the time‐honoured revelations of the once universal history of our Globe
> and the evolution of its Races, has presented it under the legendary form
> of the various records which have formed the _Bible_. Its historical
> foundation, in however imperfect a form, is now offered in these pages
> from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus the allegorical and
> symbolical meaning of the Serpent of _Genesis_ is found explained by the
> “Sons of Wisdom”—or Angels from higher Spheres, though all and each
> pertain to the Kingdom of Satan, or Matter—revealing to men the mysteries
> of Heaven. Hence, also, all the so‐called myths of the Hindû, Grecian,
> Chaldæan, and Jewish Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth.
> The Giants of _Genesis_ are the historical Atlanteans of Lankâ, and the
> Greek Titans.
> 
> Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer
> a non‐existent personage, while the existence of such cities as
> Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends?
> Yet Schliemann has proved that Troy did really exist, and the two latter
> cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had
> their resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the Earth. How
> many more cities and localities called “fabulous” are on the list of
> future discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical(548)
> will one day become historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees
> of Fate in the Astral Light.
> 
> As the tenets of the Eastern Doctrine, however, have always been kept
> secret, and as the reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts
> unless he becomes an accepted disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar
> turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. Let him, for instance,
> read carefully the opening pages of the _Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus,
> and he will see our doctrines corroborated therein, however veiled its
> text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth,
> called “Nature” in _Pymander_, as of everything else, from the “Moyst
> Principle,” or the great Deep, Father‐Mother—the first differentiation in
> the manifested Kosmos. First the “Universal Mind,” which the hand of the
> Christian translator has metamorphosed in the earliest renderings into
> God, the Father; then the “Heavenly Man,”(549) the great Total of that
> Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior Worlds
> or of the Men of our Globe, but which nevertheless _fell_ into Matter by
> virtue of that same evolution, as the Second Logos of the “Father.”(550)
> 
> Synthetically, every Creative Logos, or “the Son who is one with the
> Father,” is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian
> Theology makes of the seven “Angels of the Presence” the Virtues, or the
> personified attributes, of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus
> were by Brahmâ, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic Theodice itself,
> recognizing in its creative Verbum Princeps the Head of these Angels
> (_caput angelorum_) and the Angel of the great Counsel (_magni consilii
> angelus_), thus recognizes the identity of Christ with them.
> 
> “The Sura became A‐Sura”—the Gods became No‐Gods—says the text; _i.e._,
> Gods became Fiends—Satan, when read literally. But Satan will now be
> shown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, to be allegorized as Good
> and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names.
> 
> The _Kabalah_ teaches that Pride and Presumption—the two chief prompters
> of Selfishness and Egotism—are the causes that emptied Heaven of _one‐
> third_ of its divine denizens, mystically, and of _one‐third_ of the
> stars, astronomically; in other words, the first statement is an allegory,
> and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, is, as shown, intimately
> connected with humanity.
> 
> In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret
> meaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the
> whole of “creation” was due to, and the result of, that legendary “War in
> Heaven,” brought on by the rebellion of the Angels(551) against Creative
> Law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the _inner_ meaning is
> to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty, by
> appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy—is to
> say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient for believers in the Pope’s
> infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the
> truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told
> by any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and Symbologists, have
> shown an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the
> Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither
> Alchemist nor Philosopher during the Mediæval Ages could have uttered
> that(552) which in the sight of Orthodox Theology was terrible blasphemy,
> for it would have led them directly through the “Holy” Office of the
> Inquisition, to rack and stake. But for our modern Kabalists and
> Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely
> human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected but ineradicable
> superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manicheeïsm, invented
> the Devil, and by placing a theological extinguisher on the radiant Star‐
> God Lucifer, the “Son of the Morning,” thus created the most gigantic of
> all her paradoxes, _a black and tenebrous_ Light—the myth has struck its
> roots too deeply into the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even
> those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas, and laugh at her horned and
> cloven‐footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the
> oldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi‐
> exoterically, the “First‐born” of the Almighty—Fiat Lux—or the Angels of
> Primordial Light, were commanded to “create”; one‐third of them rebelled
> and “refused”; while those who “obeyed” as Fetahil did—_failed_ most
> signally.
> 
> To realize the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one
> must study and understand Eastern Philosophy; one has to be acquainted
> with the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedântins, as to the utter
> fallacy of attributing functional activity to the Infinite and Absolute
> Deity. Esoteric Philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyâs, the
> “Central Sun” emits _Creative Light_—passively, so to say. Causality is
> latent. It is only during the active periods of Being that it gives rise
> to a stream of ceaseless Energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more
> activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being
> which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of
> “creating,” or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its
> units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent Beings—who became
> collectively a Being or Creative God, differentiated already from the One
> Absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned “creation.”(553)
> 
> Now the Vatican MS. of the _Kabalah_—the only copy of which (in Europe) is
> said to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain—contains the most
> complete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version
> accepted by the Luciferians(554) and other Gnostics; and in that parchment
> the “Seven Suns of Life” are given in the order in which they are found in
> the Saptasûrya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions
> of the _Kabalah_ which are procurable in public libraries, and that even
> in a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced
> number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to
> the quaternary group of the Dhyân Chohans, and proves the speculation to
> have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Âryans. As is well
> known, the _Kabalah_ did not originate with the Jews, for the latter got
> their ideas from the Chaldæans and the Egyptians.
> 
> Thus even the _exoteric_ Kabalistic teachings speak of a “Central Sun,”
> and of three secondary Suns in each Solar System—our own included. As
> shown in that able though too materialistic work, _New Aspects of Life and
> Religion_, which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect
> deeply thought out and assimilated:
> 
>     The central sun ... was to them [as much as to the Âryans] the
>     _centre of rest_; the centre to which all motion was to be
>     ultimately referred. Round this central sun ... “the first of
>     three systemic suns ... revolved on a polar plane ... the second,
>     on an equatorial plane” ... and the third only was our visible
>     sun. These four solar bodies were “_the organs on whose action
>     what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet
>     earth, depends_.” The channels through which the influence of
>     these bodies was conveyed to the earth they [the Kabalists] held
>     to be electrical.... The radiant energy flowing from the central
>     sun(555) called the earth into being as a watery globe, ... [whose
>     tendency], as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the
>     (central) sun ... within the sphere of whose attraction it had
>     been created.... But the radiant energy, similarly electrifying
>     both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion
>     towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the
>     revolving planet [earth] thus sought to reach.
> 
>     In the organic cell the _visible sun_ found its own proper matrix,
>     and produced through this the animal [while maturing the
>     vegetable] kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom,
>     through the animating action of that kingdom, it originated the
>     psychic cell. But the man so placed at the head of the animal
>     kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the _soul‐
>     less, the perishable man_.... Hence man, although apparently its
>     crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation;
>     since creation, culminating in him, would at his death have
>     entered on its decline.(556)
> 
> This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in
> spirit with the Eastern Doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the
> Seven Suns with the seven systems of Planes of Being, of which the “Suns”
> are the central bodies, and you have the seven Angelic Planes, whose
> “Host” collectively are the Gods thereof.(557) They are the Head Group
> divided into four Classes, from the Incorporeal down to the Semi‐
> corporeal. These Classes are directly connected—though in very different
> ways as regards voluntary connection and functions—with our mankind. They
> are three, synthesized by the fourth, the first and highest, which is
> called the “Central Sun” in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is
> the great difference between the Semitic and the Âryan Cosmogony—one
> materializing, humanizes the mysteries of Nature; the other spiritualizes
> Matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics.
> Thus, though the seventh “principle” reaches man through all the phases of
> Being, pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes
> through—the _Kabalah_ teaches _from_—the Central Spiritual Sun and Group
> the Second, the Polar Sun, which two radiate on man his Âtmâ. Group Three,
> the Equatorial Sun, cements the Buddhi to Âtman and the higher attributes
> of Manas; while Group Four, the Spirit of our visible Sun, endows him with
> his Manas and its vehicle, the Kâma Rûpa, or body of passions and
> desires—the two elements of Ahamkâra which evolve _individualized
> consciousness_, the personal Ego. Finally, it is the Spirit of the Earth,
> in its triple unity, that builds the Physical Body, attracting to it the
> Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sharîra.
> 
> But everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything
> else, and the order in which he is generated is described fully in the
> Eastern Teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the _Kabalah_. Says the
> _Book of Dzyan_ with regard to Primeval Man when first projected by the
> “Boneless,” the Incorporeal Creator:
> 
> _First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow‐Son [the Body] were
> __“__created.__”__ But where was the Pivot [the Middle Principle, Manas]?
> Man is doomed. When alone, the Indiscrete [Undifferentiated Element] and
> the Vâhan [Buddhi]—the Cause of the Causeless—break asunder from
> manifested life._
> 
> “_Unless_,” explains the Commentary:
> 
> _Unless cemented and held together by the Middle Principle, the Vehicle of
> the personal consciousness of Jîva._
> 
> In other words, the two higher “principles” _can have no individuality on
> Earth_, cannot be _man_, unless there is (_a_) the Mind, the Manas‐Ego, to
> cognize itself, and (_b_) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body
> of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round
> a Pivot—which it is, truly—to the physical form of man. It is the _fifth_
> and the _fourth_ “principles”(558)—Manas and Kâma Rûpa—that contain the
> dual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the
> two higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral
> Body, so‐called, or the Animal‐human Soul—the two having to be closely
> blended for purposes of a _full_ terrestrial existence. Incarnate the
> Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on
> Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—_i.e._, in a
> two or even a three‐principled Body composed of its Sthûla Sharîra, Prâna
> (Life‐principle) and Linga Sharîra—and, if it lacks its middle and fifth
> “principles,” you will have created _an idiot_—at best a beautiful, soul‐
> less, empty and unconscious appearance. “_Cogito—ergo sum_” can find no
> room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.
> 
> There are students, however, who have long ago understood the
> philosophical meaning underlying the allegory—so tortured and disfigured
> by the Roman Church—of the “Fallen Angels.”
> 
>     The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and
>     is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with
>     and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine
>     action.(559)
> 
> As said in the text of Commentary xiv:
> 
> _Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution
> with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self Existent_(_560_)_
> are called __“__Creations,__”__ for they appear in the Spirit‐Ray,
> manifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is
> beyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate
> and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and
> creatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements._
> 
> Again:
> 
> _The Heavenly Rûpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a
> spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening
> of the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of
> Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race._
> 
> To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this
> Earth only, it was the duty of the first “differentiated” Egos—the Church
> calls them Archangels—to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary
> impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its
> productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the
> Eastern and Western tradition—“the Angels were _commanded to create_.”
> After the Earth had been made ready by the _lower_ and more material
> Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful
> and multiply,” the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were
> compelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to
> construct the crown of its evolution—Man. Thus the “Self‐created” and the
> “Self‐existent” projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the
> Fire‐Angels, _rebelled and refused_ to join their fellow Devas.
> 
> Hindû exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them
> to refuse to “create,” as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras,
> “Virgin Youths,” in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in
> progress towards Nirvâna‐the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric
> interpretation, it was a self‐sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The
> “Rebels” would not create will‐less irresponsible men, as the “obedient”
> Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary
> reflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another
> and a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still
> irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No
> spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth—the lowest and most
> material plane—for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently
> _perfect_ and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained
> the pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the
> one negative and passive attribute of the real _I am that I am_, he would
> have been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless
> sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being,
> collectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever
> were pronounced) the cruel words, “Behold, the man is become _as one of
> us_, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take
> also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...”—must have been
> indeed the Ilda‐baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and
> envy against his own creature, the reflection of which created
> Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead‐letter
> standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of _Genesis_, as the real creator
> and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the
> “Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the
> automaton “created” by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to
> whisper, “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good
> and evil,” can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “Adversary”
> to Jehovah, the “_personating_ spirit,” he still remains in Esoteric Truth
> the ever‐loving “Messenger,” the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both
> “knew” well, and “loved” still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual,
> instead of Physical Immortality—the latter a kind of _static_ immortality
> that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew.”
> 
> As narrated in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_ concerning Ildabaoth,
> whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:
> 
>     Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride
>     dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off
>     all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world
>     entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created
>     Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed
>     utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster,
>     crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring
>     their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by
>     communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had
>     inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his
>     pride and self‐sufficiency.
> 
>     Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son,
>     followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred
>     to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which
>     it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his
>     creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the
>     “Primal Man.” At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage
>     and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His
>     looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as
>     in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose
>     “Satan Serpent‐formed,” _Ophiomorphos_, the embodiment of envy and
>     cunning.(561)
> 
> This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a
> sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the
> natural deduction from the dead‐letter text of Chapter iii of _Genesis_.
> Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the Divine Fire so as to
> allow men to proceed consciously on the path of Spiritual Evolution, thus
> transforming the most perfect of _animals_ on Earth into a potential God,
> and making him free to “take the kingdom of heaven by violence.” Hence,
> also, the _curse_ pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah‐
> Ilda‐baoth against his “rebellious son,” Satan. The cold, pure snows of
> the Caucasian mountain and the never‐dying, singeing fire and flames of an
> inextinguishable Hell, two poles, yet the same idea, the dual aspect of a
> refined torture; a “Fire‐producer”—the personified emblem of Φωσφόρος
> (_Phósphoros_), of the Astral Fire and Light in the Anima Mundi (that
> Element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: “ohne
> _Phosphor_ kein Gedanke,” or “without phosphorus no thought”)—burning in
> the fierce Flames of his terrestrial Passions; the conflagration fired by
> his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to
> the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full
> consciousness gnawing at its heart—a Prometheus indeed, because a
> _conscious_, and hence a _responsible_ entity.(562) The curse of life is
> great, yet, with the exception of some Hindû and Sufi mystics, how few are
> those who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils
> of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive
> (objectively) _incorporeal_ Being, or even the universal static Inertia
> personified in Brahmâ during his “Night’s” Rest. For, to quote from an
> able article by one(563) who, confusing the planes of existence and
> consciousness, fell a victim thereto:
> 
>     Satan [or Lucifer] represents the _Active_, or, as [M. Jules]
>     Baissac calls it, the “Centrifugal” Energy of the Universe [in a
>     cosmic sense]. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought,
>     Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At
>     the same time he is _Pain_, which is the Reaction of the
>     _Pleasure_ of Action, and _Death_—which is the Revolution of
>     _Life_—Satan, burning in his own Hell, produced by the fury of his
>     own momentum—the expansive disintegration of the Nebula which is
>     to concentrate into New Worlds. And fitly is he again and again
>     baffled by the Eternal Inertia of the _Passive_ Energy of the
>     Kosmos—the inexorable “_I am_”—the Flint from which the sparks are
>     beaten out. And fitly ... are he and his adherents ... consigned
>     to the “Sea of Fire”—because _it is_ the Sun [in one sense only in
>     the cosmic allegory], the Fount of Life in _our_ system, where
>     they are purified (meaning thereby disintegrated) and churned up
>     to reärrange them for another life (the Resurrection)—that _Sun_
>     which, as the Origin of the Active Principle of our Earth, is at
>     once the _Home_ and the _Source_ of the Mundane Satan....
> 
>     Furthermore, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Baissac’s
>     general theory [in _Le Diable et Satan_] cold is known to have a
>     “Centripetal” effect. Under the influence of Cold everything
>     contracts.... Under it Life _hybernates_, or dies out, Thought
>     congeals, and Fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own
>     Fire‐Sea—it is only in the “Nifl‐Heim” [the cold Hell of the
>     Scandinavian _Eddas_] of the “_I am_” that he cannot exist. But
>     for all that there is a kind of _Immortal_ Existence in Nifl‐Heim,
>     and that Existence must be _Painless_ and _Peaceful_, because it
>     is _Unconscious_ and _Inactive_. In the Kingdom of _Jehovah_ [if
>     this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him]
>     there is no misery, no war, no marrying and giving in marriage, no
>     change, no _Individual Consciousness_.(564) All is absorbed in the
>     spirit of the Most Powerful. _It is emphatically a Kingdom of
>     Peace and loyal Submission, as that of the __“__Arch‐Rebel__”__ is
>     one of War and Revolution...._ It [the former] is in fact what
>     Theosophy calls Nirvâna. But then Theosophy teaches that
>     Separation from the Primal Source _having once occurred_, Reünion
>     can only be achieved by _Will‐Effort_—which is distinctly Satanic
>     in the sense of this essay.(565)
> 
> It _is_ “Satanic” from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is
> owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil—to
> the Radiant Archangels, Dhyân Chohans, who refused to create, because they
> wanted Man _to become his own creator_ and an immortal God—that men can
> reach Nirvâna and the Haven of heavenly Divine Peace.
> 
> To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the
> Fire‐Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the “Virgin‐Angels,” (to whom the
> Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, both belong,) the Divine “Rebels”—called
> by the all‐materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or
> “Deprived”—preferred the _curse_ of _incarnation_ and the long cycles of
> terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if
> _unconscious_, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their
> Brethren, through the semi‐passive energy of their _too spiritual_
> Creators. If “man’s uses of life should be such as neither to animalize
> nor to spiritualize, but to _humanize_ Self,”(566) to do so, he must be
> born _human_ not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogîs
> offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity,
> which was created god‐like and perfect at first, and endow him with human
> affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural
> status, descend on our Globe, and take up their abode on it for the whole
> cycle of the Mahâyuga, thus exchanging their impersonal Individualities
> for individual Personalities—the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse
> of terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose
> nature was _Knowledge_ and _Love_, has been construed by the exoteric
> theologies into a statement that shows “the Rebel Angels hurled down from
> Heaven into the darkness of Hell”—our Earth. Hindû Philosophy hints at the
> truth by teaching that the Asuras, hurled down by Shiva, are only in an
> _intermediate state_, in which they prepare for higher degrees of
> purification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian
> Theology—claiming to be based on the rock of the divine love, charity, and
> justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour—to paradoxically enforce that
> claim, has invented the dreary dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of
> Roman Catholic philosophy.
> 
> Whereas Rabbinical wisdom—than which there is none more positive,
> materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to
> physiological mysteries—calls these Beings, the “Evil One”; and the
> Kabalists—Nahash, “Deprived,” as just said, and the Souls that have,
> _after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One_, thrown
> themselves into an Abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have
> anticipated the time when they are to descend on Earth.(567)
> 
> And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the _Zohar_ or any
> other book of the _Kabalah_ in its right interpretation—for the latter is
> the same as our own—but only with the gross, _pseudo_‐esoteric
> explanations of the later, and especially of the Christian Kabalists.
> 
> Says the Commentary:
> 
> _Our earth and man [are] the products of the three Fires._
> 
> The names of these three answer, in Sanskrit, to the “Electric Fire,” the
> “Solar Fire,” and the “Fire produced by Friction.” Explained on the cosmic
> and human planes, these three Fires are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three
> great Root Groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with
> the Schools, and—according to their applications—become the Upâdhis and
> the Vehicles, or the Noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are
> personified by the “three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour” of
> Agni Abhimânin, the eldest son of Brahmâ, the Cosmic Logos, by Svâhâ, one
> of Daksha’s(568) daughters. In the metaphysical sense, the “Fire by
> Friction” means the union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth
> “principle,” which thus are united or cemented together, the fifth merging
> partially into and becoming part of the Monad; in the physical, it relates
> to the “creative spark,” or germ, which fructifies and generates the human
> being. The three Fires, whose names are Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Shuchi, were
> condemned, it is said, by a curse of Vasishtha, the great Sage, “to be
> born over and over again.”(569) This is clear enough.
> 
> Therefore, the Flames, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books,
> and who are called indifferently Prajâpatis, Pitris, Manus, Asuras,
> Rishis, Kumâras,(570) etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third
> Root‐Race and thus find themselves “reborn over and over again.” In the
> Esoteric Doctrine they are generally named Asuras, or the Asura Devatâ or
> Pitar Devatâ (Gods), for, as said, they were first Gods—and the
> highest—before they became “_No_‐Gods,” and had from Spirits of Heaven
> fallen into Spirits of Earth(571)—_exoterically_, note well, in orthodox
> dogma.
> 
> No Theologian or Orientalist can ever understand the genealogies of the
> Prajâpatis, the Manus, and the Rishis, or the direct connection of
> these—their correlation rather—with the Gods, unless he has the key to the
> old primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all nations originally had in
> common. All these Gods and Demi‐gods are found reborn on Earth, in various
> Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, _having his Karma
> distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause_.
> 
> Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as may be seen,
> absolutely necessary to show that the Sons of “Dark Wisdom,” though
> identical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the
> “Fallen,” are as divine and as pure, if not more pure, than all the
> Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches. The “Old Book” also
> goes into various details of Astral Life, which at this juncture would be
> quite incomprehensible to the reader. It must, therefore, be left for
> later explanation, and the First and Second Races will now receive only
> bare notice. Not so the Third Race—the Root‐Race which separated into
> sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason; men evolving
> _pari passu_ with the Globe, and the latter having “incrustated” more than
> a hundred millions of years before the first human sub‐race had yet begun
> to materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:
> 
> _The Inner Man [the Conscious Entity] was not._
> 
> This “Conscious Entity” Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases
> _is_, the very essence and _esse_ of the high Intelligences, condemned, by
> the undeviating law of Karmic evolution, to reïncarnate in this
> Manvantara.
> 
> (_b_) Shloka 39 relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly
> speaking, Esoteric Philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while
> it assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its Forefathers
> or “Creators” were all Divine Beings—though of different classes or
> degrees of perfection in their Hierarchy—it teaches that men were
> nevertheless born at seven different centres of the Continent of that
> period. Though all were of one common origin, yet, for reasons given,
> their potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms,
> and future characteristics, were very different.(572) As to their
> complexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in _Linga Purâna_. The
> Kumâras—the Rudra Gods, so called—are described as incarnations of Shiva,
> the Destroyer (of _outward forms_), called also Vâmadeva. The latter, as a
> Kumâra, the “Eternal Celibate,” the chaste Virgin Youth, springs from
> Brahmâ in each great Manvantara, and “again becomes four”; a reference to
> the four great divisions of the human Races, as regards complexion and
> type—and the three chief variations of these. Thus in the twenty‐ninth
> Kalpa—in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the
> human form, which Shiva ever destroys and remodels periodically down to
> the great Manvantaric turning point, about the middle of the Fourth
> (Atlantean) Race—in the twenty‐ninth Kalpa, Shiva, as Shvetalohita, the
> Root‐Kumâra, from moon‐coloured becomes _white_; in his next
> transformation, he is _red_ (and in this the exoteric version differs from
> the Esoteric Teaching); in the third, _yellow_; in the fourth, _black_.
> 
> Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great
> divisions, into only three distinct primeval Races—as it does not take
> into consideration the First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and
> a hardly objective, though colossal, form. The evolution of these Races,
> their formation and development, proceeded on parallel lines with the
> evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from
> which the human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the
> climates of these zones. The Esoteric Teaching names three great
> divisions, namely, the _red‐yellow_, the _black_, and the _brown‐
> white_.(573) The Âryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown,
> almost black, red‐brown‐yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are
> nevertheless all of one and the same stock, the Fifth Root‐Race, and
> spring from one single Progenitor, called in Hindû _exotericism_ by the
> generic name of Vaivasvata Manu; the latter, remember, being that Generic
> Personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago,
> and also 850,000 years ago—at the time of the sinking of the last remnants
> of the Great Continent of Atlantis,(574) and who is said to live even now
> in his mankind.(575) The light yellow is the colour of the first _solid_
> human race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root‐Race—after
> its fall into generation, as just explained—bringing on the final changes.
> For, it is only at that period that the last transformation took place,
> which brought forth man as he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race
> gave birth to the Fourth Race; “Shiva” gradually transforming that portion
> of Humanity which became “black with sin” into red‐yellow, of which the
> red Indians and the Mongolians are the descendants, and finally into
> brown‐white races—which now, together with the yellow races, form the
> great bulk of Humanity. The allegory in _Linga Purâna_ is curious, as
> showing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.
> 
> When reading of the “last transformation,” which is said to have taken
> place 18,000,000 years ago, let the reader at this juncture, consider how
> many millions more it must have required to reach that final stage. And if
> Man, in his gradual consolidation, developed _pari passu_ with the Earth,
> how many millions of years must have elapsed during the First, Second, and
> the first half of the Third Race. For the Earth was in a comparatively
> ethereal condition before it reached its last consolidated state. The
> Archaic Teachings, moreover, tell us that, during the middle period of the
> Lemuro‐Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after the Genesis of Man,
> the Earth, Man, and everything on the Globe, were of a still grosser and
> more material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were
> still in a semi‐gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that have intervened
> since then, have already carried us onward, on the opposite ascending arc,
> some steps toward our “dematerialization,” as the Spiritualists would say.
> The Earth, ourselves, and all things have softened since then—aye, even
> our brains. But it has been objected by some Theosophists that an ethereal
> Earth even some 15 or 20,000,000 years ago, “does not square with
> Geology,” which teaches us that winds blew, rains fell, waves broke on the
> shore, sands shifted and accumulated, etc.; that, in short, all natural
> causes now in operation were then in force, “in the very earliest ages of
> geological time, aye, that of the oldest palæozoic rocks.” To this the
> following answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by Geology
> to these “oldest palæozoic rocks”? And secondly, why could not the winds
> blow, rain fall, and waves—of “carbonic acid” apparently, as Science seems
> to imply—break on the shore, on an Earth semi‐astral, _i.e._, viscid? The
> word “astral” does not necessarily, in Occult phraseology, mean as thin as
> smoke, but rather “starry,” shining or pellucid, in various and numerous
> degrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just observed. But it is
> further objected: “How could an astral Earth have affected the other
> Planets in this System? Would not the whole process get out of gear now if
> the attraction of one Planet were suddenly removed?” The objection is
> evidently invalid, since our System is composed of older and younger
> Planets, some dead—like the Moon—others in process of formation, for all
> that Astronomy knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so
> far as we know, that all the bodies of our System have sprung into
> existence and developed simultaneously. The Cis‐Himâlayan Secret Teachings
> differ from those of India in this respect. Hindû Occultism teaches that
> the Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is 18,000,000 and odd years old. We say, yes;
> but only so far as _physical_ or approximately physical, Man is concerned,
> who dates from the close of the Third Root‐Race. Beyond that period _Man_,
> or his filmy image, may have existed for 300,000,000 years, for all we
> know; _since we are not taught figures_ which are and will remain secret
> with the Masters of Occult Science, as justly stated in _Esoteric
> Buddhism_. Moreover, whereas the Hindû _Purânas_ speak of one Vaivasvata
> Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic one.
> 
> We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man.
> 
> Archaic Teachings In The “Purânas” And “Genesis.” Physical Evolution.
> 
> The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and
> Anthropogony above described actually existed, that its records _are_
> preserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the modern versions of
> ancient Scriptures.
> 
> The _Purânas_ on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are
> based on the same scheme of evolution, which, if read Esoterically and
> expressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as
> much of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The
> only difference between the two schemes is, that the _Purânas_, giving as
> much, and perhaps more, attention to causes than to effects, allude to the
> pre‐cosmic and pre‐genetic periods rather than to those of so‐called
> “creation,” whereas the _Bible_, after saying only a few words on the
> former period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while almost
> skipping the Pre‐Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the
> Fifth Race.
> 
> Now, whatever the onslaught made on the “order of creation” in
> _Genesis_—and its dead‐letter account certainly lends itself admirably to
> criticism(576)—the Hindû _Purânas_, notwithstanding their allegorical
> exaggerations will be found quite in accordance with Physical Science.
> 
> Even what, on the face of it, appears to be the perfectly nonsensical
> allegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from
> under the waters, finds a perfectly scientific explanation in the Secret
> Commentaries, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, the
> constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest
> geological periods of our Globe; for Science teaches us now that nine‐
> tenths of the stratified formations of the Earth’s crust have been
> gradually constructed beneath the water at the bottom of the seas. The
> ancient Âryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of Natural
> History, Geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand,
> proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the
> _Bible_, to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism
> “earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the _less philosophical
> and more immoral religions_ (!!) of the ancient world.”(577) Only, while
> in biblical Esotericism, we find physiological sexual mysteries
> symbolized, and very little more, something for which _very little real
> Philosophy_ is requisite—in the _Purânas_ one can find the most scientific
> and philosophical “dawn of creation,” which, if impartially analyzed and
> rendered into plain language from its fairy‐tale‐like allegories, would
> show that modern Zoology, Geology, Astronomy, and nearly all the branches
> of modern knowledge, have been anticipated in ancient Science, and were
> known to ancient Philosophers in their general features, if not in such
> detail as at present.
> 
> Paurânic Astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for
> the purpose of leading the profane off the real track, has been shown even
> by Bentley to be a real science; and those who are versed in the mysteries
> of Hindû astronomical treatises, will prove that the modern theories of
> the progressive condensation of nebulæ, nebulous stars and suns, with the
> most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms for
> chronological and other purposes—far more correct than Europeans have even
> now—were known in India to perfection.
> 
> If we turn to Geology and Zoology we find the same. What are all the myths
> and endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpatis, of their sons, the seven
> Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed
> account of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation,
> one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and
> metaphysical Âryans—the authors of the most perfect philosophical system
> of transcendental Psychology, of codes of Ethics, of such a grammar as
> Pânini’s, of the Sânkhya and Vedânta systems, of a moral code (Buddhism),
> proclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth—were the Âryans such
> fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing “fairy tales,” such
> as the _Purânas_ now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the
> remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the “fable,” the genealogy
> and origin of Kashyapa, with his twelve wives by whom he had a numerous
> and diversified progeny of serpents (Nâgas), reptiles, birds, and all
> kinds of living things, who was thus the “father” of all kinds of animals,
> but a _veiled_ record of the order of evolution in _this_ Round? So far,
> we do not see that any Orientalist has ever had the remotest conception of
> the truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. The
> _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, says one, gives “_a not very intelligible_ account”
> of Kashyapa’s origin.
> 
>     According to the _Mahâbhârata_, the _Râmâyana_, and the _Purânas_,
>     he was the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ, the father of
>     Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind.
> 
>     According to the _Shatapatha Brahmâna_: Having assumed the form of
>     a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he
>     made (_akarot_); hence the word _kûrma_ (tortoise). Kashyapa means
>     tortoise; hence men say, “All creatures are descendants of
>     Kashyapa.”(578)
> 
> He was all this; he was also the father of the bird Garuda, the “king of
> the feathered tribe,” who _descends from_, and is of one stock with _the
> reptiles_, the Nâgas, and who becomes their mortal enemy _subsequently_—as
> he is also a _cycle_, a period of time, when, in the course of evolution,
> the birds which developed from reptiles in their “struggle for life” and
> “survival of the fittest,” etc., turned in preference on those from whom
> they issued to devour them, perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to
> make room for other and more perfect species.
> 
> In that admirable epitome, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, a lesson
> in Natural History is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance
> of the _Bible_ with it. The author remarks that Geology traces the “dawn
> of creation” through a line of scientific research:
> 
>     Commencing with the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of
>     the Laurentian, and continued in a chain, every link of which is
>     firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of
>     molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life, and first indication
>     of fishes; the Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first
>     appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians; the
>     Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air
>     preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land
>     animals began to appear; and finally the Tertiary, in which
>     mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type
>     and species to species, are gradually differentiated and
>     specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods,
>     until we arrive at the Glacial and Prehistoric periods, and at
>     positive proof of the existence of man.(579)
> 
> The same order, _plus_ the description of animals unknown to Modern
> Science, is found in the Commentaries on the _Purânas_ in general, and in
> the _Book of Dzyan_ especially. The only difference—a grave one, no doubt,
> as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man independent of his
> physical body in this illusionary world, in which the _false personality_
> and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox Psychology—is as
> follows. Having been in all the so‐called seven “creations,” which stand
> allegorically for the seven evolutionary changes, or sub‐races, as we may
> call them, of the First Root‐Race of Mankind—Man has been on Earth in this
> Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the Kingdoms of Nature
> in the previous _three_ Rounds,(580) his _physical_ frame—one adapted to
> the thermal conditions of those early periods—was ready to receive the
> Divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, _i.e._, 18,000,000 years
> ago. It is only at the mid‐point of the Third Root‐Race that man was
> endowed with Manas. Once united, the Two and then the Three made One; for
> though the lower animals, from the amœba to man, received _their_ Monads,
> in which all the higher qualities are potential, these qualities have to
> remain dormant till the animal reaches its human form, before which stage
> Manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals every principle is
> paralyzed, and in a fœtus‐like state, save the second, the Vital, and the
> third, the Astral, and the rudiments of the fourth, Kâma, which is desire,
> instinct—whose intensity and development varies and changes with the
> species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read
> like a fairy‐tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner,
> spiritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.
> 
> As Commentary ix says:
> 
> _Men are made complete only during their Third, toward the Fourth Cycle
> [Race]. They are made __“__Gods__”__ for good and evil, and responsible,
> only when the two arcs meet [after three and a half Rounds towards the
> Fifth Race]. They are made so by the Nirmânakâya [Spiritual or Astral
> remains] of the Rudra‐Kumâras, __“__cursed to be reborn on Earth
> again__”__ [meaning—doomed in their natural turn to reïncarnation in the
> higher ascending arc of the terrestrial Cycle]._
> 
> Now the writer is certain to be met with what will be termed insuperable
> objections. We shall be told that the line of embryology, the gradual
> development of every individual life, and the progress of what is known to
> take place in the order of progressive stages of specialization—that all
> this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins as the
> humblest and most primitive vermiform creature:
> 
>     From the primitive speck of protoplasm, and the nucleated cell in
>     which all life originates ... and “is developed through stages
>     undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until
>     the cell finally attains the highly specialized development of the
>     quadrumanous, and, last of all, of the human type.”(581)
> 
> This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against _that_; for it
> all relates to the _shell_ of man—his body, which, in its growth, is
> subject, of course, like every other once so‐called morphological unit, to
> such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the transformation of the
> mineral atom through crystallization—which is the same function, and bears
> the same relation to its so‐called _inorganic_ Upâdhi, or basis, as the
> formation of _cells_ to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and
> animal into man—it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will
> finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in Nature, ever‐
> present, and as ever invisible and unknowable, and of intra‐cosmic Gods,
> who were all once men.(582)
> 
> But we would ask, what does Science and its exact discoveries and now
> axiomatic theories prove against _our_ Occult theory? Those who believe in
> the law of evolution and gradual progressive development from a cell—which
> from a vital became a morphological cell, until it finally awoke as
> protoplasm pure and simple—can surely never limit their belief to one line
> of evolution! The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of
> evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of
> species. The constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age—we mean
> the “primordial” _matter_ of Science—was the same in every essential
> particular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial
> _living_ matter of to‐day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if
> the now orthodox theory of evolution were _quite_ correct, namely, a
> constant, ever‐flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of
> this, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal beings
> all tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one type
> and now of another, develop through the geological ages, change forms,
> assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic rapidity, in
> the description of Palæontologists from one period to another, the two
> solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite
> poles of life and type, namely—_man_ and the _lower genera_ of being!
> 
>     Certain well‐marked forms of living beings have existed through
>     enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical
>     conditions, _but persisting comparatively unaltered_, while other
>     forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be
>     termed “persistent types” of life; and examples of them are
>     abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds.(583)
> 
> Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together
> reptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., as off‐shoots of a
> moneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether reptiles, for instance, are
> direct descendants of the amphibia, the latter of fishes, and fishes of
> lower forms—which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed through
> all these forms of being up to Man, on every Globe, in the _three
> preceding_ Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A
> to G, having been, and still having to be, the arena of the same
> evolution, only repeated each time on a more solid material basis.
> Therefore the question, “What relation is there between the Third Round
> astral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the
> origination of pre‐mammalian organic species?”—is easily answered. One is
> the shadowy prototype of the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and
> evanescent sketch on the canvas, of objects which are destined to receive
> their final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. The fish
> evolved into an amphibian—a frog—in the _shadows_ of ponds, and man passed
> through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did
> in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the
> formation of the types in the present Round. On strict analogy, the cycle
> of seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through
> every Kingdom of Nature, is repeated on a microscopical scale in the first
> seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think
> over and work out this analogy. As the seven months’ old unborn baby,
> though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength
> and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven
> Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of Mother‐Nature before he is
> born, or rather reborn a Dhyâni, still more perfect than he was before he
> launched forth as a Monad on the newly built Chain of Worlds. Let the
> student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself
> that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are
> precise domains wherein the Astral merges into Physical Evolution. Of this
> Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey,
> it says. But now see the contradiction.
> 
> Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club‐mosses, some of them
> generically identical with those now living, which are met with in the
> Carboniferous epoch, for:
> 
>     The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from
>     that of existing species.... Sub‐kingdoms of animals yield the
>     same instances. The Globigerina of the Atlantic soundings is
>     identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus ... the
>     tabulate corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the
>     millepores of our own seas.... The Arachnida, the highest group of
>     which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus
>     differing from its living congeners only in ... the eyes. [etc.]
> 
> All of which may be closed with Dr. Carpenter’s authoritative statement
> about the Foraminifera:
> 
>     There is no evidence of any fundamental modification or advance in
>     the foraminiferous type from the palæozoic period to the present
>     time.... The foraminiferous fauna of our own series probably
>     present a greater range of variety than existed at any previous
>     period; but _there is no indication of any tendency to elevation
>     towards a higher type_.(584)
> 
> Now, as in the Foraminifera, Protozoa of the lowest type of life,
> mouthless and eyeless, there is no indication of change except their now
> greater variety—so man, who is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of
> being, indicates still less change, as we have seen; the skeleton of his
> palæolithic ancestor being even found superior in some respects to his
> present frame. Where is, then, the uniformity of law which is claimed—the
> _absolute rule_ for one species shading off into another and thus, by
> insensible gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson
> admitting as much as 400,000,000 years for the time since the surface of
> the Globe became sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living
> things;(585) and during that enormous lapse of time in the Oolitic period
> alone, the so‐called “Age of Reptiles,” we find a most extraordinary
> variety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching _its
> highest development_. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the
> lakes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air.
> After which, in the Tertiary period:
> 
>     We find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from
>     previously existing forms ... Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other
>     unwieldy denizens of the ancient forests and plains.
> 
> And, subsequently, we are notified of:
> 
>     The gradual modification of one of the ramifications of the
>     Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom primeval Man
>     himself may claim to have been evolved.(586)
> 
> He _may_; but no one, except a Materialist, can see why he should; as
> there is not the slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution
> warranted by facts, for those most interested in the proofs thereof
> confess their utter failure to find one single fact to support their
> theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the
> members of one progressive series. They are “the products of various and
> different evolutional divergences, taking place now in one direction and
> now in another.” Therefore it is far more justifiable to say that the
> monkey evolved into the quadrumanous order, than that primeval man—who has
> _remained stationary_ in his human specialization since the first fossil
> skeleton found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save
> in colour and facial type—has developed from a common ancestor together
> with the ape.
> 
> That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops “through
> stages indistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the
> cell attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous and
> _at last the human type_,” is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The
> Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a
> man; a man a God,” holds good throughout the ages. Hæckel, in his
> _Schöpfungsgeschichte_, shows a double drawing representing two
> embryos—that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The
> two, with the exception of a slight difference in the head, which is
> larger and wider about the brain in the man, are indistinguishable.
> 
>     In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the
>     stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal, and
>     finally of man.
> 
>     If we take him up at the more advanced stage, where the embryo has
>     already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable
>     time, the line of development remains the same as that of other
>     mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five
>     fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance
>     after the first four weeks’ growth _between the embryo of a man
>     and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish
>     them_. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal
>     with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.(587)
> 
> Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a
> reptile—a Nâga, instead of coupling man with the Quadrumana? This would be
> just as logical as the latter, if not more so. The shape and the stages of
> the human embryo have not changed since historical times, and these
> metamorphoses were known to Æsculapius and Hippocrates as well as to Mr.
> Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it from prehistoric
> times, it is no new discovery.(588)
> 
> As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other
> mammal, but contains in itself _the totality of the kingdoms of nature_,
> and since it seems to be a “persistent type” of life, far more so than
> even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make him evolve from the
> ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. Both Occult
> and Eastern Philosophies believe in Evolution, which Manu and Kapila(589)
> give with far more clearness than any Scientist does at present. No need
> to repeat what has been fully debated in _Isis Unveiled_, as the reader
> may find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all
> the Eastern doctrines of Evolution rest, in our earlier volumes.(590) But
> no Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now
> existing forms, “from the structureless Amœba to man,” are the direct
> lineal descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years
> before the birth of man, in the pre‐Silurian epochs, in the sea or land‐
> mud. The Occultists believe in an _Inherent Law of Progressive
> Development_.(591) Mr. Darwin never did, and says so himself; for we find
> him stating that, since _there can be no advantage_ “to the infusorian
> animalcule or an intestinal worm ... to become highly organized,”
> therefore, “natural selection,” _not necessarily including progressive
> development_—leaves the animalcule and the worm, the “persistent types,”
> quiet.(592)
> 
> There does not appear much _uniform_ law in such behaviour of Nature; and
> it looks more like the discriminative action of some _super_‐physical
> selection; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would
> call the “Law of Retardation,” may have something to do with it.
> 
> But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave
> such an importance to his law as is now given to it by his atheistic
> followers. The knowledge of the various living forms in the geological
> periods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons given for this by
> Dr. Bastian are very suggestive:
> 
>     First, on account of the imperfect manner in which the several
>     forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the period;
>     secondly, on account of the extremely limited nature of the
>     explorations which have been made in these imperfectly
>     representative strata; and, thirdly, because so many parts of the
>     record are absolutely inaccessible to use—nearly all beneath the
>     Silurian system having been blotted out by time, whilst those two‐
>     thirds of the earth’s surface in which the remaining strata are to
>     be found are now covered over by seas. Hence Mr. Darwin says: “For
>     my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the geological
>     record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in
>     a changing dialect; _of this history we possess the last volume
>     alone_, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume,
>     _only here and there a short chapter has been preserved_; and of
>     each page _only here and there a few lines_.”(593)
> 
> It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science
> can be said. Nor is it on any ground of human pride, or unreasonable
> belief in man’s representing even here on Earth—in _our_ period,
> perhaps—the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all the
> preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own; for it
> is not so. But simply because the “missing link,” which will prove the
> existing theory undeniably, will never be found by Palæontologists.
> Believing as we do that man has, during the preceding Rounds, evolved
> from, and passed through, the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and
> animal, on Earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having
> the Orang Outang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse;
> as it would most irresistibly forward the Occult Doctrine with regard to
> the final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into man. One may
> even enquire how it is that Biologists and Anthropologists, having once
> firmly accepted the theory of the descent of man from the ape—how it is
> that they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution of the
> existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first
> theory—unless Science would make of man a privileged being, and his
> evolution a _non_‐precedent in Nature, quite a _special_ and unique case.
> And that is what all this leads Physical Science to. The reason, however,
> why the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Hæckelian,
> hypothesis is because it is the ape, not man, which is, in sober truth, a
> special and unique instance. The Pithecoid is _an accidental creation_, a
> forced growth, the result of an unnatural process.
> 
> The Occult Doctrine is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never
> varying Law in Nature, the latter having no personal “special design,” but
> acting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole Manvantaric
> period and deals with the land‐worm as it deals with man. Neither the one
> nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the
> same Evolutionary Law, and both have to progress according to Karmic Law.
> Both have started from the same Neutral Centre of Life and both have to
> re‐merge into it at the consummation of the Cycle.
> 
> It is not denied that in the preceding Round man _was_ a gigantic ape‐like
> creature; and when we say “man” we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould
> that was developing for the use of man in this Round only—the middle, or
> the transition, point of which we have hardly reached. Nor was man during
> the first two and a half Root‐Races what he is now. That point he reached,
> as said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the Secondary period, as
> we claim.
> 
> Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult Teaching, “a God on
> Earth who had fallen into Matter,” or generation. This may or may not be
> accepted, since the Secret Doctrine does not impose itself as an
> infallible dogma, and since, whether its prehistoric records are accepted
> or rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the _actual_ Man
> and his Inner Nature; the Fall mentioned above having left no “original
> sin” on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently dealt with.
> 
> Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man
> passed on the descending arc—which is centrifugal for Spirit and
> centripetal for Matter—and those he is preparing to go through,
> henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of
> the two forces—viz., Matter will become centrifugal and Spirit
> centripetal—that all such transformations _are next in store for the
> anthropoid apes also_; all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove
> next to man in this Round—for these will all be men in the Fifth Round,
> just as the present men inhabited ape‐like forms in the Third, the
> preceding Round.
> 
> Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the
> degraded and dwarfed examples—“blurred copies,” as Mr. Huxley has it—of
> ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub‐races
> of the Fourth Root‐Race during the period of what is called the “fall into
> generation.” The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but
> an _accident_, a cross‐breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As
> has been shown in the present volume, it is the speechless animal that
> first began sexual connection, for it was the first to separate into male
> and female. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow this
> bestial example—as is now shown by the comparatively painless procreation
> of their species by animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the
> same in woman. The ape is, indeed, as remarked in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     A transformation of species most directly connected with that of
>     the human family‐_a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock
>     before the final perfection of the latter_.(594)
> 
> The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and
> are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most
> important to remember that the “Egos” of the apes are entities compelled
> by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the
> bestiality of the _latest_ Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They
> are entities who had already reached the “human stage” before this Round.
> Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless
> traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of
> animal men. The animal “Eves” were their foremothers, and the human
> “Adams” their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or
> Lilatu, Adam’s _first_ wife, whom the Talmud describes as a “charming”
> woman, “with long wavy hair,” _i.e._—a female hairy animal of a character
> now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic
> allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael‐Lilith, or
> man‐animal united, a being called, in the _Zohar_, Hayo Bischat, the Beast
> or Evil Beast. It is from this unnatural union that the present apes
> descended. The latter are truly “speechless men,” and will become speaking
> animals, or men of a lower order, in the Fifth Round, while the Adepts of
> a certain School hope that some of the “Egos” of the apes of a higher
> intelligence will reäppear at the close of the Sixth Root‐Race. What their
> form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Genera
> and species of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown—man,
> change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not
> only with every Round, but every Root‐Race likewise, as well as after
> every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning
> point in, the latter. In the Sixth Root‐Race, the fossils of the Orang,
> the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous
> mammals; and new forms—though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on
> and the close of the Manvantara approaches—will develop from the “cast
> off” types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of
> the mire of physical, life. There were no apes before man, and they will
> be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the Monads
> of the unprogressed men of our Race and lodge them in the newly evolved
> human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated Baboon.
> 
> This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture
> of this cyclic precession of all that lives and breathes now on Earth, of
> each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no “special creation”
> or miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant _ex nihilo_.
> 
> This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape
> and man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.
> 
> A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
> 
> There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first
> “mindless” race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later
> Lemurians; there is another between the earliest civilization of the
> Atlanteans and the historic period.
> 
> As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of
> half a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are
> not allowed a hearing, as they are “productions of blind natural forces,”
> we are assured by some; “quite modern” we are told by others. Tradition is
> left contemptuously unnoticed by Sceptic and Materialist, and made
> subservient to the _Bible_ in every case by the too zealous Churchman.
> Whenever a legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian Deluge
> theory, it is declared by the Christian clergy to be “the insanely
> delirious voice of old superstition.” Atlantis is denied, when not
> confused with Lemuria and other departed Continents, because, perhaps,
> Lemuria is half the creation of Modern Science, and has, therefore, to be
> believed in; while Plato’s Atlantis is regarded by most of the Scientists
> as a dream.
> 
> Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of
> Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern
> coast. But Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either
> Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to call the Third and Fourth
> Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in the
> _Purânas_, nor anywhere else. But with only one of the Esoteric keys in
> hand, it becomes an easy task to identify these departed lands in the
> numberless “Lands of the Gods,” Devas and Munis described in the
> _Purânas_, in their Varshas, Dvîpas, and Zones. Their Shveta‐dvîpa, during
> the early days of Lemuria, stood out like a giant‐peak from the bottom of
> the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the
> waters till about the early period of Atlantis, after the disappearance of
> Lemuria, when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was
> half‐sunk.
> 
> It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several
> volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress
> of the first three Races‐except so far as to give a general view of it, as
> will be done presently. Race the First had no history of its own. Of Race
> the Second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful
> attention to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans only, before the history of
> our own Race, the Fifth, can be attempted.
> 
> What is known of other Continents, besides our own, and what does history
> know or accept of the early Races? Everything outside the repulsive
> speculations of Materialistic Science is daubed with the contemptuous term
> “superstition.” The wise men of to‐day will believe nothing. Plato’s
> “winged” and “hermaphrodite” races, and his Golden Age, under the reign of
> Saturn and the Gods, are quietly brought back by Hæckel to their _new_
> place in Nature; our Divine Races are shown to be the descendants of
> Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of “sea slime”!
> 
> Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber:
> 
>     The _fictions_ of ancient poetry ... will be found to comprehend
>     some portion of historical truth.
> 
> However one‐sided the efforts of the learned author of _A Dissertation on
> the Mysteries of the Cabiri_—efforts directed throughout his two volumes
> to constrain the classical myths and symbols of old Paganism, “to bear
> testimony to the truth of Scripture”—time and further research have
> avenged, partially at least, that “truth” by showing it unveiled. Thus it
> is the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the contrary, which are made to
> bear evidence to the great wisdom of Archaic Paganism. This,
> notwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth about the
> Kabiri—the most mysterious Gods of antiquity—has been thrown by the wild
> and contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford,
> Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., and finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all of
> these scholars, from first to last, had to come to a certain conclusion
> framed by the latter, as follows:
> 
>     We have no reason to think that the idolatry of the Gentile world
>     was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it seems
>     to have been built, almost universally, upon _a traditional
>     remembrance of certain real events. These events I apprehend to be
>     the destruction of the first_ [the Fourth in Esoteric Teaching]
>     _race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge_.(595)
> 
> To this, Faber adds:
> 
>     I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegyan
>     isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island
>     Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great event, the
>     sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge, or,
>     if we suppose the arch of the earth to have remained in its
>     original position, the rising of the central water above it. M.
>     Bailly indeed in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object
>     of which is evidently to depreciate the authority of the
>     scriptural chronology, labours to prove that the Atlantians were a
>     very ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the
>     Phenicians, and the Egyptians.(596)
> 
> In this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more learned
> and intuitional than those who accept biblical chronology. Nor is the
> latter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans were the same as the Titans
> and the Giants.(597) Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his
> French _confrère_, as Bailly mentions Cosmas Indicopleustes, who preserved
> an ancient tradition about Noah—that he “formerly inhabited the _island_
> Atlantis.” This island, whether it was the “Poseidonis” mentioned in
> _Esoteric Buddhism_, or the Continent of Atlantis, does not much matter.
> The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian.
> 
> No Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives if
> he is claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the
> Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many
> others, and that they only changed the name, which they had the same right
> to do as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the literal
> acceptation of biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with
> neither geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean,
> then he was a Titan, a Giant, as Faber shows; and if a Giant, then why is
> he not shown as such in _Genesis_?(598)
> 
> Bailly’s mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and to call the
> Atlanteans simply a Northern and _post‐diluvian_ nation, which, however,
> as he says, certainly flourished before the foundation of the Hindû,
> Egyptian, and Phœnician empires. In this, had he only known of the
> existence of what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have again been
> right. For the Atlanteans were post‐diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria
> was not submerged as Atlantis was, but was _sunk_ under the waves, owing
> to earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be
> one day. It is the ignorance of our men of Science, who will accept
> neither the tradition that several Continents have already sunk, nor the
> periodical law which acts throughout the Manvantaric Cycle—it is this
> ignorance that is the chief cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly
> wrong again in assuring us that the Hindûs, Egyptians, and Phœnicians came
> after the Atlanteans, for the latter belonged to the Fourth, while the
> Âryans and their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth Race. Plato, while
> repeating the story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt,
> intentionally confuses—as every Initiate would—the two Continents, and
> assigns to the small island which last sunk, all the events pertaining to
> the two enormous Continents, the prehistoric and traditional. Therefore,
> he describes the _first couple_, from whom the whole island was peopled,
> as being formed of the Earth. In so saying, he means neither Adam and Eve,
> nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical,
> and by alluding to “Earth,” he means Matter, as the Atlanteans were really
> the first purely _human_ and _terrestrial_ Race—those that preceded it
> being more divine and ethereal than human and solid.
> 
> Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated Adept, about the
> history of the Third Race after its “Fall,” though as one pledged to
> silence and secrecy he never showed his knowledge in so many words.
> Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after acquainting oneself with
> even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations—all of which was
> based upon, and followed the early Âryan calculations—to realize the
> immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the
> sexes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root‐Races. As
> these must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western
> thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second,
> and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.(599) It is only when the
> latter has reached its full human period that a beginning can be made,
> without the uninitiated reader finding himself hopelessly bewildered.
> 
> The Third Race _fell_—and created no longer; it _begat_ its progeny. Being
> still mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous
> offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in
> the right direction. Like the “Lords Gods” of the _Bible_, the “Sons of
> Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit
> forbidden by Nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the
> unfitness—we must not say sin—of what they had done, only when too late;
> after the Angelic Monads from higher Spheres had incarnated in, and
> endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply
> physical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the
> distinction? The Doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate
> and inanimate objects on Earth, between an animal and a human frame, is
> that in some the various “Fires” are latent, and in others they are
> active. The _Vital_ Fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of
> them. But no animal has the three higher “principles” awakened in him;
> they are simply potential, latent, and thus _non‐existing_. And so would
> the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came
> out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose Shadows they were, to
> grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in Matter. But as
> said in _Pymander_:
> 
>     This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden.
>     Nature(600) being mingled with Man(601) brought forth a wondrous
>     miracle; the harmonious commingling of the _essence of the Seven_
>     [Pitris, or Governors] and her own; the _Fire_ and the _Spirit_
>     and _Nature_ [the Noumenon of Matter]; which [commingling]
>     forthwith brought forth seven men of opposite sexes [negative and
>     positive] according to the essences of the Seven Governors.(602)
> 
> Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,(603) the “Power of the
> Thought Divine.” St. Paul, another Initiate, called our World, “the
> enigmatical mirror of pure truth,” and St. Gregory of Nazianzen
> corroborated Hermes by stating that:
> 
>     Things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that
>     we cannot see.
> 
> It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung
> of the Ladder of Being down to the lower. The “Fall of the Angels,” and
> the “War in Heaven” are repeated on every plane, the lower “mirror”
> disfiguring the image of the superior “mirror,” and each repeating it in
> its own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of the
> paradigms of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously, as every
> Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few sentences of the
> _Desatir_:
> 
>     All that is on earth, saith the Lord [Ormazd], is the _shadow of
>     something that is in the superior spheres_. This luminious object
>     [light, fire, etc.] is the shadow of that which is still more
>     luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches me, who am the
>     light of lights.
> 
> In the Kabalistic books, in the _Zohar_ prëeminently, the idea that every
> objective thing on Earth or in this Universe is the “Shadow” (Dyooknah) of
> the eternal Light or Deity, is very strong.
> 
> The Third Race was prëeminently the bright “Shadow,” at first, of the
> Gods, whom tradition exiles on to the Earth after the allegorical War in
> Heaven. This became still more allegorical on Earth, for it was the War
> between Spirit and Matter. This War will last till the Inner and Divine
> Man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till
> then the dark and fierce passions of that self will be at eternal feud
> with his Master, the Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day,
> because its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more
> between the two as before the “Fall,” when even mortal man was “created”
> by the Elements and was not born.
> 
> The above is made clear in all the great Theogonies, principally in the
> Grecian, as in that of Hesiod. The _mutilation_ of Uranus by his son
> Cronus, who thus condemns him to impotency, has never been understood by
> the modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very plain; and as it was
> universal(604) it must have contained a great abstract and philosophical
> idea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory marks,
> indeed, “a new period, a second phase in the development of creation,” as
> justly remarked by Decharme,(605) who, however, does not attempt to
> explain it. Uranus tried to oppose an impediment to that development, or
> natural evolution, by _destroying all his children as soon as born_.
> Uranus, who personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos—Space,
> or the Unmanifested Deity—is thus made to pay the penalty; for it is these
> powers which cause the Pitris to evolve primordial “men” from
> themselves—as, later on, these men, in their turn, evolve _their_
> progeny—without any sense or desire for procreation. The work of
> generation, suspended for a moment, passes into the hands of Cronus
> (_Chronos_) Time,(606) who unites himself with Rhea (the Earth—‐in
> Esotericism, Matter in general), and thus produces celestial and
> terrestrial Titans. The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries
> of evolution.
> 
> This allegory is the exoteric version of the Esoteric Doctrine given in
> this part of our work. For in Cronus we see the same story repeated again.
> As Uranus destroyed his children by Gæa (one in the world of manifestation
> with Aditi, or the Great Cosmic Deep), by confining them in the bosom of
> the Earth, Titæa, so Cronus, at this second stage of creation, destroyed
> his children by Rhea—by devouring them. This is an allusion to the
> fruitless efforts of Earth, or Nature, alone to create real _human_
> “men.”(607) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus,
> Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.(608) Jupiter the Titan, is
> Prometheus, in one sense,(609) and varies from Zeus, the great “Father of
> the Gods.” He is the “disrespectful son” in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the
> “Heavenly Man” in _Pymander_; and even in the _Bible_ he is found again
> under the name of Adam, and, later on—by transmutation—under that of Ham.
> Yet these are all personifications of the “Sons of Wisdom.” The necessary
> corroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely _human_ Atlantean
> Cycle—if Uranus and Cronus who precede him are found insufficient—may be
> read in Hesiod, who tells us that:
> 
>     The Immortals made the race of the Golden and Silver Age [First
>     and Second Races]; Jupiter made the generation of Bronze [an
>     admixture of _two_ elements], that of the Heroes, and of the Iron
>     Age.(610)
> 
> After this he sends his fatal present, Pandora, to Epimetheus.(611) Hesiod
> calls this present of the _first woman_ “a fatal gift.” It was a
> punishment, he explains, sent to man “for the theft of [divine creative]
> fire.” Her apparition on Earth is the signal for every kind of evil.
> Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from sickness
> and suffering—as the same races are made to live under Yima’s rule, in the
> Mazdean _Vendidâd_.
> 
> Two Deluges may also be traced, in universal tradition, by carefully
> comparing Hesiod, the _Rig Veda_, the _Zend Avesta_, etc., but no _first_
> man is ever mentioned in any of the Theogonies save in the _Bible_.(612)
> Everywhere the man of _our_ Race appears after a cataclysm of water. After
> this, tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and
> islands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.(613) Gods and
> mortals have one common origin according to Hesiod;(614) and Pindar echoes
> the statement.(615) Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by
> constructing an Ark like Noah’s,(616) ask Jupiter to reänimate the human
> race whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the
> Slavonian mythology all men are drowned, and two old people, a man and his
> wife, alone remain. Then Pram’zimas, the “master of all,” advises them to
> jump seven times on the rocks of the Earth, and seven new races (couples)
> are born, from which come the nine Lithuanian tribes.(617) As well
> understood by the author of _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_—the Four Ages
> signify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the
> Races. As he says:
> 
>     The successive races, destroyed and replaced by others, without
>     any period of transition, are characterized in Greece by the name
>     of metals, to express their ever‐decreasing value. Gold, the most
>     brilliant and precious of all, symbol of brightness ... qualifies
>     the first race.... The men of the second race, those of the Age of
>     Silver, are already far inferior to the first. Inert and weak
>     creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid
>     infancy.... They disappear.... The men of the Age of Bronze are
>     robust and violent [the Third Race]; ... their strength is
>     extreme. “They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze;
>     used nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet
>     unknown.”(618) The fourth race is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes
>     who fell before Thebes,(619) or under the walls of Troy.(620)
> 
> Thus, as the four Races are found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets,
> though very much confused and anachronistically, our doctrines are once
> more corroborated in the classics. But this is all “mythology” and poetry.
> What can Modern Science have to say to such a euhemerization of old
> fictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore, an attempt
> must be made to answer by anticipation, and to prove that so much of the
> domain of this same Science is taken up by fictions and empirical
> speculations that none of the men of learning have the slightest right,
> with such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the speck in the eye
> of the Occultist, even supposing that speck were not a figment of their
> own imagination.
> 
> 40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH(621) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. “WE ARE THE
> KINGS;(622) WE ARE THE GODS” (_A_).
> 
> 41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, THE
> NARROW‐HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE, ALSO
> KHADO,(623) WITH LITTLE MINDS (_B_).
> 
> 42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED
> (_C_). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (_D_).
> 
> (_a_) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic
> was—pride! It is the memory of this Third Race and the gigantic
> Atlanteans, which has lingered from one generation and race to another
> generation and race down to the days of Moses, and has found an objective
> form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians,
> of whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid, and at the same time
> distorted, legends. Anyone who has read and studied the Commentaries on
> the Archaic Doctrine, will easily recognize in some of these Atlanteans
> the prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the
> Hamites, and all those _tutti quanti_ of “accursed memory,” as theological
> literature expresses it; of those, in short, who have furnished posterity
> with the orthodox types of Satan. And this naturally leads us to enquire
> into the religious ethics of these early Races, mythical as they may be.
> 
> What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common
> acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the
> Lemuro‐Atlanteans, had any; for they knew no dogma, nor had they to
> believe _on faith_. No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to
> understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever‐present,
> as also the ever to be unknown and invisible, All, the One Universal
> Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his _inner_ God,
> each felt he was a Man‐God in his nature, though an animal in his physical
> self. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of
> the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual
> and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the
> lower “principles” by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the “Sons of
> Light.” Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves
> of Matter. From “Sons of Light and Wisdom” they ended by becoming the
> “Sons of Darkness.” They fell in the battle of mortal life with Life
> Immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future
> generations of Atlanteans.(624)
> 
> At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root‐Race had thus
> no beliefs that could be called _religion_. That is to say, he was not
> only ignorant of “gay religions, full of pomp and gold” but even of any
> system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be defined as
> the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those
> we feel higher than ourselves, of piety—as a feeling expressed by a child
> toward a loved parent—then even the earliest Lemurians from the very
> beginning of their intellectual life, had a religion, and a most beautiful
> one. Had they not their bright Gods of the Elements around them, and even
> within themselves?(625) Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and
> tended by, those who had given them being and called them forth to
> intelligent, conscious life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it.
> For the evolution of Spirit into Matter could never have been achieved,
> nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits
> sacrificed their own respective super‐ethereal essences to animate the man
> of clay, by endowing each of his inner “principles” with a portion, or
> rather, a reflection, of that essence. The Dhyânîs of the Seven
> Heavens—the seven planes of Being—are the Noumena of the actual and the
> future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature—the
> grosser effects of which we perceive in what Science is pleased to call
> “modes of motion,” the imponderable forces and what not—are the still
> higher Noumena of still higher Hierarchies.
> 
> It was the “Golden Age” in those days of old, the Age when the “Gods
> walked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals.” When it ceased, the
> Gods departed—_i.e._, became invisible—and later generations ended by
> worshipping their kingdoms—the Elements.
> 
> It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi‐divine man after his
> separation into sexes—hence the first‐begotten and humanly‐born
> mortals—who became the first “sacrificers” to the _God of Matter_. They
> stand, in the dim far‐away past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the
> prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,(626) as the first
> Anthropomorphists who worshipped Form and Matter—a worship which very soon
> degenerated into _self‐worship_, and thence led to phallicism, which
> reigns supreme to this day in the symbolism of every exoteric religion of
> ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve _became matter_, or furnished the
> soil, Cain and Abel—the latter the life‐bearing soil, the former “the
> tiller of that ground or field.”
> 
> Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated
> from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into
> those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the Ray of which man
> feels within himself—or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical
> worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark, cosmic, anthropomorphic
> Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest Gibborim,
> the “mighty men ... of renown” in those days,(627) who become with the
> Fifth Race the Kabirim, Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phœnicians,
> Titans with the Greeks, and Râkshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.
> 
> Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern
> religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal
> God. At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based
> upon, and, so to say, blended with, astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians
> gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors—the
> Hyperborean Continent; the Atlanteans, toward the South Pole, the “_Pit_,”
> cosmically and terrestrially—whence breathe the hot passions blown into
> hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two Poles were
> denominated, by the Ancients, Dragons and Serpents—hence good and bad
> Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the “Sons of God”—Sons
> of Spirit and Matter—the good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of the
> dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the “Fallen Angels” in its
> Esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold contradictions of
> human character; it points to the secret of man’s self‐consciousness; it
> is the support on which hinges his entire Life‐Cycle—the history of his
> evolution and growth.
> 
> On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of
> Esoteric Anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the
> Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the One into
> various contrasted aspects.
> 
> The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so much space is devoted
> to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject every time
> it presents itself. A good deal must necessarily be said on its
> symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the
> thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be
> suggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more
> formal, philosophical exposition. The “Fallen Angels,” so‐called, are
> _Humanity_ itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no
> being _before_ the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has
> begotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart;
> it is he, again, who has contaminated the Indwelling God in himself, by
> linking the pure Spirit with the impure Demon of Matter. And, if the
> Kabalistic saying, “_Demon est Deus inversus_,” finds its metaphysical and
> theoretical corroboration in dual manifested Nature, nevertheless, its
> practical application is found in Mankind alone.
> 
> Thus it has now become self‐evident that, postulating as we do, (_a_) the
> appearance of Man before that of other Mammalia, and even before the Ages
> of the huge Reptiles; (_b_) Periodical Deluges and Glacial Periods owing
> to the Karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly (_c_) the birth of man
> from a Superior Being, or what Materialism would call a “supernatural”
> Being, though it is only super‐_human_—our teachings have very few chances
> of an impartial hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of Mankind in
> the Third Race—all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point
> of Merit and Karma in the preceding Manvantara—owed their psychic and
> rational natures to divine Beings “hypostasizing” into their Fifth
> Principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not
> only Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will
> the latter have learned that these Angels are identical with their
> “Fallen” Spirits, than the Esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly
> heretical and pernicious.(628) The _Divine_ Man dwelt in the animal, and
> therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural
> course of evolution—when also “all the animal creation was _untied_,” and
> males were attracted to females—_that race fell_; not because they had
> eaten of the Fruit of Knowledge and knew Good from Evil, but because they
> knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the early sub‐
> races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the Stanzas,
> the higher Dhyân Chohans had incarnated.(629) “When we have ascertained
> the extent of the universe (and learnt to know all that there is in it) we
> will multiply our race,” answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their
> brethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means
> that the great Adepts and Initiated Ascetics will “multiply,” _i.e._, once
> more produce “mind‐born” immaculate sons—in the Seventh Root‐Race.
> 
> It is so stated in the _Vishnu_ and _Brahmâ Purânas_, in the
> _Mahâbhârata_(630) and in the _Harivamsha_. In one portion of the
> _Pushkara Mâhâtmya_, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized
> by Daksha, who, seeing that his will‐born progeny, the “Sons of passive
> Yoga,” will not create men, “_converts half himself into a female_ by whom
> he begets daughters,” the future females of the Third Race which begat the
> Giants of Atlantis, the Fourth Race, so called. In the _Vishnu Purâna_ it
> is simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual
> intercourse as the means of peopling the world.(631)
> 
> Happily for the Human Race the “Elect Race” had already become the vehicle
> of incarnation of the highest Dhyânîs (intellectually and spiritually)
> before Humanity had become quite material. When the last sub‐races—save
> some of the lowest—of the Third Race had perished with the great Lemurian
> Continent, the “Seeds of the _Trinity of Wisdom_” had already acquired the
> secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same Great
> Personality to step _ad libitum_ from one worn‐out body into another.
> 
> (_b_) The first War that Earth knew, the first shedding of human gore, was
> the result of man’s eyes and senses being opened, which made him see that
> the daughters of his brethren were fairer than his own—and their wives
> also. There were rapes committed before that of the Sabines, and
> Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. The
> Titans or Giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This
> took place during the Fourth Race—that of the Giants.
> 
> For “there _were_ Giants” in the days of old, indeed.(632) The
> evolutionary series of the animal world is a warrant that the same thing
> took place within the human races. Lower still in the order of creation we
> find witnesses for the same proportionate size in the flora going _pari
> passu_ with the fauna. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the
> leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns
> which grew during the Carboniferous period.
> 
> Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works—in short,
> almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity—contain
> references to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the
> Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ—the opponents conquered by Râma.
> Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us
> give the subject a few moments’ attention.
> 
> Are Giants A Fiction?
> 
> Here, again, we come into collision with Science, which so far denies that
> man has ever been much larger than the average of tall and powerful men
> now met with occasionally. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces the traditions of
> Giants as resting upon ill‐digested facts, and instances of mistaken
> judgments are brought forward as disproof of such traditions. Thus, in
> 1613, in a locality, called from time immemorial the “Field of Giants,” in
> Lower Dauphiné, France, four miles from St. Romans, enormous bones were
> found deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human
> remains, and even to Teutobodus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But
> Cuvier’s later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the
> Dinotherium Giganteum, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as
> an evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are,
> the entrance doors being of no larger size then than now. The tallest man
> of antiquity known to us, we are told, was the Roman Emperor Maximus,
> whose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern
> day, every year we see men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited
> himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant
> was shown 9 feet 6 inches tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7
> inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes
> above 7 feet. Now, as the ape‐theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the
> species of animals which result from cross breeding always betray “_a
> tendency to revert to the original type_,” they ought to apply the same
> law to men. Had there been no giants as a type in ancient days, there
> would be none now.
> 
> All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the
> prehistoric ages have failed so far to prove undeniably in the opinion of
> Science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. We,
> however, positively deny the reality of the failure. Moreover, as already
> stated, human stature is little changed since the last Racial Cycle. The
> giants of old are all buried under the oceans, and hundreds of thousands
> of years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust a brazen, much
> more a human skeleton. And whence the testimony of well‐known classical
> writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation
> for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847,
> when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, hardly
> anything was known of fossil man, for Archæology complacently ignored his
> existence. Of giants who were “in the earth in those days” of old, the
> _Bible_ alone had spoken to the wise men of the West; the Zodiac being the
> solitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons
> of Orion or Atlas, whose mighty shoulders were said to support the world.
> 
> Nevertheless, even the giants have not been left without their witnesses,
> and one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three
> Sciences—geological, sidereal and scriptural, the latter in its universal
> character—may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with Geology: it
> has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger,
> taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain
> proof in hand. Frédéric de Rougemont, who, though believing too piously in
> the _Bible_ and Noah’s Ark, is none the less a scientific witness, writes:
> 
>     All those bones, found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria,
>     Liège, etc., those skulls which all remind one of the negro type
>     ... and which by reason of their type might be mistaken for
>     animals, have all belonged to men of _high stature_.(633)
> 
> The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a “tall
> stature” to those who were submerged in the Deluge—not necessarily
> “Noah’s”—and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.
> 
> As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not trouble
> ourselves with that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number
> of giants were found at Carthage—for, before his testimony can be
> accepted, his own identity,(634) if not actual existence, would have to be
> proven. We may, however, turn to the papers of 1858, which speak of a
> “sarcophagus of giants” found that year on the site of this same city. As
> to the ancient Pagan writers, we have the evidence of Philostratus, who
> speaks of a giant skeleton twenty‐two cubits long, as well as of another
> of twelve cubits, seen by himself on the promontory of Sigæum. This
> skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilas, to the
> giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of
> a giant, as was that of the other discovered by Messecrates of Stira, in
> Lemnos—“horrible to behold,” according to Philostratus.(635) Is it
> possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class _all_ these
> men as either fools or liars?
> 
> Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognized Orion, or Otus,
> the brother of Ephialtes.(636) Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the
> tomb of Antæus, the Giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence
> of the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or of Hillus, son of Hercules—all
> Giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pegues, affirms in his
> curious work, _Les Volcans de la Grèce_, that:
> 
>     In the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, giants
>     with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones,
>     the erection of which in every place must have necessitated the
>     use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all
>     countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic.(637)
> 
> In the same work above cited, the author wonders why in the _Bible_ and
> tradition the Gibborim, the giants or the “mighty ones,” the Rephaim, the
> spectres or the “phantoms,” the Nephilim, or the “fallen ones”
> (_irruentes_), are shown as if identical, though they are “all _men_,”
> since the _Bible_ calls them the primitive and the mighty ones—_e.g._,
> Nimrod. The Secret Doctrine explains the secret. These names, which belong
> by right only to the four preceding Races and the earliest beginning of
> the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two _Phantom_ (Astral) Races,
> to the “Fallen” Race—the Third, and to the Race of the Atlantean
> Giants—the Fourth, after which “men began to decrease in stature.”
> 
> Bossuet sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the “original
> sin.” “Ye shall be as Gods,” says the Serpent of _Genesis_ to Eve, thus
> laying the first germ of the worship of _false divinities_.(638) Hence, he
> thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of _images_, of
> anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is this that idolatry is
> made to rest upon, then the two Churches—the Greek, and the Latin
> especially—are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.(639) It was
> only in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered
> divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then,
> they had been truly Gods, as pure and as divine as their Progenitors, and
> the expression of the allegorical “Serpent,” as has been sufficiently
> shown in the preceding pages, does not refer at all to the physiological
> “Fall” of men, but to their acquiring the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and
> this knowledge came to them _prior_ to their fall. It must not be
> forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that “Adam
> knew Eve his wife.” We shall not, however, check the tenets of the Secret
> Doctrine by the dead‐letter of the Hebrew _Bible_, but rather point out
> the great similarities between the two in their Esoteric meaning.
> 
> It was only after his defection from the Neo‐Platonists, that Clement of
> Alexandria began to translate _gigantes_ by _serpentes_, explaining that
> “serpents and giants signify _demons_.”(640)
> 
> We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those
> of the _Bible_, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the
> Giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in _Genesis_.
> We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate are
> supported by more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah’s
> Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such
> reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In the French translation of the
> _Shoo‐King_,(641) we read:
> 
>     When the Miao‐tse (that antediluvian and perverted race [explains
>     the annotator] which retired in the days of old to the rocky
>     caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in
>     the neighbourhood of Canton),(642) _according to our ancient
>     documents_, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy‐Yeoo, troubled
>     all the earth, it became full of brigands.... The Lord (Chang‐ty
>     [a King of the _Divine_ Dynasty]) cast his eyes over the people,
>     and saw no longer among them any trace of virtue. Then he
>     commanded Tchong and Ly [two lower Dhyân Chohans] to cut away
>     every communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there
>     has been no more _going up and down_!(643)
> 
> “Going up and down” means an untrammelled communication and intercourse
> between the two Worlds.
> 
> As we are not in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the
> Third and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are
> permitted must be now collated together, especially those corroborated by
> direct as well as by inferential evidence found in ancient literature and
> history. As the “coats of skin” of men thickened, and they fell more and
> more into physical sin, the intercourse between Physical and Ethereal
> _Divine_ Man was stopped. The Veil of Matter between the two planes became
> too dense for even the Inner Man to penetrate. The Mysteries of Heaven and
> Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their Celestial Teachers in the days
> of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became
> necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial,
> because too material, soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery,
> taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of
> superstitions, and man‐, or hero‐worship. Alone a handful of primitive
> men—in whom the spark of Divine Wisdom burnt bright, and became only
> strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age
> in those who turned it to evil purposes—remained the elect custodians of
> the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the Divine Teachers. There were those
> among them, who remained in their Kaumâric condition from the beginning;
> and tradition whispers, what the Secret Teachings affirm, namely, that
> these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy _which has never died since that
> period_. As the _Catechism_ of the Inner Schools says:
> 
> _The Inner Man of the First ... only changes his body from time to time;
> he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvâna, spurning Devachan
> and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.... Out of
> the seven Virgin‐men [Kumâra]_(_644_)_ four sacrificed themselves for the
> sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the
> end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When
> people say of one of them, __“__He is dead__”__; behold, he is alive __
> and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the
> Seed of undying Knowledge [Jñâna]. Thou shall never speak, O Lanoo, of
> these great ones [Mahâ ...] before a multitude, mentioning them by their
> names. The wise alone will understand._(645)
> 
> It is these sacred “Four” who have been allegorized and symbolized in the
> _Linga Purâna_, which states that Vâmadeva (Shiva) as a Kumâra is reborn
> in each Kalpa (Race, in this instance), as four youths—four, white; four,
> red; four, yellow; and four, dark or brown. Let us remember that Shiva is
> preëminently and chiefly an ascetic, the patron of all Yogîs and Adepts,
> and the allegory will become quite comprehensible. It is the spirit of
> Divine Wisdom and chaste Asceticism itself which incarnates in these
> Elect. It is only after _getting married_ and being dragged by the Gods
> from his terrible ascetic life, that Rudra becomes Shiva, a God—and not
> one of a very virtuous or merciful type—in the Hindû Pantheon. Higher than
> the “Four” is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens—that still more mysterious
> and solitary Being described in Volume I.
> 
> We have now to examine the nature of the “Sons of the Flame” and of “Dark
> Wisdom,” as well as the _pros_ and _cons_ of the Satanic assumption.
> 
> Such broken sentences as could be made out from the fragments of the tile,
> which George Smith calls “The Curse after the Fall,”(646) are of course
> allegorical; yet they corroborate that which is taught of the true nature
> of the Fall of the Angels in our Books. Thus, it is said that the “Lord of
> the Earth his name called out, the Father Elu [Elohim],” and pronounced
> his “curse,” which “the God Hea heard, and his liver was angry, because
> _his_ man [Angelic Man] had corrupted his purity,” for which Hea expresses
> the desire that “_wisdom and knowledge_ hostilely may they injure him
> [man].”(647)
> 
> The latter sentence points to the direct connection of the Chaldæan with
> the Genetic account. While Hea tries to bring to nought the wisdom and
> knowledge gained by man, through his newly‐acquired intellectual and
> conscious capacity of creating in his turn—thus taking the monopoly of
> creation out of the hands of God (the Gods)—the Elohim do the same in the
> third chapter of _Genesis_. Therefore the Elohim sent him out of Eden.
> 
> But this was of no avail. For the Spirit of Divine Wisdom being upon and
> _in_ man—verily the Serpent of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Mânasic
> Spirit, which made him learn the secret of “creation” on the Kriyâshaktic,
> and of procreation on the Earthly planes—led him as naturally to discover
> his way to immortality, notwithstanding the jealousy of all the Gods.
> 
> The early Atlanto‐Lemurians are charged with taking unto themselves (the
> divine incarnations) wives of a lower race, namely, the race of the
> hitherto mindless men. Every ancient Scripture has the same, more or less
> disfigured, legend. Primarily, the Angelic “Fall,” which has transformed
> the “First‐born” of God into the Asuras, or into the Ahriman or Typhon of
> the “Pagans”—_i.e._, if the accounts given in the _Book of Enoch_,(648)
> and in _Hermes_, in _Purânas_ and _Bible_ are taken literally—has, when
> read Esoterically, the following simple signification:
> 
> Sentences such as, “In his [Satan’s] ambition he raises his hand against
> the Sanctuary of the God of Heaven,” etc., ought to read: Prompted by the
> Law of Eternal Evolution and Karma, the Angel incarnated on Earth in Man;
> and as his Wisdom and Knowledge are still divine, although his Body is
> earthly, he is (allegorically) accused of divulging the Mysteries of
> Heaven. He combines and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of
> super‐human, procreation. Henceforth, “man will _beget_, not
> _create_.”(649) But as, by so doing, he has to use his weak Body as the
> means of procreation, that Body will pay the penalty for this Wisdom,
> carried from Heaven down to the Earth; hence the corruption of physical
> purity will become a temporary curse.
> 
> The Mediæval Kabalists knew this well, since one of them did not fear to
> write:
> 
>     The Kabalah was first taught by God himself to a select Company of
>     Angels who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall
>     the Angels most _graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to
>     the disobedient child of Earth_, to furnish the protoplasts with
>     the means of returning to their pristine nobility and
>     felicity.(650)
> 
> This shows how the incident of the Sons of God, marrying and imparting the
> Divine Secrets of Heaven to the Daughters of Men—as allegorically told by
> Enoch and in the sixth chapter of _Genesis_—was interpreted by the
> Christian Kabalists. The whole of this period may be regarded as the
> _pre_‐human period, that of Divine Man, or as plastic Protestant Theology
> now has it—the _Pre_‐Adamite period. But even _Genesis_ begins its _real_
> history (Chap. vi) by the giants of “those days” and the “sons of God”
> marrying and teaching their wives—the “daughters of men.”
> 
> This period is the one described in the _Purânas_; and relating as it does
> to days lost in archaic ages, hence pre‐historic, how can any
> Anthropologist feel certain whether the mankind of that period was or was
> not as he knows it now? The whole _personnel_ of the _Brâhmanas_ and
> _Purânas_—the Rishis, Prajâpatis, Manus, their wives and progeny—belong to
> that pre‐human period. All these are the _Seed_ of Humanity, so to speak.
> It is around these “Sons of God,” the “mind‐born” astral Children of
> Brahmâ, that our physical frames have grown and developed to what they are
> now. For, the Paurânic histories of all those men are those of our Monads,
> in their various and numberless incarnations on this and other Spheres,
> events perceived by the “Shiva Eye” of the ancient Seers—the “Third Eye”
> of our Stanzas—and described allegorically. Later on, they were disfigured
> for sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a considerable
> ground‐work of truth in them. Nor is the philosophy less profound in such
> allegories for being so thickly veiled by the overgrowth of fancy.
> 
> But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were
> hitherto semi‐divine Beings, self‐imprisoned in bodies which were human
> only in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto
> themselves wives who were entirely human and fair to look upon, but in
> whom _lower, more material_, though sidereal, Beings had incarnated. These
> Beings in female forms—Lilith is the prototype of them in the Jewish
> traditions—are called in the Esoteric accounts Khado (Dâkinî, in
> Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the Chief of these Liliths Sangye
> Khado (Buddha Dâkinî, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of
> “walking in the air,” and the “greatest _kindness to mortals_;” but with
> no _mind_—only animal instinct.(651)
> 
> (_c_) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to
> degenerate into phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of
> the human body—that “miracle of miracles,” as an English author calls
> it—and ended by that of its respective sexes. The worshippers were giants
> in stature; but they were not giants in knowledge and learning, though it
> came to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times.
> Their science was innate in them. The Lemuro‐Atlantean had no need of
> discovering and fixing in his memory that which his informing principle
> _knew_ at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and the ever‐growing
> obtuseness of the Matter in which the “principles” had clothed themselves,
> could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre‐natal knowledge, the other,
> blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in them.
> Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures
> and bred “monsters”—_i.e._, men of distinct varieties from themselves.
> 
> Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer well describes them in saying that:
> 
>     Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by
>     the _Sovereign Powers_, the authors of their being, with
>     extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. They _commanded
>     the Elements, knew the secrets of Heaven and the Earth, of the sea
>     and the whole world, and read futurity in_ the stars.... It seems,
>     indeed, as though, when reading of them, one has to deal _not with
>     men as we are_ but with Spirits of the Elements sprung from the
>     bosom of Nature and having full sway over her.... All these beings
>     are marked with a character of _magic_ and _sorcery_....
> 
> And so they were, those now legendary heroes of the pre‐historic, still
> once really existing, races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he
> did not charge with deliberate deceit, or dulness and superstition, an
> endless series of recognized Philosophers, who mention these races and
> assert that, even in their own time, they had seen their fossils. There
> were sceptics in days of old—as many and great as they are now. But even a
> Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus, yielded to the evidence of _facts_
> and showed the discriminative capacity of really great intellects, which
> can distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud.
> Ancient writers were no more fools than are our modern wise men; for, as
> well remarked by the author of “Notes on Aristotle’s Psychology in
> Relation to Modern Thought,” in _Mind_:
> 
>     The common division of history into ancient and modern is ...
>     misleading. The Greeks in the fourth century, B.C., were in many
>     respects moderns; especially, we may add, in their scepticism.
>     They were not very likely to accept _fables_ so easily.
> 
> Yet the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, those “children of Heaven and
> Earth,” were indeed marked with a character of _sorcery_; for the Esoteric
> Doctrine charges them precisely with what, if believed, would put an end
> to the difficulties of Science with regard to the origin of man, or
> rather, his anatomical similarities to the anthropoid ape. It accuses them
> of having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so‐
> called “animals,” and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now
> extinct. Of course, as also in the question of spontaneous generation—in
> which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches—the possibility of
> such a cross‐breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied.
> But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already
> remarked, neither the human Atlantean Giants, nor yet the “animals,” were
> the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us,
> the modern notions upon this subject—those of the Physiologists
> included—are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute _à
> priori_ denial of such a fact.
> 
> A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being
> with which the new “Incarnate” bred, was called an “animal,” not because
> he was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically
> and mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed
> physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII and what is said
> in Shloka 24, viz., that when the “Sons of Wisdom” came to incarnate the
> first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms
> only a Spark, while some of the Shadows were left over from the _filling_
> and perfecting, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which “remained
> destitute of knowledge,” or those again which were left “mindless,”
> remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It
> is these who committed the first cross‐breeding, so to speak, and bred
> monsters; and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans
> chose their wives. Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, were supposed to be
> the only _human_ family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod
> and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect
> enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the Sinhalese
> regard the Veddhas of their jungles as _speaking animals_ and no more,
> some British people, in their arrogance, firmly believe that every other
> human family—especially the dark Indians—is an _inferior_ race. Moreover
> there are Naturalists who have seriously considered the problem whether
> some savage tribes—like the Bushmen, for instance—can be regarded as _men_
> at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of
> animals “fair to look upon,” as a biped:
> 
> _Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist
> down, covered with hair._
> 
> Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.
> 
> If men existed two million years ago, they must have been—just as were the
> animals—quite different physically and anatomically from what they have
> now become, and nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they
> are now. Anyhow, we learn that the animal world has bred strictly _inter
> se_—_i.e._, in accordance with genus and species—only since the appearance
> _on this Earth_ of the Atlantean Race. As demonstrated by the author of
> that able work, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, this idea of the
> refusal to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only
> result of such breeding, “appears to be a _primâ facie_ deduction rather
> than an absolute law” even now. He shows that:
> 
>     Different species do, in fact, often breed together, as is seen in
>     the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in
>     this case the mule is sterile.... But this rule is not universal,
>     and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or
>     hare‐rabbit, has been created which is perfectly fertile.
> 
> The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as also that of several
> other domestic animals; foxes and dogs again, and the modern Swiss cattle
> shown by Rütimeyer as descended from “three distinct species of fossil‐
> oxen, the _Bos primigenius_, _Bos longifrons_ and _Bos frontosus_.”(652)
> Yet some of those species, _as the ape family_, which so clearly resembles
> man in physical structure, contain, we are told,
> 
>     Numerous branches, which graduate into one another, but the
>     extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the
>     highest of the ape series.
> 
> The gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance.
> 
> Thus Mr. Darwin’s remark—or shall we say the remark of Linnæus?—_natura
> non facit saltum_, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but
> would—were there any chance of the real doctrine being accepted by any
> others than its direct votaries—reconcile the modern evolution theory, in
> more than one way, if not entirely, with facts, as also with the absolute
> failure of the Anthropologists to meet with the “missing link” in our
> Fourth Round geological formations.
> 
> We will show elsewhere that Modern Science, however unconsciously to
> itself, pleads our case by its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is
> perfectly right, when he suggests in his last work, that it is far more
> likely that the anthropoid ape should be discovered to be _the descendant
> of man_, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and
> nowhere‐to‐be‐found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old
> Stanzas is vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the
> Occultist prefers to believe, as he has ever done, that, as the Commentary
> says:
> 
> _Man was the first and highest [mammalian] animal that appeared in this
> [Fourth Round] creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all
> the dumb man who walks on all fours. [For] the Râkshasas [Giant‐Demons]
> and Daityas [Titans] of the White Dvipa [Continent] spoiled his [the dumb
> man’s] sires._
> 
> Furthermore, as we see, there are Anthropologists who have traced man back
> to an epoch which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists
> between the chronologies of Modern Science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is
> true that English Scientists generally have declined to commit themselves
> to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary man. They, each and
> all, measure the antiquity of Homo Primigenius by their own lights and
> prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene
> or Miocene man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent
> to the Eocene, but, speaking generally, English Scientists consider that
> we cannot safely go beyond the Quaternary. Unfortunately, the facts do not
> accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French school of
> Anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l’Abbé Bourgeois,
> Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the
> doctrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the
> Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary‐Age
> man. Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in
> the Brâhmanical exoteric books which approximate to the Esoteric Teaching.
> 
> (_d_) “Then the Third Eye acted no longer,” says the Shloka, because Man
> had sunk too deep into the mire of Matter.
> 
> What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Shloka 42,
> concerning the Third Eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no
> longer?
> 
> A few more Occult Teachings must now be given with reference to this point
> as well as some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be
> amplified, in order that it may throw some more light on the development
> of our present humanity; and show how the faculties, called into activity
> by Occult training, restore man to the position he previously occupied in
> reference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the phenomenon of
> the Third Eye has to be first explained.
> 
> The Races With The “Third Eye.”
> 
> The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of
> dangerous pitfalls prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good
> reasons have to be given for every step taken. While turning the light of
> the bull’s‐eye, called Esotericism, on almost every inch of the Occult
> ground travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into stronger
> objectivity the regions explored by exact Science; this, not only in order
> to contrast the two, but to defend our position.(653)
> 
> It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical,
> _human_ side of the extinct races, in the history of their growth and
> evolution. Much more might be said, assuredly, if simple prudence did not
> make us hesitate at the threshold of every new revelation. All that finds
> possibility and landmarks in the discoveries of Modern Science, is given;
> all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is
> unable to speculate—and therefore denies as fact in nature—is withheld.
> 
> But even such statements as, for instance, that, of all the mammalians,
> man was the earliest, that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the
> ape, and that he was a kind of Cyclops in days of old—all will be
> contested; yet Scientists will never be able to prove, except to their own
> satisfaction, that _it was not so_. Nor can they admit that the first two
> Races of men were too ethereal and phantom‐like in their constitution,
> organism, and _shape_ even, to be called physical men. For, if they do, it
> will be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never
> be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is
> maintained. Man was the Store‐house, so to speak, of _all the seeds of
> life_ for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.(654) As Ain Suph is
> “One, _notwithstanding the innumerable forms which are in him_,”(655) so
> is man, on Earth the microcosm of the macrocosm.
> 
>     As soon as man appeared, everything was complete ... for
>     everything is comprised in man. He _unites in himself all
>     forms_.(656)
> 
>     The mystery of the _earthly_ man is after the mystery of the
>     Heavenly Man.(657)
> 
> The human form—so called because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape)
> of the _Divine_ Man—is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of
> “Esoteric Studies,” the _new type_, at the beginning of every Round.
> 
>     As man never can be, so he never has been, manifested in a shape
>     belonging to the animal kingdom _in esse_, _i.e._, he never formed
>     part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most
>     finished class of the latter, a new human form must always have
>     been _the_ new type of the cycle. The human shape in one ring [?],
>     as I imagine, becomes cast‐off clothes in the next; it is then
>     appropriated by the highest order in the servant‐kingdom
>     below.(658)
> 
> If the idea is what we understand it to mean—for the “rings” spoken of
> somewhat confuse the matter—then it is the correct Esoteric Teaching.
> Having appeared at the very beginning, and at the head of sentient and
> conscious life, Man—the Astral, or the “Soul,” for the _Zohar_, repeating
> the Archaic Teaching, distinctly says that “the _real_ man is the soul,
> and his material frame no part of him”—Man became the living and animal
> _Unit_, from which the “cast‐off clothes” determined the shape of every
> life and animal in this Round.(659)
> 
> Thus, he “created,” for ages, the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals,
> unconsciously to himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and
> the Fourth Rounds. The same idea and teaching are as distinctly given in
> the _Vendîdâd_ of the Mazdeans, as they are in the Chaldæan and Mosaic
> allegory of the Ark, all of which are the many national versions of the
> original legend given in the Hindû Scriptures. It is found in the allegory
> of Vaivasvata Manu and _his_ Ark with the Seven Rishis, each of whom is
> shown the Father and Progenitor of specified animals, reptiles, and even
> monsters, as in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_. Open the Mazdean
> _Vendîdâd_, and read the command of Ahura Mazda to Yima, a Spirit of the
> Earth, who symbolizes the three Races, after telling him to build a
> Vara—“an enclosure,” an Argha or Vehicle.
> 
>     Thither [into the Vara] thou shalt bring _the seeds of men and
>     women_, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth;
>     thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle,
>     etc.... All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind _to be
>     kept inexhaustible there_, so long _as those men shall stay in the
>     Vara_.(660)
> 
> Those “men” in the “Vara” are the “Progenitors,” the Heavenly Men or
> Dhyânîs, the future Egos who are commissioned to inform mankind. For the
> Vara, or Ark, or again the Vehicle, simply means _Man_.(661)
> 
>     Thou shalt seal up the Vara [after filling it up with the seeds],
>     and thou shalt make a door, and a window _self‐shining within_
>     [which is the Soul].(662)
> 
> And when Yima enquires of Ahura Mazda how he shall manage to make that
> Vara, he is answered:
> 
>     Crush the earth ... and knead it with thy hands, as the potter
>     does when kneading the potter’s clay.(663)
> 
> The Egyptian ram‐headed God makes man of clay on a potter’s wheel, and so
> in _Genesis_ do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.
> 
> When the “Maker of the material world,” Ahura Mazda, is asked,
> furthermore, what is to give light “to the Vara which Yima made,” he
> answers that:
> 
>     There are _uncreated_ lights and _created_ lights. There [in
>     Airyana Vaêjô, where Vara is built], the stars, the moon, and the
>     sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems
>     only as a day [and night].(664)
> 
> This is a clear reference to the “Land of the Gods” or the (now) Polar
> Regions. Moreover another hint is contained in this verse, a distinct
> allusion to the “uncreated lights” which enlighten man within—his
> “principles.” Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura
> Mazda’s answer which is forthwith followed by the words:
> 
>     Every fortieth year, to every couple [hermaphrodite] _two are
>     born, a male and female_.(665)
> 
> The latter is a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which
> says:
> 
> _At the expiration of every forty [annual] Suns, at the end of every
> fortieth Day, the double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the
> first and second and the third...._
> 
> This is clear, since every “Sun” meant a whole year, the latter being
> composed of one Day then, as in the Arctic Circle it is now composed of
> six months. According to the old teaching, the axis of the Earth gradually
> changes its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the period referred to,
> this inclination was such that a polar Day lasted during the whole period
> of the Earth’s revolution about the Sun, when a kind of twilight of very
> short duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position
> directly under the solar rays. This may be contrary to Astronomy as now
> taught and understood; but who can say that changes in the motion of the
> Earth, which do not take place now, did not occur millions of years back?
> 
> Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the Man of the Fourth
> Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the Moon, and even Noah’s Ark,
> if one will so have it—this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura
> Mazda and Zarathushtra. Thus when the latter asks:
> 
>     O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is he who
>     brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?
> 
>     Ahura Mazda answered: “It was the bird Karshipta, O holy
>     Zarathushtra!”(666)
> 
> And the note explains:
> 
>     The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the
>     earth, he would be king of birds. He brought the law into the Var
>     of Yima, and recites the Avesta _in the language of birds_.(667)
> 
> This again is an allegory and a symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists
> only, who see in this bird “an incarnation of lightning,” and say its song
> was “often thought to be the utterance of a god and a revelation,” and
> what not. Karshipta is the human Mind‐Soul, and the deity thereof,
> symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by
> a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or Man, than he
> understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. In the “Book of Concealed
> Mystery” it is said of the Tree, which is the Tree of knowledge of good
> and evil:
> 
>     In its branches the birds lodge and build their nests (the _souls_
>     and the angels have their place).(668)
> 
> Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. “Bird” was a Chaldæan,
> and has become a Hebrew, synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit,
> or Deva; and the “Bird’s Nest” was, with both, Heaven, and is God’s Bosom,
> in the _Zohar_. The perfect Messiah enters Eden “into that place which is
> called the Bird’s Nest.”(669)
> 
>     “Like a bird that is flying from its nest,” and that is the Soul
>     from which the She’kheen‐ah [divine wisdom or grace] does not move
>     away.(670)
> 
> _The Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces Life,
> is boundless Space_,
> 
> —says the Commentary, meaning Hamsa, the Bird of Wisdom.
> 
> It is Adam Kadmon who is the tree of the Sephiroth, and it is he who
> becomes the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Esoterically. And that
> “tree hath around it seven columns [seven pillars] of the world, or
> Rectores [the same Progenitors or Sephiroth again], operating through the
> respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets,” etc.,
> one of which orders begets Giants (Nephilim) on Earth.
> 
> It was the belief of all antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest
> mankind was a race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and
> in caves, have already, in isolated cases, yielded groups of skeletons of
> nine and twelve feet high.(671) These belong to tribes of the early Fifth
> Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and six feet. But
> we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged
> to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and
> allegories found in the Hindû _Purânas_ and the Greek poems of Hesiod and
> Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans—men of a
> tremendous super‐human physical power, which enabled them to defend
> themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and
> early Cenozoic times—and of actual Cyclopes, “three‐eyed” mortals.
> 
> It has been often remarked by observant writers, that the “origin of
> nearly every popular myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact
> in Nature.”
> 
> In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always
> an element of the objective and real. The imagination of the masses,
> disorderly and ill‐regulated as it may be, could never have conceived and
> fabricated _ex nihilo_ so many monstrous figures, such a wealth of
> extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus,
> those floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken
> links of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream
> foundation of our collective consciousness.(672)
> 
> The evidence for the Cyclopes—a race of Giants—will, in forthcoming
> Sections, be pointed out in the Cyclopean remnants, which are so called to
> this day. An indication that the early Fourth Race—during its evolution
> and before the final adjustment of the human organism, which became
> perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race—may have been three‐eyed,
> without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the
> legendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.
> 
> To Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic _involution_ proceeds
> on parallel lines with physical _evolution_—that the _inner_ senses,
> innate in the first human races, atrophied during racial growth and the
> material development of the outer senses—to the students of Esoteric
> symbology the above statement is no conjecture or possibility, but simply
> _a phase of the law of growth_, a proven fact, in short. They understand
> the meaning of the passage in the Commentaries which says:
> 
> _There were four‐armed human creatures in those early days of the male‐
> females [hermaphrodites]; with one head, yet three eyes. They could see
> before them and behind them._(_673_)_ A Kalpa later [after the separation
> of the sexes] men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became
> dim; and coördinately the Third Eye commenced to lose its power.... When
> the Fourth [Race] arrived at its middle age, the Inner Vision had to be
> awakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was
> known to the old Sages._(_674_)_... The Third Eye, likewise, getting
> gradually petrified,_(_675_)_ soon disappeared. The double‐faced became
> the one‐faced, and the eye was drawn deep into the head and is now buried
> under the hair. During the activity of the Inner Man [during trances and
> spiritual visions] the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels
> it, and regulates his action accordingly.... The undefiled Lanoo
> [Disciple, Chelâ] need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in purity
> [who is not chaste] will receive no help from the __“__Deva Eye.__”_
> 
> Unfortunately not. The “Deva Eye” exists no more for the majority of
> mankind. The Third Eye _is dead_, and acts no longer; but it has left
> behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the Pineal Gland.
> As for the “four‐armed” men, it is they who became the prototypes of the
> four‐armed Hindû Gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.
> 
> Such is the mystery of the _human eye_ that some Scientists have been
> forced to resort to Occult explanations in their vain endeavours to
> explain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action. The
> development of the human eye gives more support to Occult Anthropology
> than to that of the Materialistic Physiologists. “The eyes in the human
> embryo grow _from within without_”—out of the brain, instead of being part
> of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor
> Lankester—thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to
> explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines—suggests the curious view that
> “our” earliest vertebrate ancestor was a “_transparent_” creature and
> hence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man a “transparent
> creature” once upon a time, we are taught; and hence our theory holds
> good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Hæckelian view
> that the vertebrate eye originated by changes _in the epidermis_? If it
> started _inside_, the latter theory goes into the waste basket. This seems
> to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester’s extraordinary
> suggestion—or shall we say admission?—is perhaps rendered necessary by
> evolutionist necessities. Occultism, with its teaching as to the gradual
> development of senses “_from within without_,” from astral prototypes, is
> far more satisfactory. The Third Eye _retreated inwards_ when its course
> was run—another point in favour of Occultism.
> 
> The allegorical expression of the Hindû mystics who speak of the “Eye of
> Shiva,” the Tri‐lochana, or “three‐eyed,” thus receives its justification
> and _raison d’être_: the transference of the Pineal Gland (once that Third
> Eye) to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light
> on the mystery—incomprehensible to some—of the connection between
> _abnormal_, or spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the
> Seer. The question is often asked: Why should celibacy and chastity be a
> _sine quâ non_ condition of regular Chelâship, or the development of
> psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary. When
> we learn that the Third Eye was once a physiological organ, and that later
> on, owing to the gradual disappearance of spirituality and increase of
> materiality, the spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical, it
> became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by Physiologists as is
> the spleen—when we learn this, the connection becomes clear. During human
> life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and
> especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our
> physiological senses. Sexual action also being closely connected, by
> interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is
> useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal
> state of the brain, and the degree of active work in the Medulla
> Oblongata, reacts powerfully on the Pineal Gland, for, owing to the number
> of “centres” in that region, which controls by far the greatest number of
> the physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the
> close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, a very powerful “inductive”
> action must be exerted by the Medulla on the Pineal Gland.
> 
> All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight
> of the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a
> three‐eyed man in Nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a
> comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from
> anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all, and then it may rest on
> the assumptions of Materialistic Science itself.
> 
> It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is
> this time not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation, that many of
> the animals—especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata—have a
> _third_ eye, now atrophied, but which was necessarily active in its
> origin.(676) The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia,
> recently discovered in New Zealand—_a part of ancient Lemuria so called,
> mark well_—presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and
> not only the Hatteria Punctata, but the Chameleon, and certain reptiles,
> and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that this was no more than the
> prolongation of the brain which ended with a small protuberance, called
> Epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and
> found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. As its
> development and anatomical structure showed, it offered such an analogy
> with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything
> else. There are Palæontologists who to this day feel convinced that this
> Third Eye originally functioned, and they are certainly right. For this is
> what is said of the Pineal Gland in Quain’s _Anatomy_:
> 
>     It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and
>     subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic
>     vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest
>     period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the
>     cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The
>     thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of
>     the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards
>     the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its
>     prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards
>     stretches across the ventricular cavity.... The hinder part of the
>     roof is developed by a peculiar process to be noticed later into
>     the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its
>     pedicles to the thalamus, and behind these a transverse band is
>     formed as posterior commissure.
> 
>     The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the
>     third ventricle in front, below it the optic commissure forms the
>     floor of the ventricle, and further back the infundibulum descends
>     to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the
>     posterior lobe of the pituitary body.
> 
>     The two _optic thalami_, formed from the posterior and outer part
>     of the anterior vesicle, consist at first of a single hollow sac
>     of nervous matter, the cavity of which communicates on each side
>     in front with that of the commencing cerebral hemispheres, and
>     behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora
>     quadrigemina). Soon, however, by increased deposit taking place in
>     their interior behind, below, and at the sides, the thalami become
>     solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between
>     them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which
>     continues open at the back part opposite the entrance of the
>     Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the _third ventricle_.
>     Behind, the two thalami continue united by the _posterior
>     commissure_, which is distinguishable about the end of the third
>     month, and also by the _peduncles of the pineal gland_....
> 
>     At an early period the _optic tracts_ may be recognized as hollow
>     prolongations from the outer part of the wall of the thalami while
>     they are still vesicular. At the fourth month these tracts are
>     distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into
>     connection with the corpora quadrigemina.
> 
>     The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some
>     of the most interesting phenomena which are connected with the
>     development of the thalamencephalon.(677)
> 
> The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not
> for the development of the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres, the
> Pineal Gland would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal
> bones. It is very interesting also to note the obvious connection which
> can be traced between the originally hollow Optic Tract and the Eyes
> anteriorly, and the Pineal Gland and its Peduncles posteriorly, and
> between all of these and the Optic Thalami. So that the recent discoveries
> in connection with the third eye of Hatteria Punctata have a very
> important bearing on the history of the development of the human senses,
> and on the Occult assertions in the text.
> 
> It is well known that Descartes saw in the Pineal Gland the _Seat of the
> Soul_, though this is now regarded as a fiction by those who have ceased
> to believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man. Although the
> Soul is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is one special
> portion of the latter in which the Soul exercises its functions more
> specially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain
> could be that “special” locality, he concluded that it was that little
> gland which was tied to the brain, and yet had an action independent of
> it, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion “by the
> _animal spirits_(678) which cross the cavities of the skull in every
> sense.”
> 
> Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes
> was yet far nearer the Occult truth than is any Hæckel. For the Pineal
> Gland is, as shown, far more closely connected with Soul and Spirit than
> with the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists a glimmer
> of the _real_ processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the
> winding _cyclic_ course of this great Law, they would _know_ instead of
> conjecturing, and would feel certain of the future physical
> transformations which await the human kind by the knowledge of its past
> forms. Then would they see the fallacy and the absurdity of their modern
> “blind‐force” and “mechanical” processes of Nature; and, in consequence of
> such knowledge, would realize that the said Pineal Gland, for instance,
> could not but be disabled for _physical_ use at this stage of our Cycle.
> If the odd “eye” is now atrophied in man, it is a proof that, as in the
> lower animal, it has once been active; for Nature never creates the
> smallest, the most insignificant, form without some definite purpose and
> for some use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution
> when the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent
> intellectual and psychic elements. And, as the Cycle ran down towards that
> point where the physiological senses were developed by, and went _pari
> passu_ with, the growth and consolidation of physical man—the interminable
> and complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development—this
> median “eye” at last atrophied together with the early spiritual and
> purely psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the
> window of the Soul, says popular wisdom,(679) and _Vox populi, vox Dei_.
> 
> In the beginning, every class and family of the living species was
> hermaphrodite and objectively one‐eyed. In the animal—whose form was as
> ethereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies of both began to
> evolve their “coats of skin,” viz., to evolve, from _within without_, the
> thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal
> physiological mechanism—the Third Eye was primarily, as in man, the only
> seeing organ. The two physical front eyes only developed(680) later on in
> both brute and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement
> of the Third Race, in the same position as that of some of the blind
> vertebrates, in our day, _i.e._, beneath an opaque skin.(681) Only, the
> stages of the odd, or primeval, eye, in man and brute, are now inverted,
> as the former has already passed that animal non‐rational stage in the
> Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of
> consciousness. Therefore, while the Cyclopean eye was, and still _is_, in
> man the organ of _spiritual_ sight, in the animal it was that of objective
> vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the
> course of physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes,
> and thus was stored and laid aside by Nature for further use in æons to
> come.
> 
> This explains why the Pineal Gland reached its highest development
> proportionately with the lowest physical development. It is in the
> Vertebrata that it is the most prominent and objective, whereas in man it
> is most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the Anatomist. No
> less light, however, is thereby thrown on the future physical, spiritual,
> and intellectual state of mankind, in periods corresponding on parallel
> lines with other past periods, and always on the lines of ascending and
> descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries before
> the Kali Yuga—the Age which began nearly 5,000 years ago—it was said in
> Commentary Twenty, if it is paraphrased into comprehensible sentences:
> 
> _We [the Fifth Root‐Race] in our first half [of duration] onward [on the
> now ascending arc of the Cycle] are on the mid point of [or between] the
> First and Second Races—falling downward [i.e., the Races were then on the
> descending arc of the Cycle].... Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see._
> 
> Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional
> period—namely, in the second half of the First spiritual ethereo‐astral
> Race—nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual brain element, as it
> was on its _descending_ line. And as we are parallel to it, on the
> _ascending_, we are, therefore, devoid of the spiritual element, which is
> now replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the
> Mânasa period of our Cycle of Races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore,
> crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and
> Matter—or the equilibrium between brain intellect and spiritual
> perception. One important point, has, however, to be borne in mind.
> 
>        [Illustration: Evolution of Root‐Races in the Fourth Round]
> 
> [Transcriber’s Note: The graph shows, to the left, “Downward Cycle.
> Evolution of Physical and Intellectual Nature and the Gradual Regression
> of Spirituality.” To the right is “Ascending Cycle. Reëvolution or
> Reversion of Spirituality and the Gradual Decrease of Materiality and mere
> Brain‐intellectuality.” Below is “Meridian of Races.”]
> 
> We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full
> development of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal Mahat—a ray
> unimpeded by Matter—will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub‐
> race and nation have their cycles and stages of evolutionary development
> repeated on a smaller scale, much more must it be so in the case of a
> Root‐Race. Our Race then has, as a Root‐Race, crossed the equatorial line
> and is cycling onward on the spiritual side; but some of our sub‐races
> still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective
> national cycles; while others again—the oldest—having crossed the crucial
> point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe, will live
> or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub‐races.
> 
> It now becomes comprehensible why the Third Eye was gradually transformed
> into a simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to
> call the Lemurians.
> 
> It is a curious fact that in human beings the cerebral hemispheres and the
> lateral ventricles have been especially developed, whereas it is the Optic
> Thalami, Corpora Quadrigemina, and Corpora Striata which are the principal
> parts developed in other mammalian brains. Moreover, it is asserted that
> the intellect of a man may, to some extent, be gauged by the development
> of the central convolutions and the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres.
> It would seem a natural corollary to this that if the development of the
> Pineal Gland may be considered to be an index of the astral capacities and
> spiritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding
> development of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the
> Pineal Gland at the expense of the posterior part of the cerebral
> hemispheres. This is a curious speculation and would receive confirmation
> in the present case. We should see, below and behind, the cerebellum which
> has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of the human
> being, and which is allowed by Science to be the great centre for all the
> physiologically coördinated movements of the body, such as walking,
> eating, etc.; in front, the fore‐part of the brain, the cerebral
> hemispheres, the part especially connected with the development of the
> intellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, and
> especially the animal functions, the developed Pineal Gland, in connection
> with the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.
> 
> It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just
> as the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not
> memory itself.
> 
> This is, then, the organ which has given rise to so many legends and
> traditions, among others to that of men with one head but two faces. These
> legends may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to
> in the Chaldæan fragments. Apart from the work already cited, the _Shan
> Hai King_, compiled by Kung Chia from engravings on nine urns made by the
> Emperor Yü, 2,255 B.C., they may be found in another work, called the
> _Bamboo Books_, and in a third, the _’Rh Ya_, whose author was “initiated
> according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first Emperor
> of the Chow Dynasty, 1,122 B.C.” The _Bamboo Books_ contain the ancient
> annals of China, found A.D. 279 on opening the grave of King Seang of Wei,
> who died 295 B.C.(682) Both these works mention men with two faces on one
> head—one in front and one behind.
> 
> Now what students of Occultism ought to know is that the Third Eye _is
> indissolubly connected with Karma_. The tenet is so mysterious that very
> few have heard of it.
> 
> The “Eye of Shiva” did not become entirety atrophied before the close of
> the Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and
> attributes of the Deva‐Man of the Third Race had been made the hand‐
> maidens of the newly‐awakened physiological and psychic passions of the
> physical man, instead of the reverse, the Eye lost its powers. But such
> was the law of evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no _Fall_. The
> sin was not in using those newly‐developed powers, but in _misusing_ them;
> in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a God, the fane of every
> _spiritual_ iniquity. And if we say “sin” it is merely that everyone
> should understand our meaning, for Karma(683) would be the more correct
> term to use in this case; moreover the reader who should feel perplexed at
> the use of the term “spiritual” instead of “physical” iniquity, is
> reminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is
> simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the Psychic, if not of the
> Spiritual, Man. And in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the
> Spiritual Being which sinned, the Spirit Element being still the “Master”
> Principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the
> heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.
> 
> As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should
> be explained for the benefit of those who are ignorant of Theosophical
> Teachings.
> 
> Questions with regard to Karma and Re‐births are constantly being put
> forward, and great confusion seems to exist upon the subject. Those who
> are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the
> idea that a new Soul is created by God for every newly‐born infant, are
> among the most perplexed. They ask whether the number of Monads
> incarnating on Earth is limited; to which they are answered in the
> affirmative. For, however countless, in our conception, the number of the
> incarnating Monads, still, there must be a limit. This is so even if we
> take into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their
> respective seven Groups were furnished with bodies, several births and
> deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the æons already passed.
> It has been stated that Karma‐Nemesis, whose bond‐maid is Nature, adjusted
> everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh
> pouring‐in, or arrival of new Monads, ceased as soon as Humanity had
> reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated
> since the middle‐point of the Atlanteans. Let us remember that, save in
> the case of young children, and of individuals whose lives have been
> violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reïncarnate
> before a period of many centuries has elapsed, and such gaps alone must
> show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited.
> Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their
> evolutionary progress.
> 
> Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the
> evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of Karma is
> inextricably interwoven with that of Reïncarnation.
> 
> It is only the knowledge of the constant re‐births of one and the same
> Individuality throughout the Life‐Cycle; the assurance that the same
> Monads—among whom are many Dhyân Chohans, or the “Gods” themselves—have to
> pass through the “Circle of Necessity,” rewarded or punished by such
> rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life;
> that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless Shells, or
> Astral Figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who
> are now amongst us—nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we
> say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and
> reconcile man to the terrible _apparent_ injustice of life. Nothing but
> such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one
> unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the
> inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one
> sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her
> favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all
> his intellect and noble virtues—far more deserving in every way—perishing
> of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn
> away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one’s ears ringing and
> heart aching with the cries of pain around him—that blessed knowledge of
> Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their
> supposed Creator.(684)
> 
> Of all the terrible blasphemies and what are virtually accusations thrown
> at their God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than
> that (almost always) false humility which makes the presumably “pious”
> Christian assert, in the face of every evil and undeserved blow, that
> “such _is the will_ of God.”
> 
> Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees who speak in the
> same breath of the endless merciful love and care of their God and Creator
> for helpless man, and of that God _scourging the good, the very best of
> his creatures, bleeding them to death like an insatiable Moloch_! Shall we
> be answered to this, in Congreve’s words:
> 
>     But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?
> 
> Logic and simple common sense, we answer. If we are asked to believe in
> “original sin,” in _one_ life _only_ on this Earth for every Soul, and in
> an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the
> pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell‐fire—and this whether they be
> good or bad, says the Predestinarian(685)—why should not everyone of us
> who is endowed with reasoning powers, condemn in his turn such a
> villainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in
> the God created by man’s unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human
> dogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they
> have solved the problem by addressing him as:
> 
>     Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast _involved_
>     The pride of human wisdom, _to confound_
>     The _daring scrutiny_ and prove _the faith_
>     Of thy _presuming_ creatures!
> 
> Truly a robust “faith” is required to believe that it is “presumption” to
> question the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to
> “perplex” him, and to test a “faith” with which that “Power,” moreover,
> may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.
> 
> Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every
> reasonable evidence and on life‐experience, in Karma‐Nemesis, or the Law
> of Retribution. This Law—whether Conscious or Unconscious—predestines
> nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is
> Eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coëqual with Eternity,
> it cannot be said to act, for it is Action itself. It is not the _wave_
> which drowns a man, but the _personal_ action of the wretch who goes
> deliberately and places himself under the _impersonal_ action of the laws
> that govern the _ocean’s_ motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it
> design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the
> effects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending
> ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too
> forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate
> the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say
> that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has
> brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and
> individual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not
> involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it
> punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who
> through study and meditation unveils its intricate paths, and throws light
> on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to
> their ignorance of the labyrinth of life—is working for the good of his
> fellow‐men. Karma is an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of
> Manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever‐
> present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or
> Materialists—still less as Fatalists,(686) for Karma is one with the
> Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal
> world.
> 
> Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the Law
> of Re‐birth, or of the reïncarnation of the same spiritual Individuality
> in a long, almost interminable, series of Personalities. The latter are
> like the various characters played by the same actor, with each of which
> that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the
> space of a few hours. The _inner_, or real Man, who personates those
> characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet only for the brief
> space of a few acts, which, however, on the plane of human illusion,
> represent the whole life of Hamlet. He knows also that he was, the night
> before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a
> still earlier preceding night. And though the outer, visible character is
> supposed to be ignorant of the fact, and in actual life that ignorance is,
> unfortunately, but too real, nevertheless, the _permanent_ Individuality
> is fully aware of it, and it is through the atrophy of the “spiritual” Eye
> in the physical body, that that knowledge is unable to impress itself on
> the consciousness of the false Personality.
> 
> The possession of a physical Third Eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the
> men of the Third Root‐Race down to nearly the middle period of the third
> sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race, when the consolidation and perfection of
> the human frame caused it to disappear from the outward anatomy of man.
> Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perception
> lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing
> to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether.
> This was prior to the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean Continent.
> And now we may return to the Deluges and their many “Noahs.”
> 
> The student has to bear in mind that there were many such Deluges as that
> mentioned in _Genesis_, and three far more important ones, which will be
> mentioned and described in the Section of Part III devoted to the subject
> of pre‐historic “Submerged Continents.” To avoid erroneous conjectures,
> however, with regard to the claim that the Esoteric Doctrine has much in
> common with the legends contained in the Hindû Scriptures; that, again,
> the chronology of the latter is almost that of the former—only explained
> and made clear; and that finally the belief that Vaivasvata Manu—a generic
> term indeed!—was the Noah of the Âryans and the prototype of the biblical
> patriarch, all this—as pertaining also to the belief of the
> Occultists—necessitates a new explanation at this juncture.
> 
> The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
> 
> Those who are aware that the “Great Flood,” which was connected with the
> sinking of an entire Continent (save only a few islands) could not have
> happened so far back as 18,000,000 years ago, and that Vaivasvata Manu is
> the Indian Noah connected with the Matsya, or the Fish, Avatâra of Vishnu,
> may feel perplexed at the apparent discrepancy between the facts stated
> and the chronology previously given. But there is no discrepancy in truth.
> The reader is asked to turn to _The Theosophist_ of July, 1883, for by
> studying the article therein, on “The Septenary Principle in Esotericism,”
> the whole question can be explained to him. It is in the explanation there
> given, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the Brâhmans.
> 
> For the benefit of those, however, who may not have _The Theosophist_ of
> that date to hand, a passage or two may now be quoted from it:
> 
>     Who was Manu, the son of Svâyambhuva? The Secret Doctrine tells us
>     that _this_ Manu was no man, but the representation of the first
>     human races, evolved with the help of the Dhyân Chohans (Devas),
>     at the beginning of the First Round. But we are told in his _Laws_
>     (i. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa, or
>     “interval from creation to creation”—read rather interval from one
>     _minor_ Pralaya to another(687)—and that “in the present divine
>     age, there have been as yet _seven_ Manus.” Those who know that
>     there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now
>     in the Fourth; and who are taught that there are seven Dawns and
>     seven Twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of
>     every Round and at the end, and on, and between, the planets
>     [Globes] there is an “awakening to _illusive_ life,” and an
>     “awakening to _real_ life”; and that, moreover, there are Root‐
>     Manus, and what we have to clumsily translate as Seed‐Manus—_the
>     seeds for the human races of the forthcoming_ Round (or the
>     Shishtas—the surviving fittest(688); a mystery divulged only to
>     those who have passed their third degree in Initiation)—those who
>     have learned all this will be better prepared to understand the
>     meaning of the following. We are told in the Hindû Sacred
>     Scriptures that, “The first Manu produced _six_ other Manus
>     [_seven_ primary Manus in all], and these produced in their turn
>     each seven other Manus”(689) (_Bhrigu_, i. 61‐63)—the production
>     of the latter standing in the Occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it
>     becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the Progenitor of our
>     Fourth‐Round Humanity—must be the _seventh_, since we are on our
>     Fourth Round,(690) and there is a _Root_‐Manu at Globe A, and a
>     _Seed_‐Manu at Globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences
>     with the appearance of a Root‐Manu (Dhyân Chohan) and closes with
>     a Seed‐Manu, so a Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu appear respectively at the
>     beginning and the termination of the human period on any
>     particular planet [Globe].(691) It will be easily seen from the
>     foregoing statement that a Manvantaric period (Manu‐antara) means,
>     as the term implies, the time _between_ the appearance of two
>     Manus or Dhyân Chohans; and hence a Minor Manvantara is the
>     duration of the _seven_ Races on any particular planet [Globe],
>     and a Major Manvantara is the period of one human Round along the
>     Planetary Chain. Moreover, as it is said that each of the seven
>     Manus _creates_ 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 Root‐Races on
>     the seven planets [Globes] during each Round, then every Root‐Race
>     has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called “Vaivasvata” and
>     stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who in India represents
>     the Babylonian Xisuthrus and the Jewish Noah.
> 
>     But in the Esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the
>     progenitor of our _Fifth_ Race—who saved it from the flood that
>     nearly exterminated the Fourth or Atlantean—is not the seventh
>     Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root or Primitive
>     Manus, but one of the 49 Manus emanated from this Root‐Manu.
> 
>     For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus
>     in their respective order and in their relation to each Round:
> 
>     1st Round, 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A—Svâyambhuva.
>     1st Round, 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Svârochi, or Svârochisha.
>     2nd Round, 2nd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Auttami.
>     2nd Round, 2nd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Tâmasa.
>     3rd Round, 3rd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Raivata.
>     3rd Round, 3rd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Châkshusha.
>     4th Round, 4th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Vaivasvata (our
>                 Progenitor).
>     4th Round, 4th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Sâvarna.
>     5th Round, 5th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Daksha‐sâvarna.
>     5th Round, 5th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Brahma‐sâvarna.
>     6th Round, 6th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Dharma‐sâvarna.
>     6th Round, 6th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Rudra‐sâvarna.
>     7th Round, 7th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Rauchya.
>     7th Round, 7th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Bhautya.
> 
>     Vaivasvata, thus, though seventh in the order given, is the
>     primitive Root‐Manu of our Fourth Human Wave (the reader must
>     always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity),
>     while _our_ Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who
>     are made to preside over the seven Races of this our planet
>     [Globe]. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the
>     periodical and ever‐recurring cataclysms (by fire and water) that
>     close the cycle of every Root‐Race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the
>     Hindû ideal embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus, Deucalion,
>     Noah and other names—who is the allegorical “Man” who rescued our
>     Race, when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished
>     by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its
>     temporary obscuration.(692)
> 
> Thus it is shown that there is no real discrepancy in speaking of the
> Vaivasvata Manvantara (Manu‐antara, lit., “between two Manus”) as
> 18,000,000 odd years ago, when physical, or the truly human, Man first
> appeared in his Fourth Round on this Earth; and of the other Vaivasvatas,
> _e.g._, the Manu of the Great Cosmic or Sidereal Flood—a mystery—or again
> the Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the _Racial_
> Vaivasvata saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter
> destruction. As these several and quite distinct events are purposely
> blended in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_ in one narrative, there may
> yet be a great deal of perplexity left in the profane reader’s mind.
> Therefore, as constant elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven
> unavoidable repetitions. The “blinds” which conceal the real mysteries of
> Esoteric Philosophy are great and puzzling, and even now the last word
> cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a little more removed, and some
> explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the earnest student.
> 
> As Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake, remarked: “the first
> principle in Hindû religious philosophy is _unity in diversity_.” If all
> those Manus and Rishis are called by one generic name, it is due to the
> fact that they are one and all the manifested Energies of one and the same
> Logos, the celestial as well as the terrestrial Messengers and
> Permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of
> activity—conscious during the period of Cosmic Evolution, unconscious
> (from our point of view) during Cosmic Rest—for the Logos sleepeth in the
> bosom of THAT which “sleepeth not,” nor is it ever awake, for it is Sat or
> “Be‐ness,” not a Being. It is from IT that issues the great _Unseen_
> Logos, who evolves all the other Logoi; the Primeval Manu who gives being
> to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively,
> and who represent in their aggregate the _Manifested_ Logos.(693) Hence we
> learn in the Commentaries that while no Dhyân Chohan, not even the
> highest, can realize completely
> 
> _The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution, ... the Manus retain a
> knowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout
> Eternity._
> 
> This is very plain: the first Manu is called Svâyambhuva, the “Self‐
> manifested,” the Son of the _Unmanifested_ Father. The Manus are the
> Creators of the Creators of our First Race—the Spirit of Mankind—which
> does not prevent the _seven_ Manus from having been the first “Pre‐Adamic”
> Men on Earth.
> 
> Manu declares himself created by Virâj,(694) or Vaishvânara, the Spirit of
> Humanity,(695) which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting
> Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity—that Logos or
> Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates _from within himself_
> all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity—Progenitors of
> the numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated
> _human_ Monads of Planetary Chains as well as of every being thereon.
> Svâyambhuva, or Self‐born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad _which
> becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a Planetary Chain_
> (of which Chains there are seven in our System). And the radiations of
> this Centre become again so many Manus Svâyambhuva (a mysterious generic
> name, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host,
> the Creator of his own Humanity.
> 
> As to the question of the four distinct Races of mankind that preceded our
> Fifth Race, there is nothing mystical in the subject, except the ethereal
> bodies of the first Races; and this is a matter of legendary, nevertheless
> very correct, history. The legend is universal. And if the Western
> _savant_ pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest
> difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the
> fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians
> had, and the Hindûs have, to this day.
> 
> Trying to account for the community of legends held by Chinese, Chaldæans,
> Egyptians, Indians and Greeks, in remote antiquity, and for the absence of
> any certain vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the
> author of _Mythical Monsters_ remarks that:
> 
>     We must ... not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the
>     vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years
>     ago. With an ephemeral architecture ... [as in China], the sites
>     of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a
>     few thousands of years from natural decay, and how much more ...
>     if ... minor cataclysms have intervened, such as local
>     inundations, earthquakes, deposition of volcanic ashes, ... the
>     spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by deadly pestilence,
>     by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes.(696)
> 
> How many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth
> may be inferred from the following Stanza of Commentary Twenty‐two:
> 
> _During the first seven crores [70,000,000 years] of the Kalpa the Earth
> and its two Kingdoms [mineral and vegetable], one already having achieved
> its seventh circle, the other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi‐
> ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the eleventh crore_(_697_)_
> the Mother [Earth] grows opaque, and in the fourteenth_(_698_)_ the throes
> of adolescence take place. These convulsions of Nature [geological
> changes] last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after
> which they become periodical, and at long intervals._
> 
> _The last change took place nearly twelve crores [120,000,000] of years
> ago. But the Earth with everything on her face had become cool, hard and
> settled ages earlier._
> 
> Thus, if we are to believe Esoteric Teaching, _universal_ geological
> disturbances and changes have not occurred for the last 120 million years,
> but the Earth, even before that time, was ready to receive her human
> stock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its full physical
> development, as already stated, took place only about 18,000,000 years
> ago, after the first great failure of Nature to create beings
> alone—_i.e._, without the help of the divine “Fashioners”—had been
> followed by the successive evolution of the first three Races.(699) The
> actual duration of the first two and a half Races is withheld from all but
> the higher Initiates. The history of the Races begins at the separation of
> the sexes, when the preceding egg‐bearing androgynous Race perished
> rapidly, and the subsequent sub‐races of the Third Root‐Race appeared as
> an entirely new race _physiologically_. It is this “Destruction” which is
> allegorically called the great “Vaivasvata Manu Deluge,” when the account
> shows Vaivasvata Manu, or Humanity, remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of
> Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven
> Rishis “with him.” The allegory is very plain.
> 
> In the symbolism of every nation, the “Deluge” stands for chaotic
> unsettled Matter—Chaos itself; and Water for the Feminine Principle—the
> “Great Deep.” As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it:
> 
>     Ἀρχὴ answers to the Hebrew _rasit_, or Wisdom ... and [at the same
>     time] to the emblem of the female generative power, the _arg_ or
>     _arca_, in which the germ of nature [and of mankind] floats or
>     broods on the great abyss of the waters, during the interval which
>     takes place after every mundane [or racial] cycle.
> 
> Archê (Ἀρχὴ) or Ark is also the mystic name of the Divine Spirit of Life
> which broods over Chaos. Now Vishnu _is_ the Divine Spirit, as an abstract
> principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of Life—the
> third Person of the Trimûrti—composed of Brahmâ, the Creator, Shiva, the
> Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu is shown, in the allegory,
> under the form of a _Fish_, guiding the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu across the
> Waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric
> meaning of the word _Fish_ (as Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, and
> others have done). Its theological meaning is phallic, but the
> metaphysical, divine. Jesus was called the Fish, as were Vishnu and
> Bacchus; ΙΗΣ, the “Saviour” of Mankind, being but the monogram of the God
> Bacchus, who was also called ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Fish.(700) Moreover, the Seven
> Rishis in the Ark symbolized the seven “principles,” which became complete
> in man only after he had separated, and become a _human_, and thus ceased
> to be a divine creature.
> 
> But to return to the Races; details as to the submersion of the Continent
> inhabited by the Second Root‐Race are not numerous. The history of the
> Third, or Lemuria, is given, as is also that of Atlantis, but the others
> are only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years
> before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary Age (the
> Eocene).(701) During this Deluge—an actual geological deluge this
> time—Vaivasvata Manu is also shown saving mankind, allegorically—in
> reality, a portion of it, the Fourth Race—just as he saved the Fifth Race
> during the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the remnants that perished
> 850,000 years ago,(702) after which there was no great submersion until
> the day of Plato’s Atlantis, or Poseidonis, which was known to the
> Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.
> 
> It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting.
> This is the Cataclysm of which the old records, as in the _Book of Enoch_,
> say, “the ends of the Earth got loose”; and upon which have been built the
> legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deucalion and all
> the _tutti quanti_ of the Elect Saved. Tradition, not taking into account
> the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both
> “Deluges” indifferently. Yet there is a great difference. The Cataclysm
> which destroyed the huge Continent of which Australia is the largest
> relic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking
> asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor—the
> Fourth Continent—was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial
> rotation. It began during the earliest Tertiary periods, and, continuing
> for long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis,
> with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now
> Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing
> continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, have remained in
> the annals of history, save in the Sacred Records of the East.
> 
> Hence, Modern Science denies the existence of Atlantis. It even denies any
> violent shiftings of the Earth’s axis, and would attribute the change of
> climate to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr.
> Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the
> effects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are others,
> such as Sir Henry James and Sir John Lubbock,(703) who feel more inclined
> to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the
> axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the Astronomers are again
> arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have
> they not denounced—only to accept it later on, whenever the hypothesis
> became undeniable fact?
> 
> How far our figures agree, or rather disagree, with Modern Science will be
> seen further in the Addenda to this Volume, where the Geology and
> Anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the teachings
> of Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned by the Secret
> Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree very much
> with the calculations of Modern Science, which, however, calls Atlantis
> “Lemuria” whenever it accepts such a submerged Continent. With regard to
> the pre‐human period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even
> prior to the appearance of the “mindless” First Race, the Earth was not
> without its inhabitants. We might, however, add that what Science, which
> recognizes _physical man only_, has a right to regard as the _pre‐human_
> period, may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the
> first half of the Atlantean Race, since it is only then that man became
> the “complete _organic_ being he is now.” And this would make Adamic Man
> no older than a few millions of years.(704)
> 
> The author of the _Qabbalah_ truly remarks that: “Man to‐day, as an
> individual, is only a concatenation of the being‐hood of precedent human
> life,” or _lives_, rather.
> 
>     According to the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam, went
>     into three principal classes corresponding to his three sons,
>     viz.: _Hesed_, Habel, _Ge’boor‐ah_, Qai‐yin and _Ra’h‐min_ Seth.
>     These three were divided into ... 70 species, called; the
>     principal roots of the human race.(705)
> 
>     Said Rabbi Yehudah: “How many garments [of the incorporeal man]
>     are these which are crowned (from the day man was created)?” Said
>     R. El’azar: “The mountains of the world (the great men of the
>     generation) are in discussion upon it, but there are three: one to
>     clothe in that garment the _Rua’h_ spirit, which is in the garden
>     (of Eden) on earth: one which is more precious than all, in which
>     the _Neshamah_ is clothed in that Bundle of Life, between the
>     angels of the Kings ...: and one outside garment, which exists and
>     does not exist, is seen and not seen. In that garment, the
>     _Nephesh_ is clothed, and she goes and flies in it, to and fro in
>     the world.”(706)
> 
> This relates to the Races, their “garments,” or degree of materiality, and
> to the three “principles” of man in their three vehicles.
> 
> Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth Races.
> 
>     43. The Lemuro‐Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization.
>     The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. 44. Statues, witnesses to
>     the size of the Lemuro‐Atlanteans. 45. Lemuria destroyed by fire,
>     Atlantis by water. The Flood. 46. The destruction of the Fourth
>     Race and of the last antediluvian monster‐animals.
> 
> 43. THEY(707) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT
> OF THE FIRES(708) VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE STONE(709) OF THE MOUNTAINS
> AND OF THE BLACK STONE,(710) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND
> LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM.
> 
> At this point, as the history of the first two _human_ races—the last of
> the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans—proceeds, we have to
> blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively.
> 
> Here reference is also made to the _divine_ Dynasties, which were claimed
> by the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their _human_
> Kings. These are still believed in by the modern Hindûs, and are
> enumerated in their sacred books. Of these, however, we shall treat in
> their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern
> Geologists are now being driven into admitting the demonstrable existence
> of submerged continents. But to confess the existence of the continents is
> quite a different thing from admitting that there were men on them during
> the early geological periods(711)—ay, men and civilized nations, not
> Palæolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their _divine_
> Rulers, built large cities, cultivated Arts and Sciences, and knew
> Astronomy, Architecture and Mathematics to perfection. The primeval
> civilization of the Lemurians did not, as one may think, immediately
> follow their physiological transformation. Between the final physiological
> evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had
> passed. Nevertheless, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub‐race
> building their first rock‐cities out of stone and lava.(712) One of these
> great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some
> thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow strip
> of sterile ground, and was totally destroyed by a series of volcanic
> eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the
> handiwork of the last sub‐races of the Lemurians; and an Occultist,
> therefore, shows no surprise on learning that the stone relics which were
> found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are
> 
>     Very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins
>     of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru,(713)
> 
> and also that they are in the _Cyclopean style_. The first large cities,
> however, were built in that region of the Continent which is now known as
> the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those
> days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection on the
> former, and Karma—its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians
> and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the
> Spark projected into them by the “Flames,” extinguished it by long
> generations of bestiality.(714) Whereas the Âryan nations could trace
> their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the
> Lemurians, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had personally incarnated.(715)
> 
> It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations
> were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of
> mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others
> savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself
> against the Elements—his brothers, more favoured than he by their Karma,
> and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them, built cities,
> and cultivated Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, notwithstanding
> civilization, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as
> their birthright, the “builders” could now obtain their powers only
> gradually; even those they did obtain being generally used for conquest
> over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has
> ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the
> psychic and spiritual. The command over and the guidance of one’s own
> psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural,
> were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as
> naturally as walking and thinking.
> 
> “There is no such thing as magic” philosophizes “She”—the author
> forgetting that “magic” in early days still meant the great Science of
> Wisdom, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern
> perversion of thought—“though,” she adds, “there is such a thing as
> knowledge of the Secrets of Nature.”(716) But they have become “Secrets”
> only in our Race, and were public property with the Third.
> 
> Gradually, mankind decreased in stature, for, even before the real advent
> of the Fourth or Atlantean Race, the majority of mankind had fallen into
> iniquity and sin, save only the Hierarchy of the “Elect,” the followers
> and disciples of the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—called later the “Sons of the
> Fire‐Mist.”
> 
> Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength
> reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the
> middle period of their fourth sub‐race. But, as said in the Commentary:
> 
> _The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island [the primitive
> Shveta‐dvîpa] had perished ages before. Their [Lemuria’s] Elect, had taken
> shelter on the Sacred Island [now the __“__fabled__”__ Shamballah, in the
> Gobi Desert], while some of their accursed races, separating from the main
> stock, now lived in the jungles and underground [__“__cave‐men__”__], when
> the golden yellow Race [the Fourth] became in its turn __“__black with
> sin.__”__ From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third
> time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Shveta‐dvîpa, the
> blessed, and Adbhitanya [?], east and west, the first, the one and the
> pure, had become corrupted.... The Demi‐Gods of the Third had made room
> for the Semi‐Demons of the Fourth Race. Shveta‐dvîpa,_(_717_)_ the White
> Island, had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black Land,
> wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dvîpa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas
> from the seventh climate replaced the Sâdhus and the Ascetics of the Third
> Age, who had descended to them from other and higher regions...._
> 
> In their dead letter, the _Purânas_, in general, read like an absurd
> tissue of fairy tales and no better. And if one were to read the first
> three chapters of Book II of _Vishnu Purâna_ and accept _verbatim_ the
> geography, geodesy, and ethnology in the account of Priyavrata’s seven
> sons among whom their father divides the seven Dvîpas (Islands or
> Continents); and then proceed to study how his eldest son, Agnîdhra, the
> King of Jambu‐dvîpa, apportioned Jambu‐dvîpa among his nine sons; and then
> how Nâbhi, _his_ son, had a hundred sons and apportioned lands to all
> these in his turn—he would most likely throw the book away and pronounce
> it a farrago of nonsense. But the student of Esotericism will understand
> that, when the _Purânas_ were written, their true meaning was intended to
> be clear only to the Initiated Brâhmans, and so the compilers wrote these
> works allegorically and would not give the _whole_ truth to the masses.
> And he will, further, explain to the Orientalists—who, beginning with
> Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, have made and still are
> making such a mess of it—that the first three chapters purposely confuse
> the following subjects and events:
> 
> I. The series of Kalpas, or Ages, and also of Races, are never taken into
> account; and events which have happened in one are allowed to stand along
> with those which took place in another. The chronological order is
> entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators,
> who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying:
> 
>     Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed,
>     they are ascribed ... to differences of Kalpas and the like.
> 
> II. The several meanings of the words “Manvantara” and “Kalpa” or Age, are
> withheld, the general signification only being given.
> 
> III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of their dominions,
> the Varshas (countries) and Dvîpas are all regarded as terrestrial
> regions.
> 
> Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is
> permissible and easy to show that:
> 
> (_a_) The Seven Dvîpas apportioned to Priyavrata’s septenary progeny refer
> to several localities—first of all to our Planetary Chain. In this Jambu‐
> dvîpa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us)
> invisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature
> of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu‐dvîpa “is _in the
> centre of all_ these”—the so‐called “Insular Continents”—and is surrounded
> by a _sea of salt water_ (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, Shâlmalia, Kusha,
> Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara, are surrounded severally “by great seas ...
> of sugar‐cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk,”
> etc., and such like metaphorical names.(718)
> 
> (_b_) Bhâskara Âchârya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret
> Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvîpas,
> speaks of: “the sea of milk and the sea of curds,” etc., as meaning the
> Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulæ; the more so, since he
> calls “the country to the south of the equator” Bhûr Loka, that to the
> north Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas; and adds: “These
> lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits,” _i.e._, they
> are various “Paradises.”(719)
> 
> (_c_) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical continents,
> islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to _our_
> Round, or even to _our_ Races—the name of Bhârata‐varsha (India)
> notwithstanding—is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of
> _Vishnu Purâna_, who tells us that:
> 
>     Bharata [the son of Nâbhi, who gave his name to Bhârata‐varsha or
>     India] ... consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati ... and
>     abandoned his life at ... Shâlagrâma. He was afterwards born
>     again, as a Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics....
>     Under these princes [Bharata’s descendants] Bhârata‐varsha was
>     divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively
>     held possession of the country for seventy‐one periods of the
>     aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu)
>     [representing a Mahâyuga of 4,320,000 years].(720)
> 
> But having said so much, Parâshara suddenly explains that:
> 
>     This was the creation of Svâyambhuva (Manu), by which the earth
>     was peopled when he presided over the _first_ Manvantara, in the
>     Kalpa of Varâha [_i.e._, the _Boar_ incarnation, or Avatâra].
> 
> Now every Brâhman knows that _our_ Humanity began on this Earth (or Round)
> _only with Vaivasvata Manu_. And if the Western reader turns to the sub‐
> section on “The Primeval Manus of Humanity,”(721) he will see that
> Vaivasvata is the _seventh_ of the fourteen Manus who preside over our
> Planetary Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a
> Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu), he is the Root‐Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the
> seventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that:
> 
>     The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological
>     system of Manvantaras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather
>     clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.
> 
> It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret
> Teaching, they persist in taking everything _literally_, and then turn
> round and abuse the writers for that which they do not comprehend!
> 
> These Genealogies embrace a period of _three and a half_ Rounds; they
> speak of _pre‐human_ periods, and explain the descent into generation of
> every Manu—the first manifested sparks of the One Unity—and, furthermore,
> show each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first,
> the Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can
> become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore
> the Shloka says:
> 
>     Happy are those who are born, even from the [latent] condition of
>     gods, _as men_, in Bhârata‐varsha; as that is the way to ... final
>     liberation.(722)
> 
> In Jambu‐dvîpa Bhârata is considered _the best of its divisions_, because
> it is _the land of works_. In it alone it is that:
> 
>     The succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Tretâ, the
>     Dvâpara, and Kali take place.
> 
> When, therefore, Parâshara, on being asked by Maitreya “to give him the
> descriptions of the Earth,” returns again to the enumeration of the same
> Dvîpas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the
> Svâyambhuva Manvantara—it is simply a “blind”; yet, to him who reads
> between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with
> their sub‐divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by
> the names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the
> confusion.
> 
> All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists “mythical” and
> “fabulous.”(723) Very true, some are _not of this Earth_, but they still
> exist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since
> Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the
> Fifth Race to the Land of Sin—Atlantis, in general, not to Plato’s island
> alone; and since the White Island was (_a_) the Shveta‐dvîpa of Theogony,
> and (_b_) Shâka‐dvîpa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in its
> beginnings. This was when it yet had its “seven holy rivers that washed
> away all sin,” and its “seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction
> of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue,” as it was then
> inhabited by the caste of the Magas—that caste which even the Brâhmans
> acknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of
> the first Zarathushtra. The Brâhmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha,
> on Nârada’s advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the
> Sun to the temple built by Sâmba the _reputed_ son of Krishna, for in
> reality the latter had none. In this the _Purânas_ are _historical_,
> allegory notwithstanding, and Occultism is stating facts.
> 
> The whole story is told in _Bhavishya Purâna_. It is stated that Sâmba
> having been cured of leprosy by Sûrya (the Sun), built a temple and
> dedicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Brâhmans to
> perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God,
> Nârada—the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the
> _Purânas_—advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brâhmans to
> receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore
> referred Sâmba to Gauramukha (White‐face), the Purohita, or family priest,
> of Ugrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best
> employ. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of
> Sûrya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where
> they lived, Sûrya, the Sun himself, directs Sâmba to Shâka‐dvîpa _beyond
> the salt water_. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda, the Great
> Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas,
> etc.(724)
> 
> Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Nârada, who is found reborn in
> every Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda—the symbol Esoterically of
> the Great Cycle—give the key to the allegory; nevertheless the Magas are
> the Magi of Chaldæa, and their caste and worship were born on the earlier
> Atlantis, in Shâka‐dvîpa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed
> that the Magas of Shâka‐dvîpa are the forefathers of the fire‐worshipping
> Parsîs. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods
> of hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in
> spite of Nârada and Sâmba, they carry the event only to the days of the
> flight of the Parsîs to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place
> only in the eighth century of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the
> _Bhavishya Purâna_ with still living in Shâka‐dvîpa in the day of
> Krishna’s “son,” nevertheless the last portion of that Continent—Plato’s
> “Atlantis”—had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas “late of”
> Shâkadvîpa, and in those days lived in Chaldæa. This, again, is an
> intentional confusion.
> 
> The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were
> they the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those
> days large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and
> parcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of
> the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.(725) It covered the whole area
> from the foot of the Himâlayas, which separated it from the inland sea
> rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the Great Desert
> of Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to
> Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to
> us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as
> we go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on
> its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and
> from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it
> extended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa‐nui (Teapy, or Easter
> Island) which now lies in latitude 26°S., and longitude 110°W.(726) This
> statement seems to be corroborated by Science—even if only partially. When
> discussing continental trends, and showing the infra‐Arctic masses
> trending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are
> mentioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the “Mascarene
> continent,” which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and
> another ancient continent which “stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits
> of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom.”(727)
> This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the
> polar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity,
> and the tomb of the bulk of the Mankind of that region during the Third
> Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller
> continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary,
> to a decrease of velocity in the Earth’s rotation:
> 
> _When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities [the poles] agree
> with its middle Circle [the equator], when it runs slower and tilts in
> every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth.
> The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle
> Belt [equatorial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas
> by submersion._
> 
> And again:
> 
> _Thus the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of
> the Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the
> age [Kalpa] of a great [Root‐] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers,
> or Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its
> Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the
> swelling running toward the extremities [poles], new lands will arise and
> old ones be sucked in._
> 
> We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning
> of the above very clearly. Scientists—_modern_ Specialists—have
> ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of
> land and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans
> with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands.
> Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.(728)
> Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward
> to the periods of the Earth’s first incrustation.(729) Therefore it seems
> easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of
> this at greater length in the Addenda.
> 
> Some Theosophists who have understood from a few words in _Esoteric
> Buddhism_ that “old continents” which have been submerged will reäppear,
> have asked the question: “What will Atlantis be like when raised?” Here,
> again, there is a slight misconception. Were identically the _same_ lands
> of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would,
> indeed, be _barren for ages_. But because the Atlantic sea‐bottom is
> covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming—a
> new “cretaceous formation” of strata, in fact—that is no reason why, when
> the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion
> and upraising of the sea‐bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of
> chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the
> surface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah’s Deluge of forty days—a
> kind of Bombay monsoon.
> 
> That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now
> called Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be
> demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated
> together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references
> to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvîpas) are mentioned in the
> _Sûrya Siddhânta_, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in
> the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has
> made out to be “reïncarnated” in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call
> these “Sacred Islands” Atlantean—as is done by us; for, like everything
> else in the Hindû Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things.
> The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Svâyambhuva Manu, to his seven
> sons—was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these Islands survived
> the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to
> Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first
> mentioned by Parâshara in the _Vishnu Purâna_, the seven refer to an
> Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of
> all the seven Islands, Jambu‐dvîpa (our Globe) is the only one that is
> terrestrial. In the _Purânas_ every reference to the North of Meru is
> connected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which,
> when the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert
> of ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an “ancient continent”
> which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret
> Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions
> formed a horse‐shoe‐like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more
> northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained
> Behring’s Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in
> its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have
> been right under the lower curve of the semi‐circle. This Continent was
> raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of
> Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains reäppeared again on the
> face of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing
> from truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular
> Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came into possession of some
> of the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands, included them among
> _their_ lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an
> explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is
> attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession
> of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the
> Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of Lemuria,
> but only to perish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic
> fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and
> Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is _history_. What does Science
> know to the contrary?
> 
>     Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein
>     the name of America appears for the first time, _the latter was
>     believed to be part of India_.... Science also refuses to sanction
>     the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian
>     peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other,
>     connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the
>     pre‐historic ages ... was doubly connected with the two Americas.
>     The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus
>     calls the “Brâhmans of Upper India,” stretched from Kashmir far
>     into the (now) deserts of Shamo. A pedestrian from the north might
>     then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula,
>     through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of Tartary, the
>     Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished
>     with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over
>     from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any
>     part of the continent of South America.(730)
> 
> This was written from the words of a Master—a rather doubtful authority
> for the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own
> flock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Hæckel, who, in _his_
> distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost _verbatim_:
> 
>     It would seem that the region on the earth’s surface where the
>     evolution of these primitive men from the _closely related
>     catarrhine apes_ [!!] took place, must be sought either in
>     Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even
>     in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria.
>     Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the
>     Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of the Asia of to‐day,
>     stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda
>     Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and
>     Africa.(731)
> 
> In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of Lemuria had
> already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents.
> Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe, existed
> in those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean‐floors. Nor was
> there much of present Asia; for the Cis‐Himâlayan regions were covered
> with seas, and beyond them stretched the “lotus leaves” of Shveta‐dvîpa,
> the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The
> immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian,
> Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were
> gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion
> engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to
> the earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden
> uplifting of the ocean‐floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic
> Ages—after it had been submerged with the rest—untouched, with its volcano
> and statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a
> standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the
> Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the
> Third Race.
> 
> In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science.
> Hæckel, when speaking of Blumenbach’s brown or Malay race, and the
> Australians and Papuans, remarks:
> 
>     There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of
>     Polynesia, that Australian island‐world, that _seems to have been
>     once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent_.(732)
> 
> It certainly was “a gigantic and continuous continent,” for, during the
> Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas
> now lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to
> this there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the
> face of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to
> it. Funnily enough, Hæckel, in his fantastic _Pedigree of Man_, considers:
> 
>     The Australians of to‐day as the lineal descendants, almost
>     unchanged [?!], of that _second_ branch of the primitive human
>     race ... that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from
>     the home of man’s infancy, and seems to have been the parent of
>     all the other straight‐haired races of men.... The one, woolly‐
>     haired, migrated in part westwards [_i.e._, to Africa and
>     eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no
>     existence as yet].... The other, straight‐haired, was evolved
>     farther to the North, in Asia, and ... peopled Australia.(733)
> 
> As writes a Master:
> 
>     Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third
>     Race] in _some_ of the flat‐headed aborigines of your
>     Australia.(734)
> 
> But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub‐race of the Third.
> Professor Hæckel must also have _dreamt_ a dream and seen for once a
> _true_ vision!
> 
> It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the
> ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world—now
> called respectively the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and the oldest
> Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other.
> These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, _i.e._, Kings and Rulers who
> had of mortal man only his physical appearance _as it was then_, but who
> were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere
> will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to
> force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. _Their_ greatest pride
> consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides—a fact
> which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx
> appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only
> long enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its
> eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape‐ancestors
> as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets
> Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point.
> 
> If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first
> representatives of the _really human race_ with solid bones, then Hæckel’s
> surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in _either_
> Southern Asia or ... Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out
> of the question—is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate,
> however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the
> Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic
> Pole of the (then) only Earth—so did the ultimate transformation of the
> Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been
> described as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry
> land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi‐tropical even in the
> Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent
> physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and
> tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that
> the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when:
> 
> _The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over __
> the heads of that portion of the Sweat‐born; people knew snow, ice, and
> frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those
> that did not perish remained as half‐grown babes_(_735_)_ in size and
> intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races._(736)
> 
> This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and
> _entire_ changes which go _pari passu_ with the Races. For the Secret
> Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial
> Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis.
> It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as
> Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law.
> In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the “Great Adjuster.”
> Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic
> vicissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always
> followed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of
> the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to
> deny the axial phenomena altogether, rather than admit the intelligent
> hand of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden
> changes and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them
> by various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de
> Boucheporn imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a
> Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding
> to our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in
> addition, has universal Intelligence to guide him.
> 
> Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu’s Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have
> already been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents—save the
> first—were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge
> mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the
> Globe was completely changed each time; the “survival of the fittest”
> nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones—the
> failures—were disposed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and
> shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but
> requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
> 
> The sub‐races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the
> side‐branchlets or family‐races as well. Let any one, well acquainted with
> astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight
> and shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows
> of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises
> and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles—especially with the
> Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years.(737) Then, if
> the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the
> weal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and
> close of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non‐occultist has the disadvantage
> that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing,
> through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he
> may find consolation in the knowledge of, or—if he so prefers—speculation
> about, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of—some 16,000
> years hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics
> recede from the pole _four degrees_ in each revolution from the
> equinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal
> constellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is
> only twenty‐three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the
> equator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end
> of the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized
> races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.
> 
> After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Commentary
> Thirty‐three tells us:
> 
> _Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives
> was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal
> races, and intermarried among giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the
> Poles].... Many acquired divine, nay more—unlawful knowledge, and followed
> willingly the Left Path._
> 
> Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many
> geological periods it took to accomplish this _fourth_ destruction who can
> tell! But we are told that:
> 
> 44. THEY(738) BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH,(739) THE SIZE OF THEIR
> BODIES (_a_). INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS.(740)
> WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH(741) (_b_).
> 
> (_a_) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues
> discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged
> continent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which
> had been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet
> high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all
> twenty‐seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.(742) The
> writer is well aware that the modern Archæologists have decided that
> “these statues are not very old,” as declared by one of the high officials
> of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of
> those arbitrary decisions of Modern Science which does not carry much
> weight.
> 
> We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires
> men went on steadily decreasing in stature—a process already commenced
> after their _physical_ Fall—and that finally, some millions of years
> later, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in
> the older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As
> Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub‐race of the Fourth
> Root‐Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian
> family, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a
> _higher stature than the rest of mankind_; but the Indian tribes and the
> inhabitants of the Indo‐Chinese countries are decidedly below the general
> average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very
> earliest of the surviving sub‐races, the others to the very latest and
> most transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and
> the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon
> follow.
> 
> (_b_) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even
> the knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindûs is denied by our kind and
> learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Âryan Hindûs knew nothing of
> it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled‐for
> slander has been so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by
> the clear _evidence of facts_, as not to need very much additional
> refutation. While the Egyptian Zodiacs(743) preserve irrefutable proofs of
> records embracing more than three‐and‐a‐half Sidereal Years—or about
> 87,000 years—the Hindû calculations cover nearly thirty‐three such years,
> or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of
> the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as
> remarked by the author of the _Sphinxiad_:
> 
>     These _poor benighted_ Hindoos have registered a knowledge of
>     Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the [last local] Flood
>     [in Asia], or Age of Horror.
> 
> And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great
> Flood within the Âryan _historical_ memory—the Flood which submerged the
> last portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded
> are, of course, more traditional than historical.
> 
> The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic
> Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lankâ, or rather
> on that which became Lankâ with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now
> known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lankâ, while the
> enormous Island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic
> Continent already described. As a Master says:
> 
> _Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents
> explored and fathomed by them ... there may be hidden, deep in the
> fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older
> continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that
> they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit
> that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several
> times already submerged, and had the time to reäppear again, and bear
> their new groups of mankind and civilizations; and that at the first great
> geological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical
> cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our
> already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and
> Atlantises come up again?_(744)
> 
> Not identically the _same_ Continents, of course. But here an explanation
> is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a
> Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North
> Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as
> to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must
> be noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root‐
> Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but
> extended in the shape of a horse‐shoe past Madagascar, round “South
> Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the
> Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh‐water deposit called the
> Wealden—which every Geologist regards as the mouth of a former great
> river—is the bed of _the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the
> Secondary age_. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of
> Science—its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary‐
> age Northern Lemuria, demanded by their data? Professor Berthold Seemann
> not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded
> Australia and Europe _as formerly portions of one continent_—thus
> corroborating the whole “horse‐shoe” doctrine already enunciated. No more
> striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that
> the _elevated ridge_ in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which
> runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the
> British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then _shifts almost
> at right angles_ to proceed in a _south‐easterly_ line _toward the African
> coast_, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a
> remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would
> establish the reality of a submarine horse‐shoe junction with a former
> continent in the Indian Ocean.(745)
> 
> The _Atlantic portion of Lemuria_ was the geological basis of what is
> generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a
> development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely
> new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth
> Root‐Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the
> shifting and re‐shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can
> be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in
> natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth‐Race Atlanteans were
> developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third‐Race Men, centred,
> roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid‐Atlantic
> Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and
> peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and
> ultimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans.
> After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the
> highest Occult authority, that:
> 
> _Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than
> Europe with America._(746)
> 
> The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will,
> of course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever
> work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that
> its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific
> proofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction
> will vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that
> sciences—Geology, Ethnology, and History included—were pursued by the
> Antediluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future “finds” will
> justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as
> H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such
> archaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldæans, Chinese, and
> Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting “_myriads_ of
> centuries”;(747) and the latter points to the fact that:
> 
>     Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without
>     mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth.
>     Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period.
>     The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy.
>     It was already mature.(748)
> 
> To this Professor R. Owen adds that:
> 
>     Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community
>     _before_ the time of Menes.
> 
> And Winchell states that:
> 
>     At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and
>     numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this
>     first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a
>     physician, and left _anatomical books_.
> 
> This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who
> records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian
> priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000
> or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have
> elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left
> without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete
> records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the
> Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few
> are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to
> understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its
> symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that
> of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the
> seven different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts.
> Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different
> planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from,
> one of the following standpoints:
> 
> 1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.
> 
> 2. The Idealistic.
> 
> 3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
> 
> The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially
> of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in
> terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely _mythical_ element in
> any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they
> were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during
> the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of
> thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought;
> parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the
> most difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language,
> representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the
> _Vedas_, the _Book of the Dead_, or, to a certain degree, in the _Bible_,
> is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of
> the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any
> ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter
> that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane
> thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to
> say—_i.e._, in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves
> of solar myth and sexual worship—how is it to be expected that the profane
> scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals
> with the husk or shell of the dead‐letter, and devotes himself to the
> kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word‐symbols, can never expect to
> get beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists.
> 
> Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.,—all the head‐figures
> of the World‐Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or
> geological—all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and
> effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such
> Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as
> _historical_ records, therefore—whether they were sidereal, geological, or
> even simply allegorical—of a moral event on other and higher planes of
> being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the
> long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
> 
> To speak of a race nine “yatis,” or twenty‐seven feet, high, in a work
> claiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of “Jack
> the Giant‐Killer,” is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your
> proofs?—the writer will be asked. In history and tradition, is the answer.
> Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist
> in oral and written lore. India had her Dânavas and Daityas; Ceylon had
> her Râkshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldæa,
> her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with
> the famous giants, Anakim.(749) Moses speaks of Og, a king whose
> “bedstead” was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide,(750) and
> Goliath was “six cubits and a span in height” (or 10ft. 7in.). The only
> difference found between “revealed scripture” and the evidence furnished
> to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch,
> Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the _skeletons
> of giants_, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them _had
> personally seen_, the _Bible_ interpreters unblushingly demand that
> Geology and Archæology should believe, that several countries were
> inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews
> were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and
> David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter
> or the giants has to be given up.
> 
> Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal
> men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archæology claims several
> such on this Earth, though beyond wondering “what these may be”—it has
> never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the
> Easter Island statues already mentioned, to what epoch belong the colossal
> statues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archæology, as usual, assigns
> them to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does
> in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the
> readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first
> examine what is known of them to orthodox Science.
> 
>     Teapi, Rapa‐nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost
>     2,000 miles from the South American coast.... In length it is
>     about twelve miles, in breadth four ... and there is an extinct
>     crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in
>     craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of
>     their activity remains.(751)
> 
> But who made the great stone images(752) which are now the chief
> attraction of the island to visitors? “_No one knows_,” says a reviewer.
> 
>     It is more than likely that they were here when the present
>     inhabitants [a handful of Polynesian savages] arrived.... Their
>     workmanship _is of a high order_, ... and it is believed that the
>     race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru
>     and other portions of South America.... Even at the date of Cook’s
>     visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty‐seven feet in height
>     and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while
>     others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was
>     so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of
>     thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which
>     these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in
>     length, twelve to sixteen broad ... all built of hewn stone in the
>     Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of
>     Pachacamac, _or the ruins of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru_.(753)
> 
> “_There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built
> up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them_,” adds the reviewer
> very suggestively—without explaining _how_ they could be built otherwise,
> unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of
> the best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The
> images at Ronororaka are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil,
> and one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types,
> though all are long‐headed, are different; and they are evidently meant
> for portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form;
> their head‐dress, moreover—a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it
> to cover the back portion of the head—shows that the originals were no
> savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked, Who made
> them?—but it is not Archæology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer,
> even though the latter recognizes in the island a portion of a submerged
> continent.
> 
> But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the
> most gigantic in the whole world?—for Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty,” now
> at New York, _is a dwarf_ when compared with the largest of the five
> images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place,
> speak of a mountain “all honeycombed with gigantic cells,” with two
> immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern
> Miaotse (_vide supra_, quotation from _Shoo‐King_), the last surviving
> witnesses of the Miaotse who had “troubled the earth”; the Jesuits are
> right, and the Archæologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these
> statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are
> discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of
> colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky
> Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of
> old. “Masses of enormous human bones” were found “in America, near Munte
> [?]” a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which
> local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran
> America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.(754)
> 
> Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are
> they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages,
> defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the
> instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal‐warriors of Nadir Shah?
> Bamian is a small, miserable, half‐ruined town in Central Asia, half‐way
> between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh‐i‐baba, a huge mountain of the
> Paropamisian, or Hindu‐Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the
> sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of
> Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis‐Khan in the
> thirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which
> are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes,
> once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their
> Vihâras. Such Vihâras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the
> rock‐cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some
> of these caves five enormous statues—of what is regarded as Buddha—have
> been discovered or rather _rediscovered_ in our century, for the famous
> Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he
> visited Bamian in the seventh century.
> 
> The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily
> proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and
> taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or _seventy_
> feet higher than the “Statue of Liberty” now at New York, as the latter is
> only 105 feet or 34 mètres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself,
> between whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease,
> measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which
> is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen
> feet taller than the said “Liberty.”(755) The third statue is only 60 feet
> high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger
> than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of
> the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of “toga”; M. de Nadeylac
> thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head,
> the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable
> indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove
> nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of
> Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears,
> this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due
> to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience
> of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who _knows and
> hears all_, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures
> nothing can escape. As a Shloka says:
> 
> _The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of
> the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance._
> 
> Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindû, and an approach to such ears is found
> only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort
> their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of
> the Miao‐tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in
> the first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking
> of the colossal statue, says that “the shining of the gold ornamentation
> that overlaid the statue” in his day “dazzled one’s eyes,” but of such
> gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in
> contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is
> made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made
> the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far
> later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far
> earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it
> represent?
> 
> Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query,
> and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five
> statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing
> in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered
> with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent
> Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day
> with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is
> repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of
> the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk‐
> ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock‐cut
> ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the
> Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their
> Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the
> Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable
> record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.
> 
> The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal
> body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of
> future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived
> the Atlantean Deluge. The second—120 feet high—represents the Sweat‐born;
> and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the Race that fell, and
> thereby inaugurated the first _physical_ Race, born of father and mother,
> the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on
> Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch
> when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic
> fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison
> with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the
> latter.
> 
> These are, then, the “Giants” of antiquity, the ante‐ and post‐diluvian
> Gibborim of the _Bible_. They lived and flourished one million years ago
> rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua,
> whose hosts were as “grasshoppers” in comparison with the Jews, are thus a
> piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for
> Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the
> Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions
> of years.
> 
> In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear
> in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:
> 
>     It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for
>     false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or
>     truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade
>     themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort....
> 
>     But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing
>     for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage
>     to have the bounds and limits of God’s will, and the power of our
>     common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no
>     greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of
>     our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....
> 
>     If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason
>     cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our
>     sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde‐folde,
>     we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands;
>     verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that
>     receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things,
>     were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them
>     as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756)
> 
> A fair‐minded scholar, before denying the possibility of _our_ history and
> records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions
> scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by
> these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth
> of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried,
> even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more
> glance at the subject‐matter treated of in the Section which follows.
> 
> Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
> 
> De Mirville, in his enormous works, “Mémoires Adressées aux Académies,”
> carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his
> abode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred
> pages of “historical evidence” that, in the days of “miracle,” both pagan
> and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That
> finally, the “Christ‐stone,” or Christ‐rock, “the spiritual Rock” that
> followed Israel,(757) “became a Jupiter‐lapis,” swallowed by his father
> Saturn, “under the shape of a stone.”(758) We will not stop to discuss the
> evident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the
> sake of proving the “Satanism” of idols, though a good deal might be
> said(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism
> and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn,
> every available evidence to hand, to show that: (_a_) had there been no
> giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a
> Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and
> (_b_) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so
> many witnesses to “oracular” and “speaking” stones.
> 
> In the _Achaica_ we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work,
> he had regarded the Greeks as mighty _stupid_ “for worshipping stones.”
> But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: “I have changed my way of
> thinking.”(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and
> statues, which is the same thing—a crime with which Roman Catholics are
> unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do—one may be allowed to believe in
> what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without
> deserving to be called an “idiot” by modern Pausaniuses.
> 
> The reader is referred to the _Académie des Inscriptions_, if he would
> study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of
> magic and psychic powers. In a poem on “Stones” attributed to Orpheus,
> these stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritês, the “Serpent‐stone”
> and “Star‐stone.”
> 
>     The Ophitês is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has _the gift of
>     speech_; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound
>     _similar to the cry of a child_. It is by means of this stone that
>     Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761)
> 
> Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these “bétyles,” call them
> “_animated_ stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus
> and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially
> never parted with his Ophitês, which he carried in his bosom, and received
> oracles from it, delivered _in a small voice resembling a low
> whistling_.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who “from a Pagan had become one of
> the _lights of the Church_,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses
> he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question,
> “which it answered occasionally in a _clear and sharp small voice_.”
> Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan
> Ophitês, we ask?
> 
> The famous stone at Westminster was called _liafail_, “the speaking
> stone,” and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen.
> Cambry, in his _Monuments Celtiques_, says he saw it when it still bore
> the inscription:(763)
> 
>     _Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum_
>     _Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem_.
> 
> Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heræscus, who could distinguish at a
> glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and
> Pliny mentions stones which “ran away when a hand approached them.”(764)
> 
> De Mirville—who seeks to justify the _Bible_—enquires very pertinently,
> why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old _chior‐
> gaur_ or the “dance of giants” (from _côr_, “dance,” whence _chorea_, and
> _gaur_, “giant”)? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from
> the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as _Voyage dans le
> Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants_, and of various learned
> works on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far
> fuller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In
> those regions—true forests of rocks—immense monoliths are found, “some
> weighing over 500,000 kilograms.” These “hanging stones” of Salisbury
> Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids
> were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, _if not
> giants_, could ever raise such masses—especially those at Carnac and West
> Hoadley—range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent
> the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem
> to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest
> touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men
> should they attempt to displace them.
> 
> Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans,
> we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural
> origin; that, a rock when “weathering”—_i.e._, losing flake after flake of
> its substance under the influence of the weather—assumes this form; that,
> the “tors” in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this
> cause. And thus since all Scientists consider the “rocking stones to be of
> purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks
> in layers”—our statement will be justly denied, especially as “we see this
> process of rock‐modification in progress around us to‐day.” Let us then
> examine the case.
> 
> First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often
> these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they
> are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata
> unknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the
> seas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of
> granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the
> reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains;
> and that they must have been brought over “from immense distances and with
> prodigious efforts.”(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from
> Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English
> Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin “_perhaps even
> African_.”(767)
> 
> This is a strange _coincidence_, for Irish tradition attributes the origin
> of her circular stones to a _Sorcerer who brought them from Africa_. De
> Mirville sees in this Sorcerer “an accursed Hamite.”(768) We see in him a
> dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived
> till the birth of the British Islands—a giant in any and every case.(769)
> Says Cambry, naively:
> 
>     Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could _human_ power
>     and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has
>     accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day
>     [!!].(770)
> 
> Nevertheless, it was _human_, though gigantic power, which accomplished
> it, and no more “Nature” alone than God or Devil.
> 
> “Science,” having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit
> of man are simply the production of “blind forces,” is quite capable of
> accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine
> morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic
> rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision,
> given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the
> Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa
> and Asia to England and Ireland!
> 
> It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying:
> 
>     I believed for a long time in _Nature_, but I _recant_, ... for
>     chance _is unable to create_ such marvellous combinations, ... and
>     those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who
>     have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near
>     Concarneau.
> 
> Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the _moving_
> rocks, or “rocking stones” situated on the slope of Golcar (the
> “Enchanter”) says:
> 
>     The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium
>     made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771)
> 
> In _Stonehenge_, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:
> 
>     Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone,
>     or “sarsen” stone, locally called “grey wethers.” But some of the
>     stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to
>     astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably
>     the North of Ireland.
> 
> To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the
> subject published in 1850 in the _Revue Archéologique_, are worthy of
> being quoted:
> 
>     Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful
>     machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe,
>     masses, before which the word _materials_ seems to remain
>     inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and
>     that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things
>     themselves. Besides which, these _immense rocking_ stones, called
>     sometimes _routers_, placed upright on one of their sides as on a
>     point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch
>     is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive
>     knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter‐motion, surfaces, plane,
>     convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean
>     monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De
>     la Vega, that “the demons seem to have worked on them more than
>     men.”(772)
> 
> For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask
> whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing
> millions of pounds, can be the work of Palæolithic _savages_, of cave‐men,
> taller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we
> are? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to
> the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader
> of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona,
> which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it
> elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count
> Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact,
> tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea.
> On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned
> William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in
> the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of
> what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the
> Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, “whence it _ran away several times_,
> and so they were forced to weight it with lead.”(773) Here we have immense
> stones stated by all antiquity to be “living, moving, speaking, and self‐
> perambulating.” They were also capable, it seems, of making people run
> away, since they were called _routers_, from the word to “rout,” or “put
> to flight”; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and
> sometimes called “_mad_ stones.”(774)
> 
> The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be
> blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and
> that they were called for this very reason the “stones of truth.”(775)
> 
> _This is history_, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in
> later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the
> more ancient “rocks of destiny” of older nations; and their motion, or
> _rocking_, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone
> had the key to this ancient _reading_. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that
> it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through
> “these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants,”
> that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:
> 
>     In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi
>     had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776)
> 
> and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed
> in such a manner that “a single finger can move it, while the weight of
> the whole body makes it resist.”(777) Why then should not the rocking
> stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the
> same mode of _divination_ or oracular communications? The hugest of them
> are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham
> Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more
> ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the
> plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know
> more of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used
> during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy
> and _magic_. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in
> the _Antiquités de France_ (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba
> (the “Field of Death,” or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be
> identical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, “a
> prominence and a central tomb.” Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr.
> Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling
> the tombs the “dwellings of the Râkshasas” or giants. Several stone
> circles, “considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all
> such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great
> numbers,” when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, “were found to
> contain _human bones of a very large size_.”(779)
> 
> Again, De Mirville is right in his _generalization_, if not in his
> conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly
> witnesses to “great natural geological commotions” (Charton), and “the
> work of Nature” (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just:
> 
>     We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to
>     class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works
>     are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate
>     on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize
>     once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton
>     for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of
>     Antiquity.(780)
> 
> This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the
> voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert.
> Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to
> say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval
> Theology in _its_ interpretations of the so‐called _Revelation_. Science
> would have men descend from the pithecoid ape—a transformation requiring
> millions of years—and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years!
> Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection
> and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish,
> from reptile to bird and mammalian—yet it refuses to man, who is
> physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of
> his external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have
> been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to‐day, why could not the
> monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man—the link
> between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this
> “theory” than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making
> of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, _as a distinct
> genus_ in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific
> than the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and
> consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities
> of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal;
> but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material
> aggregates and their environment, to call to life a _fully conscious man_,
> even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor
> cousins” of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that
> (objective) Life on our Globe “is a logical postulate of scientific
> natural history,” but add that the rejection of a like _spiritual_
> involution, from _within without_, of invisible subjective Spirit‐
> Life—Eternal and a Principle in Nature—is more illogical, if possible,
> than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by
> “blind forces” inherent in Matter, without any _external_ help.
> 
> Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a
> cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a
> progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material,
> which resulted in the production of a state of matter named _organic
> protein_; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states
> having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and
> majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of
> brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind‐pipes and bellows;
> after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and
> symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s “Requiem”;
> this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., _ad infinitum_, its keys
> playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own
> inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it
> is precisely in such wise that the materialistic _savants_ tell us that
> the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its
> spiritual crown.
> 
> Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when
> writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words
> apply to our doctrine.
> 
>     Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived
>     as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations _on
>     a preëxisting kind of being_.(781)
> 
> Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a
> modification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even
> supposing for argument’s sake that there is _nothing_ within him to last
> longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is
> not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the
> laboratory by what we may literally call _artificial evolution_”(782)—we
> answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great
> Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever
> attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.” The
> Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in
> Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster will
> have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either,
> will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless
> indeed he does that with which the “Progenitors” are credited, namely,
> leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the “Empty Form.” But even
> this would be an _artificial_, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors”
> had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become _Gods_ before they
> became Men.
> 
> The above digression—if indeed it is one—is an attempt at justification
> before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.
> 
> It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our
> present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology,
> and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the
> pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to
> offer than _blind_ faith. _Universal_ tradition is by far the safer guide
> in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages
> together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World’s
> “Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”(783)
> 
> 45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS
> (_A_).
> 
> 46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE
> ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (_B_).
> 
> (_a_) As this subject—the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this
> Round—is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say
> anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great
> Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret
> Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on
> account of its depravity, or because it had become “black with sin,” but
> simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which—like everything
> else under our Sun—is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was
> when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.
> 
> (_b_) Thus the Giants perished—the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the
> fancy of popular tradition. But “all holy saved,” and alone the “unholy”
> were “destroyed.” This was due, however, as much to the _prevision_ of the
> “holy” ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and
> Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the
> Commentary says:
> 
> _Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to __
> inhabit that Sacred Island—__“__from whence the last Saviour will
> come__”__—now kept mankind from becoming one‐half the exterminator of the
> other [as mankind is now_—H. P. B.]. _It [mankind] became divided. Two‐
> thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the
> Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one‐third
> remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race—the Divine
> Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect
> those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like
> the Lemurians—alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and __“__were seen no
> more__”__...!_
> 
> Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
> 
>     47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups
>     of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with
>     the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race,
>     the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest
>     glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology
>     of the _Bible_, and “universal” history slavishly following it.
>     The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind.
> 
> 47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED
> REMAINED. THE MOON‐COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (_A_).
> 
> 48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED
> OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
> 
> 49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE‐DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787)
> WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (_b_)....
> 
> (_a_) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with
> it, but living and ever‐recurring tradition does. History—or what is
> called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our
> fifth sub‐race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub‐divisions of the
> first sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race which are referred to in the
> sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The
> “moon‐coloured”—_i.e._, the First and the Second Races—were gone for ever;
> ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third
> “Deluge” of the Third Lemurian Race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail
> sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this
> is the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:
> 
> _The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents
> whose holes are now under the Triangular Stones._
> 
> Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”
> 
> (_b_) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the
> Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the Third, Fourth
> and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind
> of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such
> “pyramids” existed in the “four corners of the world” and were never the
> monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found
> scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and
> amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally
> supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically
> correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless
> many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular
> pyramidal and conical “menhirs” in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many
> of the Danish “tumuli” and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with
> their inseparable companions, the “nuraghi,” are so many more or less
> clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first
> settlers on the newly‐born continent and isles of Europe, the “some
> yellow, some brown and black, and some red” races that remained after the
> submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years
> ago—Plato’s Island excepted—and before the arrival of the great Âryan
> races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East.
> Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race
> so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the
> skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi,
> will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken
> some day. We may disparage the foolish self‐glorification of the Arcadians
> who styled themselves “older than the Moon” (προσέληνοι), and of the
> people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun
> appeared in Heaven—but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at
> the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones
> of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic
> Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with
> the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom
> Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames,
> from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that
> he is now.
> 
> But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the
> history of human evolution _is_ traced in Heaven as it is traced on
> underground walls. Humanity and the _Stars_ are bound together
> indissolubly, because of the _Intelligences_ that rule the latter.
> 
> Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr.
> Staniland Wake writes:
> 
>     It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in
>     the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids,
>     but also with the constellations.(788)
> 
> The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “Great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor:
> 
>     We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at
>     the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples,
>     ... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation....
>     It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in
>     sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded
>     respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789)
> 
> The reasons for this _singularity_, however, have been made abundantly
> clear in this work. It only shows that there were _several_ Deluges
> confused in the memories and traditions of the sub‐races of the Fifth
> Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several
> others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald
> Massey—an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still
> only a self‐initiate—declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion
> and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and
> that Atlantis was no better than an “astronomical allegory.” But the great
> zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly
> interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what
> that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the
> Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory.
> 
>     [Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through
>     the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special
>     month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in
>     the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being]
>     consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes
>     with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac—Aquarius, or the
>     Waterman.(790)
> 
> But even this is preceded in the old Records by the _pre_‐astronomical
> Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above
> Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The
> Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of
> the Great Dragon, the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the
> Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine
> reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of
> Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the
> third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race or the Atlanteans. When was it?
> Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of
> the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, _the poles have been thrice inverted_.
> 
> We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are
> represented by the Signs of the Zodiac—a fact which offers a handle to
> Materialists upon which to hang their one‐sided theories and opinions—have
> too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too
> important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to
> consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the “first
> Divine Kings,” who are said to have “redescended,” guided and _instructed_
> our Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim
> historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more
> details on the subject of “Serpents.”
> 
> The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further
> elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern
> works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to
> be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to
> compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs.
> And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often
> referred to) of the “tempter of man”—in the orthodox light of the
> Church—can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to
> exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at
> the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made
> out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly
> connected with the grotesque personage called the “Devil,” and every proof
> which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected
> and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend
> to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the
> subjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to
> examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more
> details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the
> most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine—the bulk of
> which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.
> 
> Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
> 
> The name of the Dragon in Chaldæa was not written phonetically, but was
> represented by two monograms, meaning _probably_, according to the
> Orientalists, the “scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently
> remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a
> serpent, or a fish.” To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to
> Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript
> amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying
> something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the
> Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of
> the Dragon in ancient Chaldæa. It was from Chaldæa that the Hebrews got
> _their_ symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians,
> who made of the “scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power.
> 
> A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British
> Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the
> same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a
> “tree,” and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of
> the “tree” is the Dragon‐Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two
> “Chaldees” ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator;
> while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane
> clergy. Not much of the literal “biblical event” there, as any Occultist
> can see!
> 
> “The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the
> Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures
> and the “Serpent.”
> 
> “The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed” the Fifth
> Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that _real_
> serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess—now become almost an
> axiom with men of Science—that those who in antiquity wrote upon various
> sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous
> people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves.
> Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the
> Profane.
> 
> “Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those _Gods_ whom
> men call _Dragons_. And Ælianus, treating in his _De Naturâ Animalium_ of
> these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well
> understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with
> reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:
> 
>     For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, _has within
>     himself something still more of the divine nature_ of which it is
>     better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791)
> 
> The “Dragon” symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings,
> the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the
> “Self‐born,” the Logos, the Hindû Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called
> the Naasenians, or Serpent‐worshippers, he was the Second Person of the
> Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its
> seven “Stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and
> Omega” in _Revelation_. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon”
> was applied to the “Wise” men.
> 
> This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and
> mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern
> day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted
> civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation
> of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do
> it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now
> taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
> 
> Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven
> originate with St. John, in his _Revelation_? Emphatically we answer—No.
> St. John’s “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.
> 
> In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to
> examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several
> aspects.
> 
> The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
> 
> Every Astronomer—not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers—knows that,
> figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path
> of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles
> of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called “Serpents” in the
> allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.
> 
> This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”—the
> Dragon “Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune” according to the Peratæ
> Gnostics, the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni,
> whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.
> 
> But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this
> symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret
> Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the _Vendîdâd_ complaints uttered
> against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal
> spring of Airyana Vaêjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and
> death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption—he knows that
> the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the
> Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle
> of inclination to each other. The two axes were _no more parallel_; hence
> the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô “by the good river Dâitya” had
> disappeared, and “the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana”—say the
> exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had
> passed from the equator, and that the “Land of Bliss” of the Fourth Race,
> its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation
> and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great
> antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo‐Âryans of the post‐
> diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the
> summits of which their forefathers had met _before_ the Flood, and
> conversed with the pure “Yazatas” or celestial Spirits of the Elements,
> whose life and _food_ they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein:
> 
>     The _Vendîdâd_ seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere
>     of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a
>     whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara‐Korum
>     chain.(794)
> 
> The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the
> truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a
> hawk’s head lying across its diameter.
> 
>     Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the
>     ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise
>     from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000
>     [odd] years, must have “redden’d with the solar blaze”; and _each
>     sign must have been vertical_ to the polar region.(795)
> 
> Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North
> Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the
> South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has _seven_ keys, Meru and
> Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities,
> while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the “two poles”; the
> latter meaning led to their being often rendered in _exoteric_
> sectarianism as the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we
> for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical
> significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and
> nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern
> Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the
> “Mountain” and the other the “Pit.” As the author just quoted half
> explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. “Heli‐on is the Sun in
> his highest,” Heli‐os or Eli‐os meaning the “most high,” and Acheron is 32
> degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus
> supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The
> vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded
> the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing,
> toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always
> appeared above the horizon—they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the
> high abode of the Gods, these were said to _ascend_ and _descend_
> periodically; by which (astronomically) the _Zodiacal_ Gods were meant,
> the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of
> the Heaven.
> 
>     In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the
>     meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole
>     to the north horizon; crossing the _eight coils of the serpent_
>     [eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would
>     seem like an imaginary _ladder_ with _eight staves_ reaching from
>     the earth up to the pole, _i.e._, the throne of Jove. Up this
>     ladder, then, the Gods, _i.e._, the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended
>     and descended. [Jacob’s ladder and the Angels] .... It is more
>     than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this
>     ladder.(796)
> 
> This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from
> Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific
> and especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was
> purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius
> say of those who euhemerized it: “_Judæa gens, radix stultorum_.”
> 
> But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search
> of scientific corroboration for their dead‐letter texts, persist in seeing
> in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of _Genesis_, Satan, the enemy of
> mankind; whereas it is really—a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to
> forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and
> Instructors, but also the _minor_ Gods—the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs.
> The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed,
> and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in
> that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindû Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura
> Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or
> Amesha Spentas, the “Immortal Benefactors,”(797) the “Word,” or the Logos,
> and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These “Immortal Benefactors”
> are described in _Zamyad Yasht_ as:
> 
>     The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great,
>     helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like
>     mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are _the
>     creators and destroyers of the creatures_ of Ahura Mazda, their
>     creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.
> 
> These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple
> character of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the “Serpents of
> Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura
> Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians—the Star‐
> Yazatas of the Zoroastrians—or again the seven Planets (including the Sun)
> of every religion.(798) The epithet, “the shining, having efficacious
> eyes,” proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the
> spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or
> psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “Watchers,” the Pitris,
> or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.
> 
> When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more
> need of _forcing_ them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men
> will _know_ then, that there never yet was a great World‐reformer whose
> name has passed into our generation, who (_a_) was not a direct emanation
> of the Logos (under whatever name known to us) _i.e._, an _essential_
> incarnation of one of the “Seven,” of the “Divine Spirit who is
> sevenfold”; and (_b_) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They
> will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the
> ages, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is
> impossible _for them_ to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is
> found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the _Dabistan_; why the numbers
> and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna
> and Buddha speak of themselves as reïncarnations, Krishna identifying
> himself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his
> previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the _very supreme_
> Brahmâ,” is yet called Anshânshâvatâra—“a part of a part” only of the
> Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time
> a “Prince on Earth,” who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in
> Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the
> son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains
> all this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first
> appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized
> as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had
> reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth
> Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during
> the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn
> under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation
> at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had
> become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though _de facto_ the
> One Supreme in Nature.
> 
> This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven,
> once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of
> creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol.
> These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally
> lead to inextricable confusion.
> 
> Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern
> Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s _Histoire de la
> Magie_,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from
> the _Zohar_. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the
> “interlaced triangles,” a _white_ man above and a _black_ woman below
> reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and
> protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on
> each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God,
> “Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.”
> Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as
> emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have
> the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in
> the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and
> historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them.
> Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years.
> This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great,
> succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two
> Kabiri personifying the _opposite poles_. Herodotus(801) tells posterity
> that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an
> inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a
> man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These
> were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the
> passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the
> heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles
> _inverted_, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which
> each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of
> the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the
> equatorial regions, and _vice versâ_. These Kabirim were the “Deluge”
> Gods.
> 
> This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion
> among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and
> classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the
> identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei,
> Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletæ with the Kabiri.
> And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis,
> and our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth
> Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri‐Titans were seven Great Gods,
> cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because,
> perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with _at‐al‐as_, the “divine
> sun,” and with _tit_, the “deluge.” But this, if true, is only the
> exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on
> the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe‐inspiring Great
> Gods—the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult
> Nature—become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic “Fingers,” with the Adept‐healers
> by metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying “Ghosts,”
> must be sought in the Etruscan word _lars_, “conductor,” “leader.”
> Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletæ as “fire worshippers,” and Faber
> believes it to be derived from _al‐orit_, the “God of fire.” Both are
> right, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the “highest” God,
> toward whom the Planetary Gods “gravitate” (astronomically and
> allegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar
> Deities, though Faber’s etymology, that “Lar is a contraction of El‐Ar,
> the solar deity,”(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the
> Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletæ, they were the seven
> Planets—astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our
> Protectors and Rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic
> worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and
> dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they
> respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all
> belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân
> Chohans. The Sabæans, who worshipped the “Regents of the Seven Planets”
> just as the Hindûs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes
> (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos
> were borrowed from the Sabæans and then disfigured by the Jews
> (exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in
> _Genesis_.(806) Seth is the “Progenitor” of those early men of the Third
> Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân
> Chohan and belonged to the _informing_ Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch),
> or Hermes, was said to be his _son_—Enos being a generic name for all the
> early “Seers” (Enoïchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti
> says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of
> Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were
> regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or
> Enoch);(807) that thither Sabæans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted
> prayers _seven times_ a day, _turning to the North_ (Mount Meru, Kaph,
> Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about
> the Sabæans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote
> 200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was
> consecrated to a _star_” (a Star _Regent_ rather), Abd Allatif assures us
> that he had read in ancient Sabæan books that “one pyramid was the tomb of
> Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes”:(809)
> 
>     Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some
>     writers, Hermes was his son,
> 
> adds Mr. Staniland Wake in _The Great Pyramid_.(810)
> 
> Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were
> the Great Cosmic Gods—the Seven and the _Forty‐nine_ Sacred Fires—in the
> Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the
> profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or
> seven—the male and female principles—the _crux ansata_. This division
> shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while
> others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter);
> Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or
> Kasmilos (Hermes—not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812)
> but “he of the sacred legend,” which was explained only during the
> Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to
> the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas,
> is really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal
> much.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way,
> that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two
> Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These
> two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole,
> and the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the
> spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus,
> Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read
> esoterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in
> the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show
> how the “Father of the Gods” and the “merry God of Wine” were also made to
> personify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic,
> electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references
> to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In
> Astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure”; and so are the
> Kabiri‐Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri‐Titans, to whom Diodorus
> ascribes the “invention of Fire”(815) and the art of manufacturing iron.
> Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was
> Prometheus.
> 
> But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan‐Kabirim were also the
> Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great
> Volcanic Energies—the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial
> works—does not prevent them from being, in their original divine
> characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought
> light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They
> are preëminently in every Theogony—especially in the Hindû—the Sacred
> Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty‐nine, according as the allegory
> demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni‐putra, or
> Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names
> in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name
> _kabeiros_ meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek καίω “to
> burn.” The Semitic word _kabirim_ contains the idea of “the powerful, the
> mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greek μεγάλοι, δυνατοί, but these
> are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their
> origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia,
> Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was
> always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic
> localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian
> Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them _Infernal_ Gods.
> 
> They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius
> Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a
> sanctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that
> none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy
> precincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact
> that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as
> well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and
> cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and
> terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon—as it is now
> regarded—was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in
> the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings
> of the “Divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilization,
> and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and
> perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have
> appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the
> memory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of
> letters (the Deva‐nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws
> and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic,
> so‐called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus,
> Asclepius, all those Demi‐gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the
> revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop
> Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain
> truth—would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole
> prototype, named Noah—all are generic names.
> 
> It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of
> agriculture, by _producing_ corn or wheat. What Isis‐Osiris, the once
> living Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily;
> they all belong to one class.
> 
> That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by
> the Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes,
> and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols
> of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for
> purposes of seducing Goddesses—only in the unclean fancies of profane
> Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of
> his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his
> psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to
> Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple
> and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret
> Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding
> the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that
> which is dead—a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All
> the peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the
> exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the “brazen serpent”
> of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and
> prudence of the “serpent” by Jesus himself, “Be ye _wise_ as serpents and
> harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth
> Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate
> successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of
> the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his
> dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The
> aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the
> Dragon is a human, albeit _divine_, Being. Speaking of the “Yellow
> Dragon,” the chief of the others, the _Twan‐ying‐t’u_ says:
> 
>     His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in
>     company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He
>     wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes,
>     fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is
>     perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible].
> 
> And Lü‐lan asserts that Confucius said:
> 
>     The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in
>     the clear (water) [of Life].(820)
> 
> Our Divine Instructors.
> 
> Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the
> Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or
> continent, which it calls Ma‐li‐ga‐si‐ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber
> spell “Maurigasima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own.
> Kæmpfer, in his _Japan_,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to
> the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun,
> the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a
> warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his
> descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the
> Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.
> 
> At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a
> multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual,
> psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present
> work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
> 
> Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name
> the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or
> Pitris; with the Chinese Chim‐nang and Tchan‐gy—their “Divine Man” and
> Demi‐gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul‐lil—the Creative God and the
> “Gods of the Ghost‐world”; with the Egyptian Isis‐Osiris and Thot; with
> the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco‐Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the
> story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the _seven_ and _ten_ Rishi‐
> Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki‐y; or _ten_ and _seven_
> Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten
> and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive
> Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas
> of Volume I. From Manu, Thot‐Hermes, Oannes‐Dagon, and Edris‐Enoch, down
> to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven
> Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven
> primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and
> reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the
> other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as
> Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as
> “Divine Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As
> Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had
> flourished in their country only since the time of Isis‐Osiris, whom they
> continued to adore as Gods, “though they had become princes in human
> form.” And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:
> 
>     It is said that this prince [Isis‐Osiris] built cities in Egypt,
>     stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use
>     of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.
> 
> When Abul Feda, in his _Historia Anteïslamitica_,(824) says that the
> “Sabæan language” was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means
> Astronomy. In the _Melelwa Nahil_,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of
> Agathodæmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a
> “King of Egypt.” The _Celepas Geraldinus_ gives us some curious traditions
> about Henoch, who is called the “Divine Giant.” In his _Book of the
> Various Names of the Nile_, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells
> us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the
> Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in
> the _Bible_; then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he
> communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who
> passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), “the author of thirty
> books,” was “Sabæan by origin”—_i.e._, belonged to the Saba, “a Host”:
> 
>     Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship,
>     he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty
>     cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to
>     Egypt where he became its King.(827)
> 
> Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather
> one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different
> characters. In the _Burham i Kati_, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of
> the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and
> Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the
> Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt,
> and civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of
> these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the
> sciences from _latent to active potency_, _i.e._, with having been the
> first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna
> Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
> 
> Not only does Herodotus, the “father of history,” tell us of the
> marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed
> by the Dynasties of Demi‐gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole
> series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato,
> Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.
> 
> As Creuzer shows:
> 
>     It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the
>     gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In
>     the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all
>     things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole
>     world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid
>     may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of
>     spirits.(830)
> 
> It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who
> have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of
> Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could
> never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept
> the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to
> recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much
> contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them “a
> superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying
> priests of Heliopolis.” As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:
> 
>     All those historians and priests, so _veracious_ when repeating
>     stories of _human_ kings and men, suddenly become _extremely
>     suspicious_ no sooner do they go back _to their gods_.
> 
> But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the
> genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of
> Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the
> most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:
> 
>     Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his
>     own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest
>     mythic times, or the _Reigns of the Gods and Heroes_.... At the
>     very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the
>     conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these
>     mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had
>     transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of
>     Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth‐Hermes, and the
>     Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign
>     of each of these.(831)
> 
> These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by
> Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The
> chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of
> humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from
> the profane multitudes.
> 
> Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of
> Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest
> Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once
> upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by
> Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology.
> Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first
> country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from
> the north‐east.
> 
> When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the
> Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest
> Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious
> three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the
> riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who
> told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (_a_) that the poles of the
> Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (_b_) that even since
> their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three
> times within the plane of the Ecliptic.
> 
> Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the
> _sameness_ of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:
> 
>     What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian]
>     Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien‐hoang
>     or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti‐hoang, or Kings
>     on Earth, and the Gin‐hoang, the King men, distinctions which are
>     in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in
>     enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi‐gods and
>     Mortals.(832)
> 
> As says Panodorus:
> 
>     Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that
>     the _Reign of the Seven Gods_ who rule the world took place. It
>     was during that period that those benefactors of humanity
>     _descended_ on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the
>     sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833)
> 
> Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt
> showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs‐Piromis—the
> Arch‐prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, _born one from the other_,
> without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their
> first _human_ King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood,
> three hundred and forty‐five in number, _each of which had its name,
> history and annals_. They also assured Herodotus—unless the most truthful
> of historians, the “father of history,” is now to be accused of fibbing,
> _just in this instance_—that no historian could ever understand or write
> an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned
> the history of the _three_ Dynasties that preceded the human—namely, the
> Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi‐gods, and of the Heroes, or
> Giants.(834) These “three” Dynasties are the three Races.
> 
> Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three
> Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the
> Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or
> Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as
> men in Bhârata‐varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the
> Third Root‐Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it
> symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of
> the divisions of Jambu‐dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual)
> works _par excellence_; the land of Initiation and of Divine
> Knowledge.(835)
> 
> Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when,
> although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies,
> which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:
> 
>     We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the
>     Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, _the natural
>     good sense and the upright judgment_ of the ancient peoples, quite
>     foreign to our _entirely material_ ideas of mechanics and physical
>     sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but
>     simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in
>     sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or
>     repulsion; they saw in them _living_ bodies, _animated_ by spirits
>     as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... _This doctrine
>     of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature_, from which
>     it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the
>     physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended
>     together.(836)
> 
> It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct
> conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the
> Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without
> such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can
> ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis
> of physical matter only.
> 
> Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they _feel_—and some
> see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not.
> They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects
> and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without
> seeing, or so much as sensing them.(838)
> 
> Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of
> the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls
> Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been
> preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned
> Jesuit, who in his _Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, writes:
> 
>     I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties
>     and Atlantis] as pure fables (_meras nugas_) to the day when,
>     better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those
>     legends must be, after all, only the development of a great
>     truth.(839)
> 
> As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his _Meropis_, made the priests of
> Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they
> revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to
> Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing
> two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, warrior race, and a
> pious, meditative race(840)—which Theopompus symbolizes by two
> cities.(841) The pious “city” was _continually visited by the Gods_: the
> belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings _invulnerable_ by iron,
> who could be _mortally wounded_ only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont
> treats this as a pure _fiction_ of Theopompus and even sees a fraud
> (_supercherie_) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced
> by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:
> 
>     A _supercherie_ which was based on a belief, the product of the
>     faith of the whole of antiquity; a _supposition_ which yet gave
>     its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with
>     the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this
>     land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe),
>     which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, _the great
>     transoceanic land_ situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is
>     reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the
>     Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition
>     can well be nothing else but a _universal chimera_!(843)
> 
> It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole
> world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about
> the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a
> Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and
> especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets
> of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course
> and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese
> teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not
> recorded the existence once upon a time of a _Holy_ Island beyond the sun,
> Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of _Immortal_ Men?(845) Do
> they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who
> survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have
> found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside,
> invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
> 
> As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
> 
>     If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the
>     reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi‐gods; and still
>     earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all
>     the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals
>     so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our
>     historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once
>     universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere
>     them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such
>     considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The
>     ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which _we accept no
>     longer because we no longer understand them_, must have had
>     motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater
>     proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us
>     from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his
>     _Laws_, says that, long before the construction of the first
>     cities, Saturn had established on earth a _certain_ form of
>     government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden
>     Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in
>     ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age,
>     and what was the occasion he had to introduce this _fable_ into a
>     treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear
>     and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to
>     turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great
>     changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, _in heaven and on
>     earth_, and the present state of things is one of the results
>     [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that
>     have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn’s reign, and
>     of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory;
>     but _one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these
>     revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them_. Yet
>     ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able
>     to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846)
> 
> That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the
> natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man
> built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on
> Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man
> could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe
> through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power
> over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we
> ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a
> ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,
> _i.e._, _a being of a species quite different from their own and of a
> superior nature_. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and
> placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii
> (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”
> 
> It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over
> the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world
> had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts
> devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry,
> Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire,
> wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848)
> 
> And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of
> nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
> 
> As say the Commentaries:
> 
> _Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the
> __“__Lords of Wisdom,__”__ for the benefit of those they ruled from other
> Lokas [Spheres]._
> 
> Now:
> 
>     The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that
>     the race has ever made.... The _first use of fire_, and the
>     discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the
>     domestication of animals; and, above all, _the processes by which
>     the various cereals were first developed_ out of some wild grasses
>     [?]—these are all _discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in
>     importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare_. They are all
>     unknown to history—all lost in the light of an _effulgent
>     dawn_.(849)
> 
> This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be
> asserted that there are no grains and fruits _unknown to earth_, then we
> may remind the reader _that wheat has never been found in the wild state;
> it is not a product of the earth_. All the other cereals have been traced
> to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat
> has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin.
> And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal
> with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has
> been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the
> servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat _seven
> cubits high_.(850)
> 
> Says the Egyptian Isis:
> 
>     I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to
>     mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in
>     the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert
>     my nurse.(851)
> 
> Sirius was called the Dog‐star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha,
> called the great Instructor of Mankind.
> 
> The Chinese _Y‐King_ attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the
> instruction given to men by celestial genii.”
> 
>     Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they
>     see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full
>     the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even
>     in the most sacred places.(853)
> 
> The “Sons of God” _have_ existed and _do_ exist. From the Hindû
> Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind‐born Sons, down to
> the Bne Aleim of the Jewish _Bible_, the faith of the centuries and
> universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value
> is “independent criticism” so‐called, or “internal evidence”—based usually
> on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal
> testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For
> instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of _Genesis_, which repeats
> the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form,
> and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the _Zohar_.
> 
>     There were giants in the earth in those days; _and also after
>     that_, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters
>     of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
>     which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854)
> 
> What does this sentence, “and also after that,” signify unless it means:
> There were Giants in the Earth _before_, _i.e._, before the Sinless Sons
> of the Third Race; _and also after that_ when other Sons of God, lower in
> nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw
> that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long
> break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or
> through the wickedness of the “mighty men ... men of renown,” among whom
> is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “God saw that
> the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this
> was _after_ the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced
> _monstra quædam de genere giganteo_, monsters from whence sprang the lower
> races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying‐out tribes
> and the huge anthropoid apes.
> 
> And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman
> Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above
> quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and
> biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne
> puts it:
> 
>     Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how
>     could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could
>     not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855)
> 
> This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever
> understood,” as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)—can only be
> explained by the Occult doctrine, through the _Zohar_ to the Western, and
> the _Book of Dzyan_ to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen;
> what the _Zohar_ tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the
> Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857)
> 
> We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the
> “Adversary,” is included in _Job_ among the “sons” of God or Bne Aleim who
> visit their father.(858) But of this later on.
> 
> Now the _Zohar_ says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were _not_
> guilty, but mixed _themselves with mortal men because they were sent on
> earth to do so_.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim
> belonging to the tenth sub‐division of the “Thrones.”(860) It also
> explains that the Ischins—“Men‐spirits,” _viri spirituales_(861)—now that
> men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science,
> Homunculi which are not “small men” but “men _smaller_ (in the sense of
> inferiority) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the
> Ischins had then, _i.e._, gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
> 
> But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is
> nothing of the kind. Azazel is a _mystery_, as explained elsewhere, and it
> is so expressed by Maimonides:
> 
>     There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning
>     Azazel.(862)
> 
> And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted
> before, and one who ought to know, says:
> 
>     This venerable divine name (_nome divino e venerabile_) has become
>     through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a
>     mountain, and a he‐goat.(863)
> 
> Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal
> (separated) and El (God), hence “one separated from God”—the Devil. In the
> _Zohar_, Azazel is rather the “sacrificial victim” than the “formal
> adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it.(864)
> 
> The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this “Host” by
> various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “Host”
> are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same
> standpoint. The _Zohar_ shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the
> desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these “Spirits” as
> being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or
> Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” Angels in the _Book
> of Enoch_, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound
> themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel
> taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to
> make _one see what is behind him_—viz., “magic mirrors.” Amazarak taught
> all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of
> Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs;
> Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) “These
> seven were the first instructors of the fourth man” (_i.e._, of the Fourth
> Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what
> its dead‐letter expresses?
> 
> It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine
> Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and
> Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had
> voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes,
> to a lower plane and thus transform the _animal_ of clay into an immortal
> _God_. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:
> 
>     The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man‐God,
>     is above even Angels.
> 
> On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in
> the coils of Matter.
> 
> Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the
> anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man‐like
> God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon,
> or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery;
> theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many
> a saying in the _Bible_ and even in the _New Testament_ which has hitherto
> remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan
> and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would‐be
> infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse
> on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially
> revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been
> restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods
> and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead‐letter or dogmatic
> religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and
> unadorned with fancy.
> 
> Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in _Isis Unveiled_, and a
> still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered
> throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which
> the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points
> out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine
> Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every
> worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions
> included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who
> do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride”
> of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke
> of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again
> the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically
> replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly
> repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when
> repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever
> they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos,
> or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of
> _Genesis_—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved
> the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a
> devil?”
> 
> Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the _Rig Veda_, the Occult volume _par
> excellence_ of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the
> _Purânas_—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account
> of the true Wisdom Religion. In the _Rig Veda_, Indra is the highest and
> greatest of the Gods, and his Soma‐drinking is allegorical of his highly
> spiritual nature. In the _Purânas_, Indra becomes a profligate, and a
> regular drunkard on the Soma‐juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is
> the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas
> (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent‐gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic
> Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the
> _militant_ Host. Turning to the _Bible_, we find Satan, one of the “Sons
> of God,”(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the
> Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the _Kabalah_,(867) Samael,
> who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the
> Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects
> alike Michael and Samael, _who are one_? Both proceed, it is taught, from
> Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan _Book
> of Numbers_ Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the
> higher _terrestrial_ Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but
> diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is
> Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They
> diverge, because the one (Michael) is _influenced_ by Neshamah, while the
> other (Samael) remains _uninfluenced_. This tenet was perverted by the
> dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit,
> uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of
> Samael‐Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of
> its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
> 
> The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
> 
> Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper,
> and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth
> is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in
> every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi‐savage regions. It
> took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane,
> and was once universally established through the formerly universal
> heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world
> were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the
> cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,
> 
>     Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the
>     priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of
>     his God.(868)
> 
> Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its
> Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus,
> and heliolatrous worship with its Sun‐gods crossed over into the land of
> the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the
> divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of
> the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and
> Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of
> which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As
> Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is
> one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of
> Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to
> the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought
> in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we
> find (_a_) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (_b_)
> the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality
> and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (_c_) the Hierophants
> of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of
> the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret
> Doctrine.
> 
> There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very
> vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of
> Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile,
> extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent’s
> Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred
> Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally
> known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every
> Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.
> 
> In De Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican Demi‐god, in narrating his
> expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and
> terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a
> Snake’s hole, “_un agujero de colubra_”; and that he was admitted to it
> because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.(869)
> 
> This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake’s
> hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The
> Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled
> themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent‐god,” or “Sons
> of the Dragon.”
> 
> “The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,” says Movers. The
> Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am
> a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin
> brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent’s
> Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these
> temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the
> Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician
> Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the
> surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of “Builders” or
> “Architects,” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was
> such that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the
> mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” as Taliesin says.(871)
> 
> De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐
> Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and
> Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of
> the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”(872)
> 
> Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations,
> to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate
> for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified
> human passions, when the enlightened _Inner Man_ had to either slay them
> or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon‐Slayer,” as having
> happily overcome all the temptations, and a “Son of the Serpent” and a
> Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a _new_
> body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.
> 
> Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of
> Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan.
> He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for
> Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the _dark side_ of Osiris, his
> brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda.
> Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of
> Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and
> Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in
> India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and
> traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
> 
> Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi‐god, the lower part of
> whose body ended in a Dragon’s or Serpent’s tail. During the Churning of
> the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he
> stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who
> had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in
> the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the
> Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the
> ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on
> the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has
> another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon’s head, played a prominent
> part in the Mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikartana’s) Initiation, when the
> Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
> 
> The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were
> modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King‐Snakes, who dwelt in
> cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand‐headed
> Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon‐serpent oracle,
> all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact
> mentioned in the earliest _Purânas_. The children of Surasâ are the mighty
> “Dragons.” The _Vâyu Purâna_ replacing the “Dragons” of Surasâ of the
> _Vishnu Purâna_ by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage
> Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred
> against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and
> “Serpents” of Wisdom.
> 
> We have only to compare the Sun‐gods of every country, to find their
> allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the
> allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric
> systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from
> each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern
> Christian schemes—several Sun‐gods and Dragons are selected at random,
> they will be found to be copied from each other.
> 
> Let us take Agni the Fire‐god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from
> the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the “Angel of the Sun,” the
> first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the “Saviour”—and proceed in
> order.
> 
> (1) Agni, the Fire‐god, is called Vaishvânara in the _Rig Veda_. Now
> Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant‐demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and
> Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by
> Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, “_the golden city, floating in the
> air_.”(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step‐son of these two
> as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni,
> the Fire‐god, or Sun (Kashyapa‐Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda
> or Kârttikeya, God of War, the _six‐faced_ planet Mars astronomically, a
> Kumâra, or Virgin‐youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying
> Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son
> Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka’s Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that
> they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878)
> While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the
> Serpent‐Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra‐han, the “Destroyer of
> Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other
> Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, “Leader of
> the Celestial Host.” Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For
> killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka‐jit, “Vanquisher of
> Târaka,”(879) Kumâra Guha, the “mysterious Virgin‐youth,” Siddha‐sena,
> “Leader of the Siddhas,” and Shakti‐dhara, “Spear‐holder.”
> 
> (2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun‐god, and by comparing the mythical
> accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra,
> Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa‐Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as
> the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “Angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and
> “one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic
> purposes, elevated though they be into not‐to‐be‐questioned Church dogmas,
> prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.
> 
> Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos‐Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the
> World,”(880) who arises out of the Golden‐winged Cup (the Sun); hence he
> is the Sun‐god _par excellence_. At the moment of his birth he asks for
> his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before
> his birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like
> Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the _too holy
> and wise_ Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the
> “golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the
> Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the
> Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt
> “from all sensual love.”(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya,
> and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover,
> the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic
> Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child‐birth, as Python attacks
> Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W.
> E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and
> understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling
> of the _esoteric_ meaning of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, he would have
> understood St. John’s _Revelation_, and even the _Pentateuch_, better than
> he does. For the way to the _Bible_ lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer,
> as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.
> 
> (3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of
> St. John’s _Revelation_, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without
> the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its
> origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late
> George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the
> Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
> 
>     Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam,
>     as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards
>     he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the
>     spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who _curses him_,
>     and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of
>     humanity.(883)
> 
>     This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of
>     evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.
> 
>     The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the
>     Archangel Michael in _Revelation_] undertakes to lead the heavenly
>     host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit,
>     ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885)
> 
> This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last
> and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of
> the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the
> Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.
> 
> The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated,
> more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events
> being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a
> cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its
> forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the _Vedas_ this Ahi‐Vritra
> is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is
> shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder
> and lightning the God compels Ahi‐Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth,
> and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra‐han or the “Slayer
> of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.”
> Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the
> depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
> 
> The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over
> them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the
> account in the _Vendîdâd_. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by
> Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven
> Karshvares(886) of the Earth”;(887) which Karshvares in their seven
> applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to
> the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense
> is applied to a physical, supra‐mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In
> the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host,
> Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright
> Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”(888) The “Sravah”—a word which
> the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same
> Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the
> Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those
> _manifested_ Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the
> Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.
> “Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and
> affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker
> of the _material_ world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta
> Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of
> Ahura Mazda,”(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and
> Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious
> Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never
> pronounced outside the temple.
> 
> Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of _Genesis_, and one of the primeval
> Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of
> Death, for the _Talmud_ says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the
> same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who
> also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is
> identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the
> Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos”
> or—Diabolos, the Devil.
> 
> Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the _Book of the Dead_—is
> worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon
> is the all‐destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that
> throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the
> murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology
> demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was
> discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like
> Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon,
> that has the head and tail of a serpent.(891)
> 
> Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their
> “Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in
> Chaos, brought to order by the Sun‐gods or _Creative_ Powers. In the _Book
> of the Dead_ those principles are called the “Sons of Rebellion.”(892)
> 
>     In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise
>     called the _deceiving Serpent_ ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in
>     _Air_, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there
>     is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893)
> 
> In the Scandinavian _Eddas_ the “War” of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or
> Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and
> the “Wolf” who comes out of “Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth.
> The “Evil Spirits,”(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos,
> have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have
> finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most
> civilized and learned races of this globe _since its creation_, and have
> become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:
> 
>     The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and
>     Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war
>     on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the
>     Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895)
> 
> This is only another version of the Hindû “War in Heaven,” between Soma,
> the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it
> plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into
> and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.
> 
> It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the
> real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols
> of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings,
> divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the
> true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a
> few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have
> hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as _wise_ as the serpent,
> had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the
> learned Egyptian Gnostics of the “Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have
> reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of _Wisdom_,
> the divine Sophia, and a type of the All‐good, not the All‐bad, were that
> reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a
> common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has
> never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its
> great Wisdom. The _draco volans_, the “flying dragon” of the early
> painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian
> animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in
> the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of
> Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as
> prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The
> Jews formerly worshipped the latter _idol_ themselves, but, after the
> religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called
> that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and
> their own usurper—the “One God.”(897)
> 
> The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an “Adversary” (from the verb
> _shatana_, “to be adverse,” “to persecute”) belongs by right to the first
> and cruellest “Adversary” _of all the other Gods_—Jehovah; not to the
> Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the
> worst, even in the dogma, the “Adversary” _of men_. This dogma, based as
> it is on the third chapter of _Genesis_, is as illogical and unjust as it
> is paradoxical. For who was the first to _create_ that original and
> henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely,
> but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying, “It is not good that the man
> should be alone,” made woman, and “brought her unto the man.”(898) If the
> unpleasant little incident that followed _was_ and is still to be regarded
> as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in
> a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of
> the first chapter to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.”
> It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief,
> the “_agent provocateur_,” and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,
> “the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,” the poor Tragos having
> to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of
> course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the
> drama of humanity in _Genesis_ in their dead‐letter sense. Those who read
> them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and
> hypotheses; they _know_ how to read the symbolism therein contained, and
> cannot err.
> 
> There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning
> of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity
> falsely called by that name. It was a “blind” purposely created by the
> Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten‐fold care after the
> Christians had despoiled them of this God‐name which was their own
> property.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The
> personage who is named in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ variously
> as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same
> person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or
> groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the _Kabalah_. Jehovah appears
> only in chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the first verse of which he is named
> Cain, and in the last transformed into _mankind_—male and female, Jah‐
> veh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one
> of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if
> they ate of the forbidden fruit, “ye shall not surely die”—kept his
> promise, and made man immortal in his _incorruptible nature_. He is the
> Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter
> iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that
> closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the
> “boneless” Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature;
> thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of
> Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation
> and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah‐Cain, the male
> part of Adam the _dual_ man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in
> her Abel, _the first natural woman_,(901) and sheds the _virgin blood_.
> Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the
> correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the
> original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain) the Evil
> was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of
> Adam,”(902) and the _Talmud_ adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and
> Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”(903)—it becomes easy to see that
> Jehovah (mankind, or Jah‐hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent)
> are one and the same in every particular. _There is no Devil, no Evil
> outside mankind to produce a Devil._ Evil is a necessity in, and one of
> the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress
> and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death
> for that of life—_that man may live for ever_.
> 
> Satan represents metaphysically simply the _reverse_ or the _polar
> opposite_ of everything in Nature.(904) He is the “Adversary,”
> allegorically, the “Murderer,” and the great Enemy of _all_, because there
> is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of
> the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be
> called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the
> Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and
> the _rationale_ of certain early Christian sects—called _heretical_ and
> viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We
> may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded,
> and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day,
> since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the
> Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true
> character of the _treacherous_ apostle having never been correctly
> presented before the tribunal of humanity.
> 
> As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become
> clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets
> were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus
> it becomes comprehensible why Ilda‐baoth was regarded by most of them as
> the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure
> Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God,
> though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother
> Elohim; the latter representing the all‐embracing, manifested Deity only
> in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first
> differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the
> phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the
> Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905)
> They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao‐Jehovah, who is an
> emanation of Ilda‐baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying
> what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that “Cain had
> been generated by Samael or Satan.”
> 
> The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of
> _fallen_ men—allegorically, and _those men themselves_—Esoterically. Thus
> the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni‐Elohim, the Sons of
> God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between
> Thrætaona and Azhi‐dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth,
> according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of
> Evil, “of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.” And the conflict
> of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata.
> In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and
> Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons
> and Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent
> of _Genesis_, and thus prove the new dogma.
> 
> Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
> 
> It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again
> the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to
> prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend,
> and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon
> one man. Noah is either a _myth_ along with the others, or one whose
> legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in
> Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or
> Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and
> research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri
> or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight,
> and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre‐Atlantean
> Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of
> _power and generation_, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal‐
> Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”;
> or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal
> again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, “such as have
> cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he,
> or _they_ who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for
> Poseidon.(908)
> 
> The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each
> and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key
> to the origin of Cain’s genealogy in the third chapter of _Genesis_; they
> give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed
> blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the
> Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of
> Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them
> with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were
> destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that
> of Jehovah?
> 
> The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They
> are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:
> 
>     Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth‐place of the
>     Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909)
> 
> The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been
> previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace
> of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood
> legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left
> for the present.
> 
> But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of
> nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs
> contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who
> are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to
> disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further
> equally futile attempt to show them as _real_, _historical_ men, has only
> led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to
> discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed _revelation_. For
> instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the
> further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus‐Saturn is
> also proved.
> 
> That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the
> Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion
> that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and
> that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character
> given him in _Genesis_.(912)
> 
>     He was צדיק, Sadic, a _just man_, and perfect in his generation.
>     All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and
>     through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913)
> 
> Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the
> Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi‐zedek). True enough, as this information
> has descended to us through the _Preparatio Evangelica_ of Eusebius, it
> may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than
> likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s
> Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic,
> Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the
> Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s
> characteristic as a _just man_, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious
> Melchizedek, “king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,” after “his
> own order”;(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually,
> astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they
> became rabbinically and kabalistically.
> 
> In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as _personifications_, we find the
> author of the _Source of Measures_ enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings
> in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:
> 
>     Now, Mars was the Lord of _birth_, and of _death_, of _generation_
>     and of _destruction_, of _ploughing_, of _building_, of
>     _sculpture_ or stone‐cutting, of _architecture_, ... in fine, of
>     all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the _primal
>     principle_, disintegrating into the modification of _two opposites
>     for production_. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace
>     of the day and year, _the place of its increase of strength_,
>     Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the
>     house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as _birth_, was
>     _Good_; as _death_, was _Evil_. As _good_, he was _light_; as
>     _bad_, he was _night_. As _good_, he was _man_; as _bad_, he was
>     _woman_. He held the cardinal points, and as _Cain_, or
>     _Vulcan_,(916) or _Pater Sadic_, or _Melchizadek_, he was lord of
>     the _ecliptic_, or _balance_, or _line of adjustment_, and
>     therefore was _The Just One_. The ancients held to there being
>     seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater
>     Sadic, _The Just or Right One_, was Lord of the eighth, which was
>     _Mater Terra_.(917)
> 
> This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough,
> and establishes the identity.
> 
> The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead‐letter and within the period
> of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the
> pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to
> follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather
> fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:
> 
>     There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of
>     Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of
>     Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri
>     of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the
>     scriptural Shem.(918)
> 
> The Kabirim, the “Mighty Ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyân
> Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the
> Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the
> Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.
> 
> The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
> Continents.
> 
> Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to
> unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the
> one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the
> former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of
> such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by
> Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every
> available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with
> the so‐called Grecian “fables.”
> 
> Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia,
> as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The
> stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy
> tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the
> history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel
> of the history and the pre‐historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says
> as follows:
> 
> Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding
> the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who
> reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs
> were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but
> wiser and kinder.
> 
> Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of
> the _Râmâyana_ and the children of Bharata‐varsha, or India; the Ante‐ and
> the Post‐diluvians of the _Bible_.
> 
> Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called
> Gian‐ben‐Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919)
> He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving
> against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic,
> the _sorcery_ of the Devs. Gian‐ben‐Gian had reigned 2,000 years when
> Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter
> them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being
> produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments,
> and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate,
> or Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called
> Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam.
> These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given
> by Berosus.
> 
> Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to
> identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew
> traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to
> speak of Pre‐Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly
> inferred, by sending out Cain—_one of the only two living men on
> earth_—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921)
> 
> Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the
> 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the
> last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on
> this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may
> restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the _Critias_:
> 
>     First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed
>     _since the war of the nations_, which lived above and outside the
>     Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this
>     side.
> 
> In the _Timæus_ Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that
> most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between
> 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old
> when the first great “Island,” or Continent, was submerged, there seems
> hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in
> truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the
> Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose
> exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to
> posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and
> speaking of a “week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar
> years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical
> week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24
> hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the
> present times call an age a “century.” They of Plato’s day, the initiated
> writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years;
> while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their
> chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years,
> during which space of time—_i.e._, from the first appearance of the Âryan
> Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began
> gradually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down
> to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis—the Âryan
> races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant
> races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the
> Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian
> history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of
> hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the
> numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the
> Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of
> Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had
> never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the
> Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their
> isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left
> untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our
> era.
> 
> History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first
> time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the _Bible_, and
> its queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus _could_ tell is
> confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at
> Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:
> 
>     Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, _whose name I consider
>     it impious to divulge_.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks
>     and there is a _lake_ near, surrounded with a stone wall formed
>     _in a circle_.... In this lake they perform by night, that
>     person’s adventures, which the Egyptians call _Mysteries_: on
>     these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the
>     particulars of them, _I must observe a discreet silence_.(924)
> 
> On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved
> and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations.
> From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to
> divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for
> divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the
> infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were
> threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them.
> Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in
> those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the
> Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after
> initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of
> the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.
> 
> And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews!
> What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our
> conceptions of Science and the duration of things!
> 
> The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now
> entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only
> transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf
> (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein
> statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call
> them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy‐
> two kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years
> each.(926)
> 
> Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was
> murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved
> in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire‐
> worship, as some Orientalists think!
> 
> Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re‐
> discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by
> the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass‐
> work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk,
> again, who is credited with having written the work called _Eternal
> Wisdom_, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and
> Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is
> built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on
> emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it
> can only be inferred from another legend.
> 
> In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war
> against the Giants on a twelve‐legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to
> the _amours_ of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This “Dodecapod”
> was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had
> to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk
> mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his
> tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an
> enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of
> Damavend.(927)
> 
> Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight
> who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great
> enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and
> occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the
> Persian folklore call him the Dev‐bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He,
> too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like
> his grand‐sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far
> more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh‐Anke. A marvellous bird, in
> truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says
> that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles
> and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the
> revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of
> twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give
> us again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the
> Pre‐Adamites, says the “Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!(930)
> 
> What says the _Book of Numbers_? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar
> Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka‐yin,
> Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah‐
> Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo‐geological key), the Third
> Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover,
> symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness” of the Parent Race,
> and of the “Mindless,” _i.e._, committed sin.
> 
> Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf or Kaph. He
> finds there the Peris ill‐treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the
> giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom
> Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the “dry island,”
> _i.e._, the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who
> builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his
> great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate
> punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of
> Dhulkarnayn, the “two‐horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the
> “two‐horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two‐horned” is the epithet
> given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the
> attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world
> from the East to the West.
> 
> Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who
> vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend.
> These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new
> Dynasty.
> 
> Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To
> begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?
> 
> Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the
> Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far
> beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors
> of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an
> unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which,
> nevertheless, are situated the “Fortunate Islands,” wherein, from the
> beginning of life on earth, bubbles the “Fountain of Life.”(933) The
> legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first “dry island”
> (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained,
> since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf, “the stony girdle that
> surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him
> who is possessed of “Soliman’s Ring” to that “Fountain,” if he keep on
> journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying,
> therefore, from Persia _straight_ North, will bring one along the sixtieth
> degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the
> Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one
> between the sixtieth and forty‐fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova
> Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse
> of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to
> cross over the Arctic Ocean.(934)
> 
> Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will
> maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow‐capped summits of Kap, or
> Caucasus, _there is a great continent now concealed from all_; that it is
> reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve‐legged progeny
> of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will
> twelve _wings_,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the
> good pleasure of Simorgh‐Anke, who promised that before she dies she will
> reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and
> within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build
> between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts.(936) This
> relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric
> Cycle.
> 
> It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth
> century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt
> at first, in a country “beyond the Ocean,” a proof of which had been given
> him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:
> 
>     The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that
>     Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky;
>     and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise.
>     During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his
>     posterity now inhabits.(937)
> 
> The twelve‐legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the
> “dry island.”
> 
> The “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are
> well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which
> has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller
> suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice.
> Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the
> Commentaries may become clearer.
> 
> _In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the
> right end_(_938_)_ of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is
> motionless._(_939_)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the
> waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the
> immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(_940_)_ There was eternal
> spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was
> light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(_941_)_
> reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the
> head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated
> [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ...
> Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was
> divided by the Water of Life._(_942_)
> 
> _It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end
> issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It
> gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of
> the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For
> it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the
> life and health of all that lives and breathes._(_943_)_ During the First
> and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the
> great __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the
> first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed
> harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the
> water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the
> World._(_944_)_ She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck_(_945_)_
> downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal
> Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent
> waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn].
> Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was
> now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her
> nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc._
> 
> This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even
> say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of
> human life its Root‐Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part
> of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age,
> and divided by the glacial waters.
> 
> If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which
> came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken
> crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed
> like an unreachable _mirage_ to the few arctic travellers who perceived
> it.
> 
> During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a
> continuation of the “head” from the “neck.” Beginning on both hemispheres,
> on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on
> Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American
> side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the
> neighbouring islands and promontories. _There_ it hardly reached,
> southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; _here_ it formed the
> horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of
> which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the
> fiftieth degree a little South‐West, and the other Kamschatka, the two
> ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of
> Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the
> early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in
> its turn, Atlantis appeared.
> 
> Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.
> 
> Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have
> reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two
> centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He
> even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the
> situation and measurements of the capital of “Atlantis” as given by the
> Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly
> likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and
> parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just
> as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the
> Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately
> only by studying the _Purânas_, that is to say if we will have nought to
> do with the Secret Teachings.
> 
> Three‐quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought
> forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White
> Island,” the Atala of the _Purânas_. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala
> is one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one
> of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947)
> shows, the _Purânas_ place it “on the seventh zone or seventh
> climate”—rather, on the seventh measure of heat—which thus locates it
> between the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the
> same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the
> latitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the
> White Island. Its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the Demon of Terror,
> for he says:
> 
>     In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going
>     to the mountain of _Az‐burj_, or _As‐burj_, _at the foot of which_
>     the sun sets, to fight the _Div‐sefid_, or white devil, the _Târa‐
>     daitya_ of the _Purânas_, and whose abode was on the _seventh
>     stage_ of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the
>     Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)
> 
> Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s
> riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their
> authority—if not their persons—in the eyes of every Hindû scholar, whether
> or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the _Purânas_—on the
> conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations—which has not
> several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the
> metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindûs divided the face of the Globe into
> seven Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and
> seven Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both
> cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of
> “Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh
> Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It
> represents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence
> Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the
> Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever‐frozen white region) in the
> _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas,
> lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that:
> 
>     The two countries north and south of Meru are _shaped like a bow_,
>     ... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the
>     south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru—_beyond
>     which is half of Pushkara_.
> 
> Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and
> allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu‐dvîpa,(950) in the middle of
> which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten
> thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is
> neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “of the same
> nature as the Gods.”(951) Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas,
> and locates there also the Lokâloka. Now Meru, we are told, which is the
> Svar‐loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian
> exoteric religions, is described geographically as “passing through the
> middle of the earth‐globe, and protruding on either side.”(952) On its
> upper station are the Gods, at the nether, or South Pole, is the abode of
> Demons (Hells). How then can Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which,
> Târadaitya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be
> identified with the White Island, which is Shveta‐dvîpa, for reasons given
> in the foot‐note above.
> 
> Wilford accuses the modern Brâhmans “of having jumbled them [islands and
> countries] all together”; but it is _he_ who has jumbled them still more.
> He believes that as the _Brahmânda_ and _Vâyu Purânas_ divide the old
> Continent into seven Dvîpas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond
> which lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence:
> 
>     Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated
>     Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been
>     discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of
>     nature.(953)
> 
> As we find certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests,
> Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala—a
> nether region located at the Southern Pole—we prefer holding to the
> statements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Continents,
> four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and
> two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not
> strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name,
> from Jambu down to Pushkara,(954) refers to the geographical names given
> (i) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the
> period of a Root‐Race, in general; (ii) to what remained of these after a
> geological Race Pralaya, as Jambu, for instance; and (iii) to those
> localities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation
> of new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvîpas(955)—each Continent
> being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded
> with water. Thus, that whatever “jumble” the nomenclature of these may
> represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.
> 
> Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Paurânic Islands—the
> Sixth and Seventh Continents—are yet to come, nevertheless there _were_,
> or there _are_, lands which will enter into the composition of the future
> dry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely
> changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the _Purânas_
> that Shâka‐dvîpa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha‐dvîpa, as
> shown in the _Vâyu Purâna_, is only “a minor island,” one of the nine
> divisions (to which _Vâyu_ adds six more) of Bhârata‐varsha. Because
> Shankha‐dvîpa was peopled by “Mlechchhas [unclean foreigners], who
> worshipped Hindû divinities,” therefore they were connected with
> India.(956) This accounts for Shankhâsura, a King of a portion of Shankha‐
> dvîpa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace
> “which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also,” says
> Wilford.
> 
>     On the banks of the Nîlâ(957) there were frequent contests between
>     the Devatâs [Divine Beings, Demi‐gods] and the Daityas [Giants]:
>     but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader,
>     Shankhâsura, who resided in the ocean, made frequent incursions
>     ... in the night.(958)
> 
> It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts
> of Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles
> took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a
> sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after
> another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other
> wilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Paurânic
> tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said:
> 
>     The people were between two fires; for, while Shankhâsura was
>     ravaging one side of the continent, Cracacha [or Krauncha], king
>     of Crauncha‐dwîp [Krauncha‐dvîpa], used to desolate the other:
>     both armies ... thus _changed the most fertile of regions into a
>     barren desert_.
> 
> That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large
> Continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas
> and islands (called Dvîpas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the
> whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the
> North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics
> of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian _Purânas_, Greek writers,
> and Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan traditions. Wilford, who sorely
> confuses the Hindû and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however,
> clearly.(959) His facts and quotations from the _Purânas_ give direct and
> conclusive evidence that the Âryan Hindûs and other ancient nations were
> earlier navigators than the Phœnicians, who are now credited with having
> been the first seamen that appeared in the post‐diluvian times. This is
> what we read in the _Asiatick Researches_:
> 
>     In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war between
>     Devatâs and Daityas] raised their hands and hearts to Bhagavân,
>     and exclaimed, “Let him that can deliver us ... be our king”;
>     using the word ÎT [a _magic_ term not understood by Wilford,
>     evidently] which reëchoed through the whole country.(960)
> 
> Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated,
> “when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called ÎT, at
> the head of a numerous army, saying ‘_abhayan_,’ or _there is no fear_”;
> and scattered the enemy. “The King ÎT,” explains Wilford, “is a
> subordinate incarnation of Mrīra”—Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?—who
> “reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha‐dvîpa, through
> Barbaradêsa, Misra‐st’hân and Arva‐st’hân, or Arabia,”(961) etc.
> 
> Surely, if the Hindû _Purânas_ give a description of wars on continents
> and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their
> writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs—they who were
> never known to navigate, or cross the Kâla‐pâni, the Black Waters of the
> Ocean, in the days of Phœnician navigation—then these _Purânas_ must be
> older than those Phœnicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years
> B.C. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,(962) for an Adept
> writes:
> 
> _In the above accounts, the Hindûs speak of this island as existing and in
> great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years
> ago._
> 
> But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindû
> Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of
> that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished
> soon after the upheaval of the two Americas(963)—the two Varshas of
> Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on
> it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by
> an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had
> brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun
> sets,” where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,(964) he
> says:
> 
> _We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island,
> and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the
> world_, _i.e._, _in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of
> 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of
> the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is
> represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas,
> Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of
> the __“__White Island.__”_
> 
> Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as
> Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to
> have killed Div‐sefid, the White Devil—a _possible_ personification of the
> ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas—he may perchance be only a
> representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants,
> the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily
> _cursing_ the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only
> an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura,
> and Shankha‐dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and
> ethnologically Plato’s Atlantis in Hindû dress.
> 
> It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island
> is _still existing_, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years
> which have elapsed since Shankha‐dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis,
> disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindûs should have known
> the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical
> demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one
> assumes that:
> 
> _At the time when the summer tropical __“__colure__”__ passed through the
> Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo_ was
> vertical _to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island
> of Atlantis at noon_.
> 
> This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and
> Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became
> connected with Shankha‐dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis). Only, as
> shown by Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_, this must have occurred about 23,000 years
> ago, _astronomically_; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must
> have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have
> passed over Atlantis or Shankha‐dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly
> demonstrated. Say the Commentaries:
> 
> _The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet
> Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who
> descended originally from Shveta‐dvîpa],_(_965_)_ who had mixed with the
> Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then
> Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta‐dvîpa].... Those of
> the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM._
> 
> Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano,
> when the sinking of the “Western Atala,” or Hell, began, and those who
> were saved told the tale to their children. Plato’s Atlantis perished
> between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all
> the while.
> 
> _The __“__fire‐vomiting Monster__”__ survived alone out of the ruins of
> the unfortunate island._
> 
> Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindû fiction (Atala), and
> inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their
> geographical notions and the number seven from them?
> 
>     “The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt
>     that it did once,” says Proclus, “for Marcellus, who wrote a
>     history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an
>     island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed
>     histories relative to the external sea. For _they relate that in
>     this time there were seven islands_ in the Atlantic sea sacred to
>     Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred
>     to Pluto, ... Jupiter, ... and Neptune. And, besides this, the
>     inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] _preserved the memory
>     of the prodigious magnitude_ of the Atlantic island as related by
>     their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the
>     islands in the Atlantic sea. From this _isle_ one may pass to
>     other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land,
>     near which is the true sea.”
> 
>     These seven Dvîpas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute,
>     according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis.... This
>     evidently shows that _Atlantis is the old continent_.... The
>     Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well
>     known to the Paurâunics, some of whom assert that in consequence
>     of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvîpas
>     disappeared.(966)
> 
> Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic.
> Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And
> yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those
> who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their
> respective authorities.
> 
> Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon,
> the mount in the land of Mizpeth—meaning “anathema,” “destruction”—is the
> same as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as
> affirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily
> discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the
> “Lord loved well.” And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said
> scholiasts’ brains, that, when the _Zohar_ explains the “Birds” which
> inspired Balaam to mean “Serpents,” to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at
> whose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy—the opportunity is
> again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the “winged dragons of
> Evil, whose chief is Samael”—the Jewish Satan! As Spencer says:
> 
>     It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the
>     Desert, that the scape‐goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one
>     of them [Azaz(y)el], was sent.
> 
> We say it is not so. The _Zohar_ has the following explanation on the
> practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the “Serpents’
> Works.” It says (part iii. col. 302):
> 
>     It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical
>     Kabalists] work _surrounded by the light of the Primordial
>     Serpent_, which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone
>     composed of myriads of small stars.
> 
> This means simply the Astral Eight, so called by the Martinists, by
> Éliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists.
> 
> The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.
> 
> The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal
> traditions, must now have demonstrated that the _Brâhmanas_ and _Purânas_,
> the _Vendîdâd_ and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek,
> and Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, all have the same
> origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the
> unwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or
> less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre‐
> historic tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into
> further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which
> preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the
> psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our
> Fifth (Âryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the
> other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few
> more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient
> literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one
> Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our
> Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential
> as well as by direct proof, that neither the “legendary” Giants, nor the
> lost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite
> baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find
> itself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped,
> finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number
> in nature, and our figures in general.
> 
> Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete—the disposing of that most
> pernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man‐kind
> is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam
> and Eve in the bower of Eden.
> 
> Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of
> sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah,
> who first _curses_ Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime
> committed, and then _blesses_ his “chosen people” by saying, “Be fruitful,
> and multiply, and replenish the earth.”(967) The Curse was not brought on
> mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the
> still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the
> Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and
> geological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for
> seeking _natural_ union, as all the mindless animal‐world does in its
> proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the
> divine gift, and wasting the life‐essence for no purpose except bestial
> personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of _Genesis_
> will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the
> commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for
> woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that
> woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.” Since that period,
> however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity
> between its seed and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma
> and Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, _bruised the head_ of
> the seed of _the fruit of wisdom and knowledge_, by turning the holy
> mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma
> “bruised the _heel_” of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing
> physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of
> the Fourth Race of mankind,(968) until, from being the healthy king of
> animal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a
> helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the
> Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and
> intelligently bestial of all animals!(969)
> 
> This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only
> one touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the
> Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its
> progress hand‐in‐hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse
> instead of a blessing—a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have
> poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence.
> The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to
> regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically
> depicted by Æschylus in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the
> first Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethereal Man, of the
> pious Kandu and Pramlochâ), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and
> (physiologically) senseless, is described as—
> 
>     Seeing, they saw in vain;
>     Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
>     Through the long time all things at random mixed.
> 
> Our Saviours, the Agnishvâtta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of
> Wisdom”—personified by the Greeks in Prometheus(970)—may well be left
> unrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may,
> in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift;
> but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy,
> as the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” who, when Zeus “ardently
> desired” to quench the entire human race, “dared alone” to save that
> “mortal race” from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say:
> 
>     From sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom.
>     For this by these dire tortures I am bent,
>     Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
>     I who did mortals pity....
> 
> The chorus remarking very pertinently:
> 
>     Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals!
> 
> Prometheus answers:
> 
>     Yea, and besides ’twas I that gave them fire.
> 
>     CHORUS: Have now these short‐lived creatures flame‐eyed fire?
> 
>     PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn....
> 
> But, with the arts, the “fire” received has turned into the greatest
> curse; the animal element, and _consciousness_ of its possession, has
> changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.(971) It
> is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises
> the responsibility of free‐will; the Titanic passions which represent
> humanity in its darkest aspect;
> 
>     The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires,
>     when, with self‐asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the
>     restraints of law.(972)
> 
> Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s _Protagoras_, with
> that “wisdom which ministers to physical well‐being,” but the lower aspect
> of Manas of the animal (Kâma) having remained unchanged, instead of “an
> untainted mind, heaven’s first gift,” there was created the eternal
> vulture of ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair, coupled with
> “the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (556),
> unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven‐appointed
> deliverer, Herakles.
> 
> Now Christians—Roman Catholics especially—have tried to prophetically
> connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be
> made. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine Wisdom and worshipper of
> Absolute Perfection—the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor
> Jehovah—will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove
> that there never has been an _original_ sin, but only an abuse of physical
> intelligence—the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out
> the light of the Spiritual. He will say: All you who can read between the
> lines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek;
> read carefully the “Prometheus Bound,” enacted in the theatres of Athens
> 2,400 years ago! The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Æschylus; but, as
> Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs,
> in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The _crucified_ Titan is the
> personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords
> of Wisdom” or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as
> his name (_Pro_‐me‐_theus_, “he who sees before him” or futurity)
> shows(973)—in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological
> insight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of
> Oceanus:
> 
>     Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492)
>     And among dreams did first discriminate
>     The truthful vision ... and mortals guided
>     To a mysterious art....
>     All arts to mortals from Prometheus came....
> 
> Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be
> the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive
> of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early Races, this
> will be no real digression.
> 
> The subject of Æschylus’ trilogy, of which two plays are lost, is known to
> all cultured readers. The Demi‐god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their
> secret—the mystery of the _Creative Fire_. For this sacrilegious attempt
> he is struck down by Cronus(974) and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and
> Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind
> intellectually, and animal‐like; a _Personal_ Deity, which will not see
> Man “like one of us.” Hence Prometheus, the “Fire and Light‐giver,” is
> chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform
> Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus—
> 
>     E’en he the fore‐ordained cannot escape....
> 
> —ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of
> Zeus—
> 
>     Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787)
> 
>     One of thine [Io’s] own descendants it must be (791)
> 
> —is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his
> own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come.”
> 
> On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other
> allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning—on the
> authority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the
> daughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus—a whole prophecy is constructed by
> some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:
> 
>     And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
>     By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase,
>     Wast hailed _as the illustrious spouse of Zeus_ ... (853)
>     ... stroking thee
>     With _touch alone of unalarming hand_;
>     Then thou _dark Epaphos_ shalt bear, whose name
>     Records his sacred gendering ... (870).
> 
> This was construed by several fanatics—Des Mousseaux and De Mirville
> amongst others—into a clear prophecy. Io “is the mother of God,” we are
> told, and “dark Epaphos”—Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his
> Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that
> Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled _his_ Father down into Hades.
> Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet:
> 
>     ... such marriage he prepares
>     Which from his throne of power to nothingness
>     Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
>     His father Kronos’ curse....
>     .... Then let him sit
>     Confiding in his lofty thunder‐peals,
>     And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
>     For _these shall not avail, but fall he shall,_
>     _A fall disgraceful_, not to be endured.... (980).
> 
> “Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysus‐Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter
> in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “Father of the Gods,” assuming
> the shape of a _Serpent_, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus.
> Io is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a _new race_, and so is
> Demeter—in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but
> it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared
> periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their
> transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the
> mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind,
> having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from
> spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the
> opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive
> state, when _woman knew no man_, and human progeny _was created, not
> begotten_.
> 
> That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter
> shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast
> problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or
> land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light
> will lead on and up to _true spiritual intuition_. Then, as expressed once
> in a letter to a Theosophist,
> 
>     _The world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world
>     will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers
>     to procreate Buddha‐like children—or Demons_.... When that
>     knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the
>     Demons, will die out.
> 
> If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the
> character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course
> “Time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children—the _personal_ Gods
> of exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his stone
> idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as
> mankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and
> intellectual—not spiritual—perfection. When it is as far advanced in its
> spiritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the
> stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself.
> Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, represented in the Sabasian Mysteries by
> the anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers,
> will have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny—Dionysus‐Bacchus, or the
> “dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one,” the Race that will overthrow him. Where
> will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth‐place in
> his prophecy to Io. Io is the Moon‐goddess of generation—for she is Isis
> and she is Eve, the Great Mother.(975) He traces the path of the (racial)
> wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and
> go to Asia’s continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of
> Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her:
> 
>     When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
>     Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)—
> 
> that she must travel Eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,”
> and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian
> Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross
> thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (East of Herodotus’ Scythia)
> to—
> 
>     Pluto’s gold‐abounding flood.... (825).
> 
> This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural,
> the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “the recognized inhabitants of this golden
> region.”
> 
> And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European
> interpreters. Says the Titan:
> 
>     To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land
>     Thou next shalt reach, where dwells a swarthy race
>     Near the Sun’s founts, whence is the Æthiop river;
>     Along its banks proceed till thou attain
>     The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
>     Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends.
> 
> There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we
> must see how the passage is interpreted. Io is told that she has to travel
> Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till
> it falls into the Nile—hence the perplexity. “According to the
> geographical theories of the earliest Greeks,” we are informed by the
> author of the version of “Prometheus Bound”:
> 
>     This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. 1)
>     mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the
>     Indus [having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other
>     river except the Nile ...], seemed to himself to have discovered
>     the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some
>     place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby
>     losing its name Indus, next ... flowed through inhabited land,
>     being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and
>     afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the IVth Georgic echoes the
>     obsolete error.(976)
> 
> Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their
> geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least
> so sinned—not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is
> symbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered
> allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the
> itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the
> river Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nîl or Nîlâ. It
> is the river born on the Kailâsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the
> Gods—22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and
> was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because
> its banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally
> referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred
> nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—have come from
> India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in _Isis Unveiled_.(977)
> 
> Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the
> word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its
> names? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh,
> Nîl, “blue,” and Nîlâ, the “blue river.” The water there is of such a dark
> blue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small
> town on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day.
> Evidently Arrian, who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who
> was ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the
> Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as
> they do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere
> appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old,
> when no Encyclopædias were yet ready for them.
> 
> The race of Io, the “cow‐horned maid,” is then simply the first pioneer
> race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which
> received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from
> India.(978) Therefore Prometheus says to Io(979) that the sacred
> Neilos—the God, not the river—shall guide her “to the land, _three‐
> cornered_,” namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found
> “that far‐off colony.” (833 _et seqq._)
> 
> It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “female
> race” (873) which, “fifth in descent” from dark Epaphos—
> 
>     Fifty in number shall return to Argos.
> 
> Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall—
> 
>     ... A kingly race in Argos bear....
> 
>     But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
>     Bow—famous, who shall free me from these ills.
> 
> When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he
> remarks:
> 
>     This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.
> 
> But “Argos” is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants,
> whence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages
> later that of its neighbour, India—the Aryâvarta of old.
> 
> That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by
> several ancient writers; among others by Cicero(980) and by Clemens
> Alexandrinus.(981) The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the
> fact of Æschylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and
> condemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being
> himself uninitiated, Æschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them
> in his Trilogies on a public stage.(982) But he would have incurred the
> same condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as
> otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the
> secret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is
> not the “father of the Greek tragedy” who invented the prophecy of
> Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed
> by the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.(983) The latter was one
> of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to
> history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius
> on some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however,
> the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
> 
> The translator of the drama wonders how Æschylus could become guilty of
> such
> 
>     Discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the
>     “Prometheus Bound” and that depicted in the remaining dramas.(984)
> 
> This is just because Æschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain
> the intellectual “Sphinx” of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of
> Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter
> represented in the Mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect
> of human physical intelligence—Manas wedded to Kâma; whereas
> Prometheus—the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to
> Buddhi—was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower
> passions, is the Human Soul and nothing more—the _jealous_ God, revengeful
> and cruel in its Egotism or “I‐am‐ness.” Hence, Zeus is represented as a
> Serpent—the intellectual tempter of man—which, nevertheless, begets in the
> course of cyclic evolution the “Man‐Saviour,” the Solar Bacchus or
> Dionysus—_more than a man_.
> 
> Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly
> Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) Avatâra, the glorified Spiritual
> Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos—mankind, or Prometheus,
> on its trial. This, say Brâhmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the
> Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only
> occasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after
> the appearance of Kalki Avatâra, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from
> woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindû deity, Ahura Mazda
> (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus, the Greco‐Olympian Don Juan, Jehovah, the
> jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their
> likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy—vanish and disappear in
> thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the _dark
> aspects_ of all these Deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers”
> and creatures, in exoteric legend—their own _reflection_ on Earth, in
> Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans,
> must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be
> subdued.
> 
> There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust
> contraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of
> spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual,
> that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself
> finally—Self‐redeemed.
> 
> In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto‐
> and anti‐types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them
> at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human
> physical life. Cronus is “Time,” whose first law is that the order of the
> successive and harmonious phases, in the process of evolution during
> cyclic development, should be strictly preserved—under the severe penalty
> of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the
> programme of natural development, that man—higher animal though he may
> be—should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically,
> the Demi‐god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more
> helpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast
> is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its
> indwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse—though
> _foreknown_ and _foreseen_ by the Host personified in that personage, as
> his name well shows.(985) It is in this that rests, at one and the same
> time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a
> portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free‐
> will to passive slavery, intellectual self‐conscious pain and even
> torture, “while myriad time shall flow,” to inane, imbecile, instinctual
> beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the
> programme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed
> itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.(986) But
> while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the
> tortures of the self‐consciousness of his responsibility—the result of his
> free will—besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This
> torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became
> henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was
> still un‐achieved at that period of formation.
> 
> Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical,
> once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the
> chief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.(987) Highly philosophical is
> the allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning him, in the
> primitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi‐gods, and for
> creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then
> as delivering to his (Zeus’) revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods
> of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their
> level, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus
> represents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the
> “Fathers” who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine
> Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who “fell” into
> generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger,
> than the “Prometheans”; therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “The
> lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of
> Zeus,” was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas
> the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the
> meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and
> lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and
> Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic
> tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual
> mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of
> Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and
> repentance. In every such case one sees once more—
> 
>     A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught;
>     The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all—
> 
> a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered
> in self‐sacrifice—
> 
>     For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind—
> 
> as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by
> selfishness and egoïsm in every instance.
> 
> The modern Prometheus has now become Epi‐metneus, “he who sees only after
> the event”; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago
> degenerated into selfishness and self‐adoration. Man will become the
> _free_ Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the
> broken harmony between the two natures—the terrestrial and the divine;
> after which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces,
> invulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality—but
> this cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his
> nature. When man understands that “_Deus non __ fecit mortem_,”(988) but
> that man has created it himself, he will re‐become the Prometheus before
> his Fall.
> 
> For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in
> Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX,
> “Prometheus, the Titan,” etc. In the said Part—a kind of supplement to the
> present portion—every additional information is given upon those tenets
> that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so
> heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of Theology and
> Modern Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards
> often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
> 
> Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza XII.
> 
> The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the
> group called _Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa_, or the “Records of the Thirty‐
> five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are _exoterically_ called. These
> personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion
> Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatâras, etc., as they are
> “Buddhas who have preceded Shâkyamuni” only for the Northern followers of
> the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahâtmâs, or Buddhas, are a
> universal and common property; they are _historical_ Sages—at any rate for
> all the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have
> had its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity.
> They are chosen from among some ninety‐seven Buddhas in one group, and
> fifty‐three in another,(989) mostly imaginary personages, who are really
> the personifications of the powers of the first‐named.(990) These
> “Baskets” of the oldest writings on “palm leaves” are kept very secret.
> Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub‐
> race to which the particular Buddha‐Lha belonged. The one special MS. from
> which the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered
> into more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone
> tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the Fifth Race,
> who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of
> the Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given
> here from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant.
> Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or
> the God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology,
> is one of these thirty‐five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the
> Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest—so
> early, in truth, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where
> now lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land
> from Norway _viâ_ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present
> surround Hudson’s Bay.(991) In similar fashion, in the palmy days of the
> Atlantean Giants, the sons of the “Giants from the East,” a pilgrim could
> perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to
> the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of
> the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written
> outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one
> generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by
> constant transmission “within the book volume of the brain,” and through
> countless æons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written
> document or record. “That which is part of our souls is eternal,” says
> Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at
> the dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit
> that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and
> though “the book volume” of the _physical brain_ may forget events within
> the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections
> can never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft,
> the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical
> senses; yet the shadow of events _that were_, just as much as the shadow
> of the events _that are to come_, is within its perceptive powers, and is
> ever present before its mind’s eye.
> 
> It is this Soul‐voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition
> more than in written history, that what is said below is all true, and
> relates to pre‐historic facts.
> 
> This is what is written in one passage:
> 
> _The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so
> black that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain
> empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races],
> can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who
> can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure
> Blossom?_
> 
> The “Kings of Light” is the name given in all old records to the
> Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The “Azure Seats” are translated
> “Celestial Thrones” in certain documents. The “Flower of Power” is now the
> Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell?
> 
> The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his
> people. They had become bereft of their “Azure” (Celestial) Kings, and
> “they of the deva‐hue,” the moon‐like complexion, and “they of the
> refulgent (golden) face” have gone “to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire
> and Metal”—or, agreeably with the rules of symbolism, to the lands lying
> North and East, from whence “the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked
> in by the Earth and dissipated in the Air.” The wise races had perceived
> “the black Storm‐dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom”—and “had
> fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land”—the
> great ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindûs refer to as their Manus
> and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
> 
> They “of the yellow hue” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now
> classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations;
> and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely
> new races were born; there, they lived and died until the separation of
> the nations. But this “separation” did not take place either in the
> localities assigned for it by Modern Science, nor in the way the Âryans
> are shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Müller and other
> Âryanists. Nearly two‐thirds of one million years have elapsed since that
> period. The yellow‐faced giants of the Post‐Atlantean day had ample time,
> through this forced confinement to one part of the world, with the same
> racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a
> period of nearly 700,000 years, to branch off into the most heterogeneous
> and diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more
> extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from
> gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced
> isolation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred
> thousands of years. If to‐morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear
> and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to
> separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a
> hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized
> nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured
> nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of
> crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative
> savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into _superior_ and
> _inferior_ races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
> 
> Such are the facts given in the Archaic Records. Collating and comparing
> them with some modern theories of evolution, _minus_ Natural
> Selection,(992) these statements appear quite reasonable and logical.
> Thus, while the Âryans are the descendants of the _yellow_ Adam, the
> gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto‐Âryan race, the Semites—and the Jews
> along with them—are those of the _red_ Adam, and thus both De Quatrefages
> and the writers of the Mosaic _Genesis_ are right. For, could chapter v of
> the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our
> Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed
> therein, though of course under different names, the respective years of
> the Patriarchs being turned into periods, and the whole being symbolical
> and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the
> references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean
> nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their
> arts and sciences. If the Third Root‐Race, the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, are
> already spoken of as having been drowned “with their high civilizations
> and Gods,”(993) how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!
> 
> It is from the Fourth Race that the early Âryans got their knowledge of
> “the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabhâ and Mâyâsabhâ, mentioned in
> the _Mahâbhârata_, the gift of Mâyâsura to the Pândavas. It is from them
> that they learnt æronautics, Vimâna Vidyâ, the “knowledge of flying in
> air‐vehicles,” and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and
> Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Âryans inherited their most
> valuable Science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of
> Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geology, Physics and
> Astronomy.
> 
> Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of
> _Exodus_—in its details at least—as narrated in the _Old Testament_,
> original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others,
> simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who,
> upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great
> similarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of “God” at the
> obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “chosen” ones to spoil the
> Egyptians, before departing, of their “jewels of silver and jewels of
> gold,”(994) and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red
> Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the
> Commentary:
> 
> _And the __“__Great King of the Dazzling Face__”__ the chief of all the
> Yellow‐faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black‐faced._
> 
> _He sent his air‐vehicles [Vimânas] to all his brother‐chiefs [chiefs of
> other nations and tribes] with pious men within, saying:_
> 
> “_Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet]
> dry._
> 
> “_The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the
> land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the
> Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to
> descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire
> Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire‐weapons worked by
> Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [__‘__Evil Eye__’__] are stronger
> than they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones.
> They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge]._(_995_)_
> Come and use yours_ [i.e., _your magic powers, in order to counteract
> those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of
> the White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come
> into his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its
> means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities],
> and save his wicked [followers, or people]._
> 
> “_May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every
> Black Face. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May __
> every man true to the Solar Gods bind [paralyze] every man under the Lunar
> Gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny._
> 
> “_And may every Yellow Face offer of his life‐water [blood] to the
> speaking animal of a Black Face, lest he awaken his master._(996)
> 
> “_The hour has struck, the black night is ready._
> 
> “_Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great
> Four._(_997_)_ May the Kings of Light return._”
> 
> _The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept...._
> 
> _When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved...._
> 
> _[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the
> water‐mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to
> the lands of Fire and Metal [East and North]._
> 
> Still, in another passage, it is said:
> 
> _Stars [meteors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they
> slept._
> 
> _The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet._
> 
> _The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters
> slept._
> 
> _The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to
> the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the
> antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the
> Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people]._
> 
> _When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their
> Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone._
> 
> Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the “Dark
> Faces,” who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had “spoilt
> them” and who were in the rear‐guard, for—“the nations that were led away
> were as thick as the stars of the milky way,” says a more modern
> Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.
> 
> _Like as a dragon‐snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led
> on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded
> like a running stream of sweet waters ... many of the faint‐hearted among
> them perished on their way. But most were saved._
> 
> Yet the pursuers, “whose heads and chests soared high above the water,”
> chased them “for three lunar terms” until finally reached by the rising
> waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet
> and the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
> 
> This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar
> story in _Exodus_ was built many hundred thousands of years later. The
> biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the
> Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the
> Chaldæan narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tiles in the
> British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing
> the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so
> on? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the “Lords of the Dark
> Face,” may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the
> yellow‐faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the
> “chosen people”! One more statement has to be made. There have been
> several Divine Dynasties—a series for every Root‐Race beginning with the
> Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven
> Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldæan records belonged to the
> Fifth Race, which, though generally called Âryan, was not entirely so, as
> it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other
> names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our
> disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in
> whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient
> Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists
> deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence
> of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the
> Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptians. It is their
> degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis, who built the
> first Pyramids in the country, and that certainty before the advent of the
> “Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well
> inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the
> Pyramids that:
> 
>     There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which,
>     it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of
>     which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different
>     places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be
>     lost.
> 
> These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never
> had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last
> remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those races which are dimly
> suspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Charles Gould, the well‐
> known Geologist, says:
> 
>     Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of
>     nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers?
>     Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
>     embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we
>     in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
>     years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and of China,
>     shadowy mementoes of pre‐historic man, handed down by tradition,
>     and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from
>     others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have
>     been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which
>     destroyed them with all their civilization.(998)
> 
> After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who
> wrote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould:
> 
> _The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and
> Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the
> civilizations that began with the Third Race [—after its separation]._
> 
> But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied
> to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great
> civilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there
> stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the
> beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization, during which
> period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in _Isis
> Unveiled_:
> 
>     Why should we forget that, ages before the prows of the
>     adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician
>     vessels had circumnavigated the Globe, and spread civilization in
>     regions now silent and deserted? What Archæologist will dare
>     assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt,
>     Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the
>     sandy banks of the Nile, did _not_ erect the monumental Nagkon‐Wat
>     of Cambodia; or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors
>     of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British
>     Columbia by Lord Dufferin; or those on the ruins of Palenque and
>     Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our
>     museums—last mementoes of the long “lost arts”—speak loudly in
>     favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and
>     over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have
>     buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first
>     crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked
>     by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will—at least, in the
>     present century.
> 
> And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once
> more asked:
> 
>     How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been
>     reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance
>     up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier
>     explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
>     occupied?
> 
>     If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do
>     they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian
>     forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of
>     Luxor—the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue
>     which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on
>     the first day of their application; the indestructible cement of
>     the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which
>     can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking;
>     the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is
>     found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
>     ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass?
>     And if Chemistry is so little able to rival even the early
>     mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which,
>     according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of
>     years ago. The more Archæology and Philology advance, the more
>     humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made,
>     the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who,
>     perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have
>     been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire
>     of superstition.
> 
> Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the
> Atlanteans—had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the
> knowledge of the Zodiac.
> 
> As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason,
> that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets,
> and these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world’s history is recorded
> in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the
> Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sûfî, the
> writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of
> the past—and also of the _future_—history of our Globe. Yet the original
> records exist, most undeniably.
> 
> As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those
> they do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the
> reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work
> of Denon(999) in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and
> examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to
> trust to what other students—who have examined and studied both very
> carefully—have to say of them. The assertion of the Egyptian Priests to
> Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had
> formerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the
> Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions.
> 
>     And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles,
>     there are marks which show, that it was not the last time they
>     were in that position; _but the first_ [—after the Zodiacs had
>     been traced]. Capricorn, is, therein, represented at the North
>     Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole;
>     which is a confirmation that, originally they had their winter
>     when the Sun was in Cancer. But the chief characteristics of its
>     being a monument commemorating the _first time_ that the Pole had
>     been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.(1000)
> 
> Broadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid
> was built 3,350 B.C.;(1001) and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750
> years before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty—during which the
> Pyramids are _supposed_ to have been built. Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the
> age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that all
> the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already—
> 
>     Made very great progress in the arts of civilization _before the
>     age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley
>     of the Nile_—(1002)
> 
> is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively
> modern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in _pre‐
> historic_ times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo‐Hor, the
> “servants of Horus,” were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M.
> Maspéro affirms, it is to this “pre‐historic race” that—
> 
>     Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know
>     it, from the commencement of the historic period.
> 
> And Staniland Wake adds:
> 
>     They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the
>     most important sanctuaries.(1003)
> 
> This was _before_ the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly
> arisen from the waters. Yet:
> 
>     They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the
>     Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in
>     civilization.
> 
> As says Lenormant:
> 
>     It was the country of the great pre‐historic sanctuaries, seats of
>     the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in
>     the origin of civilization.
> 
> What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost
> of 5,000, years B.C. (Maspéro). Now it is claimed that it is by means of
> the Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approximate year of
> the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained.
> 
>     Assuming that the long narrow downward passage leading from the
>     entrance was directed towards the pole‐star of the pyramid
>     builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the
>     passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the then pole‐star.... Mr.
>     Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole‐
>     star was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in
>     2,170 B.C., says: “either of these would correspond with the
>     position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but
>     Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the
>     later epoch is far too late.”(1004)
> 
> But we are also told that:
> 
>     This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an
>     extraordinary one ... it could not occur again for a whole
>     Sidereal Year.(1005)
> 
> This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of
> three Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years
> ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least
> as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.
> 
> Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same
> characteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who
> know the Hindû symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out
> from the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of time are
> correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian
> Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the
> Dion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing
> downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing
> with the _original_ conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey:
> 
>     In many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up
>     over his back, and ending with a Serpent’s head; thereby, shewing
>     that the Lion had been _inverted_: which, indeed, must have been
>     the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation,
>     when the Pole had been inverted.
> 
> Speaking of the _circular_ Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says:
> 
>     There ... the Lion is standing _on_ the Serpent, and his tail
>     forming a curve downward, from which we find that, _though six or
>     seven hundred thousand years_ must have passed between the two
>     positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the
>     Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented
>     very differently in the two—in the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is
>     _nursing her child_: but it seems that they had not had that idea
>     when the Pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in
>     _this_ Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the
>     Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear
>     of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac
>     a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the
>     beginning of Virgo, which has taken away one _Decan_ out of each
>     sign.(1006)
> 
> Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three
> different epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth
> sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race, each of which must have lived
> approximately from 25,000 to 30,000 years. The first of these, the “Âryan‐
> Asiatics,” witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant
> Atlanteans(1007) (the Ruta and Daitya Island‐Continents) who perished some
> 850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.(1008) The fourth
> sub‐race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the
> Atlanteans—the Âryo‐Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely,
> some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to
> glance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐
> Race—generally, though hardly correctly, called the Âryan Race—and the
> explanations appended to it.
> 
> Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root‐
> Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and
> concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_.
> 
> 1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth,
> and we are in the Fifth Root‐Race, at present.
> 
> 2. Each Root‐Race has seven sub‐races.
> 
> 3. Each sub‐race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be
> called “branch” or “family” races.
> 
> 4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last‐named are
> countless, and depend on Karmic action.
> 
> Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will understand.
> The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist
> the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the
> confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different
> times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express
> in figures—but only within approximate limits, for the sake of
> comparison—the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely
> distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless
> confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for
> the Races, sub‐races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap
> and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to
> separate them.
> 
>         [Illustration: Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐Race.]
> 
> The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as
> an illustration.
> 
> The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root‐Race (A).
> 
> Its larger limbs to the various sub‐races; seven in number (B1, B2, etc.).
> 
> On each of these limbs are seven “branches,” or “family” races (C).
> 
> After this the cactus‐plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy
> “leaves” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a
> nation or tribe of human beings.
> 
> Now our Fifth Root‐Race has already been in existence—as a Race _sui
> generis_ and quite free from its parent stem—about 1,000,000 years;
> therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub‐races
> has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each family race has an
> average existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European “family
> race” has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or
> the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season” of
> three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the
> comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “family race”
> and a Sidereal Year.
> 
> The knowledge of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of
> time, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were
> taught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophant
> to another. Everyone is aware that the European Astronomers
> assign—arbitrarily enough—the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac
> to the years 2,000 or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the date of
> this invention coincides with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid.
> This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, must appear quite absurd.
> The Cycle of the Kali Yuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th
> of February in the year 3,102 B.C. Now the Hindûs claim that in the year
> 20,400 before Kali Yugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the
> Spring Equinox—there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and
> Moon—and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date,
> that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to
> establish the beginning of their Kali Yuga was _very real_. That “epoch is
> the year 3,102 before our era,” he writes.(1009) The lunar eclipse
> arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the Black Age—it took
> place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star Θ of
> the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon
> certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades
> (Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern
> India and Lankâ,(1010) the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The
> “three Virgins,” or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both,
> the record of the first three “Divine or Astronomical Dynasties,” who
> taught the Third Root‐Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to
> their doom, returned, or redescended rather, during the third sub‐race of
> the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their
> birth‐place—the Sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human
> Races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes—Semi‐divine Astrals of the
> Third and Fourth—and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which preceded the
> purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and
> passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles
> of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed
> each time. In Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_ the speculations of the bold author
> must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for
> he says, fantastically enough:
> 
>     But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those
>     monuments [the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs] _does not
>     exceed five millions of years_:(1011) which falls short of the
>     records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos: which
>     latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or
>     eight millions of years:(1012) which I have seen upon a talisman
>     of porcelain.(1013)
> 
> The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the
> modern Hindûs still have. As stated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, the Egyptians,
> as well as the Greeks and “Romans” some thousand years ago, were “remnants
> of the Atlanto‐Âryans”—the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans;
> the last‐named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose
> sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The
> _human_ Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the
> _knowledge_ of the Atlanteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood
> in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic
> Records. All this has been shown long ago.(1014) And it is just because
> the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac
> of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out that it is
> only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.(1015)
> 
> Conclusion.
> 
> Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of _The Secret
> Doctrine_ has to be closed. The forty‐nine Stanzas and the few fragments
> from the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published
> in these Volumes. These, with some still older Records—to which none but
> the highest Initiates have access—and a whole library of comments,
> glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man’s Genesis.
> 
> It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to
> explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the
> true views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geology, Anthropology, and even
> Ethnology. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a
> still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their
> Creators, the _Divine_ Men from other Worlds; accompanying the statements
> proffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in Esoteric
> Astronomy and Symbolism.
> 
> The duration of the “periods” that separate, in space and time, the Fourth
> from the Fifth Race—in the historical(1016) or even the legendary
> beginnings of the latter—is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a
> Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the
> Post‐diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the
> most terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were born, and
> disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any
> description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of
> Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient
> stage down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted
> record of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and
> became thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth—is not for
> the writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal
> conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates,
> who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can,
> therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and
> even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic
> dream, than as a possible reality.
> 
> This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the
> impression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and
> bred in European, matter‐of‐fact and presumably civilized, countries, she
> assimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs
> of a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the
> long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years
> such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our
> present Globe and its human Races must have been born, grown and developed
> in this, and in no other way.
> 
> But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be
> expected to have any more weight than any other “doxy,” in the eyes of
> those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved.
> Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these:
> How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And
> supposing _she_ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing,
> as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the
> ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense,
> such an incredible antiquity?
> 
> The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its
> end is “written in the stars,” _i.e._, is recorded in the Zodiac and
> Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will
> hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much
> doubted, and it is denied point‐blank with regard to India. “Your
> conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful,”
> the writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came
> that it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with
> the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical
> Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as
> hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not
> so appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are
> very little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that
> both premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same
> brains, which, however learned, are not infallible—a truism demonstrated
> daily by the shifting and re‐shifting of scientific theories and
> speculations.
> 
> However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and traditional,
> as well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of
> the Sacred Science or Vidyâ, are not a whit more doubtful than the so‐
> called ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and
> amplified by half a century of archæological discoveries, and the very
> problematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and
> Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same
> “readings”—in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works
> of which Europe knows nothing—_plus_ the perfect knowledge by the
> Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these
> records belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archæologist and
> Palæontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain
> semi‐savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their
> thoughts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and
> ideas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred
> from some signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the
> Palæolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years
> ago, comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the United States
> to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written
> on the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a
> dozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a
> number of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists
> is yet familiar with, or even knows of, the early hieroglyphic cypher,
> still preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar.
> Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of
> writing—_e.g._, the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese
> characters—as “attempts of the early races of mankind to express their
> untutored thoughts,” will decidedly object to our statement, that writing
> was invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phœnicians. Indeed,
> such a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of
> millenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that
> writing was unknown in the days of Pânini, in India, as also to the Greeks
> in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with
> silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will
> maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our
> modern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous
> mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific
> assumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our
> Scientists say, was unknown to Pânini; and this Sage nevertheless composed
> a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the
> grammars that were ever made! Pânini is made out to have lived barely a
> few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central
> Asia—whence the Philologists and Historians show us the ancestors of the
> same Pânini, the Brâhmans, coming into India—are _covered with writing_,
> two and three thousand years old, at least, and twelve thousand, according
> to some fearless Palæontologists.
> 
> Writing was an _ars incognita_ in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably
> to Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the
> Phœnicians who had _invented_ it, and knew writing as far back as 1,500
> B.C. at the earliest,(1017) were living among the Greeks, and elbowing
> them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions
> disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (_a_) the
> site of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as
> a fable, and (_b_) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with
> inscriptions _in characters unknown_ to Palæontologists and the all‐
> denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic
> inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:
> 
>     I was myself an eye‐witness of two such discoveries, and helped to
>     gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been
>     silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an
>     imposture.(1018)
> 
> Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu,
> Gordon Cumming, Madame Merian,(1019) Bruce, and a host of others were
> charged with lying.
> 
> Says the author of _Mythical Monsters_, who gives this information in the
> Introduction:(1020)
> 
>     Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to
>     her description of a bird‐eating spider nearly two hundred years
>     ago. But now‐a‐days ... reliable observers have confirmed it in
>     regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.
> 
>     Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the
>     yellow water‐lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_
>     under the name of Nymphæa lutea, and after having lain under the
>     imputation for years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of
>     the long‐lost flower in Florida ... in ... 1876.(1021)
> 
> And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Haliætus
> Washingtonii,(1022) so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word‐
> painting of the devil‐fish, and his description of a man becoming its
> helpless victim.
> 
>     The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a
>     few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle‐
>     fishes with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable
>     of dragging a good‐sized boat beneath the surface; and their
>     action has been reproduced _for centuries past_ ... by Japanese
>     artists.(1023)
> 
> And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of
> Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo
> laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Münchausen’s
> tales, why should the writer of _Isis Unveiled_ and of _The Secret
> Doctrine_ be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the
> above‐cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from
> _Macmillan_ (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point
> not to be reproduced:
> 
>     When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are
>     still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer
>     plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game....
>     As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the
>     great (mis?) guiding spirit, _à priori_ by name, who furnishes
>     philosophers with their omniscience _pro re natâ_, whispers that
>     no such thing _can_ be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax.
>     The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When
>     Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was
>     gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been
>     calculated was not _the_ planet but another which had
>     clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the
>     true body. _The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the
>     disposition to hoax._ Who was it that first announced that the
>     classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax
>     perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little
>     or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?(1024)
> 
> Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes _The Secret Doctrine_ for a
> “hoax” is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have
> already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American
> journalists even before the work went to press.(1025)
> 
> Nor, after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult
> Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even
> believes in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted _à __
> priori_, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to
> glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such
> cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths
> of to‐day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and _vice versà_. It
> is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the
> present work will be vindicated.
> 
> It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans
> does affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have
> been unknown during that period in the Fifth Âryan Race, and yet have been
> perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of
> their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and
> races are there to account for it.
> 
> If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being
> palmed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with
> Jacolliot’s _Bible in India_—although, by the way, there are more truths
> mixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and
> recognized Orientalists—the charge and comparison will dismay us very
> little. We bide our time. Even the famous _Ezour Veda_ of the last
> century, considered by Voltaire “the most precious gift from the East to
> the West,” and by Max Müller “about the silliest book that can be read,”
> is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when the _à
> priori_ negations of specialists have become justified by subsequent
> corroborations, form but an insignificant percentage of those that have
> been fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and confirmed, to the
> great dismay of the learned objectors. _Ezour Veda_ was a very small bone
> of contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du
> Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such
> facts are recorded by Professor Max Müller himself, who, speaking of the
> discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states
> that:
> 
>     If the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise
>     not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable.
>     He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit
>     altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had
>     been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those
>     arch‐forgers and liars, the Brâhmans, and that the whole of
>     Sanskrit literature was an imposition.(1026)
> 
> The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these
> Brâhmans, and other _historical_ “liars,” in the opinion of our modern
> Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too
> varied and personal, for her not to know at least something of human
> nature. “When you doubt, abstain,” says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent
> aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience.
> Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found
> preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely
> Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical wisdom, when saying:
> 
>     In contemplation [in any question of knowledge, we add], if a man
>     begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but _if he will be
>     content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties_.
> 
> With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the
> representatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but
> our Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult
> information.
> 
> Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind,
> and everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven
> Races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have
> claimed that every Root‐Race, with its sub‐races and innumerable family
> divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and
> succeeding Race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform
> experience, in the question of Anthropology and Ethnology. Man—save in
> colour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and
> cranial capacity—has been ever the same under every climate and in every
> part of the world, say the Naturalists; ay, even in stature—this, while
> maintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape; a
> claim that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of
> stature and form from his first evolution into a biped. The very logical
> persons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical
> views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general
> derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of
> external nature,” think it
> 
>     Less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and
>     demi‐gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
>     descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be
>     inventions.
> 
> It is only such “transformations” in physical nature, as much as in the
> memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine
> teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of Modern Science,
> based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few
> centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and
> brushing away that tissue of cobweb‐like theories, spun in the darkness
> that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call
> their “history,” the Old Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of
> the memoirs of Humanity.
> 
> The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old,
> and die. Their sub‐races and nations follow the same rule. If your all‐
> denying Modern Science and so‐called Philosophy do not contest that the
> human family is composed of a variety of well‐defined types and races, it
> is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no
> external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a
> Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most
> Naturalists that _mixed_ human races, _i.e._, the seeds for entirely new
> races, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is
> maintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others.
> 
> Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said
> that whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre‐historic past
> there are no more changes for him—save certain variations, as at
> present—in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races are
> fictions.
> 
> To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited
> to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity
> and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth
> Race. How can you tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the
> prophecy of the Secret Books and their not uncertain statements.
> 
> Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed,
> yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Âryan
> element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one Race
> over the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type
> the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the
> younger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races.
> Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new
> Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that
> the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.
> 
> Pure Anglo‐Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the
> United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong
> admixture of various nationalities and inter‐marriage, almost a race _sui
> generis_, not only mentally, but also physically. To quote from De
> Quatrefages:
> 
>     Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play
>     the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its
>     present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest
>     part, by the successive crossing of a number of races _at present
>     undetermined_.(1027)
> 
> Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a “primary race,”
> temporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all
> other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the _sixth_
> sub‐race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly
> the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or
> fifth sub‐race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about
> 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub‐race;
> until, in consequence of cataclysms—the first series of those which must
> one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Âryan Race (and thus
> affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with
> the confines of our continent and isles—the Sixth Root‐Race will have
> appeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the
> great Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the
> subject as the snow‐capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is,
> that it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for
> long millenniums will its pioneers—the peculiar children who will grow
> into peculiar men and women—be regarded as anomalous _lusûs naturæ_,
> abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and
> their numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to
> find themselves in a majority. Then the present men will begin to be
> regarded as exceptional mongrels, until they die out in their turn in
> civilized lands, surviving only in small groups on islands—the mountain
> peaks of to‐day—where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out,
> perhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam‐Nyam and
> the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are
> the remnants of once mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has
> entirely died out of the remembrance of modern generations, just as we
> shall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will
> overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it
> more slowly than its new successor, still changing in stature, general
> physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Âryan Race, and
> the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
> 
> This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout
> the whole sixth and seventh sub‐races.(1028) But the _last_ remnants of
> the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of
> the _new_ Race; when another and _new_ dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will
> have appeared above the _new_ waters on the face of the Globe, so as to
> receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle
> all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster.
> When this shall be—as just said—it is not for the writer to know. Only, as
> Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes
> suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be
> preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and
> volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race
> now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the
> Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have
> now become a _new Race, and many new nations_. Yet the Fifth will not die,
> but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred
> thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become
> transformed with it more slowly than its new successor—still getting
> entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will
> not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the
> Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter
> down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the
> present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly
> growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.
> 
> Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old
> one—a fact men had also forgotten—of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether
> World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to
> sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than
> any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded
> by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of
> parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be
> composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and
> not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the
> burden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after
> race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have
> already begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one
> sub‐race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle;
> while a series of other less favoured groups—the failures of Nature—will,
> like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even
> leaving a trace behind.
> 
> Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever‐present
> and Ever‐becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few
> Occultists:
> 
> _The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the
> Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no
> parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but
> thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say __“__I am the progeny of the
> departed moment, the child of the past,__”__ thou hast become that past
> itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more
> the Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and
> the Future the Ever‐living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute
> __“__IS.__”_
> 
> PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD‐RELIGIONS.
> 
>     The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only
>     at the garment—that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more
>     they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak,
>     but what the cloak covers.—_Zohar_ (iii. 152; FRANCK, 119).
> 
>     The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all.... It
>     is requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.—_Stromateis_
>     (12; CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).
> 
> Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
> 
> In view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which
> from the modern scientific standpoint must seem absurd, some necessary and
> additional explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the
> Stanzas of Volume II are even more difficult to assimilate than those
> which are embodied in Volume I, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to
> be questioned here, in Part II, as Science will be in Part III, for 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 simply an 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. These 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 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 either be expected to do so, before
> the real meaning of the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern Esotericism, the
> terms Sat and Asat—so freely used in the _Rig Veda_ and elsewhere—is
> thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to Âryan 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.(1029) Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is
> begotten by Sat—perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can
> be squared only at the Supreme Initiation, at the threshold of
> Parinirvâna.
> 
> Barth started a reflection on the _Rig Veda_ which was meant for a stern
> criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original, view of
> this archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, in his criticism, this
> 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 Müller in his mind’s eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford
> professor has throughout characterized 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 these opinions
> become entirely biassed whichever way they incline. Thus Prof. Max Müller
> 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 can 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 is Hesiod’s Theogony for Mr.
> Gladstone.
> 
> As Barth says:
> 
>     The poetry it [the _Rig Veda_] contains appears to me, on the
>     contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially
>     elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions [?]
>     to mysticism and theosophic insight; and the manner of its
>     expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the
>     phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than
>     the poetic language of a large community.(1030)
> 
> We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the
> 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, which 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 Theosophists to learn, on good proof, 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 Judæus 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 the 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.
> 
> Section II. Adam=Adami.
> 
> Names such as Adam‐Adami, used by Dr. Chwolsohn in his _Nabathean
> Agriculture_ and derided by M. Renan, may prove little to the profane. To
> the Occultist, however, once that the term is found in a work of such
> immense antiquity as that above cited, it proves a good deal. It proves,
> for instance, that Adami was a manifold symbol, originating with the Âryan
> 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 language is. The Secret
> Doctrine teaches that Ad‐i was the name given by the Âryans to the first
> _speaking_ race of mankind, in this Round. Hence the terms Adonim and
> Adonai (the ancient plural form of the word Adon), which the Jews applied
> 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 Âdi‐Nâth, also meaning
> First Lord, as Âd‐Îshvara, or any Ad (the First) prefixed to an 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, still later hidden from profanation under an adequate symbology.
> The author of the _Qabbalah_, according to the philosophical writings of
> Ibn Gebirol, shows the Israelites using Ad‐onaï (A Do Na Y), “Lord,”
> instead of Eh’yeh, “I am,” and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonaï is
> rendered “Lord” in the _Bible_,
> 
>     The lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more general
>     term Elohim, is translated God.(1031)
> 
> A curious work was translated in 1860 or thereabout, by the Orientalist
> Chwolsohn, and presented to ever‐incredulous and flippant Europe under the
> 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, arts and sciences, not only of the Chaldæans, but also of
> the Assyrians and Canaanites of the pre‐historic ages.(1032) These
> Nabatheans—as some critics thought—were simply the Sabæans, or Chaldæan
> star‐worshippers. The work is a retranslation from the Arabic, into which
> language it was at first translated from the Chaldæan.
> 
> Masoudi, the Arabian historian, speaks of these 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 Biourasp.(1033)
> 
> 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, however, to argue the 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 and their
> wives—in 346 years(1034) 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 under notice, however, are its contents, the
> doctrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read Esoterically, almost
> all of them identical with the Secret Teachings.
> 
> Quatremère 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 Chaldæan original was written out from the oral discourses and
> teachings of a wealthy Babylonian landowner, named Qû‐tâmy, who had used
> for those lectures still more ancient materials. The first Arabic
> translation is placed by Chwolsohn so far back as the thirteenth century
> B.C. On the first page of this “revelation,” the author, or amanuensis,
> Qû‐tâmy, declares that “the doctrines propounded therein, _were originally
> told by Saturn ... to the Moon, who communicated them to her idol,_” _and
> the idol revealed them to her devotee, the writer_—the Adept Scribe of
> that work—Qû‐tâmy.
> 
> 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 Adami (the “red‐
> earth”). These periods, as might have been expected, have roused the
> defenders of the chronology of the biblical dead‐letter meaning almost to
> fury. De Rougemont was the first to make a _levée_‐in‐arms against the
> translator. He reproaches him with _sacrificing_ Moses to anonymous
> authors.(1035) 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 _apocryphon_ to
> be ranged with its contemporaries—the _Fourth Book of Esdras_, the _Book
> 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, who in the _Revue
> Germanique_(1036) asks him to show 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
> _Vie de Jésus_, since, in this _in‐folio_ on Astrology and Sorcery:
> 
>     We recognize in the personages introduced Qû‐tâmy, all the
>     patriarchs of the biblical legends, such as Adam‐Adami, Anouka‐
>     Noah, and his Ibrahim‐Abraham, etc.
> 
> But this is no reason, since Adam and others are generic names. Meanwhile
> it is humbly submitted that, all things considered, an _apocryphon_—if
> even of the third century A.D., instead of the thirteenth century B.C., is
> old enough to appear _genuine_ as a document, and so satisfy the demands
> of the most exacting archæologist 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 _Kurân_—three centuries later, 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 ninth century of our era.
> 
> This curious “Bible” of the Chaldæan Adept and the various criticisms upon
> it (as in Chwolsohn’s translation) are noticed, because it has an
> important bearing upon a great portion of the present work. With the
> exception of the contention of M. Renan, an iconoclast on principle—so
> pointedly called by Jules Lemaître “_le Paganini du néant_”—the worst
> fault found with the work is, it would seem, that the _apocryphon_
> 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 that practised by David, Saul and the High Priests of
> the Jewish Tabernacle by means of the Teraphim.
> 
> The _Nabathean Agriculture_ is a compilation indeed; it is no
> _apocryphon_, but the repetition of the tenets of the Secret Doctrine
> under the exoteric Chaldæan form of national symbols, for the purpose of
> “cloaking” the tenets, just as the _Books of Hermes_ and the _Purânas_ are
> like attempts by Egyptians and Hindûs. 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 Chaldæo‐Arabic MS., calling the Nabatheans
> by the name of their co‐religionists, the “star‐worshippers,” or Sabæans,
> but yet failing to see in the disfigured word “Nabathean” the mystic name
> of the caste devoted to Nebo, the God of _Secret_ Wisdom, which shows on
> its face that the Nabatheans were an Occult Brotherhood.(1037) 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.(1038) Nebo is the
> Deity of the Planet Mercury, and Mercury is the God of Wisdom, or Hermes,
> or Budha, which the Jews called Kokab (ככב), “the Lord on high, the
> aspiring,” and the Greeks Nabo (Ναβώ), hence Nabatheans. Notwithstanding
> that Maimonides calls their doctrines “heathenish foolishness” and their
> archaic literature “_Sabæorum fœtum_,” he places their “agriculture,” the
> Bible of Qû‐tâmy, in the first rank of archaic literature; and Abarbanel
> praises it in unmeasured terms. Spencer,(1039) quoting the latter, speaks
> of it as that “most excellent oriental work,” adding that by Nabatheans,
> the Sabæans, the Chaldæans, 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 Hindû Budha and the 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 Zarpanitu (the Moon) and of Merodach, who became
> Jupiter, after having been a Sun‐god. As Mercury the Planet, Nebo was the
> “overseer” among the seven Gods of the Planets; and as the personification
> of the Secret Wisdom he was Nabin, a seer and a prophet. Moses is made to
> die and disappear on the mount sacred to Nebo. This shows him to have been
> 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. And this
> not only 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.(1040)
> 
> Nebo is a Creator, like Budha, of the Fourth, and also of the Fifth, Race.
> For the former starts a new race of Adepts, and the latter, the Solar‐
> Lunar Dynasty, or the men of these Races and Round. Both are the Adams of
> their respective creatures. Adam‐Adami is a personation of the _dual_
> Adam: of the paradigmatic 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 Chaldæan 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 silence and secrecy upon the true
> meaning of Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of
> Qû‐tâmy, the Chaldæan, 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 Adam‐Adami was a form of a
> 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, or Divine Phantom, of the Heavenly Man, an ethereal combination
> of Neshamah, 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 _Kabalah_. The
> first is the Perfect Holy Adam, “a shadow that disappeared” (the Kings of
> Edom), produced from the divine Tzelem (Image); the second is called the
> Protoplastic Androgyne Adam of the future terrestrial and separated Adam;
> 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 Isaac Myer’s
> _Qabbalah_. He gives only four Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no
> doubt, and adds:
> 
>     The fourth Adam ... was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc.
>     This answers to the Lower _Nephesh_ and _Guff_, _i.e._, body,
>     united. He has the animal power of reproduction and continuance of
>     species.(1041)
> 
> This is the _human_ Root‐Race.
> 
> It is just at this point that the modern Kabalists—led into error by the
> 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 _Kabalah_ was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with
> animal, or terrestrial, sexes; the later _Kabalah_ has suffocated the
> divine ideal under the heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say: “God made
> man male and female.” Says the author of the _Qabbalah_:
> 
>     Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued creation and
>     existence is called the Balance.(1042)
> 
> And being without this “Balance,” connected with Maqom (the mysterious
> “Place”),(1043) even the First Race is not, as we have seen, recognized by
> 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
> Brahmâchârya. 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 sixth and seventh pairs of the male‐female Æons, Amphain‐Essumen
> (Ἀμφαὶν Ἐσσουμὲν), and Vananin‐Lamertade (Οὐανανίν Λαμερτάδε)—Father and
> Mother(1044)—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 Agathodæmon, 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 out, 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!_
> 
> Section III. The “Holy of Holies.” Its Degradation.
> 
> The Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, also called the Adytum—the recess
> at the West end of the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank
> walls and had its only aperture or door hung over with a curtain—was
> common to all ancient nations.
> 
> A great difference is now found between the secret meaning of this
> symbolical place as given in the Esotericism of the Pagans and in that of
> the later Jews, though its symbology was originally identical throughout
> the ancient races and nations. The _Gentiles_ placed in the Adytum a
> _sarcophagus_, or a tomb (_taphos_), in which was the Solar God to whom
> the temple was consecrated, holding 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
> reäwakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences; the Sun being
> the most poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of such Cycles in
> Heaven, and man—in his reïncarnations—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(1045)—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 Suph 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.(1046)
> 
> The Ark is the navi‐form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has a long
> dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a
> word about it in his Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:
> 
>     Archê (Ἀρχὴ) 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, IHVH (יהוה); Jod (י)
> meaning the _membrum virile_; Hé (ה), the _womb_; Vau (ו), a crook or a
> hook, a nail, and Hé (ה) again, meaning also “an opening”; the whole
> forming the perfect _bisexual_ emblem or symbol or I(e)H(o)V(a)H, the male
> and female symbol.
> 
> Perhaps also, when people realize 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 these “holy ones” 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 (קדשו)?”(1047) Kadesh may mean in one sense to “devote,”
>     “hallow,” “sanctify,” and even to “initiate” or to “set apart”;
>     but it also means the ministry of lascivious rites—the Venus‐
>     worship—and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly
>     rendered in _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 17; _Hosea_, iv. 14; and
>     _Genesis_, xxxviii. 15‐22. The “holy” Kadeshim of the _Bible_ were
>     identical, as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch‐girls
>     of the later Hindû pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or Galli, lived
>     “by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the
>     grove,” or the bust of Venus‐Astarte.(1048)
> 
>     The dance performed by David round the Ark was the “circle‐dance,”
>     said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries.
>     Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh,(1049) and the
>     leaping of the prophets of Baal.(1050) It was simply a
>     characteristic of the Sabæan worship, for it denoted the motion of
>     the Planets round the Sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is
>     apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of
>     Michal and the King’s reply are very expressive.(1051)
> 
>     The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things
>     necessary to repeople the Earth, represents the survival of life,
>     and the supremacy of Spirit over Matter, through the conflict of
>     the opposing powers of Nature. In the Astro‐theosophic chart of
>     the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is
>     placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the Moon), one
>     of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon’s Temple—Boaz. The
>     umbilicus is connected (through the placenta) with the receptacle
>     in which are fructified the embryos of the race. The Ark is the
>     sacred Argha of the Hindûs, and thus the relation in which it
>     stands to Noah’s Ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the
>     Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a
>     sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astarte, and Venus‐
>     Aphrodite, all of whom were Goddesses of the generative powers of
>     Nature, or of Matter—hence representing symbolically the Ark
>     containing the germs of all living things.(1052)
> 
> Mistaken is he who accepts the kabalistic works of to‐day, and the
> interpretations of the _Zohar_ by the Rabbis, for the genuine kabalistic
> lore of old!(1053) For no more to‐day than in the day of Frederick von
> Schelling does the _Kabalah_ accessible to Europe and America contain much
> more than
> 
>     Ruins and fragments, much distorted, remnants still of that
>     _primitive system which is the key to all religious
>     systems_.(1054)
> 
> The oldest system and the Chaldæan _Kabalah_ were identical. The latest
> renderings of the _Zohar_ are those of the Synagogue in the early
> centuries—_i.e._, the Thorah (or Law), dogmatic and uncompromising.
> 
> The “King’s Chamber” in Cheops’ Pyramid is thus an Egyptian “Holy of
> Holies.” On the days of the Mysteries of Initiation, the Candidate,
> 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 the 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 Brâhmanism has to
> pass if he desires to be a Brâhman, and to become _Dvi_‐ja, “born a
> _second_ time.” The crescent‐form Argha of the Greeks was the type of the
> Queen of Heaven—Diana, or the Moon. She was the Great Mother of all
> Existences, as the Sun was the Father. The Jews, previous to, as well as
> after, their metamorphosis of Jehovah into a _male_ God, worshipped
> Astoreth, which made Isaiah declare: “_Your new moons and ... feasts_ my
> soul hateth”;(1055) in 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, however, 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 the Gnostic Gospel _Pistis Sophia_,
> the seven Great Gods, divided into two Triads and the highest God (the
> Sun), are the lower Triple Powers (Τριδυνάμεις), 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.(1056)
> 
> This requires no proof. Astoreth was in one sense an impersonal symbol of
> Nature, the Ship of Life carrying throughout the boundless Sidereal Ocean
> 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 Chaldæan “Nuah, the
> Universal Mother” (the female Noah, considered as one with the Ark), and
> of the female Triad, Ana, Belita and Davkina; 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 Tamtu(1057) (the
> sea), the Mother of the City of Erech (the great Chaldæan 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 Navis, 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 Hindûs, and the Ark of the Covenant, is the
> female symbol of the Universal “Mother of the Gods,” and is now found
> under its Christian symbol in every Church, as the “nave” (from
> _navis_).(1058) The Navis, the Sidereal Vessel, is fructified by the
> Spirit of Life—the male God; or, as the learned Kenealy, in his
> _Apocalypse_, very appropriately calls it—the Holy Spirit. In Western
> 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 _Korân_, alludes to _her_ as the
> Alm, the Immaculate Virgin of the Heavens.(1059) 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 Nautchees in India, and the (female) Kadeshim, the
> “holy ones” of the Jewish temples—consecrated to Jehovah, who represented
> both sexes—whose _holy_ functions in the Israelite fanes were _identical_
> with those of the Nautchees.
> 
> Now Eustathius declares that IO (ΙΩ) means the Moon, in the dialect of the
> Argians; it was also one of the names of the Moon in Egypt. Says
> Jablonski:
> 
>     ΙΩ, _Ioh, Ægyptiis Lunam significat neque habent illi, in communi
>     sermonis usu, aliud nomen quo Lunam designent præter IO_.
> 
> The Pillar and Circle (IO), which with Pythagoras was the perfect number
> contained in the Tetraktys,(1060) became later a _preëminently phallic_
> number—amongst the Jews, foremost of all, with whom it is the male and
> female Jehovah.
> 
> This is how a scholar explains it:
> 
>     I find, on the Rosetta stone of Uhlemann, the word _mooth_ (also
>     in Seiffarth), the name of the _moon_, used as a cycle of time,
>     hence the lunar month, from the hieroglyph [Symbol: half circle],
>     with [Symbol: five‐pointed star] and [Symbol: circle with middle
>     dot] as determinatives, given as the Coptic I O H, or I O H. The
>     Hebrew הוי may also be used as I O H, for the letter _vau_ (ו) was
>     used for _o_ and for _u_, and for _v_ or _w_. This, before the
>     Massora, of which the point (·) was used as וֹ = o, וּ = u, and ו
>     = v or w. Now I had worked it out by original search that the
>     great distinctive function of the god‐name Jehovah was designative
>     of the influence of the moon as the _causative_ of _generation_,
>     and as of its exact value as a lunar year in the natural _measure
>     of days_, as you will fully see,... And here comes this linguistic
>     same word from a source far more ancient; viz., the Coptic, or
>     rather from the old Egyptian in time of the Coptic.(1061)
> 
> This is the more remarkable when Egyptology compares this with the little
> which it knows about the Theban Triad—composed of Ammon, Mooth (or Moot),
> 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 Thoth and Phtah. His mother Moot—the
> name signifying “Mother,” by the bye, and not the Moon, which was only her
> symbol—is called the “Queen of Heaven,” the “Virgin,” 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 as a
> mummy‐god holding in his hand three different sceptres, and bearing the
> lunar disk 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 p. 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.(1062) Under theogonic permutations Ammon becomes
> Horus, Hor‐Ammon, and Moot(h)‐Isis is seen suckling him in a statuette of
> the Saïtic period.(1063) In his turn, in this transformed Triad, Khonsoo
> becomes Thoth‐Lunus, “he who operates salvation.” His brow is crowned with
> the head of an ibis decorated with the lunar disk and the diadem called
> Io‐tef (IO‐tef).(1064)
> 
> Now all these symbols are certainly found reflected in (some believe them
> identical with) the Yave, or Jehovah of the _Bible_. This will be made
> plain to anyone who reads _The Source of Measures_, or “The Hebrew‐
> Egyptian Mystery,” and understands its 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 Post‐Babylonian, Jews, and
> especially the former, built their Theogony and Religion on the very same
> foundation as did all the Pagans, it is the work in question.
> 
> And now it may be as well to remind the reader of what we said of IAO in
> _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     No other deity affords such a variety of etymologies as Iaho, nor
>     is there any name which can be so variously pronounced. It is only
>     by associating it with the Masoretic points that the later Rabbins
>     succeeded in making Jehovah read “Adonaï”—or Lord. Philo Byblus
>     spells it in Greek letters ΙΕΥΩ—IEVO. Theodoret says that the
>     Samaritans pronounced it Iabé (Yahva), and the Jews Yaho; which
>     would make it as we have shown, I—Ah—O. Diodorus states that
>     “among the Jews they relate that Moses called the God IAO.” It is
>     on the authority of the _Bible_ itself, that we maintain that,
>     before his initiation by Jethro, his father‐in‐law, Moses had
>     never known the word Iaho.(1065)
> 
> The above receives corroboration in a private letter from a very learned
> Kabalist. In our first volume,(1066) it is stated that exoterically Brahma
> (neuter), so flippantly and so often confused by the Orientalists with
> Brahmâ (the male), is sometimes called Kâla‐hansa, the “Swan in Eternity,”
> and the Esoteric meaning of Aham‐sa, is given as “I [am] he,” So‐ham being
> equal to Sah “he,” and Aham “I”—a mystic anagram and permutation. It is
> also the “four‐faced” Brahmâ, the Chatur‐mukham (the Perfect Cube) forming
> itself _within_, and _from_, the Infinite Circle; and again the use of the
> 1, 3, 5, and 7/7 = 14, as the Esoteric Hierarchy of the Dhyân Chohans, is
> explained. On this, the said correspondent comments in the following
> manner:
> 
>     Of the 1, 3, 5, and twice 7, intending, and very especially,
>     13514, which on a circle may be read as 31415 (or π value), I
>     think there cannot be a possibility of doubting; and especially
>     when considered with symbol marks on Sacr’,(1067) “Chakra,” or
>     Circle of Vishnu.
> 
>     But let me carry your description a step further: You say, “The
>     One from the Egg, the _Six_, and the _Five_,(1068) give the
>     numbers 1065, the value of the First‐born.” If it be so, then in
>     1065 we have the famous Jehovah’s name, the Jve or Jave, or
>     Jupiter, and by change of ה to נ, or _h_ to _n_, then נוי or the
>     Latin Jun or Juno, the base of the Chinese riddle, the key
>     measuring numbers of Sni (Sinai) and Jehovah coming down on that
>     Mount, which numbers (1065) are but the use of our ratio of 113 to
>     355, because 1065 = 355 × 3 which is circumference to a diameter
>     of 113 × 3 = 339. Thus the first born of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati (or any
>     Demiurgus) indicates a measuring use of a circular relation taken
>     from the Chakra (or Vishnu) and, as stated above, the Divine
>     Manifestation takes the form of Life and the First‐born.
> 
>            [Illustration: Slope of entrance to King’s Chamber]
> 
>     It is a most singular thing: At the entrance passage to the King’s
>     Chamber the measurement _from the surface_ of the Great Step(1069)
>     and the Grand Gallery to the top of the said Gallery is, by the
>     very careful measures of Piazzi Smyth, 339 inches. Take _a_ as a
>     centre and with this radius describe a circle; the diameter of
>     that circle will be 339 × 2 = 678, and these numbers are those of
>     the expression _and the raven_, in the “dove and raven” scenes or
>     pictures of the Flood of Noah; (the radius is taken to show
>     division into two parts, which are 1065 each) for 113 (_man_) × 6
>     = 678, and the diameter to a circumference of 1065 × 2—so we have
>     here an indication of cosmic _man_ on this high grade or step, at
>     the _entrance_ of the King’s Chamber (the Holy of Holies)—_which
>     is the womb_. Now this passage is of such a height that a man to
>     enter it _must stoop_. But a man _upright_ is 113, and broken, or
>     stooping, he becomes 113/2 = 56·5 or 5·65 x 10 (יהוה), or Jehovah.
>     That is, he personifies(1070) him as entering the Holy of Holies.
>     But by Hebrew Esotericism the _chief function_ of Jehovah was
>     _child giving_, etc., and that because, by the numbers of his
>     name, he was the _measure of the lunar year_, which cycle of
>     time—because by its factor of 7 (seven) it ran so coördinately
>     with the periods of the quickening, viability, and gestation—was
>     taken as the _causative of the generative action_ and therefore
>     was worshipped and besought.
> 
> This discovery connects Jehovah still more with all the other Creative and
> Generative Gods, Solar and Lunar, and especially with “King” Soma, the
> Hindû Deus Lunus, the Moon, because of the Esoteric influence attributed
> to this Planet in Occultism. There are other corroborations of this,
> however, in Hebrew tradition itself. Adam is spoken of in the _More
> Nevochim_ (or “Guide of the Perplexed”—truly!) of Maimonides 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, Lingam (Phallus) and
> Yoni (Cteïs), notwithstanding their translation in the _Bible_ “male and
> female.”(1071) 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
> preëminently biblical, Sacr’ and N’cabvah(1072); 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 _Kabalah_. 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_,(1073) and quoted by Hargrave Jennings in his
> _Phallicism_:
> 
>     That Adam was commanded by God that his dead body should be kept
>     above ground till a fulness of time should come to commit it ...
>     to the _middle of the earth_ by a priest of the Most High God....
> 
> Therefore,
> 
> Noah daily prayed in the Ark before the “Body of Adam”—(1074)
> 
> 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.
> 
>     The two words of which Jehovah is composed, make up the original
>     idea of male‐female, as birth‐originator, for the י was the
>     _membrum virile_ and _Hovah_ was _Eve_. So ... the _perfect one_,
>     as originator of measures, takes also the form of _birth_ origin,
>     as _hermaphrodite one_; hence, the phallic use of form.(1075)
> 
> Besides, the same author shows and demonstrates numerically and
> geometrically that (_a_) Arets, “earth,” Adam, “man,” and H‐adam‐h, are
> cognate with each other, and are _personified_ in the _Bible_ under one
> form, as the Egyptian and Hebrew Mars, God of Generation;(1076) and (_b_)
> that Jehovah, or Jah, is Noah, for _Jehovah is Noah_ in Hebrew would be
> ינח 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 the Creator, and a Creator
> itself. Hence Adam is called the “Prophet of the Moon,” the Argha or “Holy
> of Holies” of the Yod (י). 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 kabalistically once more
> permutations, as has been shown. Says the author of _The Source of
> Measures_:
> 
>     There is one fact in regard to Moses and his works too important
>     to be omitted. When he is instructed by the Lord as to his
>     mission, the _power_ name assumed by the Deity is, _I am that I
>     am_, the Hebrew words being
> 
>     אהיה אשר אהיה ;
> 
>     a various reading of יהוה. Now, Moses is משה, and equals
> 
>     345.
> 
>     Add the values of the _new form_ of the name Jehovah, 21 + 501 +
>     21 = 543, or, by a reverse reading, 345; thus showing Moses to be
>     a form of Jehovah in this combination. 21 ÷ 2 = 105, or, reversed,
>     501, so that the _asher_ or the _that_ in _I am‐that‐I am_ is
>     simply a guide to a use of 21 or 7 × 3.501^2 = 251 +, a very
>     valuable pyramid number, etc.(1077)
> 
> For a clearer explanation for the benefit of Non‐Kabalists we put it thus:
> “I am that I am” is in Hebrew:
> 
> Âhiyé is ה י ה א, or 5 10 5 1.
> 
> Asher is ר ש א, or 200 300 1.
> 
> Âhiyé is ה י ה א, or 5 10 5 1.
> 
> Add the numbers of these separate words and you have:
> 
> אהיה (21) אשר (501) אהיה (21).
> 
> This relates to the process of descending in Fire on the Mount to make
> Man, etc., and is explained to be but a _check_ and use of the numbers of
> 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.(1078)
> 
> The “Holy of Holies,” both kabalistic and rabbinical, is thus shown as an
> international symbol, and common property. Neither had originated with the
> Hebrews; but owing to the too realistic handling of the half‐initiated
> Levites, the symbol had acquired with them a significance which it
> scarcely has with any other people to this day, and which it was
> originally never meant to have by the true Kabalist. The Lingam and Yoni
> of the modern average Hindû 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 of the chosen but “stiff‐
> necked” people before, during, and after, the days of Moses. That they
> have had at one time the Wisdom‐Religion and the use of its universal
> language and symbols is proved by the same Esotericism existing to this
> day in India with regard to the “Holy of Holies.” This, as said above, was
> and still is the passage through the “Golden” Cow in the same _stooping
> position_ as was necessitated by the Gallery of the Pyramid, which
> identified man with Jehovah in Hebrew Esotericism. The whole difference
> lies in the spirit of the interpretation. With the Hindûs 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 being the feminine principle; and to
> 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.(1079) 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 Judæan Tanaim, the inner sense of the
> symbolism was as holy in its abstraction as with the ancient Âryan Dvijas.
> The worship of the “God in the Ark” dates only from David; and for a
> thousand years Israel knew of no phallic Jehovah. And now the old
> _Kabalah_ edited and reëdited, has become tainted with it.
> 
> With the ancient Âryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime and
> poetical, however much the external appearance of their symbol may now
> militate against the claim. The ceremony of passing through the Holy of
> Holies—now symbolized by the Cow, but in the beginning through the temple
> Hiranya‐garbha, the Radiant Egg, in itself a symbol of Universal, Abstract
> Nature—meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the _re‐birth_ of
> 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
> Âryan, 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 taking
> preëminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Âryan
> views of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite
> interpretations emanated from, and were preëminently 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 Hindû Âryan—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 Hindû 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 _poetize_ 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 Âryan Hindû belongs to the oldest races now on
> Earth; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. The former is nearly one million
> years old; the latter is a small sub‐race some 8,000 years of age and no
> more.(1080)
> 
> 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 Âryans 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 itself. Philo Judæus 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_. True,
> they did hate Baal or Bacchus worship publicly, but left its worst
> features to be followed secretly. 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” 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 Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, 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 Hindû Lingam is identical with Jacob’s
> “Pillar”—most undeniably. But the difference, as said, seems to consist in
> the fact that the Esoteric significance of the Lingam 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 Âryan Hierophant and Brâhman, 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 in his supposed monotheism over
> the Heathen, whom his Law commanded him to hate(1081)—a commandment now
> gladly accepted by the Christian too, in spite of another and later
> commandment, “Love one another.” 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. Virâj and Horus are both male symbols, emanating from Androgyne
> Nature, one from Brahmâ and his female counterpart Vâch, the other, from
> Osiris and Isis—never from the One Infinite God. In the Judæo‐Christian
> systems it is different. Whereas the lotus, containing Brahmâ, the
> Universe, is shown growing out of Vishnu’s Navel, the Central Point in the
> Waters of Infinite Space, and whereas Horus springs from the lotus of the
> Celestial Nile—all these abstract pantheistic ideas are dwarfed and made
> 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.(1082) In Hindûism—the “Holy of Holies” is a universal
> abstraction, whose _dramatis personæ_ are Infinite Spirit and Nature; in
> Christian Judaism, it is a _personal_ God, _outside_ of that Nature, and
> the human womb—Eve, Sarah, 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 Deity, the
> kabalistic Ain Suph; or, the Jews have been from the beginning no better
> than the dead‐letter Lingam‐worshippers(1083) 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 Vedântin 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 most refined and
> the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof
> of it, with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the Law.
> For how could those who invented the stupendous scheme now known as the
> _Bible_, or their successors who knew, as all Kabalists do, that it was so
> 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 Bethels, 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 Sanhedrim_ and
> judge. As various writers have shown, and as brutally stated in Hargrave
> Jennings’ _Phallicism_:
> 
>     _We know from the Jewish records_ that the Ark contained a _table
>     of stone_; and if it can be demonstrated that that stone was
>     phallic, and yet identical with the sacred name Jehovah or
>     Yehovah, which, written in unpointed Hebrew with four letters, is
>     J‐E‐V‐E or J‐H‐V‐H (the H being merely an aspirate and the same as
>     E). This process leaves us the two letters I and V (or in another
>     of its forms U); then if we place the I _in_ the U we have the
>     “Holy of Holies”; we also have the Linga and Yoni and Argha of the
>     Hindûs, the Iswarra [Îshvara] or “supreme Lord”; and here we have
>     the whole secret of its mystic and arc‐celestial import, confirmed
>     in itself by being identical with the Linyoni [?] of the Ark of
>     the Covenant.(1084)
> 
> The biblical Jews of to‐day do not date from Moses but from David—even
> admitting the identity of the old and genuine with the later and
> remodelled Mosaic scrolls. Before that time their nationality is lost in
> the mists of pre‐historic darkness, the veil from which is now withdrawn
> as much as we have space to do. 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,(1085) and since
> 
>     The Pentateuch arose out of the _primitive or older_ documents, by
>     means of a _supplementary_ one.
> 
> The Elohistic texts were re‐written 500 years after the date of Moses; the
> Jehovistic 800, on the authority of the biblical chronology itself. Hence,
> 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—the Yod, י or “phallus,” and Hé, ה, the
> “opening,” or 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 Lingam and Yoni
> found on every roadside in India.
> 
> Just as the Iao of the Mysteries was distinct from Jehovah, so was the
> later Iao and Abraxas, or Abrasax, of some Gnostic sects identical with
> the God of the Hebrews, who was the same as 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 ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ ΙΑΩ (Abrasax Iao)—an
>     address exactly parallel to the so frequent ΕΙΣ ΖΕΥΣ ΣΑΡΑΠΙ (Eis
>     Zeus Sarapi) on the contemporary Heathen gems, and therefore only
>     to be translated by “Abraxas is the One Jehovah.”(1086)
> 
> But who was Abraxas? As the same author shows:
> 
>     The numerical or Kabbalistic value of the name Abraxas directly
>     refers to the Persian title of the god “Mithras,” Ruler of the
>     year, worshipped from the earliest times under the appellation of
>     Iao.(1087)
> 
> Thus, he was the Sun, in one aspect, the Moon or the Lunar Genius, in
> 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_ [!!].
> 
> Section IV. On the Myth of the “Fallen Angels” in its Various Aspects.
> 
> A. The Evil Spirit: Who, And What?
> 
> Our present quarrel is exclusively with Theology. The Church enforces
> belief in a Personal God and a Personal Devil, while Occultism shows the
> fallacy of such a belief. For the Pantheists and Occultists, as much as
> for the Pessimists, “Nature” is no better than “a comely mother, but stone
> cold”; but this is true only so far as regards _external_ Physical Nature.
> They both agree that, to the superficial observer, she is no better than
> 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 recognize 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 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 mediæval 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 personæ_ of
> the old heathen Pantheons. They would have been 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 call the
> Devil the “monkey of God,” we can attribute it 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 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 and
> of his Amshaspands in the _Zend Avesta_ and the _Vendîdâd_, 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 _succès 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, by mangling
> the texts and meaning, to discover in its verses 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 Kabalah.(1088)
> 
> 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 Chaldæa 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 Chaldæo‐Judæan 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 (? Murudug), “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 Nebo. With both
> peoples, as also in the case of the Hindû 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.(1089) The reading of the Chaldæo‐Assyrian tiles has now demonstrated
> this 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 Chaldæo‐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” or “Primeval Space”), or Chaos, of the
> Babylonians. Wisdom, the Great Unseen God—called in _Genesis_ 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,
> whosoever he was, forbids cursing Satan. Philo Judæus and Josephus both
> state that the Law (the _Pentateuch_ and the _Talmud_) undeviatingly
> forbid one to curse the Adversary, and also the Gods of the Gentiles.
> “Thou shalt not revile the Gods,” quoth the God of Moses,(1090) for it is
> God who “hath divided [them] unto all nations”;(1091) and those who speak
> evil of “Dignities” (Gods) are called “filthy dreamers” by Jude.
> 
>     For even Michael the Archangel ... durst not bring against him
>     [the Devil] a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke
>     thee.(1092)
> 
> Finally the same is repeated in the _Talmud_:(1093)
> 
>     Satan appeared one day to a man who used to curse him daily, and
>     said to him: “Why dost thou this?” Consider that _God himself_
>     would not curse me, but merely said: “The Lord rebuke thee,
>     Satan.”(1094)
> 
> This piece of Talmudic information shows plainly (_a_) that St. Michael is
> 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. It is
> the Logos who is shown, in the mystic symbolism of Cosmogony, Theogony,
> and Anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of Creation and
> Being—that of the purely human Personality and the divine Impersonality of
> the so‐called Avatâras, or divine Incarnations, and of the Universal
> Spirit, called Christos by the Gnostics, and the Fravarshi (or Ferouer) of
> Ahura Mazda in the Mazdean Philosophy. On the lower rungs of Theogony the
> Celestial Beings of lower Hierarchies had each a Fravarshi, or a Celestial
> “Double.” It is the same, only still more mystic, reässertion of the
> 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 would have it. The Roman
> Catholic Church shows its usual logic and consistency by accepting St.
> Michael as the Ferouer of Christ. This Ferouer was his “Angel Guardian,”
> as _proved_ by St. Thomas,(1095) who, however, calls the prototypes and
> synonyms of Michael, such as Mercury for example, Devils!
> 
> The Church positively accepts 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 _second_ Jehovah), and his _Face_ [“Presence,” as the
>     Protestants translate], both making but one, and yet being two, a
>     mystery which seemed to us unsolvable before we had studied the
>     doctrine of the Mazdean _Ferouers_, and learnt that the _Ferouer_
>     was the spiritual potency, at once _image_, _face_, and _guardian_
>     of the Soul which finally assimilates the _Ferouer_.(1096)
> 
> This is _almost_ correct.
> 
> Among other absurdities, the Kabalists maintain that the word Metatron,
> being divided into _meta‐thronon_ (μετὰ, θρόνον), means “near the
> throne.”(1097) 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 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.”(1098) 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 Abbé Caron. The Roman Catholics, and
> especially their Kabalists, know better; and it is they who explain to the
> world this duality, which affords 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_), for,
> 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 speaking of the
> _Saviour_ to the Israelites, Isaiah [?] tells them” that “the Angel of his
> Presence saved them in their affliction”—“so he was their Saviour.”(1099)
> Elsewhere Michael is called very plainly the “Prince of the Faces of the
> Lord,” the “Glory of the Lord.” Both Jehovah and Michael are the “Guides
> of Israel(1100) ... Chiefs of the Armies of the Lord, Supreme Judges of
> the Souls and even Seraphs.”(1101)
> 
> The whole of the above is given on the authority of various works by Roman
> Catholics, and must, therefore, be orthodox. Some expressions are
> translated to show what subtle Theologians and Casuists mean by the term
> Ferouer,(1102) a word borrowed by some French writers from the _Zend
> Avesta_, as said, and utilized in Roman Catholicism for a purpose
> Zoroaster was very far from anticipating. In Fargard xix (verse 14), of
> the _Vendîdâd_ it is said:
> 
>     Invoke, O Zarathushtra! my Fravarshi, who am Ahura Mazda, the
>     greatest, the best, the fairest of all beings, the most solid, the
>     most intelligent, ... and whose soul is the holy Word (Mâthra
>     Spenta).(1103)
> 
> The French Orientalists translate _Fravarshi_ by _Ferouer_.
> 
> Now what is a Ferouer, or Fravarshi? In some Mazdean works it is plainly
> implied that Fravarshi is the _inner_, immortal Man, or the Ego which
> reïncarnates; that it existed before the physical body and survives all
> such bodies it happens to be clothed in.
> 
>     Not only man was endowed with a Fravarshi, _but gods too_, and the
>     sky, fire, waters, and plants.(1104)
> 
> This shows as plainly as can be shown that the Ferouer is the “spiritual
> counterpart” of either 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 Zarathushtra to invoke his Fravarshi and not himself (Ahura
> Mazda); that is to say, the impersonal and _true_ Essence of Deity, one
> with Zoroaster’s own Âtmâ (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
> have 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 at the same time make of the same Mercury the
> Ferouer of their Christ. This fact is undeniable. Vossius(1105) 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 and the Verbum (the Sun), must be
> absorbed by and confounded with him.(1106)
> 
> 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, saying, “The Gods have come down to us in the
> likeness of men”—the text adds: “And they called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul,
> Hermes, because he was the _leader of the Word_ (Logos),” and not “the
> chief speaker,” as erroneously translated in the Authorized, and repeated
> even in the Revised, English _Bible_. Michael is the Angel of the vision
> in _Daniel_, the Son of God, “who was like unto a Son of Man.” It is the
> Hermes‐Christos of the Gnostics, the Anubis‐Syrius of the Egyptians, the
> Counsellor of Osiris in Amenti, the Leontoid Michael‐Ophiomorphos
> (ὀφιομόρφος) of the Ophites, who wears on certain Gnostic jewels a lion’s
> _head_, like his father Ildabaoth.(1107)
> 
> Now to all this the Roman Catholic Church tacitly consents, many of her
> writers even avowing it publicly. Unable to deny the flagrant “borrowing”
> of their Church, who “spoiled” her seniors of their symbols, as the Jews
> had “spoiled” the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold, they
> explain the fact quite coolly and seriously. Thus the writers who have
> hitherto been _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
> _pre‐historical_ plagiarism, of a _superhuman_ origin.”
> 
> If the reader would know how, he must again kindly turn to the same volume
> of De Mirville’s work.(1108) Please note that this author was the
> _official and recognized defender_ of the Roman Church, and was helped by
> the learning of all the Jesuits. There we read:
> 
>     We have pointed out several demi‐gods, and also “very historical”
>     heroes of the Pagans, who were predestined from the moment of
>     their birth, _to ape_, while at the same time they dishonoured,
>     the nativity of the hero, _who was quite God_, before whom the
>     whole earth had to bow; we have traced them being born as _he_
>     was, from an immaculate mother; we have seen them strangling
>     serpents in their cradles, fighting against demons, performing
>     miracles, dying as martyrs, descending to the nether world and
>     rising again from the dead. And we have bitterly deplored that
>     timid and shy Christians should feel compelled to explain all such
>     identities on the ground of coincidence of myth and symbol. They
>     forget apparently these words of the Saviour, _all that came
>     before me are thieves and robbers_—a word which explains all
>     without any absurd negation and which I have commented on in these
>     words, “The Evangel is a sublime drama, _parodied and played
>     before its appointed time by ruffians_.”
> 
> The “ruffians” (_les drôles_), are of course Demons whose manager is
> Satan. Now this is the easiest and the most sublime and simple way of
> 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_. In the Introduction to Archbishop
> Laurence’s translation 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, we have been
>     still further impressed by relationship with New Testament
>     Scripture. Thus, the parable of the sheep, rescued by the good
>     Shepherd from hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is
>     _obviously borrowed_ by the fourth Evangelist from Enoch lxxxix,
>     in which the author depicts the shepherds as killing and
>     destroying the sheep before the advent of their Lord, and thus
>     discloses the true meaning of that hitherto mysterious passage in
>     the Johannine parable—“All that ever came before me are thieves
>     and robbers”—language in which we now detect an obvious reference
>     to the allegorical shepherds of Enoch.(1109)
> 
> It is too late in the day to claim that it is Enoch who borrowed from the
> _New Testament_, instead of _vice versâ_. Jude (14, 15) quotes _verbatim_
> from Enoch a long passage about the coming of the Lord with his ten
> thousand saints, and naming the prophet specifically _acknowledges_ the
> source.
> 
>     In ... perfecting the parallelism between prophet and apostle,
>     [we] have placed beyond controversy that, _in the eyes of the
>     author of an Epistle accepted as Divine revelation_, the Book of
>     Enoch _was the inspired production of an antediluvian
>     patriarch_....
> 
>     The cumulative coincidence of language and ideas in Enoch and the
>     authors of New Testament Scripture, ... clearly indicates that the
>     work of the Semitic Milton was the inexhaustible source from which
>     Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names,
>     borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment,
>     immortality, perdition, and of the universal reign of
>     righteousness under the eternal dominion of the Son of Man. This
>     _evangelical plagiarism_ culminates in the Revelation of John,
>     which adapts the visions of Enoch to Christianity, with
>     modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of the great
>     master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of
>     the antediluvian Patriarch.(1110)
> 
> “Antediluvian,” truly; but if the phraseology of the text dates hardly a
> few centuries or even millenniums before the historical era, then it is no
> longer the original _prediction_ of the events to come, but is, in its
> turn, a copy of some scripture of a pre‐historic religion.
> 
>     In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other
>     (inspired teachers) ... imparts ... true wisdom [as Enoch did]. In
>     the Tretâ age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal
>     monarch [Chakravartin, the “Everlasting King” of Enoch(1111)] and
>     protects the three worlds [or Races]. In the Dvâpara age, in the
>     person of Veda‐vyâsa, he divides the one Veda into four, and
>     distributes it into hundreds (Shata) of branches.(1112)
> 
> Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Âryans, before it was written, went
> 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 Judæo‐
> Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present Age, Vishnu, or the
> “Everlasting King,” will appear as Kalki, and reëstablish righteousness
> upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened,
> and become as pellucid as crystal.
> 
>     The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time [the
>     Sixth Race] _shall be as the seeds_ of other human beings, and
>     shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita
>     age of purity;
> 
> _i.e._, it shall be the Seventh Race, the Race of “Buddhas,” the “Sons of
> God,” born of _immaculate_ parents.
> 
> B. The Gods Of Light Proceed From The Gods Of Darkness.
> 
> Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in
> Space and the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of this same
> antediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom. Its history begins by the
> descent on Earth of the “Gods” who incarnate in mankind, and this is the
> “Fall.” Whether Brahmâ hurled down on Earth by Bhagavân in the allegory,
> or Jupiter by Cronus, all are the symbols of the human races. Once having
> touched this Planet of dense Matter, the snow‐white wings of even the
> highest Angel can no longer remain immaculate, or the Avatâra (or
> incarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatâra is 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 it—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 _Vedânta_ and the _Upanishads_, “the
> mirror of the Eternal Wisdom.”
> 
> For upwards of sixteen centuries the new masks, forced over the faces of
> the old Gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have
> finally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical Fall, and the as
> metaphorical Atonement and Crucifixion, have led Western Humanity through
> roads knee‐deep in blood. Worse than all, they have 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 preëminently in man. Finally it has
> created the God‐slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it has
> spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine
> verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it has 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. Hence the people have been 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, for to
> demonstrate this feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyze and give a
> natural reason for it, would necessitate an endless philosophical
> explanation for which there here is no room. 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_, which are now shown to be a plagiarism from Enoch
> by some scholars. These have given rise to endless theories and
> speculations, which have gradually acquired the importance of dogma and
> inspired tradition. Every one sought to explain the verse about the seven‐
> headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail “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 (or 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. Says Bossuet:
> 
>     The star that falls is the heresiarch Theodosius.... The clouds of
>     smoke are the heresies of the Montanists.... The third part of the
>     stars are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity.
> 
> Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in
> _Revelation_ were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and
> Pagan traditions. There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic
> times, nor yet far earlier in China. But Christian _Theology_ had to be
> _protected and saved_.
> 
> This is only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to
> 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 Éliphas Lévi 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 geological phenomena.
> 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. The 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,”(1113) just in the same shape and under the same symbol
> as Satan, who is seen to fall “as lightning ... from heaven.”(1114) All
> these metaphors and figures of speech, preëminently 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 principle of all things.” Hence Pymander, the “Thought
> Divine,” issues as Light from Darkness. Behemoth(1115) is the principle of
> Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him
> that Behemoth is “the chief [principle] of the ways of God”—“_Principium
> viarum Domini Behemoth!_”(1116)
> 
> Consistency does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of
> Divine Revelation, so‐called—not as interpreted by Theologians, at any
> rate.
> 
> The Egyptians and the Chaldæans referred the birth of their Divine
> Dynasties to that period when creative Earth was in her last final throes
> in giving birth to her pre‐historic 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. Our Geologists have now ascertained
> that there was such a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological
> periods, several hundred millions of years ago.(1117) 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 its Typhon,
> Python, Loki, and its “falling” Demon, but China also. The Celestials have
> a whole literature upon the subject. It is said that in consequence of the
> 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.”
> 
> 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 Esoteric
> statements in the _Bible_—in both Testaments—are 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 _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben
> Iochaï is the soul and essence of the allegorical narrative, as the later
> _Christian Kabalah_ is the “dark cloaked” Mosaic Pentateuch. And it says
> (in the Agrippa MSS.):
> 
>     The Wisdom of the Kabalah rests in the Science of the Equilibrium
>     and Harmony.
> 
>     Forces that manifest without having been first equilibrized perish
>     in Space [“equilibrized” meaning differentiated].
> 
>     Thus perished the first Kings [the Divine Dynasties] of the
>     Ancient World, the _self‐produced_ Princes of Giants. They fell
>     like rootless trees, and were seen no more; for _they were the
>     Shadow of the Shadow_ [to wit, the Chhâyâ of the Shadowy
>     Pitris].(1118)
> 
>     But those that came after them, who shooting down like falling
>     stars were enshrined in the Shadows—prevailed to this day
>     [Dhyânîs, who by incarnating in those “empty Shadows,” inaugurated
>     the era of mankind].
> 
> Every sentence in the ancient Cosmogonies unfolds to him who can read
> 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 have been any Devils or “disobedient
> Angels,” for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. The
> Asuras (call them by any other name you will) who incarnated, followed in
> 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. The name “Asura” was first given by
> the Brâhmans indiscriminately to those who opposed their mummeries and
> sacrifices, as did the great Asura called Asurendra. 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 “God” in the translations, who create “Light,”
> are identical with the Âryan Asuras. They are also referred to as the
> “Sons of Darkness,” as a philosophical and logical contrast to Light
> Immutable and Eternal. The earliest Zoroastrians did not believe in Evil
> or Darkness being _coëternal_ with Good or Light, and they give the same
> interpretation. Ahriman is the manifested _Shadow_ of Ahura Mazda (Asura
> Mazda), himself issued from Zeruâna Âkerne, the “Boundless [Circle of]
> Time,” or the Unknown Cause. They say of the latter:
> 
>     Its glory is too exalted, its light too resplendent for either
>     human intellect or mortal eye to grasp and see.
> 
> Its primal emanation _is Eternal Light, which, from having been previously
> 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 antetype (preëxisting spiritual idea), _has lived
> within Darkness from all Eternity_. The six Amshaspands—seven with
> himself, the Chief of all—the primitive _Spiritual Angels and Men_, are
> _collectively_ his Logos. The Zoroastrian Amshaspands create the World in
> six Days or periods also, and rest on the seventh; but in the Esoteric
> Philosophy, that _seventh_ is the _first_ period or “Day,” the so‐called
> _Primary Creation_ in Âryan Cosmogony. It is that intermediate Æon 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 Elohim are shown to “create”—that is to say, to
> build or to produce the two Heavens 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 Æons 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 [Zeruâna Âkerne]
>     produced through its Word, or first aspect, the other, _operating_
>     Thought, which being the God of Spirit and Fire, constructed Seven
>     Regents enclosing within their Circle the World of Senses named
>     “Fatal Destiny.”
> 
> The latter refers to Karma; the “Seven Circles” are the seven planets and
> planes, as also the seven Invisible Spirits, in the Angelic Spheres, whose
> visible symbols are the seven planets,(1119) the seven Rishis of the Great
> Bear and other glyphs. As said of the Âdityas by Roth:
> 
>     They are neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the
>     eternal sustainers of this luminous life which exists as it were
>     behind all these phenomena.
> 
> It is they—the “Seven Hosts”—who, having “considered in their Father
> [Divine Thought] the plan of the operator,” as says _Pymander_, _desired_
> to operate (or build the world with its creatures) likewise; for, having
> been born “_within_ the Sphere of Operation”—the manifesting Universe—such
> is the Manvantaric Law. And now comes the second portion of the passage,
> or rather of two passages merged into one to conceal the full meaning.
> Those who were born within the Sphere of Operation were “the brothers who
> loved _him_ well.” The latter—the “him”—were the Primordial Angels; the
> Asuras, the Ahriman, the Elohim, or “Sons of God,” of whom Satan was
> one—all those Spiritual Beings who were called the “Angels of Darkness,”
> because that Darkness is _absolute_ Light, a fact now neglected if not
> entirely forgotten in Theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of those
> much abused “Sons of Light” which is Darkness, must be evidently as great,
> in comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the ethereality of
> the latter would be when contrasted with the density of the human body.
> The former are the “First‐born,” and 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 the principle of the _scientific_ theory
> which teaches us as to the effect of two sound 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_.
> 
> While 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.(1120) The latter is sometimes applied to the very first
> Emanation, but in several systems it proceeds from the first Androgyne or
> Double Ray produced at the beginning by the Unseen. Philo depicts this
> Wisdom as male and female. But though its first manifestation had a
> beginning—for it proceeded from Oulom(1121) (Aiôn, Time), the highest of
> the Æons when emitted from the Father—it had remained with the Father
> _before all creations_, for it is part of him.(1122) Therefore Philo
> Judæus calls Adam Kadmon by the name “Mind”—the Ennoia of Bythos in the
> Gnostic System. “The Mind, let it be named Adam.”(1123)
> 
> As the old Magian books explain it, the whole event becomes clear. A thing
> 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 Evil produced, since there was
> nothing coëqual 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.) 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”(1124)—which it certainly has
> not.(1125)
> 
> The _Zohar_ gives it very suggestively. When the “Holy One” (the Logos)
> desired to create man, he called the _highest_ Host of Angels and spake
> unto them what he wanted, but they _doubted_ the wisdom of this desire and
> answered: “Man will not continue one night in his glory”—for 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 to the Earth; and “they were changed [into Men] and
> sinned after the women of the earth.”(1126) This is quite plain. No
> mention is made in _Genesis_ (vi) of these “Sons of God” receiving
> _punishment_. The only reference to it in the _Bible_ is in _Jude_:
> 
>     And the angels which kept not their first estate but left their
>     own habitation, he hath reserved in _everlasting chains_ under
>     _darkness_ unto the _judgment of the great day_.(1127)
> 
> And this means simply that the “Angels,” doomed to incarnation, are in the
> _chains_ of flesh and matter, under the _darkness_ of ignorance, till the
> “_Great Day_,” which will come as always after the Seventh Round, after
> the expiration of the “Week,” on the Seventh Sabbath, or in the Post‐
> Manvantaric Nirvâna.
> 
> How truly Esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is Pymander, the
> Thought Divine, of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive
> 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 translation
> from the old French translation, the original being given in the foot‐
> note(1128) in its quaint old French:
> 
>     Seven men [principles] were generated in Man.... The nature of the
>     harmony of the Seven of the Father and of the Spirit. Nature ...
>     produced seven men in accordance with the natures of the Seven
>     Spirits ... having in them, potentially, the two sexes.
> 
> Metaphysically, the Father and the Son are the “Universal Mind” and the
> “Periodical Universe”; the “Angel” and the “Man.” It is the Son and the
> Father at one and the same time; in Pymander, the _active_ Idea and the
> _passive_ Thought that generates it; the radical keynote in Nature which
> gives birth to the seven notes—the septenary scale of the Creative Forces,
> and to the seven prismatic _aspects_ of colour, all born from the one
> White Ray, or Light—itself generated in Darkness.
> 
> C. The Many Meanings Of The “War In Heaven.”
> 
> The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self‐evident fact, that Mankind,
> collectively and individually, is with all manifested Nature the vehicle
> (_a_) of the Breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal
> differentiation; and (_b_) of the countless “breaths” proceeding from that
> One Breath in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with
> its many “mankinds” proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever
> increasing in materiality. The Primary Breath informs the higher
> Hierarchies; the secondary—the lower, on the constantly descending planes.
> 
> Now there are many passages in the _Bible_ which prove on their face,
> _exoterically_, that this belief was at one time _universal_; and the two
> most convincing are _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_, it is said:
> 
>     Son of Man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God
>     [as we understand it, the “God” Karma]; Because thine heart is
>     lifted up, and thou hast said I am a God, ... yet thou art a
>     man.... Behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee: ...
>     and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom,
>     ... and they shall bring thee down to the pit [or Earth‐
>     life].(1129)
> 
> The origin of the “prince of Tyrus” is to be traced to the “Divine
> Dynasties” of the iniquitous Atlanteans, the Great Sorcerers. There is no
> 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.(1130)
> 
> 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? Again, “Thine heart was lifted up because of
> thy beauty,”(1131) 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 wast
>     created. Thou art the anointed cherub; ... thou hast walked up and
>     down in the midst of the stones of fire.... Thou wast perfect in
>     thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was
>     found in thee. Therefore I will cast thee ... out of the mountain
>     of God, and ... destroy thee.(1132)
> 
> The “Mountain of God” means the “Mountain of the Gods” or Meru, whose
> 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; for it has sunk at two different times. It is of a volcanic
> origin, and therefore the voice within Ezekiel says:
> 
>     Therefore will I _bring forth a fire from the midst of thee_, it
>     shall devour thee.(1133)
> 
> Surely it does not mean, as seems to be the case from the translated
> texts, that this fire was to be brought from the midst of the Prince of
> Tyrus, or his people, but from Mount Atlas, symbolizing the proud Race,
> 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”;(1134)
> 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 choice and best of Lebanon, ...
>     comforted in the nether parts of the earth. [For] they also went
>     down into hell with him [Pharaoh](1135)
> 
> —unto the nether parts, which are in fact the bottom of the ocean, whose
> 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 chapters xxviii and xxxi of _Ezekiel_ do not relate to
> Babylon, Assyria, nor yet to Egypt, since none of these have been so
> destroyed, having simply fallen 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”(1136)—for every nation had and many
> still have _holy_ mountains; some Himâlayan 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.(1137)
> 
> Throughout all Asia Minor, the Initiates were called the “Trees of
> Righteousness,” and the Cedars of Lebanon, as also were some kings of
> Israel. So were the great Adepts in India, but only the Adepts of the Left
> Hand. When _Vishnu Purâna_ narrates that “the world was over‐run with
> 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 Âryans. Other
> “_trees_ [Adept Sorcerers] spread, and over‐shadowed the unprotected
> earth; and the people perished ... unable to labour for ten thousand
> years.” Then the Sages, the Rishis of the Âryan Race, called Prachetasas,
> are shown “coming forth _from the deep_,”(1138) 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 Mârishâ, the “offspring of the trees.”(1139)
> This hints at the great struggle between the “Sons of God” and the Sons of
> the Dark Wisdom—our forefathers; or the Atlantean and the Âryan Adepts.
> 
> The whole history of that period is allegorized in the _Râmâyana_, which
> is the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Râma—the
> first king of the Divine Dynasty of the early Âryans—and Râvana, the
> symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lankâ) 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 over the lower terrestrial, or cosmic
> powers.
> 
> If the student would understand better the last statement, let him turn to
> the Anugîtâ episode of the _Mahâbhârata_, where the Brâhmana 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.(1140)
> 
> The Moon _is_ the deity of the mind (Manas) but only on the lower plane.
> Says a Commentary:
> 
>     _Manas is dual—Lunar in the lower, Solar in its upper portion._
> 
> That is to say, it is attracted in its higher aspect towards Buddhi, and
> in its 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 and of a profane man’s life, as also that of the _post
> mortem_ separation of the divine from the animal Man. The
> _Mahâbhârata_—every line of which has to be read Esoterically—discloses in
> magnificent symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both Man and Soul.
> Says the Brâhmana in the _Anugîtâ_:
> 
>     In the interior (within the body), in the midst of all these
>     (life‐winds) [? principles], which move about in the body and
>     swallow up one another,(1141) blazes the Vaishvânara fire(1142)
>     sevenfold.(1143)
> 
> But the chief “Soul” is Manas or mind; hence, Soma, the Moon, is shown as
> 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
> _Râmâyana_, 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 are 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”;(1144) and the king of Assyria’s armies are called
> “trees.”(1145)
> 
> The true meaning of the Garden of Eden has been sufficiently given in
> _Isis Unveiled_. Now the writer has more than once heard surprise
> expressed that _Isis Unveiled_ 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 withheld. The time had
> not arrived then, as the hour has not struck even now, _to say all_. “No
> Atlanteans, or the Fourth Race which preceded our Fifth Race, are
> mentioned in _Isis Unveiled_,” wrote a critic on _Esoteric Buddhism_ one
> day. I, who wrote _Isis Unveiled_, maintain that the Atlanteans _are_
> mentioned as our predecessors. For what can be plainer than the following
> statement, when speaking of the Book of Job:
> 
>     In the original text, instead of “dead things,” it is written dead
>     _Rephaim_ (giants, or mighty primitive men), from whom “Evolution”
>     _may one day trace our present race_.(1146)
> 
> It is invited to do so now, now that this hint is explained quite openly;
> but Evolutionists are as sure to 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
> reëdited version of the _Book of Enoch_, on these insecure grounds
> Christian Theology has built its dogmatic Epos of the War in Heaven. It
> has done more: it has 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
> this Jakin and Boaz—the two contrary forces of Good and Evil, Christ and
> Satan, αἱ ἀγαθαὶ καὶ αἱ κακαὶ δυνάμεις. 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 Archéologique_, 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_, which, according to an ancient myth, took place before
>     the creation of the universe, between the faithful and the
>     rebellious legions.(1147)
> 
> Once more, it is a simple question of priority. Had John’s _Revelation_
> 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
> biassed 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 now stands, 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, and much has been found out with regard to the
> astronomical and numerical keys of this universal myth. That which may be
> now given, 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 this 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 Târaka War, and some
> Esoteric Commentaries, may offer a clue perhaps. In every _Purâna_ the
> event is described with more or less variations which show its allegorical
> character.
> 
> In the Mythology of the earliest Vaidic Âryans as in the later Paurânic
> narratives, mention is made of Budha, the “Wise,” one “learned in the
> Secret Wisdom,” who is the planet Mercury in his euhemerization. The
> _Hindû 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 Brâhmans,” but is a very old personation indeed.
> 
> It is by enquiring into his genealogy, or theogony rather, that the
> following facts are disclosed. As a myth, he is the son of Târâ, the wife
> of Brihaspati, the “gold coloured,” and of Soma, the (male) Moon who,
> Paris‐like, carries this new Helen of the Hindû Sidereal Kingdom away from
> her husband. This causes a great strife and _war_ in Svarga (Heaven). The
> episode brings on a battle between the Gods and the Asuras. King Soma
> finds allies in Ushanas (Venus), the leader of the Dânavas; and the Gods
> are led by Indra and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati. The latter is helped
> by Shankara (Shiva), 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, the one
> party in defence of Jupiter Tonans (in India, Brihaspati is the planet
> Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other in support of the
> ever‐thundering Rudra. During this war, Indra 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, the name “of a 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.
> 
> Târâ,(1148) his wife, is, on the other hand, the personification of the
> powers of one initiated into Gupta Vidyâ (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 Brâhmans 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,
> the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the
> Agnihotris, or Fire‐priests, of the great Mysteries knew all its powers.
> But the real property of the _true_ Soma was (and _is_) to make a “new
> man” of the Initiate, after he is “reborn,” namely once that he begins to
> live in his _Astral_ Body;(1149) for, his spiritual nature overcoming the
> physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized
> form.(1150)
> 
> Soma was never given in days of old to the non‐initiated Brâhman—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 Târâ, 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
> _to carry her away_ in the allegory. The result of this is the birth of
> Budha, _Esoteric Wisdom_—Mercury, or Hermes, in Greece and Egypt. He is
> 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.(1151) Such is, in brief, _one_ of the meanings of the allegory.
> 
> The War in Heaven refers to several events of this kind on various and
> different planes of being. The first is a purely astronomical and cosmical
> fact pertaining to Cosmogony. Mr. John Bentley thought that with the
> Hindûs the War in Heaven was only a figure referring to their calculations
> of time periods.(1152)
> 
> 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 which the Âryan
> Initiates claim they have of the whole programme and progress of
> cosmogony,(1153) the War of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy
> of the real war that took place in the Himâlayan Kailâsa (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.(1154)
> There was a time when the Gods Indra, Agni, and Varuna themselves belonged
> to the Asuras.
> 
> In the _Taittirîya Brâhmana_, the Breath (Asu) of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati 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 Mahâ 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 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) Ushanas, or the “Host” of the Planet Venus, become now in Roman
> Catholicism Lucifer, the Genius of the “day star,”(1155) the Tsaba, or
> Army of “Satan.”
> 
> (2) The Daityas and Dânavas are the Titans, the Demons and Giants whom we
> find in the _Bible_(1156)—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 Brâhmans; for they
> are the Kratu‐dvishas—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 Nâgas,(1157) the Sarpas, 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 (compare
> Serapis, Sarpa, Serpent); the singular being Saraph, “burning, fiery.”
> Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes between the Seraphim and the
> Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order: Esoterically, and
> 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 Nâgas were the names given to the
> Initiate‐hermits, on account of their great Wisdom and Spirituality and
> their living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel(1158) applies the adjective
> Cherub to the King of Tyre, and tells him that by his _wisdom_ and his
> _understanding_ there is _no secret_ that can be hidden from him, he shows
> the 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 the earliest Adepts known; the Royal,
> or Râjarshis, kings and princes, who adopted the ascetic life; the Divine,
> or Devarshis, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga; and the Brahmarshis,
> descendants of those Rishis who were the founders of Gotras of Brâhmans,
> 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_. Nârada, one of the greatest Rishis, was a Devarshi; and he
> is shown in constant and everlasting feud with Brahmâ, Daksha, and other
> Gods and Sages. Therefore we may safely maintain that whatever the
> _astronomical_ meaning of this universally accepted legend may be, its
> 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.(1159)
> 
> 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”(1160)—were the abodes of twelve
> Hierophants and Masters of Wisdom. This “Sea of Knowledge” or
> learning(1161) remained for ages there, where now stretches the Shamo or
> Gobi Desert. It existed until the last great glacial period, when a 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 a 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 those exoteric religions,
> which have been invented to satisfy the depraved taste 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 remembrance of all the literary and Sanskrit‐reading
> 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, were at
> last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet
> they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions: the first as the
> Tzelem, the “Shadow‐Adam,” the Chhâyâs of our doctrine; the second, the
> “Model” Adam, the copy of the first, and the “male and female” of the
> exoteric _Genesis_; 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 the _Zohar_, Adam, the first Man, is not found now on
> Earth, he “is not found in all Below.” For where does the lower Earth come
> from? “From the _Chain of the Earth_, and from the _Heaven Above_,”
> _i.e._, from the superior Globes, those which precede and are above our
> Earth.
> 
>     And there came out from it [the Chain] creatures differing one
>     from the other. Some of them in garments [solid] (skins), some in
>     shells (_Q’lippoth_), ... some in red shells, some in black, some
>     in white, and some from all the colours.(1162)
> 
> As in the Chaldæan Cosmogony of Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some
> treatises on the _Kabalah_ 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 Iochaï, that to
> understand the meaning of the Dragon is not given to the “companions”
> (students, or Chelâs), but only to the “little ones,” _i.e._, the perfect
> Initiates.(1163)
> 
>     The work of the beginning the companions understand; but it is
>     only the little ones who understand the parable on the work in the
>     Principium by the _Mystery of the Serpent of the Great Sea_.(1164)
> 
> And those Christians, who may happen to read this, will also understand by
> 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 the references to
> the “little ones” in the Gospels, relate to the Initiates, _of whom Jesus
> was one_. Paul (Saul) is referred to in the _Talmud_ as the “little one.”
> 
> The “Mystery of the Serpent” was this: Our Earth, or rather _terrestrial
> 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
> _Siphra Dtzenioutha_ 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.(1165)
> 
> A commentary on the _Purânas_ says:
> 
>     Ananta‐Shesha is a form of Vishnu, the Holy Spirit of
>     Preservation, and a symbol of the Universe, on which it is
>     supposed to sleep during the intervals of the _Days_ of Brahmâ.
>     The seven heads of Shesha support the Universe.
> 
> So the Spirit of God “sleeps,” or is “breathing” over the Chaos of
> Undifferentiated Matter, before each new “Creation,” says the _Siphra
> Dtzenioutha_. Now one Day of Brahmâ is composed, as already explained, of
> _one thousand_ Mahâ Yugas; and as each Night, or period of rest, is equal
> in duration to this Day, it is easy to see what this sentence in the
> _Siphra Dtzenioutha_ refers to—viz., that the Serpent manifests “once in a
> thousand days.” Nor is it more difficult to see whither the initiated
> writer of the _Siphra_ is leading us, when he says:
> 
>     Its head is broken in the waters of the Great Sea, as it is
>     written: Thou dividest the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the
>     _heads_ of the _dragons_ in the waters.(1166)
> 
> It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical life, the “Sea
> 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 a “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 (or phallic), the Serpent
> was always regarded as a _divine_ symbol. When mention is made of “the
> [Cosmic] Serpent which runs with 370 leaps,”(1167) it means the cyclic
> periods of the great Tropical Year of 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 _Siphra
> Dtzenioutha_ 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.” Thus the most solemn and
> dreaded of Church dogmas, the alpha and omega of the Christian faith, and
> the pillar of its Fall and Atonement, dwindles down to a Pagan symbol, in
> the many allegories of these pre‐historic struggles.
> 
> Section V. Is Plerôma Satan’s Lair?
> 
> The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other
> 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 concerning the
> “Beni Shamash”—the “Children of the Sun”—relating to 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 concerning the “Old Dragon” and his various Slayers, as has been
> 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 (!!),(1168) the English compiler of
> Éliphas Lévi’s works, _The Mysteries of Magic_, is also of a like opinion.
> He remarks that:
> 
>     Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship
>     attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work [the _Book
>     of Enoch_] than the fourth century B.C.(1169)
> 
> Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems
> 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 Thoth, 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, which have now become singly and collectively
> the symbol of, and the theological term for, the “Fallen Angel,” are not
> so described either in the _original_ Kabalah (the Chaldæan _Book of
> Numbers_) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of
> modern Kabalists, namely Éliphas Lévi, 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 himself in
>     full divine light; strong enough to still reign in darkness amidst
>     agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his
>     inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the republican and
>     heretical Milton ... the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy
>     of pure spirits(!!).(1170)
> 
> This description—one which reconciles so cunningly Theological dogma and
> Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment
> 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. As Éliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony:
> 
>     It is this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who,
>     slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and
>     claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor.(1171)
> 
> It is he who has been finally transformed into a Serpent—the Red Dragon.
> But Éliphas Lévi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic
> authorities—one may add, too jesuitical—to confess that this Devil was
> mankind, and never had any existence on Earth outside of that
> mankind.(1172)
> 
> In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of
> Paganism, has only been true to its own time‐honoured policy. It had to
> 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, have been cursed, and thus the one God
> chosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized. But
> Theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating
> and finally analyzing 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 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.”(1173) 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(1174)—but not unto Âryan 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 standpoint as:
> 
>     The Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as
>     Jehovah.(1175)... It was that Spirit again who, after the death of
>     Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ
> 
> —the doctrine of Cerinthus and several Gnostic sects with slight
> 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, ... the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the
>     God [by the Jews only].
> 
> Asks the author:
> 
>     What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is
>     claimed to be the God ... by overcoming them?
> 
> To which our Occultism answers: Those whom the Church now calls the Fallen
> Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon—overcome, if we have to accept
> _her_ dictum, by Michael and his Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah
> 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 there was a
>     class of personating spirits_ which they designated _demons_,
>     “personators.”... Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts
>     it, the existence of other gods, which ... were personators of the
>     One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of
>     personating spirits, ... which had acquired and exercised greater
>     powers? And is not personation _the key to the mystery of the
>     spirit state_? But once granting this position, _how are we to
>     know that Jehovah was not a personating spirit_, a spirit which
>     arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator
>     of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that
>     the spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his
>     attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to
>     the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable?(1176)
> 
> Then the author shows that “the spirit Jehovah _is_ a personator” on its
> 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.(1177)
> 
> 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 Unveiled_, the Devil—the powerful
> Enemy of God (?!!) had to become the corner stone and pillar of the
> Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his
> _Satan ou le Diable_:
> 
>     Il fallait éviter de paraître autoriser le dogme du double
>     principe en faisant de ce Satan créateur une puissance réelle, et
>     pour expliquer le mal originel, on profère contre Manes
>     l’hypothèse d’une permission de l’unique Tout‐Puissant.(1178)
> 
> 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,
> 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 Dhyân Chohans, or Elohim, who were “commissioned to create,”
> _i.e._, to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
> 
> The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned
> 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.(1179) “For the Initiates,” says Éliphas
> Lévi, “the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for
> Evil.” The Initiates represented this Force, which presides at physical
> 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 have never known it.
> 
> Éliphas Lévi 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 which differs from that
> given by Éliphas Lévi, 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, the Astral Light, by the mediæval Kabalists and
> Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the
> Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Âkâsha—is that which the
> Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in
> transforming the Universal Soul and Plerôma—the _Vehicle of Light_ and the
> receptacle of all 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 Éliphas Lévi, 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, who is a beginner, gather from the following highly
> poetical sentences of Éliphas Lévi, which are 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. Madness,
>     hallucinations, visions, extasies, are all forms of a very
>     dangerous excitation due to this _interior phosphorus_[?]. Thus
>     light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of
>     which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the
>     contrary, dissolves and annihilates.
> 
>     Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over this
>     [Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is
>     threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and
>     eternally destroyed by it.
> 
>     This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful,
>     and fatal, would thus really be hell‐fire, the serpent of the
>     legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and
>     the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the
>     phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult
>     their agony, all this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.(1180)
> 
> There is no _false_ statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance
> of ill‐applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth
> of Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Âkâsha,(1181) the
> Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the
> Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is
> born by separation or _differentiation_. It is the cause of existence; it
> fills all the infinite Space, _is_ Space itself, in one sense, or both its
> _sixth_ and seventh principles.(1182) But as the finite in the Infinite,
> 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 into __
> activity_. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its
> unmanifested unity and infinity, it 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 Éliphas Lévi—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_ it
> is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the
> three Triple Powers (Τριδυνάμεις), 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—_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 Sûtrâtmâ, 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 the Vedântic Philosophy.
> 
> And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of
> Phôsphoros”—brimstone was a Theological improvement—and Lucifer, or
> “Light‐Bearer,” is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our
> 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_(1183)—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 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 also 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 Good and 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.(1184)
> 
> 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; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same
> tenet, save the final conclusion, which 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.
> 
> 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 as it does 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, to admit that the downfall of the _disobedient_ Spirits
> means 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
> naturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
> 
> Yet such was the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now
> disfigured tenet. 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
> Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The
> Âryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss
> of Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from
> their primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same
> Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being
> incarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in 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
> _Esprits Tombés des Paiens_ does, that since—
> 
>     Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil
>     (πουηροῦ), and of good (ἀγαθοῦ); on two forces, in short (ἀγαθαὶ
>     καὶ κακαὶ δυνάμεις): 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 false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and
> Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the “Prince of the Air”
> (_princeps aeris hujus_) is not the “God of _that_ period,” but an
> everlasting principle. When 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‐
> forgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths
> and _revealed_ facts. 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” of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,(1185) when Ahura
> Mazda, descending from the _solid_ Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the
> Heavens _that revolve_ (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles
> including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspands, the “seven bright
> Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished
> Devas fall to the Earth along with him.(1186) In the _Vendîdâd_ the Daêvas
> are called “evil‐doing,” and are shown to rush away “into the depths of
> the ... world of hell,” or Matter.(1187) This is an allegory which shows
> the Devas _compelled to incarnate_, once that they have separated
> themselves from their Parent Essence, or, in other words, after the Unit
> had become 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
> the Fashioners or “Architects” of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man.
> They are the _Fallen_ Angels, metaphorically—the “true mirrors” of the
> “Eternal Wisdom.”
> 
> What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this
> 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 intuition. It is the great _Seventh
> Mystery_ of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St.
> John’s _Apocalypse_ may find its shadow lurking under the _seventh seal_.
> It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the
> eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and
> perished, it is not because Œdipus _had_ unriddled the secret of the ages,
> but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever‐spiritual and the subjective,
> he had 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
> 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,”(1188) invoked in the prayer called Airyama‐ishyô, is
> the divine aspect of Ahriman, “the deadly, the Daêva of the Daêvas,”(1189)
> and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “Keep us from
> our hater, O Mazda and Ârmaita Spenta,”(1190) 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 Ârmaita
> Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or
> Angra Mainyu in one sense.
> 
> The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature—or what remains of it—is
> magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its “mystery of
> the law.”(1191) Now the Mobed and the Parsî 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 Haômas, nor even their
> Vohu‐Manô (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help
> them much. Let them meditate on the “Tree of Wisdom,” and by study
> assimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal
> Life, the white Haôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to
> the other; and Haôma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once
> more a priest of it, and a “healer,” man must heal himself, for this must
> be done before he can heal others.
> 
> This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an
> approximate degree of justice, the so‐called “myths” 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 than they did in Gods—or, we
> may call them, the spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits, the
> Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because _they knew_.
> And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were
> 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 and their Remains_, 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 Cherubim placed over
>     it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation,
>     in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of _Form_
>     and _Matter_, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans
>     broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem,
>     they naturally enough exclaimed, “Is this your God, of whom you
>     boast, that He is such a lover of purity!”(1192)
> 
> King thinks that this tradition “savours too much of Alexandrian
> 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, not to speak of the “holy” Jod within the Ark! The
> Mystery of Agathodæmon, 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.
> 
> Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.
> 
> His Origin In Ancient India.
> 
> In our modern day there is not the slightest doubt in the minds of the
> best European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest
> and most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of
> Deucalion, whom the Bœotians 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 Grèce Antique_ remarks:
> 
>     Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity;
>     he is its _generator_. In the same way that we saw Hephæstus
>     moulding the first woman [Pandora] and endowing her with life, so
>     Prometheus kneads the moist clay, of which he fashions the body of
>     the first man whom he will endow with the soul‐spark.(1193) After
>     the flood of Deucalion, Zeus, they said, had commanded Prometheus
>     and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by
>     the waters of the deluge,(1194) and, in the day of Pausanias, the
>     slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in
>     Phocis.(1195) On several archaic monuments we still see Prometheus
>     modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena’s help.(1196)
> 
> The same author reminds us of another equally mysterious personage, though
> 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 Phoroneidæ. 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.(1197) A benefactor of men, like Prometheus, he
> had made them participators of every bliss on earth. Plato(1198) and
> Clemens Alexandrinus(1199) say that Phoroneus was the first man, or the
> “father of mortals.” His genealogy, which assigns to him the river Inachos
> as his father, reminds us 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.(1200)
> 
> Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the “Ash‐tree,” whence,
> according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze,(1201) and which
> with the Greeks is the _celestial tree_ common to every Âryan mythology.
> This Ash is the Yggdrasil of 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 Orlog or Fate (Karma), but men are
> conscious only of the Present.
> 
>     [But when] Gultweig (gold‐ore) comes, the bewitching enchantress
>     ... who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more
>     beautiful than before and fills the souls of gods and men with
>     unappeasable longing, then the Norns ... enter into being, and the
>     blessed peace of childhood’s dreams passes away, and sin comes
>     into existence with all its evil consequences [and Karma].(1202)
> 
> The thrice‐purified Gold is—Manas, the Conscious Soul.
> 
> With the Greeks, the Ash‐tree represented the same idea. Its luxuriant
> 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 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 more than
> “fire by friction,” the learned author of the _Mythologie de la Grèce
> 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 palæolithic men—but something more mysterious
> this time, though still as earthly!
> 
>     A divine bird, nestled in the branches [of the celestial Ash‐
>     tree], stole that bough [or the fruit] and carried it down on the
>     earth in its bill. Now the Greek word Φορώνευς is the rigid
>     equivalent of the Sanskrit word _bhuranyu_, “the rapid,” an
>     epithet of Agni, considered as the carrier of the divine spark.
>     Phoroneus, son of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds
>     to a conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which
>     transformed the _pramantha_ [of the old Âryan Hindûs] into the
>     Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the [personified] bird, that brings
>     the heavenly lightning to the earth. Traditions relating to the
>     birth of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the
>     father of the Argolians, are an evidence to us that this
>     thunderbolt [or lightning], as in the legend of Hephæstus or
>     Prometheus, was the origin of the human race.(1203)
> 
> 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. But 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
> Abhimânin, 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 Hindû Âryan mind never
> soar above such purely sensual conceptions; that mind which is declared by
> Prof. Max Müller 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 Pro‐metheus as the old Greeks did. The
> latter, it seems:
> 
>     Basing themselves on the apparent analogy of προμηθεύς with the
>     verb προμανθύνειν, saw in him the type of the “foreseeing” man, to
>     whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was added—Epi‐metheus,
>     or “he who takes counsel _after_ the event.”(1204)
> 
> But now the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real
> 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, and its remembrance has never
>     since faded out from popular memory.(1205)
> 
> What was this? 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 Æschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth
> of which is now confirmed by Science; and then we 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 men 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, was it not analogous in nature to that
>     which sent them from above its light and heat, or which frightened
>     them in the thunderbolt? Was it not derived from the same source?
>     And if its origin was in heaven, must it not have been brought
>     down some day on earth? If so, who was the powerful being, the
>     beneficent being, God or man, who had conquered it? Such are the
>     questions which the curiosity of the Âryans offered in the early
>     days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth
>     of Prometheus.(1206)
> 
> The Philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above
> reflections, and proceeds to point them out. The miserable state of
> Humanity described by Æschylus and Lucretius was no more wretched then, in
> the early days of the Âryans, 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 by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side
>     by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from
>     Kent’s Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could
>     distinguish between them.(1207)
> 
> And if there are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest
> civilization, who are no higher intellectually than the race of men which
> inhabited Devonshire and Southern France during the Palæolithic 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,
> Pâninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the
> Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Hæckels. On comparing the
> results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist,(1208) 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 average index of skulls among
> various races having been now recognized to be “one of the most
> characteristic marks of difference between different races,” the following
> comparison is suggestive:
> 
>     The index of breadth among the Scandinavians [is] at 75; among the
>     English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80;
>     Schiller’s skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 ... the
>     Madurese also 82!
> 
> Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the
> European, brings to light the startling fact that:
> 
>     _Most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period, are
>     above rather than below the average of the brain of the now living
>     man in volume._
> 
> Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length in inches
> from the average measurements of several skulls, the following sums are
> obtained:
> 
> 1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age:                    18.877 ins.
> 2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England:    18.858 ins.
> 3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales:       18.649 ins.
> 4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France:       18.220 ins.
> 
> The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots,
> 17.795 inches!
> 
> These figures show plainly that:
> 
>     The size of the brain of the oldest populations known to us is not
>     such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living
>     inhabitants of the Earth.(1209)
> 
> Besides which, they show the “missing link” vanishing into thin air. Of
> these, however, more anon: we must return to our direct subject.
> 
> As the “Prometheus Vinctus” of Æschylus tells us, the race which Jupiter
> so ardently desired “to quench, and plant a new one in its stead” (v.
> 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” (v. 256); he “saved the mortal race from sinking
> blasted down to Hades’ gloom” (v. 244); and then only, “besides” that, he
> gave them fire (v. 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
> all but a few volcanoes 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 spot of the Globe, with the exception perhaps of the
> Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before
> “discovering fire,” through lightning setting the grass or something else
> in flames. 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 Æschylus was an Initiate, and knew well what he was giving
> out.(1210)
> 
> No Occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us
> from the East, will for a moment deny that the myth of Prometheus has
> reached Europe from Âryâvarta. 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 “Les Mythes du Feu et du Breuvage
> Céleste”(1211) one of the aspects of Prometheus and his origin from India.
> He shows the reader the _supposed_ primitive process to obtain fire, still
> 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
>     Sûtras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in
>     the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat
>     and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The
>     motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of
>     motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick
>     in its middle; the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and
>     pulls them alternately.... The full process is designated in
>     Sanskrit by the verb _manthâmi, mathnáni_, which means “to rub,
>     agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,” and is especially applied
>     to rotatory friction, as is proved by its derivative _mandala_,
>     which signifies a circle.... The pieces of wood serving for the
>     production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick
>     which turns is called _pramantha_; the discus which receives it is
>     called _arani_ and _aranî_: “the two aranis” designating the
>     _ensemble_ of the instrument.(1212)
> 
> It remains to be seen what the Brâhmans will say to this. But even
> supposing that Prometheus, in one of the aspects of his myth, was
> conceived as the producer of fire by means of the 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 modern symbologists?
> Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth;
> for he unconsciously corroborates all that the Occult Sciences teach with
> regard to the Mânasa 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.(1213) “How did Prometheus
> come into possession of the [divine] spark?” he asks.
> 
>     Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to
>     find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the
>     gods, he must have been a god himself.(1214)
> 
> The Greeks held that he was of the _Divine_ Race, “the son of the Titan
> Iapetos”;(1215) the Hindûs, that he was a Deva.
> 
>     But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone; it
>     was a treasure they reserved for themselves ... over which they
>     jealously watched.... “The prudent son of Iapetus,” says Hesiod,
>     “deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing in the cavity of a
>     narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow.”(1216)
>     ... Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made
>     from heaven. Now according to Greek ideas [in this identical with
>     those of the Occultists], this possession forced from Jupiter,
>     this human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be
>     followed by an expiation.... Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that
>     race of Titans who had rebelled(1217) against the gods, and whom
>     the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he
>     is the genius of evil, doomed to cruel suffering.(1218)
> 
> What is most revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one‐sided
> view taken of this grandest of all 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 them, Prometheus is
> not a criminal, save in the eyes of the Gods. In his relation with the
> Earth, he is, on the contrary, a God himself, a friend of mankind
> (φιλάνθρωπος), which he has raised to civilization and initiated into the
> knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most poetical
> expounder in Æschylus. 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_)(1219) _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.(1220)
> 
> It is the former idea (the phallic) which was _preëminently_ Âryan, if we
> believe Adalbert Kuhn(1221) and F. Baudry. For:
> 
>     The fire used by man being the result of the action of _pramantha_
>     in the _arani_, the Âryas _must have_ ascribed [?] the same origin
>     to celestial fire, and they _must have_(1222) imagined [?] that a
>     god armed with the pramantha, or a divine pramantha, caused a
>     violent friction in the bosom of the clouds, which gave birth to
>     lightning and thunderbolts.(1223)
> 
>     This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch’s
>     testimony,(1224) the Stoics thought that thunder was the result of
>     the struggle of storm‐clouds, and lightning a conflagration due to
>     friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action
>     of clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if
>     not the scientific translation of the production of fire by
>     friction?... Everything leads us to think that, from the highest
>     antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Âryas, it was believed
>     that the pramantha lighted the fire in the storm‐cloud as well as
>     in the aranis.(1225)
> 
> Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered
> truths. Defenders of the biblical dead‐letter could not help the writers
> of missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists
> in thus taking for granted that the ancient Âryans 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. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:
> 
>     This idea of the creative power of fire is explained ... by the
>     ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark(1226)
> 
> —as shown by the imagery often made use of in the _Vedas_ when speaking of
> Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual
> conception. A Hymn to Agni in the _Veda_ is cited as an example:
> 
>     Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress
>     of the race (the female aranî). Let us produce Agni by attrition,
>     according to ancient custom.
> 
> This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of
> mortals. The female Aranî, the “mistress of the race,” is Aditi, the
> Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light—in the World of Spirit, the
> “Great Deep” and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from
> the Unknown, in the Manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is
> applied to Devakî, the Mother of Krishna, or the incarnated Logos; and if
> the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric
> religions, may now 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 _Purânas_ there is an abyss of
> which they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Âtmâ, and
> the first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary
> constitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the
> _Vedas_, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the Paurânic
> accounts, found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing
> events which took 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 Surârani, the Matrix or “Mother” of the Suras or Gods,
> so Kuntî, the mother of the Pândavas, is called in the _Mahâbhârata_
> Pândavârani(1227)—and the term is now _physiologized_. But Devakî, the
> antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form
> of Aditi. The latter is the Goddess‐mother, or Deva‐mâtri, of seven Sons
> (the six and the seven Âdityas of early Vedic times); the mother of
> Krishna, Devakî, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad‐dhâtri,
> the “Nurse of the World,” the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being
> transferred to that of Rohinî. 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.(1228) No one of the worshippers of the Roman
> Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer
> addressed by the Gods to Devakî. Let the reader judge.
> 
>     Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which
>     formerly bore Brahmâ in its womb.... Thou, eternal being,
>     comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things,
>     wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri‐form
>     sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice,
>     whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the Aranî, whose attrition
>     engenders fire.(1229) As Aditi, thou art the parent of the
>     gods.... Thou art light [Jyotsnâ, the morning twilight],(1230)
>     whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [Samnati, a daughter of
>     Daksha], the mother of wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of
>     harmony (Naya);(1231) thou art modesty, the progenitrix of
>     affection [Prashraya, explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of
>     whom love is born.... Thou art ... the mother of knowledge
>     [Avabodha]; thou art patience [Dhriti], the parent of fortitude
>     [Dhairya].(1232)
> 
> Thus Aranî is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic “Vase of
> Election.” As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No
> unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in
> the _Zohar_—far less metaphysical in its symbology than any other
> symbolism—the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the
> _Zohar_ says:
> 
>     All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the
>     ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and
>     female principle.(1233)
> 
> It means no more than that the divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing
> 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 comprises _all_ when it goeth forth.
> 
> Hence Chokmah (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 touching the shell but to get at its contents, so the eye
> of the true Philosopher reads between the lines of the _Purânas_ the
> sublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedântic
> 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.
> 
> Section VII. Enoïchion‐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 Enoïchion 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 _apocryphon_?
> The very etymology of the term shows that it is simply a _secret_ book,
> _i.e._, one that belonged to the catalogue of temple‐libraries under the
> guardianship of the Hierophants and Initiated Priests, and was never meant
> for the profane. _Apocryphon_ comes from the verb _crypto_ (κρύπτω), “to
> hide.” For ages the _Enoïchion_, the Book of the Seer, was preserved in
> the “city of letters” and secret works—the ancient Kirjath‐sepher, later
> on, Debir.(1234)
> 
> 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 of these are distinct one from the
> other; professionally—if one may use this word, now so limited in its
> sense—one and all belong to the same category of sacred writers, of
> Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in the
> _Korân_(1235) are generically termed the Edris, or the “Learned,” the
> Initiated, bore in Egypt the name of “Thoth,” the inventor of Arts,
> Sciences, of writing or letters, of Music and Astronomy. Among the Jews
> Edris became “Enoch,” who, according to Bar‐Hebræus, “was the first
> inventor of writing,” books, Arts, and Sciences, the first who reduced to
> a system the progress of the planets.(1236) 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,(1237) as well as the number 365, of the days in the year,
> astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the sacred
> office of all these men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is
> the _seventh_ Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the Phorminx, the
> seven‐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 God of the seven days, or the week.
> Esoterically and spiritually, Enoïchion means the “Seer of the Open Eye.”
> 
> The story about Enoch, told by Josephus, namely, that he had concealed his
> precious Rolls or Books under the pillars of Mercury or Seth, is the same
> as that told of Hermes, the “Father of Wisdom,” who concealed his Books of
> Wisdom under a pillar, and then, discovering the two pillars of stone,
> 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 these pillars as still existing during
> his own time.(1238) 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, with the exception of the application
> made of it, must be true _allegorically_. According to his version the two
> famous pillars were entirely covered with hieroglyphics, which, after
> their discovery, were copied and reproduced in the most secret corners of
> the inner temples of Egypt, and thus became 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—such
> as Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Plato—got the elements of their
> Theology from those hieroglyphics, he is right in one sense, and wrong in
> another. 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, moreover, a
> Chaldæan, and now very incomplete, compendium. As already said, Enoïchion
> means in Greek the “Inner Eye,” or the Seer; in Hebrew, _with the help of
> Masoretic points_, it means the “Initiator” and “Instructor” (חֲנוֹךּ).
> Enoch is a generic title; and, moreover, his legend is 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 Chaldæan 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
> (אֶלְיָה),(1239) and again of Elihu, which has the same meaning. This kind
> of easy death, or _euthanasia_, has an Esoteric meaning. It symbolizes the
> “death” of any Adept who has reached the power and degree, and also the
> purification, which enable him to “die” 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,(1240) “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(1241)—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 Shishta, the holy “Sons of
> Light.”
> 
> The Latin Church is not always logical, nor prudent. She declares the
> _Book of Enoch_ an _apocryphon_, and has gone so far as to claim, through
> Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from
> the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, otherwise, as an _inspired_
> apostle, would quote from and thus sanctify 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 _a whole sentence_ from him, in
> the mouth of Jesus!(1242)
> 
> 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 this too dogmatic
> assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel did find the _Book of Enoch_ in
> Abyssinia, and what is more, brought it to Europe some years later, and
> Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its
> contents; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it a
> _Gnostic_ work, concerning the Age of Giants who devour men—and bearing a
> strong resemblance to the _Apocalypse_.(1243) Giants! another _fairy‐
> tale_!
> 
> Such, however, has not been the opinion of all the best critics. Dr.
> Hanneberg places the _Book of Enoch_ along with the _Third Book of the
> Maccabees—at the head of the list of those whose authority stands the
> nearest to that of the canonical works_.(1244)
> 
> Verily, “where doctors disagree...”!
> 
> As usual, however, they are all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a
> biblical character, a single living person, is like accepting Adam as the
> first man. 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
> Nirvâna, 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.
> Josephus, speaking of Elijah and Enoch,(1245) remarks that:
> 
>     It is written in the sacred books they [Elijah and Enoch]
>     disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died.
> 
> It means simply that _they had died in their personalities_, as Yogîs die
> 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_;(1246) R.
> Eliezar referring to Enoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus,
> for the two are identical in their Esoteric meaning. “Hanokh” in this
> case, and his “Wisdom,” belong to the cycle of the Fourth Atlantean
> Race,(1247) and Noah to that of the Fifth.(1248) In this case both
> 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(1249)) took
> him; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoïchions, the Seers and their
> Knowledge and Wisdom, became strictly 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, as given by Éliphas Lévi from a secret
> work, which is a Six‐pointed Star, the “Adonai.” In the upper angle of the
> upper Triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower angle 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.(1250) Now the figures on the
> upper Triangle represent the Four Races, omitting the First, the Chhâyâs
> or Shadows, and the “Son of Man,” Enos or Enoch, is in the centre, where
> he stands between the Fourth and the Fifth Races, for he represents the
> Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four Animals of _Ezekiel_ and of the
> _Revelation_. This Double Triangle which, in _Isis Unveiled_, is faced by
> the Hindû Ardhanârî, is by far the best. For in the latter, only the three
> (for us) historical Races are symbolized; the Third, the Androgynous, by
> Ardha‐nârî; the Fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful Lion; and the
> Fifth, the Âryan, by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the
> Bull (and the Cow).
> 
> A man of great erudition, a French _savant_, M. de Sacy, finds several
> 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.(1251)
> 
> To which he adds, later on:
> 
>     I see but one means to palliate them [these “absurdities”]; it is
>     to suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may
>     have existed _before the order of Nature had been altered at the
>     period of the Universal Deluge_.(1252)
> 
> Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that this “order of nature”
> 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_ of heaven, which cause all their
>     operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of
>     sinners _the years shall be shortened_.... The moon shall change
>     its laws....(1253)
> 
> In those days also, years before the Great Deluge that carried away the
> Atlanteans and changed the face of the whole Earth (because “the _Earth_
> [or its axis] _became inclined_”), Nature, geologically, astronomically,
> and cosmically in general, could not have been the same, just because the
> Earth _had inclined_. To quote from Enoch:
> 
>     And Noah cried with a bitter voice, Hear me; hear me; hear me;
>     three times. And he said,... The earth labours and is violently
>     shaken. Surely, I shall perish with it.(1254)
> 
> This, by the way, looks like one of those many “inconsistencies,” if the
> _Bible_ is read literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange
> 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 had already _inclined_, and the
> deluge of waters had 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_”—the end of the Race:
> 
>     For they _knew_ [truly] every secret of the angels, every
>     oppressive and secret power of the _Satans_, and every power of
>     those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten
>     images in the whole earth.(1255)
> 
> And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author
> of this powerful vision—no matter to what age he may be assigned before
> the day of Galileo—that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis?
> Whence did he derive such astronomical and geological knowledge if the
> Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is
> but a fancy, an invention of later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically
> perchance in Fréderic Klée’s work on the Deluge the lines:
> 
>     The position of the terrestrial globe with reference to the sun
>     has evidently been, in primitive times, different from what it is
>     now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement
>     of the axis of rotation of the earth.
> 
> This reminds one of that _unscientific_ statement made by the Egyptian
> priests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it
> rises _now_, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at
> right angles.(1256)
> 
> There are many such “dark sayings” scattered throughout the _Purânas_,
> _Bible_ and other Mythologies, and to the Occultist they divulge two
> facts; (_a_) that the Ancients knew as well as, and perhaps better than,
> the moderns do, Astronomy, Geognosy and Cosmography in general; and (_b_)
> that the behaviour of the Globe has altered more than once since the
> primitive state of things. Thus, Xenophantes—on the _blind_ faith of _his_
> “ignorant” religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the
> _hidden_ truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course—asserts
> somewhere that, “the Sun turned toward another country”; which is a
> parallel—slightly more scientific, however, if not as bold—of Joshua
> stopping the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching
> of the Northern Mythology that before the _actual order_ of things the Sun
> arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone (Jeruskoven) in the
> East, whereas now it is in the North.(1257)
> 
> The _Book of Enoch_, in short, is a _résumé_, a compound of the main
> 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, for Origen, among others, who lived in the second century of
> the Christian era, 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 eighteenth to the
> fiftieth 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_).(1258) 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”!
> 
> Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery‐Names Iao and Jehovah, with
> their Relation to the Cross and Circle.
> 
> When the Abbé Louis Constant, better known as Éliphas Lévi, said in his
> _Histoire de la Magie_ that the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the _Zohar_, and the
> _Apocalypse_ of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he
> ought, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added—in Europe.
> It is quite true that these works contain “more _significance_ than
> words”; and that their “expression is poetical,” while “in numbers” they
> are “exact.” Unfortunately, however, 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
> employed. But 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 Patriarch‐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, or the
> other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those
> used with respect to Ain Suph 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 Clement, and the Rabbis confessed that the
> _Kabalah_ and the _Bible_ were _veiled and secret_ books; but few know
> that the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present _reëdited_
> 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 has been built. With the old Âryans,
> the Egyptians, and the Chaldæans, the symbol 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 “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 Jetzirah_, or what remains of the latter—that which has been
> subsequently embodied 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 now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the
> early period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and
> pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred
> 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 weaker, the Judeans could not help the desecration. They
> kept, however, 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 the verses in
> _Deuteronomy_, which say quite plainly:
> 
>     When the Most High [not the “Lord,” or “Jehovah” either] divided
>     to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of
>     Adam, he set the bounds ... according to the number of the
>     children of Israel.... _The Lord’s_ [Jehovah’s] _portion is his
>     people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance_.(1259)
> 
> This settles the question. So impudent have been the modern translators of
> Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following
> in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each
> translator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above‐cited
> quotation is taken _verbatim_ from the English Authorized Version, in the
> French Bible,(1260) we find the “Most High” translated by “Souverain”
> (Sovereign!!), the “sons of Adam” rendered by “the children of men,” and
> the “Lord” changed into the “Eternal.” For impudent sleight‐of‐hand, the
> French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English
> ecclesiasticism.
> 
> 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 Âryans,
> 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 Ildabaoth‐Jehovah, the
> Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.(1261) 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,(1262) so each Hindû 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.(1263)
> 
> 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. These seven meanings and
> their applications are difficult 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_. 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 _Kabalah_, of which we may give two as interpreted
> by the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:
> 
>     “Thou canst not see My face;... I will put thee in a cleft of the
>     rock and I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then
>     I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My _a’hoor_,”
>     _i.e._, My back.(1264)
> 
> And then the translator adds in a gloss:
> 
>     That is, I will show you “My back,” _i.e._, My visible universe,
>     My lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou
>     canst not see My invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.(1265)
> 
> This is correct, and is the cosmo‐metaphysical explanation. And now speaks
> 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 Section III, on the “Holy of Holies.”(1266)
> 
> The numbers of the name “Moses” are those of “I am that I am,” so that the
> names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is
> משה (5 + 300 + 40), and the sum of the values of its letters is 345;
> Jehovah—the Genius _par excellence_ of the Lunar Year—assumes the value of
> 543, or the reverse of 345.
> 
>     In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is
>     said: And Moses said, ... Behold I come unto the children of
>     Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent
>     me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? What
>     shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses,
> 
>     I Am That I Am.
> 
> The Hebrew words for this expression are _âhiyé asher âhiyé_, and in the
> value of the sums of their letters stand thus:
> 
> אהיה     אשר     אהיה
> 21      501      21
> 
>     ... This being his [God’s] name, the sum of the values composing
>     it, 21, 501, 21 is 543, or simply a use of the simple digit
>     numbers in the name of Moses, ... but now so ordered that the name
>     of 345 is reversed, and reads 543.
> 
> So that when Moses asks, “Let me see Thy face or glory,” the other rightly
> and truly replies, “Thou canst not see my face ... but thou _shalt see me
> behind_”—the true sense, though not the precise words; for the corner and
> the _behind_ of 543 is the _face_ of 345. This is
> 
>     For check and to keep a _strict use_ of a set of numbers to
>     develop certain _grand_ results, for the object of which they are
>     specifically employed.
> 
> As the learned Kabalist adds:
> 
>     In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It
>     is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the
>     Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or
>     Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives
>     three eights as quotient.... The chief end of all this system of
>     Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the
>     Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days.
> 
> These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogony
> of sidereo‐cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldæo‐Hebrews,—two meanings out
> of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.
> 
> The series of Œdipuses 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 Œdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the
> Sphinx, 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
> Jehovah symbol 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, a _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—unless they accepted the more abstract
> and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles—was, in truth, only
> an astronomical triad, 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.”(1267) For, if the Father is the Sun (the “Elder Brother,” in the
> Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes,
> Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet
> receives seven times more light than any other; a fact which led the
> Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the
> astronomical meaning), the “Seven‐fold Light.” Finally, _this_ God was
> Bel—the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios, with the Greeks; Baal, with
> the Phœnicians; El, in Chaldæan, hence El‐ohim, Emanu‐el, and 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 Suph, 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, at any rate by
> those who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost,
> Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions,
> but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the
> Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.
> 
> As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between
>     the mystery‐god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who
>     participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his
>     phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little
>     reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.(1268)
> 
>     In the Ophite gems of King,(1269) we find the name of Iao
>     repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter
>     simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But
>     the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property
>     of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon
>     the tutelary “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of
>     the “chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why
>     other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One‐
>     living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there
>     is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the
>     beginning, for יהיה and יה never came into use before the time of
>     king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were
>     compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being
>     a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,(1270) brought
>     thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom
>     came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at
>     Hebron (חברון), 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 יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules
>     and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
> 
>     Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the
>     Greek Ιαω, 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 Chaldæans, whose remains are to be found
>     among the Neo‐Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above
>     the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light‐Principle, ...
>     and also conceived of as Demiurgus,(1271) was called Ιαω (יהו),
>     who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and
>     whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a
>     Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and _secret_, and he was
>     Ιαω.”(1272)
> 
> 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
> has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The
> Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and
> the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter.
> This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone
> has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial
> events.
> 
> Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the
> son of Cœlus 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, the Logos, or Verbum. Now
> Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the
> latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to
> Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his
> Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes‐Mercury (Dii Termini) were
> placed along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now
> placed in Italy, and they were _cruciform_.(1273) 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, says:
> 
>     I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia.
>     Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.
> 
> Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.(1274) He
> was often represented as three‐headed and called Tricephalus, Triplex, as
> one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus(1275) 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 it is 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.(1276) In Alchemy “Mercury” is the radical “Moyst”
> Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the
> Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating
> principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or
> the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform
> Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the
> _cubic_ Hermes. The author of _Source of Measures_ tells us why.(1277)
> 
> As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau,
> 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 “King‐Initiates” for ages, and also what was meant by “the
> attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “was made to coördinate with
> that of the origin of human life, and hence the _phallic form_.” Only the
> latter came into action æons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and
> Artificer of the Gods, Vishva‐karmâ, 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
>     form of display by the Hindûs.(1278)
> 
> But, it was made “to coördinate” 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 Source of Measures_ is quite correct.
> 
>     The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded
>     as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or
>     God, as the _basis or law_ of the exertion practically of creative
>     power—_i.e._, it was the _creative design_, of which creation was
>     practically the application. This seems to be established by the
>     fact that, under the system set forth, measures of _planetary
>     times_ serve coördinately as measures of the _size_ of planets,
>     and of the peculiarity of their shapes—_i.e._, in the extension of
>     their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of
>     creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure,
>     as a foundation for its _ritualism_ and for its display of the
>     works of the Deity in the way of _architecture_, by use of the
>     sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the
>     Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.(1279)
> 
> Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish
> Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One
> Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a _number_; symbolically,
> a _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 modern 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.(1280) One
> author believes that:
> 
>     However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the
>     practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the
>     planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements,
>     it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the
>     means of his realization of the Deity—that is, he approached _so
>     nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own_,
>     only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize _a law of
>     creation_ established by that Being, which must have existed prior
>     to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).(1281)
> 
> This may have satisfied the practical _Semite_ mind, but the Eastern
> Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a
> Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is
> _no_ God that has any room _beyond_ the cycle of creation. He has nought
> to do with the _ideal_ conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best,
> one of the _subordinate creative_ 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 _Kabalah_ 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
>     Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of
>     these relations, respectively—the first being of circumference,
>     the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under
>     it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are
>     used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of
>     the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1)
>     will leave a _unit_ of a diameter value in terms, or in the
>     denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or
>     a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor
>     of circular value.(1282)
> 
> Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries
> of the _third_ stage of Evolution, or the “Third Creation of Brahmâ.” The
> initiated Hindûs 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 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
> Éliphas Lévi 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 Éliphas Lévi thought. It was
> _borrowed_ by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or
> Cardinal Cusa’s Latin work, _De Doctâ Ignorantiâ_, in which he makes use
> of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words
> “Cosmic Circle,” which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by
> the word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous.
> 
> A. Cross And Circle.
> 
> In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the
> mysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old
> world, consistent in its symbolism and 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 being given indifferently to both, is
> explained, and becomes thereby still more _scientific_ and philosophical.
> Plato’s etymological definition of the word _theos_ (θεός) has, been given
> elsewhere. In his _Cratylus_, he derives it from the verb _the‐ein_
> (θέειν), “to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies
> which he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philosophy, this
> Deity, during its “Nights” and its “Days,” or Cycles of Rest and Activity,
> is 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 is the only possible conception in the 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
> æons 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 Persæa in An”(1283) 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 Gerald Massey, 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 says:
> 
>     The circle and cross are inseparable.... The Crux Ansata unites
>     the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin the
>     circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For
>     example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The name
>     denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of
>     time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like
>     manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four‐
>     footed cross [Svastika], and a type of the four quarters. Thus the
>     cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem
>     unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake
>     and the Ankh‐tie ☥.(1284)
> 
> Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the
> Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows that:(1285)
> 
>     The sign ♀ occurs as the _reverse_ of a Phœnician coin, with a Ram
>     as the obverse.... The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking‐
>     Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the
>     hind‐quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other
>     beautiful breeds of horses.
> 
> This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already
> become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the _divine_
> origin of cross and circle had begun.
> 
> Another form of the cross is given from the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic
> Society_:(1286)
> 
>     At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform
>     curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus
>     the figure combines the cross with the circle round it in four
>     parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four
>     segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the
>     Fylfot of Thor. The four‐leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is
>     likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an
>     Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter
>     arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse
>     is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore
>     denotes the path of the earth.... Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the
>     following specimen, [Symbol: Oval, with large letter “Z” inside,
>     with horizontal crossbar] which is here presented, as the cross of
>     the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure
>     of the earth’s path. The same ovoid or boat‐shaped figure appears
>     at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a
>     form or a mode of Meru.
> 
> This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more
> 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 Âryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author:
> 
>     The four‐armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but
>     the cross‐sign is not always simple.(1287) This is a type that was
>     developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the
>     expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of
>     Egypt that was carried in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and
>     the mummied dead, is the Ankh ☥ the sign of life, the living, an
>     oath, the covenant.... The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru
>     [Symbol: Horizontal oval] set upright on the Tau‐cross. The Ru is
>     the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the
>     _birthplace_ in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which
>     the Sun is reborn. Hence the _Ru of the Ankh‐sign is the feminine
>     type of the birthplace, representing the north_. It was in the
>     _northern quarter_ that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the
>     “Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest
>     cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and
>     cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh‐cross
>     [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right], a mere loop
>     which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop
>     or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, _Typhon of
>     the Great Bear_; as her _Ark_, the ideograph of a _period_, _an
>     ending_, _a time_, shown to mean one revolution. This, then,
>     represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great
>     Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact
>     we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter,
>     the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol.
>     Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an _Ark_ or _Rek_ type of
>     reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh‐cross was continued in the Cypriote
>     R, [Symbol: Circle with horizontal line beneath], and the Coptic
>     Ro, [Symbol: Figure like a Rho].(1288) The Ro was carried into the
>     Greek cross [Symbol: Large Greek Rho with letter Chi beneath it],
>     which is formed of the Ro and Chi or _R‐k_.... The Rek, or Ark,
>     was the sign of all beginning (_Arche_) on this account, and the
>     Ark‐tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of heaven.(1289)
> 
> Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Paurânic
> version in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without 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 [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right]
> does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pâsha, a cord
> which the four‐armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.(1290)
> The Mahâdeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahâyogî,
> with his third eye [Symbol: Vertical oval with dot in the middle], which
> is “the Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval with dot in the middle], set upright
> on the Tau‐cross” in another form. The Pâsha is held in the hand in such a
> way that the first finger and hand near the thumb make the cross, or loop
> and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind
> refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kâlî, Shiva’s consort, has
> the same as an attribute!
> 
> The Pâsha has here a double significance, as also has Shiva’s Trisûla and
> every other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for
> Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansated Cross in its
> cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pâsha becomes
> lingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the _Vedas_. It is
> in the _White Yajur Veda_ that Rudra appears for the first time as the
> Great God, Mahâdeva, whose symbol is the Lingam. In the _Rig Veda_ he is
> called Rudra, the “howler,” the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the
> same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the _Vishnu Purâna_, he is the
> God who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and
> 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 _Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra,
> God of Fire, are called the “ten vital breaths (_prâna_, life), with the
> heart (_manas_), as eleventh,”(1291) whereas as Shiva, he is the
> _destroyer_ of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides,
> seven other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the
> seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.
> 
> Hence the cruciform noose, or Pâsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he is
> represented as an ascetic, the Mahâyogin, has no phallic signification,
> and, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to
> find such a signification even in 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 “birthplace” 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 Yogî 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 seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear;
> if Egypt made them sacred to “the oldest genitrix, Typhon,” India has
> connected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga‐revolutions, and the
> Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age‐the dark Kali
> Yuga.(1292) The great Circle of Time, on the face of which, Indian fancy
> has represented the Porpoise, or Shishumâra, has the cross placed on it by
> nature in its division and localization of stars, planets and
> constellations. In _Bhâgavata Purâna_,(1293) it is said:
> 
>     At the _extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is
>     directed toward the south_, and whose body is _in the shape of a
>     ring_ [circle], Dhruva [the ex‐pole star] is placed; _along its
>     tail_ are Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; _across its loins_
>     the seven Rishis.(1294)
> 
> This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity,
> symbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kâla, 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 Mahâpralaya.
> 
> Meanwhile it is 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, or Krittikâs, are the nurses of Kârttikeya, the
> God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander
> of the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas—Siddha‐sena (translated
> Yogîs in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth)—which would make Kârttikeya
> identical with Michael, the “Leader of the Celestial Hosts” and, like
> himself, a virgin Kumâra.(1295) Verily he is the Guha, the “Mysterious
> One,” as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikâs, the seven Rishis
> 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 circle, as it bears strongly upon
> the elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the
> circle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been
> born of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or
> like the Avatâras (Krishna, for instance)—in the West as in the
> East—Kârttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten
> by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra‐Shiva, which was
> cast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he
> is born from Fire and Water—a “boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the
> Moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhû (son of Agni) and Gangâputra (son of
> Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittikâ, his nurses, as the
> _Matsya Purâna_ shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic
> words, “the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni,” and hence
> “Krittika has Âgneya as a synonym”(1296)—and the connection is easy to
> follow.
> 
> It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga,
> the age of sin and sorrow. As the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ tells us:
> 
>     When the splendour of Vishnu, named Krishna, departed for heaven,
>     then did the Kali age, during which men delight in sin, invade the
>     world....
> 
>     When the seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali age, comprising
>     1,200 [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from
>     Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvâshâdhâ, then will this Kali age
>     attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.(1297)
> 
> This is the revolution of the Rishis—
> 
>     When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise
>     in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an
>     equal distance between them, then the seven Rishis continue
>     stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,
> 
> —as a hater of Nanda makes Parâshara say. According to Bentley, it was in
> order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this
> notion originated among the Astronomers.
> 
>     This was by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing
>     through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed
>     Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the
>     Great Bear.... The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the
>     Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis;
>     and, being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism
>     Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc.,
>     of any movable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle, as an
>     index.(1298)
> 
> There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy
> about the chronology of the Hindûs. Here is, however, 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 Kârttikeya
> was delivered to the Krittikâ by the Gods to be nursed, they were only
> six, whence Kârttikeya is represented with _six_ heads; but when the
> poetical fancy of the early Âryan Symbologists made of them the consorts
> of the seven Rishis, they were _seven_. Their names are given, and these
> are Amba, Dulâ, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and
> Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow,
> the seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittikâ before the
> disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindû
> astronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the
> strongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the
> majority of the events described in the Hindû allegories is fixed upon as
> “a very recent invention, certainly _within_ the Christian era.”
> 
> The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras,
> the twenty‐seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittikâ, and this can
> hardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is according to the “Vedic
> Calendar,” which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out
> of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not _prove_ that
> the Hindûs knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their
> readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have
> acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittikâ from the
> Phœnicians, 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 Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in Astronomy, as the
> _central group_ of the system of the Milky Way, and in the _Kabalah_ and
> Eastern Esotericism, as the _sidereal septenate_ born from the first
> manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed [triangle]. This
> manifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the
> first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) “bull” or “ox,” whose
> synthesis is Ten (10), or Yod (י), 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 sidereal symbols of the
> Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starry cross on its face
> which plays 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
> 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 its 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 Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name
> being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is
> called in the Egyptian 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, or reïncarnations, of the liberated
> soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in
> reïncarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal
> Entity. As this, however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during
> the Mysteries, by the Priest‐hierophants and the King‐initiates to the
> Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the
> Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the
> 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.(1299) As Proclus says:
> 
>     Before the mathematical numbers, there are the _self‐moving_
>     numbers; before the figures apparent—the vital figures, and before
>     producing the material worlds _which move in a circle_, the
>     Creative Power produced the _invisible_ circles.(1300)
> 
> “_Deus enim et circulus est_,” says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter.
> This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular
> 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 the same custom among the
> people, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says:
> 
>     During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a
>     ring—_totum corpus circumagimur_.(1301)
> 
> The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism
> of the circle, when he beheld a “whirlwind” from which came out “one
> _wheel_ upon the earth” whose work “_was_ as it were a wheel in the middle
> of a wheel”—“for the spirit of the living creature _was_ in the
> wheels.”(1302)
> 
> “[_Spirit_] whirleth about continually, and ... returneth again according
> to his circuits”—says Solomon,(1303) 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 gloss
> of the Kabalistic Preacher—in explanation of this verse, which is,
> perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend—says:
> 
>     It seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers
>     to the Spirit _under the sun_, called the Holy Spirit, that moves
>     circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] _should
>     be united in the same Essence_.(1304)
> 
> The Brâhmanical “Golden Egg,” from within which emerges Brahmâ, the
> Creative Deity, is the “Circle with the Central Point” of Pythagoras, and
> its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity—whether
> representing Parabrahman, or the “Great Extreme” of Confucius, or the
> Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph,
> 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 nor 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 Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one 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
> antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time—especially in
> India—are referred to _Isis Unveiled_.(1305)
> 
> Admitting for argument’s sake that the ancient world was not acquainted
> with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures—though in reality we know
> it was—yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the
> first symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trigrams of Fo‐hi, Yang, the unity,
> and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Éliphas Lévi,(1306)
> China had her Confucius, and her Tao‐ists. The former circumscribes the
> “Great Extreme” within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter
> 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,
> notwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the “God over all” (ὁ
> ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός). 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, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As
> Plato says:
> 
>     Beyond all _finite_ existences and _secondary_ causes, all laws,
>     ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (νοῦς), the
>     first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all
>     other ideas are grounded, ... the _ultimate_ substance _from which
>     all things derive their being and essence_, the First and
>     efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and
>     excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.
> 
> This Mind is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme
> Good,(1307) “The God” (ὁ θεός), 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 θεός, 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?(1308) Surely not he who considered only those
> to be 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.(1309) Speusippus and Xenocrates
> followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no _existence_, in
> the sense applied to it by mortal men. The τίμιον (the honoured) dwells in
> the centre as in the circumference, but it is only _the reflection_ of the
> Deity—the World Soul(1310)—the plane of the surface of the circle. The
> cross and circle are a universal conception—as old as the 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.
> 
> It is no explanation to say, as does Éliphas Lévi, that God, the universal
> Love, having caused the male Unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or
> Chaos, thereby produced the world. In addition to the grossness of the
> conception, 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
> used 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 Hindûs have tried to solve it by their Avatâras, the
> Christians _think_ they have done so—by their one divine Incarnation.
> Exoterically—both are wrong; Esoterically both of them are very near the
> 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 synthesized it into one symbol—the central point
> in the crucifix—they show thereby that they have never seized the true
> spirit of the teaching of Christ, but rather that they have degraded it in
> more than one way by their erroneous interpretations. They have forgotten
> the spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it—as
> though the Boundless and the Infinite could ever be limited and
> conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a
> nation!
> 
> The four arms of the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], or decussated
> cross, and of the Hermetic cross, pointing to the four cardinal
> points—were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindûs, Brâhmans
> and Buddhists, hundreds of years before it was heard of in Europe, for
> that symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of the
> cross and made of it their Svastika, 卐 now the Wan of the Mongolian
> Buddhist.(1311) 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. Upon it were traced, among others, the
> sentences:
> 
>     Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross....
> 
>     Ascend ... from the earth to heaven and then descend again to
>     earth.
> 
> The _riddle_ of the cross is contained in these words, and its double
> 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 circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent
>     in succession, birth, life, death, and _immortality_.(1312)
> 
>     “Attach thyself,” says the Alchemist, “to the four letters of the
>     tetragram disposed in the following manner. The letters of the
>     ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at
>     first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained
>     therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the
>     masters.”(1313)
> 
> Again:
> 
>     The Tau, Τ, and the astronomical cross of Egypt, [Symbol: Circle
>     with cross within] are conspicuous in several apertures of the
>     remains of Palenque. In one of the _basso‐relievos_ of the Palace
>     of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right
>     under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which
>     leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with
>     the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its
>     right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The
>     position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his
>     blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at
>     the Last Supper.(1314)
> 
> The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head‐dress which he had to wear
> always during his functions. These square hats are worn unto this day by
> the Armenian priests. The perfect Tau—formed of the perpendicular
> (descending male ray) and the horizontal line (Matter, female
> principle)—and the mundane circle were attributes of Isis, and it was only
> at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy. 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,(1315) with the _signum Thau_, as it is
> translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus
> [Symbol: Cross, tilted towards the northeast], but in the original
> Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross ☦ (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 on the
> foreheads of the _elect_. Moses(1316) 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 Philæ.
> 
> Enough has been said in the text about the Svastika 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 the Tau and Svastika, in Pre‐Christian Scandinavia, everywhere! The
> author of the _Source of Measures_ 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_(1317) 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_ or
>     _cross_. (Wordsworth on Joshua.) ... The strangest expression of
>     this kind is in _Numbers_ (xxv. 4) where, by Onkelos (?) it is
>     read: “_Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the sun_.”
>     The word here is יקע, _to nail to_, rendered properly (Fuerst) by
>     the Vulgate, _to crucify_. The very construction of this sentence
>     is mystic.(1318)
> 
> So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. “To crucify
> 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, Τ, in Egypt, of
> a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (☩ not 卐) in India,
> plunged in a deep sleep—the “Sleep of Siloam,” as 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 Pâtâla—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 Philæ, represents a _scene of
> initiation_. Two God‐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 of New‐birth), the streams
> being interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated
> crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the Candidate who is 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 Hierophant‐Initiators, and the
> sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly to the Sun‐Osiris, 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 from
> the highest antiquity, in both its generative and spiritually regenerative
> capacities. Let him examine the tomb of Bait‐Oxly, in the reign of Ramses
> II, where he will find the crosses in every shape and position; as also on
> the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment representing the
> adoration of Bakhan‐Alearé, from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III,
> now preserved in the National Library of Paris. In this extraordinary
> sculpture and painting one sees the disk of the Sun beaming upon an
> ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary are
> 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 Hindû “fables,” as the Orientalists call
> them, and remember the allegory of Vishvakarmâ, the Creative Power, the
> Great Architect of the World, called in the _Rig Veda_ the “All‐seeing
> God,” who “sacrifices himself to himself.” The Spiritual Egos of mortals
> 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, Sûrya, his son‐in‐law, on his lathe—in the exoteric allegory, but on
> the Svastika, in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant‐
> Initiator—and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Vishvakarmâ, remember
> again, is the son of Yoga‐siddhâ, _i.e._, the holy power of Yoga, and the
> fabricator of the “fiery weapon,” the magic Agneyastra.(1319) The
> narrative is given more fully elsewhere.
> 
> The author of the kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:
> 
>     The theoretical use of crucifixion then, must have been somehow
>     connected with the personification of this symbol [the structure
>     of the Garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man]. But how?
>     And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of measures,
>     shadowing forth _creative law_ or _design_. What, practically, as
>     regards humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it
>     was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same
>     system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be
>     deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number
>     values—[the symbolization of the connection of 113: 355, with
>     20612: 6561, by a _crucified man_]. Not only are they shown to
>     work in the cosmos but, ... by sympathy, they seem to work out
>     conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the
>     prophets seem to have held knowledge of the connecting links.
>     Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that, the
>     power of expression of the law, _exactly_, by numbers clearly
>     defining a system, was not the _accident_ of the language, but was
>     its very _essence_, and of its _primary organic construction_;
>     therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system
>     attaching to it, could be of man’s invention, unless both were
>     _founded upon a prior language which afterwards became
>     obsolete_.(1320)
> 
> The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the
> secret meaning of more than one dead‐letter narrative, by showing that
> probably, איש, _man_, was the _primordial_ word:
> 
>     The very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were,
>     to carry the idea, by sound, of _a man_. The _essential_ of this
>     word was 113 [the numerical value of that word] from the
>     beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system
>     displayed.(1321)
> 
> This is demonstrated by the Hindû Vittoba, a form of Vishnu, as has
> already been stated. The figure of Vittoba, even to the nail‐marks on the
> feet,(1322) is that of _Jesus crucified_, in all its details save the
> cross. 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 intended by 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 Phœnicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom also they borrowed
> most of their Kabalistic Mysticism—most ingeniously adapted the cosmic and
> anthropological symbols of the “Heathen” nations to their peculiar
> _secret_ records. If Christian sacerdotalism has lost the key of this 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 Shânâh or _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 the “man crucified” in space certainly belongs to the
> ancient Hindûs. Moor shows this in his _Hindû Pantheon_ in the engraving
> that represents Vittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated cross in
> space, the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], the “second God who
> impressed himself on the universe in the form of the cross”; Krishna is
> likewise shown “crucified.”(1323) Again it is repeated in the _Old
> Testament_ in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the
> Sun—which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In
> that same most suggestive work on the kabalistic meanings, we read again:
> 
>     In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads
>     thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or
>     phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of the _three_
>     nails in the man’s extremities and on the cross, they form or mark
>     a _triangle_ in shape, one nail being at each corner of the
>     triangle. The wounds, or _stigmata_, in the extremities are
>     necessarily _four_, designative of the _square_.... The three
>     nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6
>     faces of the cube _unfolded_ [which make the cross or man‐form, or
>     7, counting three horizontal and four vertical squares], on which
>     the man is placed; and this in turn points to the circular measure
>     transferred on to the edges of the cube. The _one_ wound of the
>     feet separates into _two_ when the feet are separated, making
>     _three_ together _for all_, and _four when separated_, or 7 in
>     all—another and _most holy_ [_with the Jews_] feminine base
>     number.(1324)
> 
> Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the “crucifixion nails” is
> 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 into 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 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. This
> 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.
> 
> As we have said elsewhere, long before the cross or its sign were adopted
> as symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a mark of
> recognition among Adepts and Neophytes, the latter being called
> Chrests—from Chrestos, the man of tribulation and sorrow. Says Éliphas
> Lévi:
> 
>     The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong to
>     them exclusively. It is also kabalistic, and represents the
>     opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by
>     the occult verse of the _Paternoster_ ... that there were
>     originally two ways of doing it, or, at least _two_ very different
>     formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for the priests and
>     initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for
>     example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said,
>     _To thee_; then he added, _belong_; and continued, carrying his
>     hand to the breast, _the kingdom_; then to the left shoulder,
>     _justice_; to the right shoulder, _and mercy_. Then he joined the
>     two hands, adding, _throughout the generating cycles—Tibi sunt
>     Malchut et Geburah et Chesed per Æonas_—an absolutely and
>     magnificently kabalistic sign of the cross, which the profanations
>     of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely
>     _lose_.(1325)
> 
> The “militant and official Church” did more: having helped herself to what
> 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—Éliphas Lévi’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 Chrestoi.
> 
> Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.
> 
> We are reminded in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_ that the Greek
> language had but one word for _vowel_ and _voice_. This has led the
> uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge,
> however, of this 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 _Purânas_, “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 above mentioned work.
> 
> 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_(1326) ... sounded each one vowel, which, all
>     combined together, formed a single doxology, “the _sound_ whereof
>     being carried down [from these seven heavens] to earth, becomes
>     the creator and parent of all things that be on earth.”(1327)
> 
> Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this
> 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:
> 
>     Seven thunders uttered their voices ... [and] I was about to write
>     ... [but] I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up
>     those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them
>     not.(1328)
> 
> The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other _semi_ and
> _full_ Initiates. The very sameness of the expressions used, and of the
> 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, in _Pistis
> Sophia_, the Rabbi Jesus is requested by his disciples to reveal to them
> the “Mysteries of the Light of 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).(1329)
> 
> As says the Commentary, speaking of the “Fires”:
> 
> _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._
> 
> Now it becomes evident that, in every Esoteric interpretation of exoteric
> beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there is the same underlying
> idea—the basic number _seven_, the compound of _three_ and _four_,
> preceded by the divine _three_ ([triangle]) making the perfect number
> _ten_.
> 
> Also, these numbers apply 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 Hindûs 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, or what we call in Esoteric parlance Round, 1,000
> years only or of the seven Renewals of the Globe 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.(1330)
> 
> Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on the
> Indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical
> and monstrous half‐man and half‐bird—the Vâhana or vehicle on which
> Vishnu, as Kâla or “Time,” is shown to ride—is the origin of all such
> allegories. He is the Indian Phœnix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical
> time, the “Man‐lion” (Sinha), of whose representations the so‐called
> Gnostic gems are so full.(1331)
> 
>     Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding to
>     their points, stand often the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet,
>     ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ, testifying to the Seven Heavens.(1332)
> 
> This is the Solar Lion and the emblem of the Solar Cycle, as Garuda(1333)
> is that of the Great Cycle, the Mahâ Kalpa, coëternal 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, on account of his
> “dazzling splendour,” is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, and was
> thence called Gaganeshvara, “Lord of the Sky.” Its representation as
> Osiris, on the Abraxas (Gnostic) gems, and by many heads of allegorical
> monsters, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk—both solar
> birds—denotes Garuda’s solar and cyclic character. His son is Jatâyu, the
> cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King:
> 
>     Whatever its primary meaning [of the gem with the solar lion and
>     vowels] it was probably imported in its present shape from India
>     (that true fountain head of Gnostic iconography).(1334)
> 
> The mysteries of the seven Gnostic Vowels, uttered by the Thunders of St.
> John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of
> Âryâvarta, brought into India by the primeval Brâhmans, who had been
> _initiated in Central Asia_. And this is the Occultism we study and try to
> 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_.(1335) When the seven
> “Thunders,” or “Sounds,” or “Vowels”—one meaning out of the seven for each
> such vowel relates directly to our own Earth and its seven Root‐Races in
> each Round—“had uttered their voices,” but had 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 up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for
>     ever and ever, ... that there _should be time no longer_: but in
>     the days of the voice of the _seventh_ angel, when he shall begin
>     to sound, the mystery of God [of the Cycle] should be
>     finished.(1336)
> 
> This means, in Theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is
> 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 that the calculations of the cyclic seven
> and forty‐nine were brought by the Rabbins from Chaldæa. 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 Brâhmans,
> their _Purânas_ and _Upanishads_ are good proof of it. The latter have
> passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brâhman needs only to read
> _Pistis Sophia_(1337) to recognize his forefathers’ property, even to the
> phraseology and similes used. Let us compare. In _Pistis Sophia_ the
> disciples say to Jesus:
> 
>     Rabbi, reveal unto us the mysteries of the Light [_i.e._, the
>     “Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment”], ... forasmuch as we have
>     heard thee saying that there is another baptism of _smoke_, and
>     another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light [_i.e._ the Spirit of
>     Fire].(1338)
> 
> As John says of Jesus:
> 
>     I indeed baptize you with water; ... but he shall baptize you with
>     the Holy Ghost and with fire.
> 
> The real significance of this statement is very profound. It means that
> John, a non‐initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no greater
> wisdom than the Mysteries connected with the plane of Matter, of which
> Water is the symbol. His Gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic
> dogma, of dead‐letter orthodoxy;(1339) 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 _real_
> Spiritual Enlightenment. One was Fire, the other the Smoke. For Moses, the
> Fire on Mount Sinai and the Spiritual Wisdom; for the multitudes of the
> “people” below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) Smoke, _i.e._,
> the exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism.
> 
> Now, having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Nârada
> and Devamata in the _Anugîtâ_,(1340) an episode from the _Mahâbhârata_,
> the antiquity and importance of which one can learn in the “Sacred Books
> of the East,” edited by Prof. Max Müller.(1341) Nârada is discoursing upon
> the “breaths” or the “life‐winds,” as they are called in the clumsy
> translations of such words as Prâna, Apâna, 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 Brâhmanas, being
>     accompanied by intelligence.(1342)
> 
> By “fire,” says the Commentator, he means the Self. By “intelligence,” the
> Occultist says, Nârada meant neither “discussion” nor “argumentation,” as
> Arjuna Mishra believes, but “intelligence” truly, or the adaptation of the
> _Fire of Wisdom_ to _exoteric ritualism_ for the profane. This is the
> chief concern of the Brâhmans, who were the first to set the example to
> other nations who thus anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest
> metaphysical truths. Nârada shows this plainly and is made to say:
> 
>     The _smoke_ of that (fire) which is of excellent glory (appears)
>     in the shape of ... darkness [verily so!]; (its) ashes, ... [are]
>     passion; and ... goodness is that in connection with it, in which
>     the offering is thrown.(1343)
> 
> That is to say, that faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle
> truth (the flame) which escapes heavenward, while the objective sacrifice
> remains as a proof and _evidence of piety_ only to the profane. For what
> else can Nârada mean by the following?
> 
>     Those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the
>     Vyâna as the _principal_ (offering). The Prâna and Apâna are
>     portions of the offering, ... and between them is the _fire_. That
>     is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas. As
>     to that which is distinct from these pairs, hear me speak about
>     that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the fire.... That
>     _which exists_ and _that which does not exist_ are a pair, between
>     them is the fire....(1344)
> 
> And after every such contrast Nârada adds:
> 
>     That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by
>     Brâhmanas.
> 
> Now many people do not know the full meaning of the statement that Samâna
> and Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna—which are explained to be “life‐winds,” but
> which we say are principles and their respective faculties and senses—are
> offered up to Udâna, the _soi‐disant_ principal “life‐wind,” which is said
> to act at all the joints. And so the reader who is ignorant that the word
> “Fire” in these allegories means both the “Self” and the higher Divine
> Knowledge, will understand nothing in this, and will entirely miss the
> point of our argument, as the translator and even the editor, the great
> Oxford Sanskritist, F. Max Müller, have missed the true meaning of
> Nârada’s words. Exoterically, this enumeration of “life‐winds” has, of
> course, the meaning, _approximately_, which is surmised in the foot‐notes,
> namely:
> 
>     The sense _appears_ to be this: The course of worldly life is due
>     to the operations of the life‐winds which are attached to the self
>     and lead to its manifestations as individual souls [?]. Of these,
>     the Samâna and Vyâna are controlled and held under check by the
>     Prâna and Apâna.... The latter two are held in check and
>     controlled by the Udâna, which thus controls all. And the control
>     of this, which is the control of all five, ... leads to the
>     supreme self.(1345)
> 
> The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words
> of the Brâhmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of
> Yogism, and in this wise reached All‐knowledge. Saying that he had
> “perceived by means of the self the seat abiding in the self,”(1346) where
> dwells the Brahma 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 all these (life‐winds) which move about in the
>     body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaishvânara fire
>     _sevenfold_.(1347)
> 
> This “Fire,” according to Nîlakantha’s commentary, is identical with the
> “I,” the Self, which is the goal of the ascetic; Vaishvânara being a word
> often used for the Self. Then the Brâhmana goes on to enumerate that which
> is meant by the word “sevenfold,” and says:
> 
>     The nose [or smell], and the tongue [taste], and the eye, and the
>     skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the understanding,
>     these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaishvânara.(1348)...
>     Those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me.(1349)... These are the
>     _seven great officiating priests_.(1350)
> 
> These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Mishra in the sense of meaning
> “the soul distinguished as so many [souls, or principles] with reference
> 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.
> 
> But whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or orthodox
> interpretations, this passage on page 259 explains Nârada’s statements on
> page 276, and shows them referring to exoteric and esoteric methods and
> contrasting them. Thus the Samâna and the Vyâna, though subject to the
> Prâna and the Apâna, and all the four to Udâna in the matter of acquiring
> the Prânâyâma (of the Hatha Yogî, chiefly, or the lower form of Yoga), are
> yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as rightly argued by K.
> Trimbak Telang, their “operations are more practically important for
> vitality”; _i.e._, they are the grossest, and are offered in the
> sacrifice, in order that they may disappear, so to speak, in the quality
> of darkness of that fire or its _smoke_—mere exoteric ritualistic form.
> But Prâna and Apâna, 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”(1351) have
> Fire between them, _i.e._, Esoteric Knowledge, the Wisdom of the Divine
> Self. Let those who are satisfied with the _smoke_ of the Fire remain
> 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
> Hindûs, 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 are necessary, if only 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 _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, the _Anugîtâ_ 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 the following and compare it with the
> explanation from the Hindû scriptures just given.
> 
>     And no Name is more excellent than all these, a Name wherein be
>     contained all Names, and all Lights, and all the [forty‐nine]
>     Powers. Knowing that Name, if a man quits this body of
>     matter,(1352) no _smoke_ [_i.e._, no theological delusion],(1353)
>     no darkness, nor Power, nor Ruler of the Sphere [no _Personal_
>     Genius or Planetary Spirit called God] of Fate [Karma] ... shall
>     be able to hold back the Soul that knoweth that Name.... If he
>     shall utter that Name unto the fire, ... the darkness shall flee
>     away.... And if he shall utter that name unto ... all their
>     Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,(1354) and the Invisible God, and
>     the three triple‐powered Gods, so soon as he shall have uttered
>     that name in those places, they shall all be thrown one upon the
>     other, so that they shall be ready to melt and perish, and shall
>     cry aloud, O Light of every light that is in the boundless lights,
>     remember us also and purify us!(1355)
> 
> It is easy to see what this Light and Name are: the Light of Initiation
> and the name of the “Fire‐Self,” which is no name, no action, but a
> Spiritual, Ever‐living Power, higher even than the real “Invisible God,”
> 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
> less of the meaning 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 versâ_, as is 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 _Râmâyana_, Garuda is called “the maternal uncle of Sagara’s 60,000
> sons”; and Amshumat, Sagara’s grandson, “the nephew of the 60,000 uncles”
> who were reduced to ashes by the look of Kapila—the Purushottama, or
> Infinite Spirit, who caused the horse which Sagara was keeping for the
> Ashvamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda’s son(1356);—Garuda being
> himself the Mahâ Kalpa or Great Cycle—Jatâyu, the king of the feathered
> tribe (when on the point of being slain by Râvana who carries off Sîtâ)
> 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.
> 
> Jatâyu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the Great Cycle of
> Garuda; hence he is represented as his son, or nephew, _ad libitum_, since
> the whole meaning rests on his being placed in 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 Hiranyâksha, “whose
> number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of men,” according to the _Padma
> Purâna_. 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
> Paurânic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew king
> Sagara’s progeny—60,000 men strong—was undeniably Kapila, the founder of
> the Sânkhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the _Purânas_; although
> one of them flatly denies the imputation without explaining its Esoteric
> meaning. It is the _Bhâgavata Purâna_(1357) which says that:
> 
>     The report is not true that the sons of the king were scorched by
>     the wrath of the sage. For how can the quality of darkness, the
>     product of anger, exist in a Sage whose body was goodness and who
>     purified the world—the earth’s dust, as it were, attributed to
>     heavens! How should mental perturbation distract that sage,
>     identified with the Supreme Spirit, who has steered here (on
>     earth) that solid vessel of the Sânkhya (philosophy), with the
>     help of which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the
>     dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?(1358)
> 
> The _Purâna_ is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to
> 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 _Purânas_, 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
> Earth—reduces 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 _Purânas_.
> 
> Now it is as well ascertained as any tradition can be, that it was at
> Hardwar, or Gangâdvâra, the “door or gate of the Ganges,” at the foot of
> the Himâlayas, 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 also is named “Kapilasthen” by the
> ascetics. It is there that the Ganges, Gangâ, emerging from its
> mountainous gorge, begins its course over the sultry plains of India. And
> it is clearly ascertained by geological survey that the tradition which
> claims that the ocean washed the base of the Himâlayas ages ago, is not
> entirely without foundation, for distinct traces of this still remain.
> 
> The Sânkhya Philosophy may have been _brought down_ and taught by the
> first, and written out by the _last_ Kapila.
> 
> Now Sâgara is the name of the ocean, and especially of the Bay of Bengal,
> at the mouth of the Ganges, to this day in India.(1359) Have Geologists
> ever calculated the number of millenniums it must have taken the sea to
> recede the distance it is now from Hardwar, which is at present 1,024 feet
> above its level? If they had, those Orientalists who show Kapila
> flourishing from the first to the ninth century A.D., might change their
> opinions, if only for one of two very good reasons. Firstly, the true
> number of years which have elapsed since Kapila’s day is unmistakably in
> the _Purânas_, though the translators may 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 the Sânkhya Philosophy, is also the generic name of the
> Kumâras, the celestial Ascetics and Virgins; therefore the very fact of
> the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ calling _that_ Kapila—whom it had showed just
> before as a portion of Vishnu—the author of the Sânkhya Philosophy, ought
> to have warned the reader of a “blind” containing an Esoteric meaning.
> Whether he was the son of Vitatha, as the _Harivamsha_ shows him to be, or
> of any one else, the author of the Sânkhya cannot be the same as the Sage
> of the Satya Yuga—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 newly created men those arts and sciences, which have since been
> cultivated and preserved in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are
> several well‐known Kapilas in the _Purânas_. First the primeval Sage, then
> Kapila one of the three “secret” Kumâras, and Kapila son of Kashyapa and
> Kadrû—the “many‐headed serpent”(1360)—besides Kapila the great Sage and
> Philosopher of the Kali Yuga. The latter, being an Initiate, a “Serpent of
> Wisdom,” a Nâga, was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former
> ages.
> 
> Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.
> 
> The early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the Gnosis, rested on a
> square, the angles of which represented respectively Sigê (Silence),
> Bythos (Depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth).
> 
> It is they who were the first to reveal to the world that which had
> 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
> contained in the number 10, the Pythagorean Decad.
> 
> This Decad, 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, 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 Decad. It could be
> studied, in short, both by the deductive method 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 Decad appeared, only to be finally reäbsorbed, lost in the infinite
> Circle. The latter depended on sensuous perception alone, when the Decad
> 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 Decad, 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 _Purânas_ and the _Laws of Manu_. In
> these Laws or Ordinances of Manu, it is said that Brahmâ first creates the
> “_ten_ Lords of Being,” the ten Prajâpati or Creative Forces; which ten
> produce _seven_ other Manus, or, rather, as some MSS. have it, Munîn
> (instead of Manûn) “devotees,” or holy beings, which are the seven Angels
> of the Presence in the 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 (Sigê 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 one of the
> Sections of Volume I, Part II, Section III, “Primordial Substance and
> Divine Thought,” which the reader should notice carefully, if he would
> grasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as in
> nature, according to the Cis‐Himâlayan Esoteric Philosophy, which is that
> of the Cosmogony of the _original_ Manu, it is 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 [Brahmâ]
> having pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured
> brightness,”(1361) created or called them forth to “Self”‐consciousness or
> the consciousness of that One Self. Of these six, five elements (or
> principles, or Tattvas, as Medhâtithi, the commentator thinks) “are called
> the atomic destructible elements”;(1362) these are described in the above‐
> named Section.(1363)
> 
> 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 had its philosophical meaning and _raison d’être_.
> The number _one_ (1) 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 the form of its letters; nor had Πατὴρ Δεὺς
> (according to Ragon).(1364) If we turn now to the Hebrew alphabet, we
> shall find that while _one_ or Aleph (א) has a bull or an ox for its
> symbol, _ten_, the perfect number, or _one_ of the _Kabalah_, is a Yod (י,
> _y_, _i_, or _j_), and means, as the first letter of Jehovah, the
> procreative organ, and the rest.
> 
> 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 Sigê (Depth,
> Chaos, Matter born in Silence) are the primordial Binary. 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 the One and Only God, the
> Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol—the Sun.
> 
> The Ternary is the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first
> of the geometrical figures.(1365) This number is truly the number of
> mystery _par excellence_. To study it on the exoteric lines one has to
> read Ragon’s _Cours Philosophique et Interprétatif des Initiations_, on
> the Esoteric—the Hindû symbolism of numerals; for the combinations which
> were applied to it are numberless. It is on the Occult properties of the
> three equal 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. As the founder writes:
> 
>     The first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for study
>     is the _mineral kingdom_, symbolized by Tubalc [Symbol: Three dots
>     in a triangle] [Tubal‐Cain].
> 
>     The second side on which the companion has to meditate, is the
>     _vegetable kingdom_, symbolized by Schibb [Symbol: Three dots in a
>     triangle] [Schibboleth]. In this kingdom begins the _generation of
>     the bodies_. This is why the letter G is presented radiant before
>     the eyes of the adept [?!].
> 
>     The third side is left to the master mason, who has to complete
>     his education by the study of the _animal kingdom_. It is
>     symbolized by Maoben [Symbol: Three dots in a triangle] (son of
>     putrefaction).(1366)
> 
> The first solid figure is the Quaternary, the symbol of immortality. It is
> the Pyramid, for the Pyramid stands on a triangular base, and terminates
> with a point at the top, thus yielding the Triad and the Quaternary or the
> 3 and 4.
> 
> The Pythagoreans taught the connection and relation between the Gods and
> 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 Five was composed of a Binary and a Ternary, and of these the
> Binary threw everything in the perfect form into disorder and confusion.
> The _perfect man_, they said, was a Quaternary and a Ternary, or _four_
> material and _three_ immaterial elements; and these three Spirits or
> Elements we likewise find in Five when it represents the microcosm. The
> latter is a compound of a Binary directly relating to gross Matter and of
> three Spirits. Since, as Ragon says:
> 
>     This ingenious figure is the union of two Greek breathings placed
>     over vowels which have or have not to be aspirated. The first sign
>     (῾) is called the “strong” or superior “spiritus,” the Spirit of
>     God aspired (_spiratus_) and breathed by man. The second sign (᾿)
>     the lower, is the soft “spiritus” representing the secondary
>     spirit; ... the whole embraces the whole man. It is the _universal
>     quintessence_, the vital fluid or life.(1367)
> 
> The more mystic meaning of the number Five is given in an excellent
> article by Mr. T. Subba Row, in _Five Years of Theosophy_, in an article
> entitled “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” in which he gives some rules
> that may help the enquirer to ferret out “the deep significance of ancient
> Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Âryan 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 Kumâra. The first means some amphibious animal, flippantly
> called the “crocodile,” as some Orientalists think, and the second is the
> title of the great patrons of Yogins, according to the Shaiva _Purânas_,
> the sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Shiva), who is a Kumâra himself. It
> is through their connection with Man that the Kumâras are likewise
> connected with the Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara
> means.
> 
> Says the author of “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”:
> 
>     Makara ... contains within itself the clue to its correct
>     interpretation. The letter _ma_ is equivalent to number 5, and
>     _kara_ means hand. Now in Sanskrit Tribhujam means a triangle,
>     _bhujam_ or _karam_ (both synonymous) being understood to mean a
>     side. So, Makaram or Panchakaram means a Pentagon.(1368)
> 
> Now the five‐pointed star or pentagon represents the five limbs of
> man.(1369) Under the old system, we are told, Makara was the _eighth_
> instead of the tenth sign.(1370)
> 
>     The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the
>     universe, and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded
>     by Pentagons.(1371)
> 
> The Sanskrit writers “speak also of Ashtadisha or eight faces bounding
> Space,” referring thus to the Loka‐pâlas, the eight points of the compass,
> 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.(1372)
> 
> But the true Esoteric sense of the word Makara is not, in truth,
> “crocodile” at all, even when it is compared with the animal depicted on
> the Hindû 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 Vâhana of
> Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this reason, Jala‐rûpa 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. Says the mummy‐form God with the crocodile’s
> head:
> 
>     I am the fish [and seat] of the great Horus of Kem‐oor.(1373)
> 
> With the Peratæ Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune) who converts the
> dodecagonal pyramid into a sphere, “and paints its gate with many
> colours.”(1374) He has _five androgyne_ ministers—he is Makara, the
> Leviathan.
> 
> As the rising Sun was considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest
> itself to men every day, and as the crocodile rose 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 _Purânas_, the number of the Kumâras 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 _Kûrma Purâna_ it
> is said of them:
> 
>     These _five_ [Kumâras], O Brâhman, were Yogins who acquired entire
>     exemption from passion.
> 
> Their very name shows their connection with the said constellation Makara,
> and with some other Paurânic characters connected with the zodiacal signs.
> This is done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs
> of the primitive Temples. The Kumâras are mixed up, astronomically,
> physiologically, and mystically in general, with a number of Paurânic
> personages and events. Hardly hinted at in the _Vishnu_, they figure in
> various dramas and events throughout all the other _Purânas_ and sacred
> literature; so that the Orientalists, having to pick up the threads of
> connection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming the Kumâras “due
> chiefly to the fancy of the Purânic writers.” But—
> 
> _Ma_—we are told by the author of the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”—is
> “five”; _kara_, a “hand” with its five fingers, as also a five‐sided sign
> or a Pentagon. The Kumâra (in this case an anagram for Occult purposes),
> as Yogîs, are _five_ in Esotericism, because the last two names have ever
> been kept secret; they are the fifth order of Brahma‐devas, and the five‐
> fold Chohans, having the Soul of the five Elements in them, Water and
> Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both _aquatic_ and
> _fiery_.
> 
>     Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the
>     Golden Lotus (Padma) floating on the Water.
> 
> In India this is Vishnu, one of whose Avatâras was Buddha, as claimed in
> days of old. The Prachetasas, the worshippers of Nârâyana—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.
> Prachetâs is, in Sanskrit, the name of Varuna, the Water God, Nereus, an
> aspect of Neptune, the Prachetasas being thus identical with the “five
> ministers” of the male‐female Chozzar (Χωζζάρ or Χορζάρ), or Poseidon, of
> the Peratæ Gnostics. These are respectively called Ou, Aoai, Ouô, Ouôab
> and ... (Οὔ, Ἀοαὶ, Οὐώ, Οὐωάβ ...),(1375) the _fifth_, a _triple_ name
> (making seven in all) being lost(1376)—_i.e._, kept secret. Thus 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 Savarnâ, the daughter of the Ocean, so was
> Amphitrite the mother of Neptune’s mystic “ministers.”
> 
> Now the reader is reminded that these “five ministers” are symbolized both
> 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 Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, both teaching mortals Wisdom.
> The Dolphin, as every Mythologist knows, was placed, for his service, by
> Poseidon, among the constellations, and became with the Greeks,
> Capricornus, the Goat, whose hind part is that of a dolphin, and is thus
> 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 Kâmadeva, the Hindû God of Love, identified, in the _Atharva
> Veda_, with Agni, the Fire‐god, the son of Lakshmî, as correctly given by
> the _Harivamsha_. For Lakshmî and Venus are one, and Amphitrite is the
> early form of Venus. Now Kâma, the Makara‐ketu, is Aja, the “unborn,” and
> Âtmâ‐bhû, 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; for “Desire
> first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind,” that “which
> connects entity with non‐entity”—or Manas, the _fifth_, with Âtmâ, the
> _seventh_, Esoterically—say the Sages. This is the _first_ stage. The
> second, on the following plane of manifestation, shows Brahmâ—whom we
> select as a representative for all the other First Gods of the
> nations—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 a “blind”) become the Kumâra. 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 Durgâ Kâlî, who is only
> the _black_ side of Lakshmî (Venus), the _white_ side of Shakti—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 Amalthæa, 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 uttered by
> Brahmâ at “creation,” which forthwith became the Panchadasha (certain
> Vedic Hymns, attributed to that God), are in their creative and magical
> potentiality, the _white_ side of the _black_ Tântric _five_ Ma‐kâras, 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 Kumâra, 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,(1377) so the Dhyân
> Chohans, called in India Kumâras, are connected with both. Moreover, in
> the exoteric religions, they have become the synonyms of the Angels of
> Darkness. Mâra is the God of Darkness, the Fallen One, and Death;(1378)
> and yet it is one of the names of Kâma, the First God in the Vedas, the
> Logos, from whom have sprung the Kumâras, and this connects them still
> more with our “fabulous” Indian Makara, and the crocodile‐headed God in
> Egypt.(1379) The Crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are _five_, and the God
> Toom, the Primordial Deity, creating the heavenly bodies and living
> 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 reëmerge 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 these [Zodiacal] signs by the ancient
>     philosophers, _will never be lifted up for the amusement or
>     edification of the uninitiated public_.(1380)
> 
> Nor was number Five less sacred with the Greeks. The “Five Words” of
> Brahmâ have become with the Gnostics the “Five Words” written upon the
> Âkâshic (Shining) Garment of Jesus at his glorification—the words “Zama
> Zama Ôzza Rachama Ôzai” (ΖΑΜΑ ΖΑΜΑ ΩΖΖΑ ΡΑΧΑΜΑ ΩΖΑΙ), 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 Nirvâna. The E Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral
> _five_, again; and how sacred it was is shown by the fact that the
> Corinthians, according to Plutarch, replaced the wooden numeral in the
> Delphic Temple by a bronze one, and this one was transmuted by Livia
> Augusta into a facsimile in gold.(1381)
> 
> It is easy to recognize in the two “Spiritus”—the Greek signs (!) spoken
> of by Ragon—Âtmâ and Buddhi, or Divine Spirit and its Vehicle, the
> Spiritual Soul.
> 
> The Six or the Senary is dealt with later in this Section, while the
> Septenary will be fully treated in the course of this Volume in the
> Section on “The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.”
> 
> The Ogdoad or Eight symbolizes the eternal and spiral motion of cycles,
> 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 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 Decad, brings all these digits back to unity, and ends the
> Pythagorean table. Hence this figure, [Symbol: Circle with line through
> the middle]—_unity_ within _zero_—was the symbol of Deity, of the
> Universe, and of Man. Such is the secret meaning of “the strong grip of
> the lion’s paw, of the tribe of Judah” (the “master mason’s grip”) between
> two hands, 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, which was so exalted by Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews,
> to be mysteriously connected with the Decad. The Tau is the Alpha and the
> Omega of Secret Divine Wisdom, which is symbolized by the initial and the
> final letters 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.” Hence, 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, though at the same time 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; 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 _seven_ a feminine number
> of generation(1382)—thus introducing 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 the
> Tetraktys and the Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of the
> Quaternary. The latter was with the Ancients only a _secondary_
> “perfection,” so to speak, because it related only to the manifested
> planes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek Delta (Δ), which was the
> “vehicle of the unknown Deity.” A good proof of it lies in the name of the
> Deity beginning with Delta. Zeus was written Δεύς (Deus) by the Bœotians,
> 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 7 was the invisible centre, the Spirit of
> everything, as there exists no hexagonal body without a _seventh_ property
> being found as the central point in it, as, for instance, 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
> Decad can beget or produce it. And it is _four_ which affords an
> arithmetical division between _unity_ and _seven_, for 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_.(1383)
> 
> “With the Egyptians number 7 was the symbol of _life_ eternal,” says
> Ragon, and adds that this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double
> 7, is the initial letter of Zaô, “I live,” and of Zeus, the “father of all
> living.”
> 
> 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,(1384) it was the source of descent,
>     and held the waters of life.(1385)
> 
> It was, to put it plainly, the symbol of the personified Earth, or Isis
> 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 year of 365 days; while Isis was
> the Moon, the bed of that river, or 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, our modern scholars seeming 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 (3)—animated by (6)—the Spirit of Life (5).
> 
> Simply because 3 is equivalent to the Greek Gamma (Γ) which 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.(1386)
> 
> 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 æons 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, like Plato’s, was to proceed from universals down to
> particulars, who could ever have begun by symbolizing their religions by
> sexual emblems! It is quite true, though uttered by that incarnated
> paradox Éliphas Lévi, that “man is God on Earth, and God is man in
> Heaven.” But this could not, and never did apply to the One Deity, only to
> the Hosts of Its incarnated beams, called by us Dhyân Chohans, by the
> Ancients Gods, and now transformed by the Church into Devils on the
> _left_, and into the Saviour on the _right_ side!
> 
> But all such dogmas grew out of the one root, the root of Wisdom, which
> 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 Âryâvarta. These
> prototypes are all connected with the Kumâras who appear on the scene of
> action by “refusing”—as Sanatkumâra and Sananda—to “create progeny.” Yet
> they are called the “creators” of (thinking) man. More than once they are
> brought into connection with Nârada—another bundle of _apparent_
> incongruities, yet a wealth of philosophical tenets. Nârada is the leader
> of the Gandharvas, the celestial singers and musicians; Esoterically, the
> reason for this is explained by the fact that 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, Nârada, while refusing to procreate,
> leads men to become Gods. Moreover, all of these, as stated in the
> _Vedas_, are Chhandajas, “will‐born,” or incarnated, in different
> Manvantaras, _of their own will_. They are shown in exoteric literature as
> existing age after age; some being “cursed to be reborn,” others
> incarnating as a duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the seven Kumâras who
> went to visit Vishnu on the “White Island” (Shveta‐dvîpa), the Island
> inhabited by the Mahâ Yogins—they are connected with Shâka‐dvîpa and the
> Lemurians and Atlanteans of the Third and Fourth Races.
> 
> In the Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras (Kumâras, Âdityas, Gandharvas,
> Asuras, etc.) are the highest Dhyân Chohans or Devas as regards
> 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 Arûpa 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_. Nârada, the Rishi, is cursed by Brahmâ to incessant
> peripateticism on Earth, _i.e._, to be constantly reborn. He is a rebel
> against Brahmâ, and yet has no worse fate than the Jayas—the twelve great
> Creative Gods produced by Brahmâ as his assistants in the functions of
> creation. For the latter, lost in meditation, only _forgot to create_; and
> for this, they were equally cursed by Brahmâ 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
> _Purânas_ except in their dead‐letter sense.(1387) Hence we find the
> Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and cutting the Gordian knot of
> perplexity by declaring the whole scheme “figments ... of Brâhmanical
> fancy and love of exaggeration.” But to the student of Occultism, the
> whole is pregnant with deep 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 Parâshara:
> 
>     These classes of thirty‐three divinities ... exist age after age,
>     and their appearance and disappearance is in the same manner as
>     the sun sets and rises again.(1388)
> 
> There was a time, when the Eastern symbol of the cross and circle, the
> Svastika, was universally adopted. With the Esoteric, and for the matter
> of that exoteric, Buddhist, the Chinaman and the Mongolian, it means the
> “ten thousand truths.” These truths, they say, belong to the 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 Svastika is always placed—as the ansated cross was in
> Egypt—on the breast of the defunct Mystics. It is found on the heart of
> 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 these truths inviolate
> and intact, in eternal silence and secrecy to the day they 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 or 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 his 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, for many
> specimens of it have been found by Schliemann on the site of that old
> city. One finds it with the old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldæans, 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 Swastika from an early period was a
>     favourite form of the cross _employed with an occult
>     signification_ which shows the secret was not that of the
>     Christian cross. One Swastika cross in the catacombs is the sign
>     of an inscription which reads “ΖΩΤΙΚΩ ΖΟΤΙΚΗ [? ΖΩΤΙΚΗ], _Vitalis
>     Vitalia_,” or life of life.(1389)
> 
> But the best evidence to the antiquity of the cross is that which is
> brought forward by the author of _The Natural Genesis_ himself:
> 
>     The value of the cross as a Christian symbol is supposed to date
>     from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. And yet in the
>     “Christian” _iconography of the catacombs no figure of a man
>     appears upon the Cross during the first six or seven centuries_.
>     There are all forms of the cross except that—the alleged starting‐
>     point of the new religion. That was not the initial but the final
>     form of the Crucifix.(1390) During some six centuries after the
>     Christian era the foundation of the Christian religion in a
>     crucified Redeemer is entirely absent from Christian art! The
>     earliest known form of the human figure on the cross is the
>     crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great to Queen Theodolinde
>     of Lombardy, now in the Church of St. John at Monza, whilst no
>     image of the Crucified is found in the catacombs at Rome earlier
>     than that of San Giulio, belonging to the seventh or eighth
>     century.... There is no Christ and no Crucified; the Cross is the
>     Christ even as the Stauros (Cross) was a type and a name of Horus
>     the Gnostic Christ. The Cross, not the Crucified, is the primary
>     symbol of the Christian Church. The Cross, not the Crucified, is
>     the essential object of representation in its art, and of
>     adoration in its religion. The germ of the whole growth and
>     development can be traced to the cross. And that cross is pre‐
>     Christian, is pagan and heathen, in half a dozen different shapes.
>     The Cult began with the cross, and Julian was right in saying he
>     waged a “Warfare with the X”; which he obviously considered had
>     been adopted by the A‐Gnostics and Mytholators to convey an
>     impossible significance.(1391) During centuries the cross stood
>     for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It
>     was divinized at first and humanized at last.(1392)
> 
> Few world‐symbols are more pregnant with real Occult meaning than the
> Svastika. It is symbolized by the figure 6. Like that figure, it points,
> in its concrete imagery, as does the ideograph of the number, to the
> Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and East; one finds the unit
> 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 Svastika, say the Commentaries, “can trace on it, with
> mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of
> Sandhyâ.” 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, the Ego, to liberate itself
> from the thraldom of sensuous perception, and see in the light of the one
> eternal present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and far more now to the
> superficial Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of Materialistic
> Science, the chief explanation of the mysteries of the cross is—its sexual
> element. Even the otherwise spiritualistic modern commentator discerns
> this feature in the cross and Svastika before all others.
> 
>     The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol
>     of saving power. Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained to
>     and bound by the cross. In the _Ritual_, the Osirian cries, “_The
>     Apophis is overthrown, their cords bind the South, North, East,
>     and West, their cords are on him. Har‐ru‐bah has knotted
>     him._”(1393) These were the Cords of the four quarters, or the
>     cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the serpent with his
>     hammer, ... a form of Swastika or four‐footed cross.... In the
>     primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber had the
>     form of a cross.(1394) The pagoda of Mathura ... the birth‐place
>     of Krishna, was built in the form of a cross.(1395)
> 
> This is perfect, and no one can discern in it that “sexual worship,” with
> which the Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about
> the Jews, and the exoteric religions of some Hindû sects, especially the
> rites of the Vallabâchâryas? For, as said, Shiva‐worship, with its Lingam
> and Yoni, stands too high philosophically, its modern degeneration
> notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the Tree‐ or
> Cross‐worship(1396) of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can
> hardly escape the charge. The “sons of the sorcerers, the seed of the
> adulterer,”(1397) as Isaiah calls them, never lost an opportunity of
> “enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree”(1398)—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—even after every symbol relating
> thereto has been referred to and read, one after another—still remain 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 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 Ashvattha, 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,(1399) 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 man 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 Éliphas Lévi 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
> _revealer_, 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_—as indeed we say it is—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
> preeminent number—six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings
> within one another round a central point, 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.
> 
> Section XI. 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, the Hebdomad, in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As
> every religion, from the oldest to the latest, reveals 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. The 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 should ask a Brâhman learned in the _Upanishads_, which are 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;(1400) and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the
> Brâhman 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. As says the Commentary:
> 
> _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 Jîvas of the plants, produced the middle
> [intermediate] natures between plant and moving living animal. The third
> Seven evolved their Chhâyâs.... The fifth Seven imprisoned their
> Essence.... Thus man became a Saptaparna._
> 
> A. Saptaparna.
> 
> Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown
> 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 τ (Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ
> (Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, and of
> Life Eternal: of earthly life, because Γ (Gamma) is the symbol of the
> Earth (Gaia)(1401); 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:
> 
> [Symbol: a triangle over a square]
> 
> —a Triangle and a Quaternary, the symbol of Septenary Man.
> 
> Now, the number _six_ has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an
> emblem of _physical_ Nature. For six is the representation of the six
> dimensions of all bodies—the _six_ directions which compose their form,
> namely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North,
> South, East, and West, and the two directions 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.(1402)
> 
> J. M. Ragon gives a very good illustration of the “hieroglyphical senary,”
> as he calls our double equilateral triangle.
> 
>     The hieroglyphical senary is the symbol of the commingling of the
>     _philosophical three_ fires and _three_ waters, whence results the
>     procreation of the elements of all things.(1403)
> 
> The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For,
> though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is
> the symbol of the Triad, or Tri‐mûrti. For, even in the exoteric
> rendering, the lower triangle, [Symbol: triangle], with the apex downward,
> is the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water,
> Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;(1404) while
> the triangle, with its apex upward, [Symbol: triangle], is Shiva, the
> Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.(1405) It is
> these two interlaced triangles, wrongly called “Solomon’s Seal”—which also
> form the emblem of our Society—that produce the Septenary and the Triad at
> one and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this [Symbol:
> 6‐point star] is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For
> with a point in the middle or centre, [Symbol: 6‐point star with middle
> dot], it is a _sevenfold_ sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number
> three, or the Triad; 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 spagyrization of matter by
>     triads, are necessary to develop the generative force, that
>     prolific virtue and tendency to reproduction which is inherent in
>     all bodies.(1406)
> 
> Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no
> 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 [Symbol: bar]; the
> differentiated matter‐line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or ☩.
> The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is
> why all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by
> Science, can be reduced to four Elements only—Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen,
> and Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or
> graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a _terra incognita_, and mere
> speculations, mere 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.(1407)
> As those Alchemists 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._
> 
> Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also
> appear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or “soft stones that
> hardened,” to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, 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”;(1408) 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(1409) in the Fourth Round.
> 
> Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in Esoteric
> Philosophy, sang of evolution in the following strains:
> 
>     _Principio cælum ac terras camposque liquentes_
>     Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra
>     _Spiritus_ intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
>     _Mens_ agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
>     Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitæque volantum
>     Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus.(1410)
> 
> “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 has been demonstrated in the Section on “The
> Chronology of the Brâhmans”—by the compound number seven, the three and
> the four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. 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 “Pyramis”; while the
> second geometrical figure in _manifested_ Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4
> and 6; for, as Enfield says, “the particles of earth being cubical, those
> of fire are pyramidal”—truly. 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. Darwin—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.(1411)
> 
>     The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks [or 14 days];
>     those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of
>     the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven.(1412)
> 
> This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is
> 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. This truth has ever been evident
> to the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, 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 of 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 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_) The Noah—identical with the Hindû Shishta, the human Seed, left for
> the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as
> expressed in the _Purânas_, or the pre‐diluvian period as rendered
> allegorically in the _Bible_—in his cosmic character.
> 
> But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical
> Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as
> Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of
> 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.
> 
> As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to
> kabalistic works.
> 
>     “_Ararat_ = _the mount of descent_ = הר‐י‐רד, _Hor‐Jared_. Hatho
>     mentions it out of composition by _Arath_ = ארת. Editor of Moses
>     Cherenensis says: ‘By this, they say, is signified _the first
>     place of descent_ (of the ark).’ ” (Bryant’s _Anal._, vol. iv. pp.
>     5, 6, 15.) Under “_Berge_,” _mountain_, Nork says of _Ararat_:
>     “אררט, for ארת (_i.e._, _Ararat_ for _Arath_) _earth, Aramaic_
>     reduplication.” Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of
>     the same equivalent, in Arath, ארש, with the meaning of
>     _earth_.(1413)
> 
> 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, Vaivasvata
> Manu, perished, the number _seven_ will be seen to recur at every step. It
> is Noah who, as Jehovah’s permutation, represents the septenary Host of
> the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all
> animal life. Hence the verses 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,”(1414) etc., followed by all the _sevening_ of
> days and the rest.
> 
> B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.
> 
> Thus number _seven_, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in
> 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. Says the author of the article “Personal and Impersonal
> God”:
> 
>     This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor
>     non‐Ego; and it is neither object nor subject.
> 
>     In the language of Hindû philosophers it is the original and
>     eternal combination of Purusha [Spirit] and Prakriti [Matter]. As
>     the Advaitîs hold that an external object is merely the product of
>     our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and
>     Purusha is the only reality; it is the _one_ existence which
>     remains in the universe of Ideas. This ... then, is the
>     Parabrahman of the Advaitîs. Even if there were to be a personal
>     God with anything like a material Upâdhi (physical basis of
>     whatever form), from the standpoint of an Advaitî there will be as
>     much reason to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in
>     the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God
>     cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the
>     effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its
>     ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that _the grand total of all
>     the states of consciousness in the universe_ is their deity, as
>     these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic idealism
>     ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in
>     the Universe, which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare
>     Chidâkâsham (the field of consciousness) in fact.
> 
>     When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is
>     in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of
>     consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the
>     ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahman by
>     the Advaitîs.(1415)
> 
> Although itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this
> “huge aggregation of various states of consciousness” is a septenate, in
> _its_ totality entirely composed of septenary groups—simply because “the
> capacity of perception _exists in seven different aspects corresponding to
> the seven conditions of matter_,”(1416) or the seven properties, or states
> of matter. And, therefore, the series from one to seven, begins in the
> Esoteric calculations with the first manifested principle, which is number
> one if we commence from above, and number seven when reckoning from below,
> or from the lowest principle.
> 
> The Tetrad is esteemed in the _Kabalah_, 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. And the latter has ever
> been 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 Tetraktys of the
> Greeks, is the Second Logos, the Demiurgos.
> 
>     The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thinks, is, however, the _animal
>     itself_ of Plato who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of
>     the Pythagoreans; subsists at the extremity of the intelligible
>     triad, as is most satisfactorily shown by Proclus in the third
>     book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between these
>     two triads [the double triangle], the one intelligible, and the
>     other intellectual, another order of gods exists, which partakes
>     of both extremes.(1417)...
> 
> The Pythagorean world, according to Plutarch,(1418) _consisted of a double
> quaternary_.
> 
> This statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric
> theologies, of the _lower_ Tetraktys. For:
> 
>     The quaternary of the intellectual world [the world of Mahat] is
>     T’Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle; while that of the sensible world
>     [of Matter], which is properly what Pythagoras meant by the word
>     Kosmos, is Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The four elements are
>     called by the name of _rhizômata_, the roots or principles of all
>     _mixed bodies_.(1419)
> 
> That is to say, the lower Tetraktys is the root of _illusion_, of the
> World of Matter; and this is the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the
> “mysterious deity,” over which the modern Kabalists make such a fuss!
> 
>     This number [_four_] forms the arithmetical mean between the monad
>     and the heptad; and this comprehends all powers, both of the
>     productive and produced numbers; for this, of all numbers under
>     ten, is made of a certain number; the duad doubled makes a tetrad,
>     and the tetrad doubled [or unfolded] makes the hebdomad [the
>     septenary]. Two multiplied into itself produces four; and retorted
>     into itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a _fertile
>     number_, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two
>     and four [depending on the monad, the _seventh_]. Thus the two
>     principles of temporal things, the pyramis and cube, form and
>     matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon [on earth, the monad,
>     in heaven].(1420)
> 
> Here Reuchlin, the great authority on the _Kabalah_, shows the cube to be
> “matter,” whereas the pyramid or the triad is “form.” With the Hermesians
> 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.(1421)
> 
> Some students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line,(1422)
> which is male, becoming, 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 in his _Mathematica_, the Pythagoreans, who gave the name of Harmony
> to the Tetraktys, “because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia,” were of
> opinion that:
> 
>     The division of the canon of the monochord was made by the
>     tetraktys in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a
>     sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a duple, a triple, and a quadruple
>     proportion, the section of which is 27. In the ancient musical
>     notation, the tetrachord consisted of _three_ degrees or
>     intervals, and _four_ terms of sounds called by the Greeks
>     diatessaron, and by us a fourth.(1423)
> 
> Moreover, the quaternary though an even, therefore a female (“infernal”)
> number, varied according to its form. This is shown by Stanley.(1424) The
> four was called by the Pythagoreans the Key‐Keeper of Nature; but in union
> with the three, 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 one and a half tones; from the Sun to Mars a
> tone; from thence to Jupiter half a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn half a
> tone; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones—the
> diapason harmony.(1425) All the melody of Nature is in those seven tones,
> and therefore is called the “Voice of Nature.”
> 
> Plutarch explains(1426) that the most ancient 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.(1427) 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 Peuvret, and was treated according to the
> fundamental principles of light and darkness, _or good and evil_.(1428)
> 
>     The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind [or unit]
>     after this manner. The Tetraktys, reflecting upon its own essence,
>     _the first unit, productrix of all things_, and on its own
>     beginning, saith thus: Once one, twice two, immediately ariseth a
>     tetrad, having on its top the highest unit, and _becomes a
>     Pyramis_, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable to a
>     superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity
>     produceth the form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent
>     of Juno (matter) to inferior things. Hence ariseth essential
>     light, not burning but illuminating. This is _the creation of the
>     middle world_, which the Hebrews call the _Supreme_, the world of
>     the [_their_] deity. It is termed Olympus, entirely light, and
>     replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal
>     gods, _deûm domus alta_, whose top is _unity_, its wall _trinity_,
>     and its superficies _quaternity_.(1429)
> 
> The “superficies” has thus to remain a _meaningless surface_, if left by
> 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,
> Brahmâ‐Vâch, or the Kabalistic Jah‐Hovah; all male‐females. Every
> anthropomorphic God, in old nations, as Marcellus Ficin well observed, has
> his name written with four letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut;
> the Arabs, Alla; the Persians, Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mahometans, Abdi;
> the Greeks, Teos; the ancient Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which John
> Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott; the Sarmatian Bouh; etc.(1430)
> 
> The Monad being one, and an _odd_ number, the Ancients therefore said that
> the odd were 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. Virgil records the fact by
> saying, “_Numero deus impare gaudet_.” “The God is pleased with an odd
> number.”(1431)
> 
> 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.(1432) The doctrine of the Spheres ruled by the seven Sacred
> Planets(1433) 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 considered to be _the number of a virgin,
> because it is unborn_ [like the Logos or the Aja of the Vedântins]:
> 
>     Without a father ... or a mother, ... _but proceeding directly
>     from the monad_, which is the origin and crown of all
>     things.(1434)
> 
> And if the Heptad is made to proceed from the Monad directly, then it is,
> as taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest schools, the perfect and
> sacred number of this Mahâmanvantara 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, amid 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.(1435)
> 
> Cis‐Himâlayan 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 Spirit, Soul, and
> Body. Behold, the Târaka Râja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, we,
> to 4, and the Vedântins 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?
> 
>     Ἑπτά με κ.τ.λ.
>     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 triadic and tetradic symbols come under one unified name with the
> Christians—the Jehovah of the seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Shebâ
> is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktys) identical with number 7? Or, as
> Mr. Gerald Massey has it:
> 
>     Taking an oath was synonymous with “to seven,” and the 10
>     expressed by the letter Jod, was the full number of Iao‐Sabaoth
>     [—the ten‐lettered God].(1436)
> 
> In Lucian’s _Auction_:
> 
>     Pythagoras asks, “How do you reckon?” The reply is, “One, Two,
>     Three, Four.” Then Pythagoras says, “Do you see? In _what you
>     conceive_ Four there are Ten, _a perfect Triangle and our Oath_
>     [Tetraktys, Four!—or Seven in all].”(1437)
> 
> Why again does Proclus say:
> 
>     The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetraktys as the
>     fountain of perennial nature?(1438)
> 
> Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the _exoteric_ proofs
> against us have no idea of the real _Esoteric_ meaning. All the ancient
> Cosmologies—the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the
> Fifth Root‐Race, the Hindû Âryans and the Egyptians, together with 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
> Babian 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_; the Jewish Sephiroth of the seven splendours; the
> seven Gothic deities; the seven worlds of the Chaldæans 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.(1439)
> 
> 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 Esoteric Schools
> into seven. Make it four and it will either leave man _minus_ his lower
> terrestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical standpoint, make of
> him a soulless animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower—the
> celestial or terrestrial Tetraktys; to become comprehensible, according to
> the teachings of the _ancient_ Esoteric School, man must be regarded as a
> septenary. This was so well understood, that even the so‐called Christian
> Gnostics adopted this time‐honoured system.(1440) This remained for a long
> time a secret, for though it was 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_. To make the proof absolutely complete, we
> shall quote from an authority, C. W. King, the only Archæologist who has
> 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,(1441)
> just as our School teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of
> which are borrowed from the four kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus:
> 
>     From Asiah it gets the Nephesh, or seat of the physical appetites
>     [vital breath, also]; from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the
>     passions [? !]; from Briah, the Neshamah or reason; and from
>     Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life.
>     This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul’s
>     obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its
>     downward progress through their spheres. But the Pistis‐Sophia,
>     with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more
>     poetical shape (§ 282). The _Inner Man_ is similarly made up of
>     _four_ constituents, _but these are supplied by the rebellious
>     Æons of the Spheres_, being the _Power_—a particle of the Divine
>     light (“Divinæ particula auræ”) yet left in themselves; the _Soul_
>     [the fifth] “formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat
>     of their torments”; the Ἀντιμῖμον Πνεύματος, _Counterfeit of the
>     Spirit_ (seemingly answering to our _Conscience_) [_the sixth_];
>     and lastly the Μοῖρα, _Fate_(1442) [Karmic Ego], whose business it
>     is to lead the man to the end appointed for him: if he hath to die
>     by the fire, to lead him into the fire; if he hath to die by a
>     wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast—[the _seventh_]!(1443)
> 
> C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
> 
> _It Corroborates the Occult Teaching Concerning the Seven Globes and the
> Seven Races._
> 
> We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would
> 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 Sûrya, the Sun, are therein made 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 Ashvins, the Âdityas,(1444) are all
> synonymous with those “Sacrificers,” or the Fathers, variously called
> Pitaras (or Pitris), Angirasas,(1445) and Sâdhyas, “Divine Sacrificers,”
> the most Occult of all. They are all called Deva‐putra Rishayah or the
> “Sons of God.”(1446) The “Sacrificers,” moreover, are collectively the One
> Sacrificer, the Father of the Gods, Vishvakarman, who performed the great
> Sarva‐medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself.
> 
> In these Hymns the “Heavenly Man” is called Purusha, the “Man,”(1447) from
> whom Virâj was born(1448); and from Virâj, the (mortal) man. It is
> Varuna—lowered from his sublime position to be the chief of the
> Lords—Dhyânîs or Devas—who regulates all natural phenomena, who “makes a
> 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 (Vratâni, or “courses of natural action,” active
> laws), is punished by Indra(1449) the Vedic powerful God, whose Vrata, or
> law or power, is greater than the Vratâni 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, which are the records written by the earliest Initiates of the
> Fifth (our) Race concerning the Primordial Teachings, speak of the Seven
> Races (two still to come), allegorizing them by the seven “Streams”(1450)
> and of the Five Races (Panchakrishtayah) which have already inhabited this
> world(1451) on the five Regions (Panchapradishah)(1452) as also of the
> three Continents that were.(1453)
> 
> It is only those scholars who will master the secret meaning of the
> Purusha Sukta—in which the intuition of the modern Orientalists has chosen
> 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. He must study, in all the abstruseness of their
> metaphysical meaning, the relations therein between the (Heavenly) Man
> (Purusha), _sacrificed_ for the production of the Universe and all in
> it,(1454) and the terrestrial mortal man(1455) before he realizes the
> hidden philosophy of the verse:
> 
>     15. He [“Man,” Purusha, or Vishvakarman] had seven enclosing logs
>     of fuel, and _thrice seven_ layers of fuel; when the Gods
>     performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.
> 
> This relates to the three septenary primeval Races, and shows the
> antiquity of the _Vedas_, which knew of no other sacrifice, probably, in
> these earliest _oral_ teachings; and also to the seven primeval groups of
> Mankind, as Vishvakarman represents divine Humanity collectively.(1456)
> 
> The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may,
> it must, have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the
> case of the Parsîs who read it in their _Vendîdâd_ and elsewhere, though
> without understanding the allusions therein contained any better than do
> the Orientalists; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old
> works.(1457)
> 
> Comparing the Esoteric Teaching with the interpretations by Prof. James
> Darmesteter, one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the
> cause that produced it. The passage runs thus:
> 
>     The Indo‐Iranian Asura [Ahura] was often conceived as _sevenfold_;
>     by the play of certain mythical [?] formulæ and the strength of
>     certain mythical [?] numbers, the ancestors of the Indo‐Iranians
>     had been led to speak of seven worlds,(1458) and the supreme god
>     was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he
>     ruled. The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of
>     the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, _only one of
>     which is known and accessible to man_, the one on which we live,
>     namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are _seven
>     earths_.(1459) Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens.
>     Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. §
>     72.)(1460)
> 
> The same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most
> revered of the Hindû scriptures—the _Rig Veda_. Mention is made therein of
> six Worlds, _besides_ our Earth: the six Rajamsi above Prithivî, the
> Earth, or “this” (Idam) as opposed to “that which is _yonder_” (_i.e._,
> the six Globes on the _three_ other planes or Worlds).(1461)
> 
> The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of
> the Esoteric Doctrine, and to accentuate the mistake that is 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. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret
> Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities in
> septenary divisions, which has made the Orientalists—who have, moreover,
> been further led astray by the oblivion of their primitive doctrines of
> both the uninitiated Hindûs and Parsîs—feel so puzzled by this ever‐
> recurring seven‐fold number as to regard it as “mythical.” It is this
> oblivion of 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 Âryans, can never assimilate or even
> understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these Beings.
> 
> Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha
> Spentas, or Amshaspands, and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as
> Jehovah‐Binah‐Elohim was the head and synthesis of the Elohim, and no
> more; so Agni‐Vishnu‐Sûrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence
> emanated in physics and also in metaphysics, from the spiritual as well 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; _i.e._, the sinking of Atlantis,
> or the “Flood,” and the occupation of India by the Brâhmans, who sought
> safety on the summits of the Himâlayas, for 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 _Vendîdâd_. Ahura Mazda in its literal translation means the “Wise
> Lord” (Ahura “lord” and Mazda “wise”). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in
> Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who
> 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.
> 
> 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 existing Âryan Brâhmanical nation,
> and also the time of its descent into the plains of Hindûstan, which did
> not take place till millenniums later.
> 
> Yima, the so‐called “first man” in the _Vendîdâd_, as much as his twin‐
> brother Yama, the son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of
> 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 Vîvanghat”(1462) 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(1463) 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 Fargard ii of the _Vendîdâd_. 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.”(1464)
> 
> And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and “watch over”
> his world.
> 
> 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 nourish, and rule, and watch over thy world.
>     There shall be, while I am king, neither cold wind nor hot wind,
>     _neither disease nor death_.”
> 
> Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of
> sovereignty.
> 
>     Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred _winters_ passed away,
>     and the earth was _replenished_ with flocks and herds, with men
>     and dogs and birds and with red blazing fires.
> 
> Three hundred winters mean three hundred periods or cycles. “Replenished,”
> 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 “three hundred 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
> Ârmaita, the female Genius, or Spirit of the Earth, makes that Earth
> stretch out and become larger by one‐third, after which “new flocks and
> herds 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 Zarathushtra 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 above, 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, as impersonal as the
> source from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of
> bodies, which were sinless, hence Karma‐less. Therefore, as there was no
> Kâma Loka—least of all Nirvâna or even Devachan—for the “Souls” of men who
> had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the
> incarnations. Like the Phœnix, 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.
> 
> In fact, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction
> to Nott and Gliddon’s _Types of Mankind_, Agassiz declares 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 Prajâpatis, the evolvers of beings.
> These are neither Gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from
> another and lower Planet, reborn on this Planet, and giving birth in their
> turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again
> corroborated by one of its echoes—among the Gnostics. 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 Irenæus,(1465)
> 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.
> 
> Scattered about in thousands of other Sanskrit texts, some still unopened,
> others yet unknown, as well as in all the _Purânas_, as much as, if not
> much more than, even in the Jewish _Bible_, the numbers seven and forty‐
> nine (7 × 7) play a most prominent part. In the _Purânas_ they are found
> from the seven Creations, in the first chapters, 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 Purâna_ has:
> 
>     For the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, in the beginning
>     of a Kalpa, related to Manu the story of Narasimha and the events
>     of _seven_ Kalpas.(1466)
> 
> Then again the same _Purâna_ shows that:
> 
>     In all the Manvantaras, classes of Rishis(1467) appear by seven
>     and _seven_, and having established a code of law and morality
>     depart to felicity.(1468)
> 
> The Rishis, however, represent many other things besides living sages.
> 
> In Dr. Muir’s translation of the _Atharva Veda_, we read:
> 
>     1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with _seven_ rays, a
>     thousand eyes, undecaying, full of fecundity. On him intelligent
>     sages mount; his wheels are all the worlds.
> 
>     2. Thus Time moves on _seven_ wheels; he has _seven_ naves;
>     immortality is his axle. He is at present _all these worlds_. Time
>     hastens onward the first God.
> 
>     3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many
>     forms. He is all these worlds in the future. They call him “Time
>     in the highest Heaven.”(1469)
> 
> Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric Volumes:
> 
> _Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the
> incognizable That, which can be sensed only through its seven Rays—which
> are the seven Creations, the seven Worlds, the seven Laws, etc._
> 
> Remembering that the _Purânas_ insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time
> and Space,(1470) and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is Maqom,
> “Space,” it becomes clear why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity—Space,
> Matter, and Spirit—the one central Point became the Triangle and
> Quaternary—the perfect Cube—hence _seven_. Even the Pravaha Wind—the
> mystic and occult force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the
> course of the stars and planets—is septenary. The _Kûrma_ and _Linga
> Purânas_ enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the
> principles of Cosmic Space.(1471) They are intimately connected with
> Dhruva(1472) (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., in the Âryan Scriptures, the number has passed through
> Indian, Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian
> mystic thought, until it landed in, and remained indelibly impressed 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 remembrance of the seven primordial
> Mysteries instituted according to the “seven secret Emanations,” the seven
> Sounds, and seven Rays—the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven
> thousand times seven copies of them in later æons.
> 
> The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious
> Maruts. The _Vâyu Purâna_ shows, and the _Harivamsha_ corroborates,
> concerning the Maruts—the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the
> secondary or lower Gods in the _Rig Veda_:
> 
>     That they are _born in every Manvantara [Round], seven times
>     seven_ (or forty‐nine); that, in each Manvantara, _four times
>     seven_ (or twenty‐eight) obtain emancipation, but their places are
>     _filled up by persons reborn in that character_.(1473)
> 
> What are the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who _those persons_
> “reborn in that character”? In the _Rik_ and other _Vedas_, the Maruts are
> 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 Shiva, the great patron of the Yogîs:
> 
>     The Mahâ Yogî, the great _ascetic_, in whom is centred the highest
>     perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, _by which
>     the most unlimited powers are attained, marvels and miracles are
>     worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union
>     with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained_.(1474)
> 
> In the _Rig Veda_ the name Shiva is unknown, but the corresponding God is
> called Rudra, a name used for Agni, the Fire‐God, the Maruts being called
> therein his sons. In the _Râmâyana_ and the _Purânas_, their mother,
> Diti—the sister, or complement, and a form of Aditi—anxious to obtain a
> son who would destroy Indra, is told by Kashyapa, the Sage, that if, “with
> thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure,” she carries the babe in
> her womb “for a hundred years,”(1475) she will have 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.(1476) These Deities are only another _aspect_, or a development,
> of the Kumâras, who are patronymically Rudras, like many others.(1477)
> 
> Diti, being Aditi—unless the contrary is proven to us—Aditi, we say, or
> Âkâsha in her highest form, is the Egyptian _seven‐fold_ Heaven. Every
> true Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the
> sixth principle of _metaphysical_ Nature, the Buddhi of Âkâsha. 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 Mâyâ,
> and consequent final bliss. Indra is now degraded, because of the Kali
> Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal
> through a general spread of Ahamkâra, the feeling of Egotism, or “I‐am‐
> ness” and ignorance; but in the beginning Indra was one of the greatest
> Gods of the Hindû Pantheon, as the _Rig Veda_ shows. Surâdhipa the “chief
> of the gods,” has fallen down from Jishnu, the “Leader of the Celestial
> Host”—the Hindû St. Michael—to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy of
> every holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindrî (Indrânî), the
> personification of Aindriyaka, 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,
> Yogîs, 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 principle, Manas in its dual aspect—as connected with Buddhi,
> and as allowing itself to be dragged down by the Kâma principle, the body
> of passions and desires. This is demonstrated by Brahmâ 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 Yogî,
> determined to resist all such temptations, and thus destroy the passions
> within his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh
> conquers spirit.(1478) He divides the “embryo” (of new _divine_ Adeptship,
> begotten once more by the Ascetics of the Âryan 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,(1479) but also to the seven
> degrees of Adeptship), and then each 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 are _re‐born_ in that character, viz., of the Maruts in
> their Esoteric meaning, and who “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 Âkâsha’s lower
> principles—her body, or Sthûla Sharîra, 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, Marut in Occult parlance is one of the names given to
> those Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and are known also as
> Nirmânakâyas; of those Egos for whom—_since they are beyond
> illusion_—there is no Devachan, who, having either voluntarily renounced
> Nirvâna for the good of mankind, or who not yet having reached it, remain
> invisible on Earth. Therefore are the Maruts(1480) shown, firstly, as the
> sons of Shiva‐Rudra, the Patron Yogî, 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, under various
> characters. The “four times seven” emancipations have a reference to the
> four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of which
> Maruta‐Jîvas (Monads) have been re‐born, and would have obtained final
> liberation, if only they had chosen to avail themselves of it. But instead
> of this, out of love for 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 Tvashtri, a synonym of
> Vishvakarman, the great Patron of the Initiates, is included. This gives
> us an ample knowledge of their true nature.
> 
> The same for the septenary division of cosmos and the human principles.
> The _Purânas_, along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this.
> First of all, the Mundane Egg which contained Brahmâ, or the Universe, was
> externally invested with _seven_ natural elements, at first loosely
> enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and _three secret_ elements; then
> the “World” is said to be “encompassed on every side” by seven elements,
> also _within_ the Egg—as explained:
> 
>     The world is encompassed on every side, and above, and below, by
>     the shell of the egg (of Brahmâ) [Andakatâha].(1481)
> 
> Around the shell flows Water, which is surrounded with Fire; Fire by Air;
> Air by Ether; Ether by the Origin of the Elements (Ahamkâra); the latter
> by Universal Mind, or “Intellect,” as Wilson translates. It relates to
> Spheres of Being as much as to Principles. Prithivî 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 a key to be read
> correctly—three terrestrial and three celestial Earths are mentioned as
> having been called into existence simultaneously with Bhûmi, 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 of a principle. So with the Planetary Chain; therein, speaking
> 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 its 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 Brahmâ divides in the _Purânas_ into seven
> Zones, is Prithivî, 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 again, in
> its turn, is divided into seven Zones according to the law of analogy
> which guided ancient Philosophers. After which we find on it seven
> Continents, seven Isles, seven Oceans, seven Seas and Rivers, seven
> Mountains, seven Climates, etc.(1482)
> 
> Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindû scriptures and philosophy that
> one finds references to the seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phœnician,
> Chaldæan, and Egyptian cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The
> Phœnix(1483)—called by the Hebrews Onech ענק, from Phenoch, Enoch, the
> 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_,(1484) when comes the Day of Judgment. The “seven times
> seven,” or forty‐nine, 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 _Kurân_,
> shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes
> or Phœnix; the “Day of Judgment” meaning a minor Pralaya. The author of
> the _Book of God_ and the _Apocalypse_ believes that:
> 
>     The Phœnix is ... very plainly the same as the Simorgh of Persian
>     romance; and the account which is given us of this last bird yet
>     more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival
>     of the Phœnix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction
>     of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of
>     a fiery deluge [and also a watery one in its turn]. When the
>     Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world
>     is very ancient, for it has been already _seven times
>     replenished_, with beings different from men, and _seven times
>     depopulated_:(1485) that the age of the human race in which we now
>     are, is to endure seven thousand years, and that she herself had
>     seen _twelve_ of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she
>     had to see.(1486)
> 
> The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century,
> down to Dr. Kenealy, in the present, these facts have been noticed by a
> number of writers; but now a connection can be established between the
> Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the _Book of
> God_:
> 
>     The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the
>     Hindûs, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the
>     former will appear at the end of the world ... [as a] monstrous
>     lion‐bird.... From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of
>     an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the earth, sometimes
>     walking in the ocean ... while its head props the sky; and with
>     the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it
>     relates. They teach that there are to be _seven successive
>     renewals_ of the globe; that each reproduced system will last
>     _seven_ thousand years [?]; and that the _total duration of the
>     Universe_ will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the
>     doctrine of the preëxistence of each renewed creature, they may
>     either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or _it may
>     have been part of the primeval religion_ which their priests had
>     preserved from remote times.(1487)
> 
> It shows rather that the initiated Jews _borrowed_, and their non‐
> initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost, the sense, and applied the
> seven Rounds, and the forty‐nine Races, etc., wrongly.
> 
> 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 can be. 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.(1488)
> 
> Who, in the least acquainted 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, Part III.(1489)
> 
> 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
> seventh _hidden_.” In India they are connected with their nursling, the
> war God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave
> this name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, _astronomically_.
> As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman.
> He is a Kumâra, a “virgin youth” again, generated in the fire from the
> Seed of Shiva—the Holy Spirit—hence called Agni‐bhû. The late Dr. Kenealy
> believed that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of
> the Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar
> or lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that 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 intended to commemorate one particular event,
> Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, 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,
> Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He
> is then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and
> the Hindû Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is
> well known. A six‐rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, 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 Dvâdasha‐kara, the
> “twelve‐handed,” and Dvâdashâksha, “twelve‐eyed.” It is as Shakti‐dhara,
> however, the “spear‐holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka‐jit, that
> he is shown to be most famous.
> 
> As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by
> one hundred “years of the gods” (divine years), or one hundred “mortal
> years,” we can see the tremendous difficulty the non‐initiated have in
> arriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an
> important part in St. John’s _Revelation_. It is the truly apocalyptic
> cycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various
> pre‐historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it
> have we found any but a few _approximate_ truths.
> 
> Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it
> has been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in
> their chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that
> Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism—which we have already
> exposed—of the Hindû figures 432. These they give in thousands and
> millions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to
> 4,320 _lunar_ years,(1490) “before the birth of Christ,” as “foreordained”
> in the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved “by the
> apparition of the Star of Bethlehem.” But Suidas had no other warrant for
> this assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. He
> cites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477
> _days_, as he thinks, or again rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and
> 7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original—thus committing an error
> even in such an easy calculation.(1491) True, there are other ancient
> writers guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance,
> who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldæans only 1,903
> years, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.(1492) The whole of these
> hypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The
> chronology of 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 Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of
> mortals, which is only one _day_ of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2
> of these months constitute a Rûdû, 3 Rûdûs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a
> year of mortals, which is only a _day_ of the Gods. It is from 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 the
> present century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely
> mutilated accounts of Hindû chronology, brought from India by certain
> unscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory
> on the subject. Because the Hindûs had made of half a revolution of the
> moon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days,
> of which Quintus Curtius speaks,(1493) is found mentioned in Hindû
> literature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their _year_ was
> only half a year, when it was not called a _day_! The Chinese, also,
> divided their Zodiac into twenty‐four parts, and hence their year into
> twenty‐four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent
> them having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a
> period of 60 days—the Southern Indian Rûdû—to this day in some provinces.
> Moreover, Diodorus Siculus(1494) calls “_thirty days_ an Egyptian year,”
> or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny
> and Plutarch(1495) both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the
> Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the
> _lunar_ month consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions?
> This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the
> Ayanam and the Rûdû of the Hindûs. The year of 2 months’ duration, and the
> period of 60 days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as
> Bailly himself shows in his _Traité de l’ Astronomie Indienne et
> Orientale_. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year
> into two parts, from one equinox to the other;(1496) 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 Abbé Chappe.(1497) But is all this any reason for claiming that
> when the Hindû _Purânas_ say a solar _year_, they mean one solar _day_!
> 
> It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root
> nature‐number, so to say, in the manifested world, or 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—to prophesy, it is
> called—the influence which they would 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
> respectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its
> seven domains, or “spheres of action.”(1498)
> 
> This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men
> of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention
> called to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and
> Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this
> fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are
> explained in the Commentaries in the following words:
> 
> _The Circle is not the __“__One__”__ but the __“__All.__”_
> 
> _In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,_(_1499_)_ it [the Circle]
> becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in
> it._
> 
> _In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three __“__Worlds__”__], the
> One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and
> the Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton]._
> 
> _In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and
> Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt obtain Seven, the sacred
> number of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt
> have Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming._(1500)
> 
> When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig
> Vedic divisions of the World—the two‐fold, three‐fold, six‐ and seven‐
> 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 perceptions of the mind._ The direction, indeed, of
>     modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization
>     which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple
>     numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell’s _Philosophy
>     of the Inductive Sciences_, and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the
>     laws of harmonious colouring and form. _From these it appears that
>     the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the
>     harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds_, and probably
>     of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind
>     with mathematical accuracy.(1501)
> 
> So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the
> _septenary_ periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of
> various complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss
> to explain this law.
> 
>     The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions
>     of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles,
>     fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less
>     controlled by a law of _completion in weeks_ [or seven
>     days].(1502)
> 
> Dr. Laycock, writing on the “Periodicity of  Vital Phenomena,”(1503)
> records a “most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in
> insects.”(1504)
> 
> To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he
> defends biblical chronology:
> 
>     And man’s life ... is a _week_, a _week of decades_. “The days of
>     our years are three‐score years and ten.” Combining the testimony
>     of all these facts, we are bound to admit that _there prevails in
>     organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion
>     in weeks_.(1505)
> 
> Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the
> 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,
> hypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, 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 _Kabalah_ being its warrant; moreover there is in it “a
> system of weeks,” based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be
> found in the old Jyotisha.(1506) And there are in it cycles of the “_week_
> of days,” of the “_week_ of months,” of years, of centuries, and even of
> millenniums, and more, of the “week of years of years.”(1507) But all this
> can be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the
> chronology in every scripture, however _veiled_, is denied in the case of
> the _Bible_; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days
> and the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the
> Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first “week of creation” shows the
> septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ’s “seven
> creations.” The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which
> he has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform
> calculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical 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 may be, 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 the “Creation” and the “Nativity,” is a clear and
> unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindû Yugas.
> Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are
> preëminently Chaldæan and Indo‐Âryan, play such a part in the _New
> Testament_? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.
> 
> Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts—the _Vishnu Purâna_ and
> the _Bible_—and he will find that the “seven creations” of Brahmâ are at
> the foundation of the “week of creation” in _Genesis_. The two allegories
> are different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation‐
> stone. The _Bible_ can be understood _only by the light of_ the _Kabalah_.
> 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 Brahmâ’s head; they are his “Mind‐born Sons,” and
> it is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from
> the Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking
> of the “Skull” (Head) of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One(1508) (in Sanskrit
> Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the _Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha_, or
> “Greater Holy Assembly,” says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden
> 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] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth
>     forth into _thirty_ and _two_ paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or
>     again 432].
> 
> And again:
> 
>     Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of
>     the skull [_i.e._, six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth
>     being also the fourteenth, as it is male‐female]; ... and through
>     them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things,
>     of mankind and the races].(1509)
> 
> “We _six_ are lights which shine forth from a _seventh_ (light),” saith
> Rabbi Abba; “_thou art the seventh light_”—the synthesis of us all—he
> adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven “companions,” whom he calls
> the “eyes of Tetragrammaton.”(1510)
> 
> Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed _four_ forms, in order to
> create four kinds of _supernal_ creatures, _i.e._, made himself _four‐
> fold_, or the manifest Quaternary;(1511) after that, he is re‐born in the
> _seven_ Rishis, his Mânasaputras, “Mind‐born Sons,” who became later,
> nine, twenty‐one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various
> parts of Brahmâ.(1512)
> 
> There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus.
> The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the
> Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain—Non‐being,
> _i.e._, illimitable or absolute “Be‐ness.” But when viewed as
> Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the
> Triangle in the Square—the _sevenfold_ Cube, not the fourfold, or the
> plane Square. For it is written in “The Greater Holy Assembly”:
> 
>     And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in
>     their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod.
>     xvii. 7: “Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the
>     Negatively Existent One?”(1513)
> 
> —where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called
> Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the
> Negatively Existent.(1514)
> 
> Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three _made_ four and the Four made
> 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 “The Greater Holy Assembly” elsewhere
> says:
> 
>     We have learned that there _were ten_ (_Rabbis_) [Companions]
>     entered into (_the Assembly_) [the Sod, “mysterious assembly or
>     mystery”] and that _seven_ came forth(1515) [_i.e._, _ten_ for the
>     unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].
> 
>     1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were
>     found none present there save those [seven] (_companions_). And
>     Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like
>     as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: “These are the seven eyes [or
>     principles] of Tetragrammaton” [—_i.e._, the four‐fold Heavenly
>     Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter
>     and Spirit].(1516)
> 
> Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male‐female
> Chokmah‐Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the
> 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 _Zechariah_ and especially
> to the _Epistle of Peter_,(1517) 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 a
> man whose constitution (_i.e._, his “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 quâ non_, in the production of occult astral phenomena.
> 
> 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 Abba said:
> 
>     We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (_light_); thou
>     [Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (_the origin of_) us all.
> 
>     For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (_what they
>     derive_) from the seventh. For all things depend from the
>     seventh.(1518)
> 
> The ancient and modern Western American Zuñi 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 the _Anugîtâ_, 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 Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulûpî, the daughter
> of the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuñi priests.
> 
> These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours.
> Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a
> certain day they come out—six priests and one priestess—arrayed in their
> 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 a Zuñi, 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 _Purânas_ and the _Mahâbhârata_—the Âgneyâstra or “fiery
> weapon” bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara—is said to be constructed
> 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 Hindû Theatre_, and finally fails to
> explain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues:
> 
>     These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them
>     are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they
>     _appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual_—such as
>     those of paralyzing an enemy, or _locking his senses fast in
>     sleep_, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from
>     heaven.(1519)... They are supposed to assume celestial shapes,
>     endowed with human faculties.... The _Râmâyana_ calls them the
>     sons of Krishâshva.(1520)
> 
> The Shastra‐devatâs, “Gods of the divine weapons,” are no more
> Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the
> 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 Krishâshva, “the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons
> is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”(1521) It is the fiery javelin of
> Brahmâ.
> 
> The seven‐fold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles,
> symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the
> doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell.
> 
> F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.
> 
> If one turns to those wells of information, _The Natural Genesis_ and the
> _Lectures_ of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the
> doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of
> the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the
> symbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too
> materialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and
> follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that:
> 
>     The student of Böhme’s books finds much in them concerning these
>     Seven “Fountain Spirits,” and primary powers, treated as seven
>     properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of
>     the mediæval mysteries....
> 
>     The followers of Böhme look on such matter as the divine
>     revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the
>     natural genesis, the history and persistence of the “Wisdom”(1522)
>     of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognize
>     the physical features of the ancient “Seven Spirits” beneath their
>     modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link
>     between the theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of
>     Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of _Hermes
>     Trismegistus_.(1523) No matter whether these teachings are called
>     Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian,
>     the elemental types can only be truly known in their
>     beginnings.(1524) When the prophets or visionary showmen of
>     cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter
>     something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But
>     if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot
>     account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by
>     the primary significations rather than the latest
>     pretensions.(1525) It is useless for us to read our later thought
>     into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients
>     meant that!(1526) Subtilized interpretations which have become
>     doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their
>     genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their
>     false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural
>     knowledge.(1527)
> 
> But the able author of _The Book of the Beginnings_ and of _The Natural
> Genesis_ does—very fortunately, for us—quite the reverse. He demonstrates
> 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.”(1528) Says the author:
> 
>     The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in
>     heaven by the seven large stars of the _Great Bear_, the
>     constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and
>     of the seven Elemental Powers.(1529)
> 
> Just so, for the Hindûs place their seven primitive Rishis in the Great
> Bear, and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarshi, Riksha and
> Chitra‐shikhandinas. And their Adepts claim to know whether it is only an
> astronomical myth, or a primordial mystery having a deeper meaning than it
> bears on its surface. We are also told that:
> 
>     The Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven
>     parts. The primary Heaven was sevenfold.(1530)
> 
> So it was with the Âryans. One has but to read the _Purânas_ about the
> beginnings of Brahmâ and his Egg, to see this. Have the Âryans then, taken
> the idea from the Egyptians? But, as the lecturer proceeds:
> 
>     The earliest forces recognized in Nature were reckoned as seven in
>     number. These became Seven Elementals, devils [?], or later
>     divinities. Seven properties were assigned to Nature—as matter,
>     cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and
>     division—and _seven elements or souls to man_.(1531)
> 
> All this was taught in the Esoteric Doctrine, but it was interpreted and
> 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 in psychic Nature, and were made referable
> to Metaphysics and Psychology as much as to Physiology. As the author
> says:
> 
>     A principle of _sevening_, so to say, was introduced, and the
>     number seven supplied a sacred type _that could be used for
>     manifold purposes_.(1532)
> 
> And it was so used. For:
> 
>     The seven souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian
>     texts.... _Seven souls, or principles in man were identified by
>     our British Druids_.... The Rabbins also ran the number of souls
>     up to seven: so, likewise, do the Karens of India.(1533)
> 
> And then, the author, with several misspellings, tabulates the two
> teachings—the Esoteric and the Egyptian—and shows that the latter had the
> same series and in the same order.
> 
> [Esoteric] Indian.               Egyptian.
> 1. Rûpa, body or element of      1. Kha, body.
> form.
> 2. Prâna, the breath of life.    2. Ba, the soul of breath.
> 3. Astral body.                  3. Khaba, the shade.
> 4. Manas, or                     4. Akhu, intelligence or
> intelligence.(1534)              perception.
> 5. Kâma Rûpa, or animal soul.    5. Seb, ancestral soul.
> 6. Buddhi, or spiritual soul.    6. Putah, the first
>                                  intellectual father.
> 7. Âtmâ, pure spirit.            7. Atmu, a divine, or eternal
>                                  soul.(1535)
> 
> Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) Souls, as (1)
> The Soul of Blood—the _formative_; (2) The Soul of Breath—that _breathes_;
> (3) The Shade or Covering Soul—that _envelopes_; (4) The Soul of
> Perception—that _perceives_; (5) The Soul of Pubescence—that _procreates_;
> (6) The Intellectual Soul—that _reproduces intellectually_; and (7) The
> Spiritual Soul—that is _perpetuated permanently_.
> 
> From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct;
> 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 compound unit
> of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of
> being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. Gerald Massey adds:
> 
>     The seven souls [our “principles”] ... are often mentioned in the
>     Egyptian texts. The moon‐god, Taht‐Esmun, or the later sun‐god,
>     expressed the seven nature‐powers that were prior to himself, and
>     were summed up in him as his seven souls [we say “principles”]....
>     The seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation, have the
>     same significance.(1536)
> 
> And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the _seven keys_ of
> the Seven Churches or the Sodalian Mysteries, kabalistically. However, we
> will not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also
> discovered that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine
> with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the
> _Sphinx_, of 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.
> 
> Böhme, the prince of all the mediæval seers, says:
> 
>     We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only
>     Mother works all things [which he calls fire, light, sound (the
>     upper three) and _desire_, _bitterness_, _anguish_, and
>     _substantiality_, thus analyzing the lower in his own mystic way];
>     whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh [the body
>     or substantiality], is essentially. These are the seven forms of
>     the Mother of all Beings, from whence all that is in this world is
>     generated.(1537)
> 
> And again:
> 
>     The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as
>     it were _creaturely_ in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and
>     all the stars are ... God’s powers, and the whole body of the
>     world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain
>     spirits.(1538)
> 
> This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. But how
> can we agree with Mr. Gerald Massey when he states that:
> 
>     The Seven Races of Men that have been sublimated and made
>     Planetary [?] by Esoteric Buddhism,(1539) may be met with in the
>     Bundahish as (1) the earth‐men; (2) water‐men; (3) breast‐eared
>     men; (4) breast‐eyed men; (5) one‐legged men; (6) bat‐winged men;
>     (7) men with tails.(1540)
> 
> Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later
> 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 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_:
> 
>     “I am the mouse.” “I am the hawk.” “I am the ape.”... “_I am the
>     crocodile whose soul comes from_ MEN.”... “_I am the soul of the
>     gods._”(1541)
> 
> The last sentence but one is explained by the lecturer, who says
> parenthetically, “_that is, as a type of intelligence_,” and the last 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 new‐fangled doctrine. And there are many such, in
> Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the Esotericism of the old
> Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brâhmans
> 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 eighth
> 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 Brâhmanical system may be judged by what one of India’s
> learned meta‐physicians and Vedântic scholars says of it:
> 
>     The real esoteric seven‐fold classification is one of the most
>     important, if not the most important classification, which has
>     received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this
>     eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the four‐
>     fold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as
>     it were, seems to be refracted by the treble‐faced prism of
>     Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided
>     into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven
>     principles of this classification. The progress of development
>     presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of
>     the rays of the spectrum. While the four‐fold classification is
>     amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven‐fold
>     classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance.
>     It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of
>     phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted
>     to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the
>     peculiar property of the “Trans‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine.” In
>     fact, it has a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than
>     with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may
>     point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words,
>     there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has
>     became the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the
>     ancient Wisdom‐Religion. This classification is not the seven‐fold
>     classification we have adopted. I make this assertion without the
>     slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all
>     the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven
>     distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states
>     of Prajñâ or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the
>     objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit
>     through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to
>     seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These
>     principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which
>     define the limits of _human_ consciousness.(1542)
> 
> The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, on one point. The “seven‐
> fold classification” in the Esoteric System has never (to the writer’s
> knowledge) been claimed by any one belonging to it, as “the peculiar
> property of the ‘Trans‐Himâlayan 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‐Himâlayan 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(1543) 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,” whereby the submersion
> of their Continent was brought on. What is claimed is simply that the
> Wisdom imparted by the “Divine Ones”—born through the Kriyâshaktic 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 School or Fraternity being closely connected
> with a certain island of an inland sea—believed in by both Hindûs 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 “seven‐
> fold classification” as having “a closer connection with the Brâhmanical
> Logos than with the Buddhist Logos,” since both are identical, whether the
> one Logos is called Îshvara or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ or Padmapâni. These
> are, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact.
> Brâhmanism 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 “Achilles’
> heel” of orthodox Brâhmanism is the Advaita 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 the Yogâchârya School of Âryâsangha and the Mahâyâna, who
> are twitted in their turn by their co‐religionists as “Vedântins in
> disguise.” The Esoteric Philosophy of both these can be but one if
> carefully analyzed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Shankarâchârya 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_(1544) There the Brâhmana 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, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in
>     which desire and anger are the obstructors.
> 
> The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest—a symbol for
> man’s life‐time—and also that forest itself:(1545)
> 
>     In that forest are seven large trees [the senses, mind and
>     understanding, or Manas and Buddhi, included], seven fruits, and
>     seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration,
>     and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the
>     forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid
>     flowers and fruits of five colours.
> 
> The senses, says the commentator:
> 
>     Are called trees, as being producers of the fruits ... pleasures
>     and pains ...; the guests are the powers of each sense
>     personified—they receive the fruits above described; the
>     hermitages are the trees ... in which the guests take shelter; the
>     seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of
>     the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred
>     to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the
>     higher life, by repudiating as not one’s own the actions of each
>     member out of the group of seven.(1546)
> 
> The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory. Says the Brâhmana,
> 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 with seven] with two large trees producing
>     numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours [mind and
>     understanding—the two higher senses, or theosophically, Manas and
>     Buddhi]. There is one fire [the Self] here, connected with the
>     Brahman,(1547) and having a good mind [or _true knowledge_,
>     according to Arjuna Mishra]. And there is fuel here, (namely) the
>     five senses [or human passions]. The seven (forms of) emancipation
>     from them are the seven (forms of) initiation. The qualities are
>     the fruits.... There ... the great sages receive hospitality. And
>     when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another
>     forest shines forth, in which _intelligence_ is the tree, and
>     emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of)
>     tranquillity, which depends on knowledge, which has contentment
>     for its water, and which has the Kshetrajña(1548) within for the
>     sun.
> 
> Now, all the above is very plain, and no Theosophist, even among the least
> learned, can 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 they can be “absorbed into it.” One
> would think, on the contrary, that it is 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(1549) 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 Kshetrajña—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 seventh sense, but sixth principle) which is transformed into
> _the_ Tree—that Tree whose fruit is emancipation—which finally destroys
> the very roots of the Ashvattha 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 Mishra, are the Mahat,
> Ahamkâra and five Tanmâtras—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
>     [Kshetrajña, the Higher Self].... Those whose wishes are reduced
>     [the unselfish]; ... whose sins [passions] are burnt up by
>     penance, merging the self in the self,(1550) devote themselves to
>     Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of knowledge
>     [Brahman, or the Self], praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that
>     forest, they are [re‐] born so as not to lose courage. Such,
>     indeed, is this holy forest.... And understanding it, they [the
>     sages] act (accordingly), being directed by the Kshetrajña.
> 
> 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., 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 Avatâra. 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, has been 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, mediæval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well
> said; what the latter repeated, has generally been distorted. An instance:
> Read the Pythagorean Fragments, and study the septenary man as given by
> the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned Mason, in his _Pythagorean Triangle_, who
> 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.
> 
>     (3) The elemental man.
> 
>     (4) The mercurial ... paradisiacal man.
> 
>     (5) The martial soul‐like man.
> 
>     (6) The venerine, ascending to the outward desire.
> 
>     (7) The solar man, [a witness to and] an inspector of the wonders
>     of God [the Universe].
> 
>     They had also seven fountain spirits or powers of nature.(1551)
> 
> Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western Theosophic
> Philosophy with the latest Theosophic explanations by the Eastern School
> of Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily:
> 
>     Wisdom hath builded her house,
>     She hath hewn out her _seven pillars_.(1552)
> 
> As to the charge that our School has not adopted the sevenfold
> classification of the Brâhmans, but has confused it, this 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
> Prajñâ or Consciousness; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Prajñâ
> _is_, in 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, though _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 in truth 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_; used as it is by
> scientific and ignorant Materialists, in the general ignorance of the
> seven principles, it will soon become _Satanism_ in the full acceptation
> of the term.
> 
> PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
> 
>     The knowledge of this nether world—
>       Say, friend, what is it, false or true?
>     The false, what mortal cares to know?
>       The true, what mortal ever knew?
> 
> Section I. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
> 
> Whenever the question of the Origin of Man is offered seriously to an
> unbiassed, honest, and earnest man of Science, the answer comes
> invariably: “We do not know.” De Quatrefages with his agnostic attitude is
> one of such Anthropologists.
> 
> This does not imply that the rest of the men of Science are neither fair‐
> minded nor honest, as such a remark would be questionably discreet. But it
> is estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists.
> Are these representatives of Modern Thought all guilty of flagrant
> misrepresentation of the facts? No one says this—but there are a few very
> exceptional cases. However, the Scientists, in their anti‐clerical
> enthusiasm and in despair of any alternative theory to Darwinism except
> that of “special creation,” are unconsciously insincere in “forcing” a
> hypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the
> severe strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same
> subject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has
> come forward as a thorough‐going supporter of Darwinism in his _Religion
> and Science_. This clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter—after
> it has received its “primal impress”—as the unaided evolver of all cosmic
> phenomena. This view only differs from that of Hæckel, in postulating a
> hypothetical Deity at “the back of beyont,” a Deity which stands entirely
> aloof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical entity is no more
> the Theological God than is that of Kant. Bishop Temple’s truce with
> materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic—apart from the fact
> that it involves a total rejection of the biblical cosmogony. In the
> presence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our
> “learned” age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the
> Master such theological truants profess to serve—Christ, and Christendom
> at large?
> 
> However, we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to
> the clergy, our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The
> latter, in the person of its best representatives, answers to our
> question, “We do not know;” yet the majority of them act as though
> Omniscience were their heirloom, and they knew all things.
> 
> For, indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of
> Scientists from speculating on the question, each seeking to have his own
> special theory accepted to the exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet
> in 1748, down to Hæckel in 1870, theories on the origin of the human race
> have differed as much as the personalities of their inventors themselves.
> Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent, Lamarck, E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Gaudry,
> Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Hæckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz,
> etc., each has evolved a more or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De
> Quatrefages arranges these theories in two principal groups—one based on a
> rapid, and the other on a very gradual transmutation; the former favouring
> a new type (man) produced by a being entirely different, the latter
> teaching the evolution of man by progressive differentiations.
> 
> Strangely enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that
> has emanated the most unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of
> the Origin of Man. This is now so evident, that the hour is rapidly
> approaching when the current teaching about the descent of man from an
> ape‐like mammal will be regarded with less respect than the formation of
> Adam out of clay, and of Eve out of Adam’s rib. For
> 
>     It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of
>     Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of
>     another whose development is in an inverse order to its own.
>     Consequently, in accordance with these principles, man cannot be
>     considered as the descendant of any simian type whatever.(1553)
> 
> Lucae’s argument _versus_ the Ape‐theory, based on the different flexures
> of the bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of man and
> the anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt. He admits that:
> 
>     The ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man ... more human—
> 
> and seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on:
> 
>     This flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be
>     emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction to the apes;
>     the peculiar characteristic of an order can scarcely be elicited
>     from it; and especially as to the doctrine of descent, this
>     circumstance seems in no way decisive.(1554)
> 
> The writer is evidently not a little disquieted by his own argument. He
> assures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been
> the progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare
> possibility of the man and the anthropoid having had a common—though, so
> far, an absolutely theoretical—ancestor?
> 
> Even “Natural Selection” itself is with every day more threatened. The
> deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time
> its most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but
> steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the _Journal of the Royal
> Microscopical Society_ for October, 1886, we may read as follows:
> 
>     PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION.—Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain
>     difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the
>     origin of species, as it is rather a theory of the origin of
>     adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls
>     physiological selection, or segregation of the fit. His view is
>     based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to
>     small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that
>     variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must
>     frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that
>     the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility
>     with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of
>     the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by
>     intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a
>     variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must
>     divide the species into two parts. The author, in fine, regards
>     mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific
>     differentiation, but as the cause of it.(1555)
> 
> An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence
> to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public
> will soon be asked to believe that Mr. C. Dixon’s _Evolution without
> Natural Selection_ is also Darwinism—expanded, as the author certainly
> claims it to be!
> 
> But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces, and then
> maintaining that each piece is the identical man he was before,
> only—expanded. Yet the author states:
> 
>     Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the
>     foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin’s theory
>     of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain _certain_
>     phenomena ... the more one studies Darwin’s works, the more one is
>     convinced of the truth of his hypothesis [! !].(1556)
> 
> And before this, he alludes to:
> 
>     The overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of
>     his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of
>     Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections.(1557)
> 
> This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this
> theory as “triumphantly,” and from even openly calling his work
> _Evolution_ without _Natural Selection_, or, in so many words, with
> Darwin’s fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.
> 
> As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among
> many present‐day thinkers, who tacitly accept the conclusions of
> Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit
> Natural Selection with the power of _originating_ species. Natural
> Selection is no entity; it is merely a convenient phrase for describing
> the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit
> among organisms are brought about by the Struggle for Existence. Every
> group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence; the
> constant battle for life—the “struggle to obtain enough to eat and to
> escape being eaten” added to the environmental conditions—necessitates a
> perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The _élite_ of any stock, thus sorted
> out, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to
> their descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a
> progressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection—in the writer’s
> humble opinion, “Selection, _as a Power_”—is in reality a pure myth;
> especially when it is resorted to as an explanation of the Origin of
> Species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in
> which “useful variations” are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, “it”
> can _produce_—_nothing_, and only operates on the rough material presented
> to “it.” The real question at issue is: What _cause_—combined with other
> secondary causes—produces the “variations” in the organisms themselves?
> Many of these secondary causes are purely physical—climatic, dietary, etc.
> Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper
> principle has to be sought for. The Materialist’s “spontaneous
> variations,” and “_accidental_ divergencies” are self‐contradictory terms
> in a universe of “Matter, Force and _Necessity_.” Mere variability of
> type, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi‐intelligent impulse,
> is powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the
> human body, for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists’ mechanical
> theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely
> negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader’s intelligence to write,
> as does Hæckel, of _blind_ indifferent cells, “arranging themselves into
> organs.” The Esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given
> elsewhere.
> 
> Those purely _secondary_ causes of differentiation, grouped under the head
> of sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., mislead
> the Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the
> “whence” of the “ancestral types” which served as the _starting point_ for
> physical development. The truth is that the differentiating “causes” known
> to Modern Science only come into operation after the _physicalization of
> the primeval animal root‐types out of the astral_. Darwinism only meets
> Evolution at its midway point—that is to say, when astral evolution has
> given place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our
> present senses acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with
> the “expansions” recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of
> the case. The cause underlying physiological variation in species—one to
> which all other laws are subordinate and secondary—is a sub‐conscious
> intelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a _reflection_ of
> the Divine and Dhyân‐Chohanic wisdom.(1558) A not altogether dissimilar
> conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von
> Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of _unaided_ Natural Selection,
> regards Evolution as being intelligently guided by the Unconscious—the
> Cosmic Logos of Occultism. But the latter acts only mediately through
> Fohat, or Dhyân‐Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which
> the great pessimist describes.
> 
> It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their
> _self_‐contradictions, that gives the writer of the present volumes the
> courage to bring to light other and older teachings—if only as hypotheses
> for _future_ scientific appreciation. So evident, even to the humble
> recorder of this archaic teaching, though not in any way very learned in
> Modern Sciences, are the scientific fallacies and gaps, that she has
> determined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two teachings on
> parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self‐defence, and
> nothing more.
> 
> So far, _The Secret Doctrine_ has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure
> and simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain
> of physical Science and practical Anthropology, or those branches of study
> which materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly
> asserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of
> the Soul, the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations _of the
> Zoologist and the Physiologist alone_.(1559) This stupendous pretension
> comes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to
> include the Lemuridæ among the ancestors of man; these have been promoted
> by him to the rank of Prosimiæ, _indeciduate_ mammals, to which he very
> incorrectly contributes a _decidua_ and a discoidal placenta.(1560) For
> this Hæckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised
> by his own brother Materialists and Agnostics—Virchow and du Bois‐Reymond,
> as great, if not greater authorities than himself.(1561)
> 
> Such opposition notwithstanding, Hæckel’s wild theories are, to this day,
> still called by some scientific and logical. The mysterious nature of
> Consciousness, of Soul, of Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere
> advance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively
> Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and “social
> instincts” toward civilization having to be traced back to their origin in
> the civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures—the chances left for
> an impartial hearing of the doctrines of Archaic Wisdom are few indeed.
> The _educated_ profane are told that:
> 
>     The social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been
>     regarded for various reasons _as clearly the origin of morals_,
>     even of those of man [?], ...
> 
> —and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and aspirations
> have worked their “way up from the lower stages of the simple cell‐soul”
> of the gelatinous Bathybius—(1562) and they seem to believe it. For such
> men, the Metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our
> grandest oratorios produce on the Chinaman—sounds that jar upon their
> nerves.
> 
> Yet, are our Esoteric teachings about “Angels,” the first three pre‐animal
> human Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, _on a lower level of fiction
> and self‐delusion_ than the Hæckelian “plastidular,” or the inorganic
> “molecular souls of the Protista”? Between the evolution of the spiritual
> nature of man from the above amœbian souls, and the alleged development of
> his physical frame from the protoplastic dweller in the ocean slime, there
> is an abyss which will not easily be crossed by any man in the _full_
> possession of his intellectual faculties. Physical Evolution, as Modern
> Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral
> development on the same lines is the insane dream of a crass Materialism.
> 
> Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no
> truth has ever been accepted by learned bodies unless it has dovetailed
> with the habitually preconceived ideas of their professors. “The crown of
> the innovator is a crown of thorns”—said Geoffroy St. Hilaire. It is only
> that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a
> general rule gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Hæckelian ideas,
> notwithstanding that they are proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois‐Reymond, and
> others as the “_testimonium paupertatis_ of Natural Science.”
> 
> Diametrically opposed as may be the materialism of the German
> Evolutionists to the spiritual conceptions of Esoteric Philosophy,
> radically inconsistent as is their accepted anthropological system with
> the real facts of Nature—the pseudo‐idealistic bias now colouring English
> thought is almost more pernicious. The pure Materialistic Doctrine admits
> of a direct refutation and an appeal to the logic of facts. The Idealism
> of the present day, not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the
> basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of
> _unreality_, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such
> writers is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still
> more antagonistic than even the Materialists to the Occult teachings now
> given. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric
> Anthropogenesis at the hands of their foes than being openly called by
> their old and time‐honoured names of “lunatics” and “ignoramuses,” the
> present archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern
> speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial
> recognition. Only, as the very existence of these archaic theories will
> probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to
> the bitter end.
> 
> In our race and generation the one “temple in the universe” is in rare
> cases—_within_ us; but our body and mind have been too defiled by both
> “sin” and “science” to be outwardly anything better _now_ than a fane of
> iniquity and error. And here our mutual position—that of Occultism and
> Modern Science—ought to be once for all defined.
> 
> We, Theosophists, are willing to bow before such men of learning as the
> late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, de Quatrefages, Wallace,
> Agassiz, Butlerof, and others, though, from the stand‐point of the
> Esoteric Philosophy, we may not agree with all they say. But nothing will
> make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of such other
> men of Science as Hæckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany, or
> even Mr. Huxley and his co‐thinkers in Materialism in England—the colossal
> erudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the
> intellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Hæckel,
> whose crass Materialism often rises to the height of idiotic _naivetés_ in
> his reasonings. One has but to read his _Pedigree of Man, and Other
> Essays_ (Aveling’s Translation) to feel a desire that, in the words of
> Job, his remembrance should perish from the Earth, and that he “shall have
> no name in the streets.” Hear the creator of the mythical Sozura deriding
> the idea of the origin of the human race “as a supernatural [?]
> phenomenon,” as one—
> 
>     That could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical
>     and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a
>     creative personality.... Now the central point of Darwin’s
>     teaching ... lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest
>     mechanical causes, purely physico‐chemical phenomena of nature, as
>     wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult
>     problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force,
>     building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on
>     a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (as we
>     say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of
>     operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution.... [So had Manu
>     and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and
>     intelligent Powers]. Darwin very wisely ... had put on one side
>     the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon
>     that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide‐reaching, was openly
>     discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl
>     Vogt, Ludwig Büchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living
>     form was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin’s teaching ...
>     we are at present only concerned with a single consequence of the
>     theory, the natural origin of the human race through almighty
>     Evolution.(1563)
> 
> To this, unabashed by such a scientific farrago, Occultism replies: In the
> course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over the spiritual and
> mental evolution, and nearly crushed it under its weight, the great gift
> of Kriyâshakti remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age.
> Spirit strove vainly to _manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic
> forms_ (as has been explained in Part I of this Volume), and the faculty,
> which had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third
> Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by
> Spiritualists and Occultists, and as _scientifically impossible_ by
> Materialists.
> 
> In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can
> create human forms—ready‐made Sheaths within which can incarnate the
> _conscious_ Monads or Nirmânakâyas of past Manvantaras—is, of course,
> absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other
> hand, is the production of a Frankenstein’s monster, _plus_ moral
> consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of his own
> immortal nature within himself—by “physico‐chemical forces,” guided by
> blind “Almighty Evolution.” As to the origin of that man, not _ex nihilo_,
> cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity
> consolidating the Astral Body with surrounding materials—such a conception
> is too absurd even to be mentioned, in the opinion of the Materialists.
> Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims
> and theories compared as to their intrinsic value and probability with
> those of the modern Evolutionists—however unscientific and superstitious
> these theories may at the first glance appear. Hence the Esoteric teaching
> is _absolutely_ opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and
> _partially_ so with regard to other species.
> 
> It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation
> of Evolution in the scientific brain of a Materialist. What _is_
> Evolution? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term,
> neither Huxley nor Hæckel will be able to do so any better than does
> Webster:
> 
>     The act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the
>     evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.
> 
> Yet the bud must be traced through its parent‐plant to the seed, and the
> egg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of
> protoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the
> speck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and
> gradual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases
> of evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal
> is fully developed? Hence, the future plan—if not a design—_must be
> there_. Moreover, that seed _has to be traced_, and its nature
> ascertained. Have the Darwinians been successful in this? Or will the
> Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is _not_
> homogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that had
> moulded and cast it into being.
> 
> Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no self‐consciousness
> as yet in speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and
> Psychologists of the modern school—Occultists agreeing in this for once
> with their natural enemies—what is it that guides the force or forces so
> unerringly in this process of Evolution? “Blind force”? As well call
> “blind” the brain which evolved in Hæckel his _Pedigree of Man_ and other
> lucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an
> important centre or two; for whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the
> human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an Atheist and a
> Materialist, must be “hopelessly insane,” according to Lord Herbert, who
> rightly sees in the frame of man’s body and the coherence of its parts,
> something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it to be the “greatest
> miracle of nature.” _Blind_ forces and “_no_ design” in anything under the
> Sun! When no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the
> little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in
> Kosmos, he sees very plainly that every part, every speck and atom, are in
> harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its
> distinct mission throughout the life‐cycle. But, fortunately, the
> greatest, the most eminent Thinkers and Scientists of the day are now
> beginning to rise against this “Pedigree,” and even against Darwin’s
> Natural Selection theory, though its author had never, probably,
> contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The Russian scientist N.
> T. Danilevsky, in his remarkable work, _Darwinism, a Critical
> Investigation of the Theory_, upsets such Darwinism completely and without
> appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are
> recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges, a member of the
> Paris Anthropological Society, read by its author at a recent meeting of
> that society and called “Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit,
> etc.” In it he completely reconciles the two teachings—namely of physical
> and spiritual evolution. He explains the origin of the variety of organic
> forms—which are made to fit their environments with such evidently
> intelligent design—by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of
> two Principles in manifested Nature, the inner conscious Principle
> adapting itself to physical Nature and the innate potentialities of the
> latter. Thus the French scientist has to return to our old friend Archæus,
> or the Life‐Principle—without naming it—as Dr. Richardson has done in
> England in his Nerve‐Force. The same idea was recently developed in
> Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, _Individuality in the
> Light of Biology and Modern Philosophy_.
> 
> We find the same conclusions arrived at in yet another excellent volume by
> a deep thinking Russian, N. N. Strachof, who says in his _Fundamental
> Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology_:
> 
>     The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be
>     found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served
>     others as a model to follow.... If organisms are entities ... then
>     it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life
>     strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct
>     and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of
>     evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the
>     tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe
>     itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which
>     contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the
>     reverse.
> 
> This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Mémoire above mentioned, the
> identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle
> with the Self‐Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the Ego and the
> world at large the Soul. Thus all the best Scientists and Thinkers are
> gradually approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.
> 
> But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will
> hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of
> Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering
> fall down dead, after beholding the naked Truth in the face of the stern
> Goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural
> selection and affinity, also gazed at the Saïtic Mother bereft of her
> veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their
> great intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the
> uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in
> their brains to respond to “blind” physico‐chemical forces. At any rate
> Shakspere’s lines apply admirably to our modern Evolutionist, who
> symbolizes that “proud man,” who—
> 
>     Drest in a little brief authority;
>     Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
>     His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
>     Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
>     As make the angels weep!(1564)
> 
> These have nought to do with the “Angels.” Their only concern is with the
> human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons—the tailed
> Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the “arboreal” Palæolithic man. On
> this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is
> immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific enquiry. The
> insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the Evolution theory,
> namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition
> of the period _at_ which, and the form _in_ which, the first man appeared,
> is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is “really of no
> account.” Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are
> informed. The Chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply
> 
>     Upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has
>     ever been seen, isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician
>     speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly revealed
>     themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules
>     or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge
>     of the beginnings of law, matter, or life.(1565)
> 
> And, withal, to reject a _scientific hypothesis_, however absurd, is to
> commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
> 
> Section II. The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by Science.
> 
>     The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies
>     all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the
>     ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of
>     his relations to the universe of things.(1566)
> 
> The world stands divided this day and hesitates between _Divine
> Progenitors_—be they Adam and Eve or the Lunar Pitris—and _Bathybius
> Hæckelii_, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the
> Occult theory, it may now be compared with that of Modern Materialism. The
> reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on
> their respective merits.
> 
> We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our Divine Ancestors,
> in finding that the Hæckelian speculations receive no better treatment at
> the hands of strictly _exact_ Science than do our own. Hæckel’s
> Phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution,
> by other and greater Scientists, than our primeval Races will be. As du
> Bois‐Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that the
> 
>     Ancestral trees of our race sketched in the _Schöpfungsgeschichte_
>     are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric
>     heroes in the eyes of the historical critic.
> 
> This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another.
> And as we find Hæckel himself confessing that neither Geology in its
> history of the past nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever “rise
> to the position of a real ‘exact’ science,”(1567) a large margin is thus
> left to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The
> world is left to choose between the teachings of Paracelsus, the “father
> of modern chemistry,” and those of Hæckel, the “father of the mythical
> Sozura.” We demand no more.
> 
> Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned
> Naturalists as du Bois‐Reymond and Hæckel _à propos_ of our blood
> relationship to
> 
>     Those ancestors [of ours] which have led up from the unicellular
>     classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia to the Aves
> 
> —we may put a brief question or two, for the information of our readers.
> Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing in mind Darwin’s
> theories of Natural Selection, etc., we would ask Science—with regard to
> the origin of the human and animal species—which theory of Evolution of
> the two herewith described is the more scientific, or the more
> unscientific, if so preferred.
> 
> (1) Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual
> propagation?
> 
> (2) Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs; their
> solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple
> easy separation from one into two or even several individuals; then a
> fresh development—the first step to a species of separate distinct
> sexes—the hermaphrodite condition; then again, a kind of parthenogenesis,
> “virginal reproduction,” when the egg‐cells are formed within the body,
> issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it;
> until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings
> begin procreating through sexual connection?
> 
> Of these two, the first “theory”—or rather, a “revealed fact”—is
> enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles, except the _Purânas_, preëminently
> by the Jewish Cosmogony. The second is that which is taught by the Occult
> Philosophy, as has been explained.
> 
> An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr.
> Samuel Laing—the best lay exponent of Modern Science.(1568) In Chapter
> viii of his latest work, _A Modern Zoroastrian_, the author begins by
> twitting “all ancient religions and philosophies” for “assuming a male and
> female principle for their gods.” At first sight, he says:
> 
>     This distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant
>     and animal.... The Spirit of God brooding over Chaos and producing
>     the world is only a later edition, revised according to
>     monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which
>     describes the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos by the coöperation
>     of great gods, male and female.... Thus, in the orthodox Christian
>     creed we are taught to repeat “begotten, not made,” a phrase which
>     is absolute nonsense, or _non‐sense_—that is, an instance of using
>     words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea
>     behind them. For “begotten” is a very definite term, which implies
>     the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new
>     individual.(1569)
> 
> However we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of
> using wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in
> the old Scriptures—especially in the orthodox Christian
> _Bible_—nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the
> case. Firstly, all these “ancient philosophies” and “modern religions”
> are—as has been sufficiently shown in these two Volumes—an exoteric veil
> thrown over the face of Esoteric Truth; and—as the direct result of
> this—they are allegorical, _i.e._, mythological in form; but still they
> are immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific
> theories, so‐called. Secondly, from the Orphic Theogony down to Ezra’s
> last remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture, having in its
> origin borrowed its facts from the East, has been subjected to constant
> alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there has
> remained but the name, a dead shell from which the spirit had been
> gradually eliminated.
> 
> This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be
> understood without the help of the Archaic Wisdom, the primitive
> foundation on which they were all built.
> 
> But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct
> question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of
> thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in
> ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the
> following terms:
> 
>     Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual
>     generation being the original and only mode of reproduction, and
>     the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us
>     to new and altogether unsuspected [?] worlds of life.
> 
> So little “unsuspected,” indeed, that the original a‐sexual “modes of
> reproduction” must have been known to the ancient Hindûs, at any rate—Mr.
> Laing’s assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. In view of the
> statement in the _Vishnu Purâna_, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha
> “established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication,” only
> after a series of other “modes,” which are all enumerated therein,(1570)
> it becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found,
> note well, in an _exoteric_ work. Next, Mr. Laing goes on to tell us that:
> 
>     By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number at any
>     rate if not in size, have come into existence, without the aid of
>     sexual propagation.
> 
> He then instances Hæckel’s Moneron, “multiplying by self‐division.” The
> next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, “which does exactly the
> same thing.” The following stage is that in
> 
>     Which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a
>     small portion of it swells out ... and finally parts company and
>     starts on a separate existence, which grows to the size of the
>     parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm
>     from surrounding inorganic materials.(1571)
> 
> This is followed by a many‐celled organism which is formed by
> 
>     Germ‐buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted
>     from the parent.... We are now at the threshold of that system of
>     sexual propagation, which has [now] become the rule in all the
>     higher families of animals.... This organism, having advantages in
>     the struggle for life, established itself permanently ... and
>     special organs developed to meet the altered conditions. Thus at
>     length the distinction would be firmly established of a female
>     organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the
>     new being was to be developed, and a male organ supplying the
>     fertilizing spore or cell.... This is confirmed by a study of
>     embryology, which shows that in the _human_ and higher animal
>     species the distinction of sex is not developed until a
>     considerable progress has been made in the growth of the
>     embryo.... In the great majority of plants, and in some of the
>     lower families of animals ... the male and female organs are
>     developed within the same being, and they are what is called
>     hermaphrodites. Another transition form is Parthenogenesis, or
>     virginal reproduction, in which germ‐cells, apparently similar in
>     all respects to egg‐cells, develop themselves into new
>     individuals, without any fructifying element.(1572)
> 
> Of all this we are as perfectly well aware as we are aware that the above
> was never applied by the very learned English popularizer of Huxley‐
> Hæckelian theories to the _genus homo_. He limits this to specks of
> protoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true to
> the theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the
> fundamental biogenetic law, we are told, runs as follows:
> 
>     The development of the embryo (ontogeny) is a condensed and
>     abbreviated repetition of the evolution of the race (phylogeny).
>     This repetition is the more complete, the more the true original
>     order of evolution (palingenesis) has been retained by continual
>     heredity. On the other hand, this repetition is the less complete,
>     the more by varying adaptations the later spurious development
>     (cænogenesis) has obtained.(1573)
> 
> This shows us that every living creature and thing on Earth, including
> man, evolved from _one common primal form_. Physical man must have passed
> through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes
> of procreation as other animals have done; he must have _divided_ himself;
> then, hermaphrodite, have given birth _parthenogenetically_ (on the
> immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the
> _oviparous_—at first “without any fructifying element,” then “with the
> help of the fertilitary spore”; and only after the final and definite
> evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct “male and female,”
> when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So
> far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be
> ascertained; viz., the plain and comprehensively described processes of
> such ante‐sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight
> outline of which has been attempted by the writer in Part I of this
> Volume.
> 
> Either this, or—man is a distinct being. Occult Philosophy may call him
> that, because of his distinctly _dual_ nature. Science cannot do so, once
> that it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of no
> principle outside Matter. The former—Archaic Science—allows the human
> physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the
> very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex—to use
> the accepted terms. But it claims that in this Cycle, the Fourth, the
> frame having already existed among the types and models of Nature from the
> preceding Rounds—it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this
> Round.(1574) The Monad had but to step into the Astral Body of the
> Progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin
> around the shadowy prototype.(1575)
> 
> What would Science say to this? It would answer, of course, that as man
> appeared on Earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, any
> more than these mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of
> procreation as above described. His mode of procreation was already
> established on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply: Since
> to this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal has
> yet been found, then (if the Occult Doctrine is to be repudiated) he must
> have sprung _miraculously_ in Nature, like a fully armed Minerva from
> Jupiter’s brain; and in such case the _Bible_ is right, along with other
> national “revelations.” Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by
> the author of _A Modern Zoroastrian_ upon ancient philosophies and
> exoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden
> discovery of a “missing‐link”‐like fossil mend matters at all. For neither
> one such solitary specimen nor the scientific inductions therefrom, could
> insure its being the long‐sought‐for relic, _i.e._, that of an
> undeveloped, still a once‐speaking, Man. Something more would be required
> as a final proof. Besides this, even _Genesis_ takes up man, her Adam of
> dust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her “Sons of God and Wisdom”
> and picks up the physical man of the Third Race. Eve is _not_ “begotten,”
> but is extracted out of Adam in the manner of “Amœba A,” contracting in
> the middle and splitting into Amœba B—by division.(1576)
> 
> Nor has human speech developed from the various animal sounds. Hæckel’s
> theory that “speech arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal
> sounds,” as such “speech still remains amongst a few races of lowest
> rank,”(1577) is altogether unsound, as argued by Professor Max Müller,
> among others. He contends that no plausible explanation has yet been given
> as to how the “roots” of language came into existence. A _human_ brain is
> necessary for _human_ speech. And figures relating to the size of the
> respective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf which separates
> the two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla,
> measures no more than 30·51 cubic inches; while the average brains of the
> flat‐headed Australian natives—the lowest now of the human races—amount to
> 99·35 cubic inches! Figures are awkward witnesses and cannot lie.
> Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises are as sound
> and correct as his biblical conclusions are silly:
> 
>     The brain of the apes most like man does not amount to quite a
>     third of the brain of the lowest races of men: it is not half the
>     size of the brain of a new‐born child.(1578)
> 
> From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove
> the Huxley‐Hæckelian theories of the descent of man, it is not one, but a
> great number of “missing links”—a true ladder of progressive evolutionary
> steps—that would have to be first found and then presented by Science to
> thinking and reasoning humanity, before it would abandon belief in Gods
> and the immortal Soul for the worship of quadrumanic ancestors. Mere myths
> are now greeted as “axiomatic truths.” Even Alfred Russel Wallace
> maintains with Hæckel that primitive man was a speechless ape‐creature. To
> this Prof. Joly answers:
> 
>     Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose
>     portrait Hæckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose
>     singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given,
>     from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with
>     speech and a civilization analogous to that of the Australians and
>     Papuans.(1579)
> 
> Hæckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the
> “science of languages.” In the course of his attack on Evolutionism(1580)
> Prof. Max Müller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as “vulnerable at the
> beginning and at the end.” The fact is, that only the partial truth of
> many of the secondary “laws” of Darwinism is beyond question—M. de
> Quatrefages evidently accepting natural selection, the struggle for
> existence, and transformation within species, as proven not once and for
> ever, but only _pro tempore_. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to
> condense the linguistic case against the “ape ancestor” theory:
> 
> Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in Nature. It
> is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three
> stages.
> 
> (1) All words are roots and are merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical
> languages).
> 
> (2) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element
> (Agglutinative).
> 
> (3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has long
> lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
> 
> The problem then is: Whence these roots? Prof. Max Müller argues that the
> existence of these _ready‐made materials of speech_ is a proof that man
> cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This _potentiality of
> forming roots_ is the great crux which Materialists almost invariably
> avoid.
> 
> Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the “Unconscious,” and
> admits its cogency _versus_ mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair
> representative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age.
> 
> The argument has never been met by the non‐pantheistic Evolutionists. To
> say with Schmidt: “Forsooth we are to halt before the origin of
> language!”—is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat.(1581)
> 
> We respect those men of Science who, wise in their generation, say: The
> Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we
> are too honest, too devoted to the truth—or what we regard as truth—to
> speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with
> facts absolutely established in Modern Science.
> 
>     The borderland of [metaphysical] knowledge is, therefore, best
>     left to time, which is the best test as to truth.(1582)
> 
> This is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a Materialist. But
> when a Hæckel, after just saying that “historical events of past time,”
> having “occurred many millions of years ago,(1583) ... are for ever
> removed from direct observation,” and that neither Geology nor
> Phylogeny(1584) can or will “rise to the position of a real ‘exact’
> science,” then insists on the development of all organisms—“from the
> lowest vertebrate to the highest, from amphioxus to man”—we ask for a
> weightier proof than he can give. Mere “empirical sources of knowledge,”
> so extolled by the author of _Anthropogeny_—when he has to be satisfied
> with the qualification for his own views—are not competent to settle
> problems lying beyond their domain; nor is it the province of exact
> Science to place any reliance on them.(1585) If “empirical”—and Hæckel
> himself declares so repeatedly—then they are no better, nor any more
> reliable, in the sight of _exact_ research, when extended into the remote
> past, than are our Occult teachings of the East, both having to be placed
> on the same level. Nor are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations
> treated any more favourably by the real Scientists, than are our cyclic
> repetitions of the evolution of the great in the minor races, and the
> original order of Evolution. For the province of exact, real Science,
> materialistic though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guess‐
> work, speculation which _cannot_ be verified; in short, all _suppressio
> veri_ and all _suggestio falsi_. The business of the men of exact Science
> is to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of Nature; to
> record, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest
> minutiæ which are presented to the observation of the senses _with the
> help of all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies_, not
> by the aid of metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate
> right to do, is to correct by the assistance of physical instruments the
> defects or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other
> senses. He has no right to trespass on the grounds of Metaphysics and
> Psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts that _fall
> under his direct observation_; to profit by the experiences and mistakes
> of the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a certain
> concatenation of cause and effect, which—but only by its constant and
> unvarying repetition—may be called a Law. This it is which a man of
> Science is expected to do, if he would become a teacher of men and remain
> true to his original programme of natural or physical Sciences. Any side
> path from this royal road becomes speculation.
> 
> Instead of keeping to this, what does many a so‐called man of Science do
> in these days? He rushes into the domain of pure Metaphysics, while
> deriding them. He delights in rash conclusions and calls them “a deductive
> law from the inductive law” of a theory based upon and drawn out of the
> depths of his own consciousness—that consciousness being perverted by, and
> honeycombed with, one‐sided Materialism. He attempts to explain the
> “origin” of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions.
> He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and
> denounces everything, save his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests
> theories of the Universe, a cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical
> forces of Nature alone, far more _miraculous and impossible_ than even one
> based upon the assumption of _fiat lux ex nihilo_—and tries to astonish
> the world by his wild theory; and this theory, being known to emanate from
> a scientific brain, is taken, on _blind faith_, as very scientific and as
> the outcome of Science.
> 
> Are these the opponents Occultism should dread? Most decidedly not. For
> such theories are treated no better by _real_ Science than are our own by
> empirical Science. Hæckel, hurt in his vanity by du Bois‐Reymond, is never
> tired of publicly complaining of the latter’s onslaught on his fantastic
> theory of descent. Rhapsodizing on “the exceedingly rich storehouse of
> empirical evidence,” he calls those “recognized Physiologists” who oppose
> every speculation of his drawn from the said “storehouse”—ignorant men,
> and declares:
> 
>     If many men, and among them even some Scientists of repute—hold
>     that the whole of phylogeny is a castle in the air, and
>     genealogical trees [from monkeys?] are empty plays of phantasy,
>     they only in speaking thus demonstrate their ignorance of that
>     wealth of _empirical sources of knowledge_ to which reference has
>     already been made.(1586)
> 
> We open Webster’s Dictionary and read the definitions of the word
> “empirical”:
> 
>     Depending upon experience or observation alone, _without due
>     regard to modern science and theory_.
> 
> This applies to the Occultists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc. Again:
> 
>     An empiric; one who confines himself to applying the results of
>     his own observations only [which is Hæckel’s case]; one _wanting
>     science_ ... an ignorant and unlicensed practitioner; a quack; a
>     charlatan.
> 
> No Occultist or “Magician,” has ever been treated to any worse epithets.
> Yet the Occultist remains on his own metaphysical grounds, and does not
> endeavour to rank _his knowledge_, the fruits of _his_ personal
> observation and experience, among the _exact_ Sciences of modern learning.
> He keeps within his legitimate sphere, where he is master. But what is one
> to think of a rank Materialist, whose duty is clearly traced before him,
> who uses such an expression as this:
> 
>     The origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the
>     catarrhine ape, is a deductive law, that follows necessarily from
>     the inductive law of the Theory of Descent.(1587)
> 
> A “theory” is simply a hypothesis, a speculation, and _not_ a law. To say
> otherwise is one of the many liberties taken now‐a‐days by Scientists.
> They enunciate an absurdity, and then hide it behind the shield of
> Science. A deduction from theoretical speculation is nothing more than a
> _speculation on a speculation_. Sir William Hamilton has already shown
> that the word theory is now used
> 
>     In a very loose and improper sense ... that it is convertible into
>     _hypothesis_, and _hypothesis_ is commonly used as another term
>     for _conjecture_, whereas the terms “theory” and “theoretical” are
>     properly used in opposition to the terms practice and practical.
> 
> But Modern Science puts an extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks
> at the idea. Materialistic Philosophers and Idealists of Europe and
> America may be agreed with the Evolutionists as to the physical origin of
> man, yet it will never become a general truth with the true Metaphysician;
> and the latter defies the Materialists to make good their arbitrary
> assumptions. That the ape‐theory theme(1588) of Vogt and Darwin, on which
> the Huxley‐Hæckelians have of late composed such extraordinary variations,
> is far less scientific—because clashing with the fundamental laws of that
> theme itself—than ours can ever be shown to be, is very easy of
> demonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent work on _Human
> Species_ by the great French Naturalist de Quatrefages, and our statement
> will at once be verified.
> 
> Moreover, between the Esoteric teaching concerning the Origin of Man and
> Darwin’s speculations, no man, unless he is a rank Materialist, will
> hesitate. This is the description given by Mr. Darwin of “the early
> progenitors of man.”
> 
>     They must have been once covered with hair, both sexes having
>     beards; their ears were probably pointed and capable of movement;
>     and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper
>     muscles. Their limbs and bodies were also acted on by many muscles
>     which now only occasionally reäppear, but are normally present in
>     the Quadrumana.... The foot was then prehensile, judging from the
>     condition of the great toe in the fœtus; and our progenitors, no
>     doubt, were arboreal in their habits, and frequented some warm
>     forest‐clad land. The males had great canine teeth, which served
>     them as formidable weapons.(1589)
> 
> Darwin connects man with the type of the tailed catarrhines:
> 
>     And consequently removes him a stage backward in the scale of
>     evolution. The English naturalist is not satisfied to take his
>     stand upon the ground of his own doctrines, and, like Hæckel, on
>     this point places himself in direct variance with one of the
>     fundamental laws which constitute the principal charm of
>     Darwinism.
> 
> And then the learned French Naturalist proceeds to show how this
> fundamental law is broken. He says:
> 
>     In fact, in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take
>     place, either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by
>     certain laws which are due to the organization itself. If an
>     organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo
>     secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the
>     impress of the original. It is the law of _permanent
>     characterization_, which _alone_ permits Darwin to explain the
>     filiation of groups, their characteristics, and their numerous
>     relations. It is by virtue of this law that _all_ the descendants
>     of the first mollusc have been molluscs; _all_ the descendants of
>     the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that this
>     constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine. It follows
>     that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to
>     _a common ancestor_, but the one cannot be the descendant of the
>     other.
> 
>     Now man and apes present a very striking contrast in _respect to
>     type_. Their organs ... correspond almost exactly term for term:
>     but these organs are arranged after a very different plan. In man
>     they are so arranged that he is essentially a _walker_, while in
>     apes they necessitate his being a _climber_.... There is here an
>     anatomical and mechanical distinction.... A glance at the page
>     where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the
>     skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently
>     convincing proof.
> 
>     The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the
>     logical application of the law of _permanent characterizations_,
>     is that man cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already
>     characterized as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape
>     can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A _walking animal_
>     cannot be descended from a _climbing_ one. This was clearly
>     understood by Vogt.
> 
>     In placing man among the primates, he declares without hesitation
>     that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common
>     ancestor), from which the different types of this family have
>     originated and diverged. [This ancestor of the apes, Occult
>     Science sees in the lowest human group during the Atlantean
>     period, as shown before.] We must, then, place the origin of man
>     beyond the last ape [corroborating our doctrine], if we wish to
>     adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the
>     Darwinian theory. We then come to the prosimiæ of Hæckel, the
>     loris, indris, etc. But these animals also are climbers; we must
>     go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But
>     the genealogy by Hæckel brings us from the latter to the
>     _marsupials_. From men to the kangaroo the distance is certainly
>     great. Now neither living nor extinct fauna show the intermediate
>     types which ought to serve as landmarks. This difficulty causes
>     but slight embarrassment to Darwin.(1590) We know that he
>     considers the want of information upon similar questions as a
>     proof in his favour. Hæckel doubtless is as little embarrassed. He
>     admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical _pithecoid man_.
> 
>     Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism
>     itself, the origin of man must be placed beyond the eighteenth
>     stage, and since it becomes, in consequence, _necessary_ to fill
>     up the gap between marsupials and man, will Hæckel admit the
>     existence of _four unknown intermediate groups_ instead of one?
>     Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to
>     answer.(1591)
> 
> But see Hæckel’s famous genealogy, in _The Pedigree of Man_, called by him
> the “Ancestral Series of Man.” In the “Second Division” (eighteenth stage)
> he describes—
> 
>     Prosimiæ, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and Makis (Lemur), without
>     marsupial bones and cloaca, _with placenta_.(1592)
> 
> And now turn to de Quatrefages’ _The Human Species_,(1593) and see his
> proofs, based on the latest discoveries, to show that the Prosimiæ of
> Hæckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They cannot be the
> ancestors of the apes even, let alone man, according to a fundamental law
> of Darwin himself, as the great French Naturalist shows. But this does not
> dismay the “animal theorists” in the least, for self‐contradiction and
> paradoxes are the very soul of modern Darwinism. Witness—Mr. Huxley;
> having himself shown, with regard to fossil man and the “missing link,”
> that:
> 
>     Neither in Quaternary ages nor at the present time does any
>     intermediary being fill the gap which separates man from the
>     Troglodyte;
> 
> and that to “deny the existence of this gap _would be as reprehensible as
> absurd_,” the great man of Science denies his own words _in actu_ by
> supporting with all the weight of his scientific authority that _most_
> “absurd” of all theories—the _descent of man from an ape_!
> 
> Says de Quatrefages:
> 
>     This genealogy is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material
>     error.
> 
> Indeed, Hæckel bases his descent of man on the seventeenth and eighteenth
> stages, the Marsupialia and Prosimiæ—(genus Hæckelii?). Applying the
> latter term to the Lemuridæ—hence making of them animals with a
> placenta—he commits a zoological blunder. For after having himself divided
> mammals according to their anatomical differences into two groups—the
> _indeciduata_, which have no decidua (or special membrane uniting the
> placentæ), and the _deciduata_, those who possess it—he includes the
> Prosimiæ in the latter group. Now we have shown elsewhere what other men
> of Science had to say to this. As de Quatrefages says:
> 
>     The anatomical investigations of ... Milne Edwards and Grandidier
>     upon the animals ... place it beyond all doubt that the Prosimiæ
>     of Hæckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They are
>     _indeciduata_. Far from any possibility of their being the
>     ancestors of the apes, according to the principles laid down by
>     Hæckel himself, they cannot even be regarded as the ancestors of
>     the zonoplacental mammals ... and ought to be connected with the
>     Pachydermata, the Edentata, and the Cetacea.(1594)
> 
> And yet Hæckel’s inventions pass with some as _exact Science_!
> 
> The above mistake, if indeed it be one, is not even hinted at in Hæckel’s
> _Pedigree of Man_, translated by Aveling. If the excuse may stand good
> that at the time the famous “genealogies” were made, “the embryogenesis of
> the Prosimiæ was not known,” it is familiar now. We shall see whether the
> next edition of Aveling’s translation will have this important error
> rectified, or if the seventeenth and eighteenth stages will remain as they
> are to blind the profane, as one of the _real_ intermediate links. But, as
> the French Naturalist observes:
> 
>     Their [Darwin’s and Hæckel’s] process is always the same,
>     considering the unknown as a _proof_ in favour of their theory.
> 
> It comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the
> whole animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually
> evolving from latent and passive into active and positive polarity—and
> Hæckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say.
> 
> But there are important divergencies even between Darwin and Hæckel. While
> the former makes us proceed from the _tailed_ catarrhine, Hæckel traces
> our hypothetical ancestor to the _tailless_ ape, though, at the same time,
> he places him in a hypothetical “stage” immediately preceding
> this—Menocerca with tails (nineteenth stage).
> 
> Nevertheless, we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school, that
> is the law of gradual and extremely slow Evolution, embracing many million
> years. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the
> primitive “ancestor.” We shall be told that the Dhyân Chohan, or the
> “progenitor” of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on _the physical
> plane_. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of Antiquity, and is
> by nine‐tenths of the present humanity; whereas not only is the pithecoid
> man, or ape‐man, a purely hypothetical creature of Hæckel’s creation,
> unknown and untraceable on this Earth, but further its genealogy—as
> invented by him—clashes with scientific facts and all the known data of
> modern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd, even as a fiction. As de
> Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Hæckel “admits the existence of
> an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man”—a hundred times more difficult to
> accept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not the only instance in which he
> proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table.
> In fact he very naïvely admits his inventions himself. Does he not confess
> the non‐existence of his Sozura (fourteenth stage)—a creature entirely
> unknown to Science—by confessing over his own signature, that:
> 
>     The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an
>     intermediate type between the thirteenth and the fourteenth
>     stages[!].
> 
> If so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of
> the existence of our three ethereal Races, and of the three‐eyed men of
> the Third and Fourth Root‐Races, “arises also from the necessity of an
> intermediate type” between the animal and the Gods. What reason would the
> Hæckelians have to protest in this special case?
> 
> Of course there is a ready answer: Because we do not grant the presence of
> the Monadic Essence. The manifestation of the Logos as individual
> consciousness in the animal and human creation is not accepted by exact
> Science, nor does it cover the whole ground, of course. But the failures
> of Science and its arbitrary assumptions are far greater on the whole than
> any “extravagant” Esoteric doctrine can ever furnish.(1595) Even thinkers
> of the school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general
> epidemic. They accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though
> they also postulate the individual Ego as a manifestation of the
> Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine
> Thought). They say the evolution of the physical man is from the animal,
> but that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart from
> material facts, though organism, as a Upâdhi, is necessary for its
> manifestation.
> 
> Plastidular Souls, And Conscious Nerve‐Cells.
> 
> But one can never see the end of such wonders with Hæckel and his school,
> whom the Occultists and Theosophists have every right to consider as
> materialistic tramps trespassing on private metaphysical grounds. Not
> satisfied with the paternity of Bathybius (Hæckelii), “plastidular souls”
> and “atom‐souls”(1596) are now invented, on the basis of purely blind
> mechanical forces of matter. We are informed that:
> 
>     The study of the evolution of soul‐life shows us that this has
>     worked its way up from the lower stages of the simple cell‐soul,
>     through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up
>     to the soul of man.(1597)
> 
> “Astonishing,” truly—based as this wild speculation is on the
> _consciousness_ of the “nerve cells.” For as he tells us:
> 
>     Little as we are in a position, at the present time, to explain
>     fully the nature of consciousness,(1598) yet the comparative and
>     genetic observation of it clearly shows, that it is only a higher
>     and more complex function of the nerve cells.(1599)
> 
> Mr. Herbert Spencer’s song on consciousness—is sung, it seems, and may
> henceforth be safely stored up in the lumber room of obsolete
> speculations. Where, however, do Hæckel’s “complex functions” of _his_
> scientific “nerve‐cells” land him? Once more right into the Occult and
> mystic teachings of the _Kabalah_ about the descent of Souls as conscious
> and unconscious Atoms; among the Pythagorean Monad and the Monads of
> Leibnitz, and the “Gods, Monads, and Atoms” of our Esoteric
> teaching;(1600) into the _dead letter_ of Occult teachings, left to the
> _amateur_ Kabalists and professors of ceremonial Magic. For this is what
> he says, in explaining his newly‐coined terminology:
> 
>     Plastidule‐Souls. The plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the
>     smallest, homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastid
>     theory, to be regarded as the active factors of all life‐
>     functions. The plastidular soul differs from the inorganic
>     molecular soul in that it possesses memory.(1601)
> 
> This he develops in his mirific lecture on the “Perigenesis of Plastidule,
> or the Wave‐motions of Living Particles.” It is an improvement on Darwin’s
> theory of “Pangenesis,” and a further approach, a cautious move, towards
> “Magic.” The former is a conjecture that:
> 
>     Some of the actual identical atoms which formed part of ancestral
>     bodies are thus transmitted through their descendants for
>     generation after generation, so that we are literally “flesh of
>     the flesh” of the primeval creature who has developed into man
> 
> —explains the author of _A Modern Zoroastrian_.(1602) The latter,
> Occultism, teaches that—(_a_) the life‐atoms of our (Prâna) Life‐
> Principle, are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best
> impregnated with the Life‐Principle, an independent, eternal, conscious
> factor, are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and are
> partially drawn once more together and become the animating principle of
> the new body in every new incarnation of the Monads. Because (_b_), as the
> Individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles
> (the body, its astral, or life‐double, etc.), drawn as they are by
> affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of
> various bodies.(1603)
> 
> To be just and, to say the least, logical, our modern Hæckelians ought to
> pass a resolution that henceforth the “Perigenesis of the Plastidule,” and
> other similar lectures, should be bound up with those on “Esoteric
> Buddhism” and “The Seven Principles in Man.” Thus the public will have a
> chance, at any rate, of comparing the two teachings and then of judging
> which is the more or the less absurd, even from the standpoint of
> materialistic and exact Science.
> 
> Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the Universe, whether an
> aggregate or single, to One Unity, the Universal Life; who do not
> recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic; who know of no such
> thing as dead Matter—the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of
> Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and
> sensation. But what can a Materialist mean by the qualification? The law
> of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Hæckelians, is the result
> of the ignorance on the part of the man of Science of _Occult_ Physics. We
> know and speak of “life‐atoms,” and of “sleeping‐atoms,” because we regard
> these two forms of energy—the kinetic and the potential—as produced by one
> and the same force, or the One Life, and regard the latter as the source
> and mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and
> especially with memory, the “plastidular souls” of Hæckel? The “wave
> motion of living particles” becomes comprehensible on the theory of a
> Spiritual One Life, of a universal Vital Principle independent of _our_
> Matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on _our_ plane of
> consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is
> transmitted from father to son.
> 
> Now Hæckel, modifying Darwin’s theory, suggests “more plausibly,” as the
> author of _A Modern Zoroastrian_ thinks:
> 
>     That not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode
>     of aggregation have been thus transmitted [by heredity].(1604)
> 
> If Hæckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does know of
> the nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this
> way. For he only states, in more metaphysical language than Darwin, one
> and the same thing. The Life‐Principle, or Life Energy, which is
> omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a Force and a Principle as
> _noumenon_, while it is Atoms, as _phenomenon_. It is one and the same
> thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in Materialism.(1605)
> 
> Further, Hæckel enunciates concerning the Atom‐Souls that which, at first
> sight, appears as occult as the Monad of Leibnitz:
> 
>     The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard
>     as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and
>     chemical processes, seems to be capable of easiest settlement by
>     the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres
>     of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the
>     power of movement.(1606)
> 
> He does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz’ theory,
> and one that is preëminently Occult. Nor does he understand the term
> “soul” as we do; for, with Hæckel it is simply, along with consciousness,
> the product of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which, as the cell‐
> soul
> 
>     Is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic body as is the
>     human soul with the brain and spinal cord.(1607)
> 
> He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois‐Reymond
> and Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of
> Science, as of the greatest thinkers of this and past ages, in saying
> that:
> 
>     The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
>     facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Were our minds and senses
>     so ... illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very
>     molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their
>     motions, all their groupings ... electric discharges ... we should
>     be as far as ever from the solution of the problem.... The chasm
>     between the two classes of phenomena would still remain
>     intellectually impassable.
> 
> But the complex function of the nerve‐cells of the great German Empiric,
> or, in other words, his consciousness, will not permit him to follow the
> conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe. _He is greater than
> they._ He asserts this, and _protests_ against all:
> 
>     No one has the right to hold that in the future we shall not be
>     able to pass beyond these limits of our knowledge that to‐day seem
>     impassable.(1608)
> 
> And he quotes from Darwin’s introduction to _The Descent of Man_ the
> following words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and
> himself:
> 
>     It is always those who know little, and not those who know much,
>     that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be
>     solved by Science.
> 
> The world may rest satisfied. The day is not far off when the “thrice
> great” Hæckel will have shown, to his own satisfaction, that the
> consciousness of Sir Isaac Newton was, physiologically speaking, but the
> reflex action (or _minus_ consciousness) caused by the perigenesis of the
> plastidules of our common ancestor and old friend, the Moneron Hæckelii.
> Though, the said Bathybius has been found out and exposed as a pretender
> simulating the organic substance _it is not_, and though among the
> children of men, Lot’s wife alone—and even this, only after her
> disagreeable metamorphosis—could claim as her forefather the pinch of salt
> _it is_; all this will not dismay him in the least. He will go on
> asserting, as coolly as he has always done, that it was only the peculiar
> mode and motion of the ghost of the long‐vanished atoms of our Father
> Bathybius, which—transmitted across æons of time into the cell‐tissue of
> the grey matter of the brains of every great man—caused Sophocles and
> Æschylus, and Shakspere as well, to write their tragedies, Newton, his
> _Principia_, Humboldt, his _Cosmos_, etc. It also prompted Hæckel to
> invent Græco‐Latin names three inches long, pretending to mean a good
> deal, and meaning—nothing.
> 
> Of course we are quite aware that the true, honest Evolutionist agrees
> with us; and that he is the first to say that not only is the geological
> record imperfect, but that there are enormous gaps in the series of
> hitherto discovered fossils, which can never be filled. He will tell us,
> moreover, that “no Evolutionist assumes that man is descended from any
> existing ape or any extinct ape either,” but that man and apes originated
> _probably_ æons back, in some common root stock. Still, as de Quatrefages
> points out, he will urge as an evidence corroborating his claim this
> wealth of absent proofs as well, saying that:
> 
>     All living forms have not been preserved in the fossil series, the
>     chances of preservation being few and far between ... [even
>     primitive man] burying or burning his dead.
> 
> This is just what we ourselves claim. It is just as _possible_ that the
> future may have in store for us the discovery of the giant skeleton of an
> Atlantean, thirty feet high, as of the fossil of a pithecoid “missing
> link”; only the former is more _probable_.
> 
> Section III. The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
> 
> A. Geological Facts Bearing On The Question Of Their Relationship.
> 
> The data derived from scientific research as to “primeval man” and the ape
> lend no countenance to theories deriving the former from the latter.
> “Where, then, must we look for primeval man?”—still queries Mr. Huxley,
> after having vainly searched for him in the very depths of the Quaternary
> strata.
> 
>     Was the oldest Homo sapiens Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more
>     ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape
>     more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid than any yet known, await
>     the researches of some unborn palæontologist? Time will
>     show.(1609)
> 
> It will—undeniably—and thus vindicate the Anthropology of the Occultists.
> Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin’s _Descent of Man_,
> Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes that he has all but found the “missing link”—in
> theory. It was due to Theologians more than to Geologists that, till
> nearly 1860, man had been considered as a relic no older than the Adamic
> orthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it, though, it was left to a
> French Abbé—Bourgeois—to give this easy‐going theory even a worse blow
> than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes.
> Everyone knows that the Abbé discovered and brought to light good evidence
> that man was already in existence during the Miocene period, for flints of
> undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words
> of the author of _Modern Science and Modern Thought_:
> 
>     They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins
>     supposes, by the dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which
>     had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla or
>     chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case the
>     problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for such
>     an ape might well have been the ancestor of Palæolithic man.(1610)
> 
> Or—_the descendant of Eocene man_, which is a variant offered to the
> theory. Meanwhile, the dryopithecus with such fine mental endowments is
> yet to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic and even Palæolithic
> man having become an absolute certainty, and as the same author justly
> observes:
> 
>     If 100,000,000 years have elapsed since the earth became
>     sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the
>     Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000; or for 10,000,000
>     years, if the life‐sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell
>     supposes for at least 200,000,000 years—(1611)
> 
> why should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as a hypothesis,
> to the close of Mesozoic times—admitting _argumenti causâ_ that the (much
> more recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time for man
> and the modern apes to have diverged from the mythical “ape more
> anthropoid,” and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that
> are found _mimicking_ man in using “branches of trees as clubs, and
> cracking cocoa‐nuts with hammer and stones.”(1612) Some savage tribes of
> hillmen in India build their abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build
> their dens. The question, which of the two, the beast or the man, has
> become the imitator of the other, is scarcely an open one, even granting
> Mr. Boyd Dawkins’ theory. The fanciful character of this hypothesis, is,
> however, generally admitted. It is argued that while in the Pliocene and
> Miocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and man was undeniably
> contemporaneous with the former of these times—though, as we see, orthodox
> Anthropology still hesitates, in the teeth of facts, to place him in the
> era of the dryopithecus, which latter—
> 
>     Has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects
>     superior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla ... (1613)
> 
> yet, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil _primates_ unearthed
> and no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms. And we
> find it also hinted that the dryopithecus _may have been_ the “missing
> link,” though the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than
> does the brain of the modern gorilla. (See also Gaudry’s speculations.)
> 
> Now we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that _there
> was no man_ in existence in the early Tertiary period? What is it that
> prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther
> back than six or seven thousand years was indignantly denied. Now he is
> refused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may become a
> question whether man was not contemporary with the “flying dragon,” the
> pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc. Let us listen, however,
> to the echo of Science.
> 
>     Now, wherever anthropoid apes lived it is clear that, whether as a
>     question of anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings,
>     man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have
>     lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as much
>     special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they
>     resemble bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical
>     animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type
>     specialized for erect posture and a larger brain(1614).... If he
>     could survive, as we know he did, the adverse conditions and
>     extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why
>     he might not have lived in the semi‐tropical climate of the
>     Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland
>     and Spitzbergen.(1615)
> 
> When most of the men of Science who are uncompromising in their belief in
> the descent of man from an “extinct anthropoid mammal;” will not accept
> even the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to
> man and the dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real
> scientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it
> can be made under the circumstances, _i.e._, without immediate danger of
> getting knocked off one’s feet by the tidal wave of science‐adulation.
> Believing that the difficulty of accounting—
> 
>     For the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not
>     so great as that presented by the difference as to physical
>     structure(1616) between man and the highest animal—
> 
> the same author says:
> 
>     But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical
>     structure arose, and how a being came into existence which had
>     such a brain and hand, and such undeveloped capabilities for an
>     almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference
>     in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the
>     highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of
>     one being the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some
>     respects makes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His
>     skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more
>     projecting, his arm longer than those of the average European man.
>     Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from
>     the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or crétin, whose
>     brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the
>     chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape.
> 
>     If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case of man
>     and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom both
>     may have originated.... But to establish this as a _fact_ and not
>     a _theory_ we require to find that ancestral form, or, at any
>     rate, some intermediate forms tending towards it ... in other
>     words ... the “missing link.” Now it must be admitted that,
>     hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered, but
>     the oldest known human skulls and skeletons which date from the
>     Glacial period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old, show
>     no very decided approximation towards any such pre‐human type. On
>     the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the
>     sepulchral cave of Cro‐Magnon,(1617) is that of a fine race, tall
>     in stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of
>     the existing races of mankind. The reply of course is that the
>     time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a common
>     ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly,
>     and man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such
>     ancestor must be sought still further back at a distance compared
>     with which the whole Quaternary period sinks into
>     insignificance.... All this is true, and it may well make us
>     hesitate before we admit that man ... is alone an exception to the
>     general law of the universe, and is the creature of a special
>     creation. This is the more difficult to believe, as the ape family
>     which man so closely resembles [?] in physical structure contains
>     numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the
>     extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the
>     highest of the ape series. If a special creation is required for
>     man, must there not have been special creations for the
>     chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100 different
>     species of apes and monkeys which are all built on the same
>     lines?(1618)
> 
> There _was_ a “special creation” for man, and a “special creation” for the
> ape, _his_ progeny; only on other lines than ever bargained for by
> Science. Albert Gaudry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot
> be regarded as the crown of an ape‐stock. When one finds that not only was
> the “primeval savage” (?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de
> Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left behind him were splintered
> _by fire_ in that remote epoch; when we learn that the dryopithecus,
> _alone of the anthropoids_, appears in those strata, what is the natural
> inference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very man‐like gibbon
> is _still in the same low grade of development, as it was when it
> coëxisted with man at the close of the Glacial period_. It has not
> appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to
> choose between the dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids—gibbon,
> gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all‐sufficient, how are we
> to “explain” the evolution of this ape into man during the first half of
> the Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical
> transformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in species
> supervenes renders the thing inconceivable—more especially on the “natural
> selection” hypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a
> savage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal
> anthropoid, is too great to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a
> period. Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding
> Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace both man and
> dryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration has,
> nevertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are
> as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of
> Hæckel. Is an exit out of this _cul de sac_ to be found by an appeal to
> the “unknown,” and a reference, with Darwin, to the “imperfection of the
> geological record”? So be it; but the same right of appeal must then be
> equally accorded to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of
> puzzled Materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of
> the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary age,
> the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a
> period when the Hæckelian man‐ape is conceived as roaming through primeval
> forests, and Mr. Grant Allen’s putative ancestor as swinging himself from
> bough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third
> Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the
> civilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no
> respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean
> Giants, “blurred copies” of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man,
> according to Huxley, now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative
> Anthropologist of European Science.
> 
> Where did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa, some
> in Southern Asia, others again believe in an independent origin of human
> stocks in Asia and America from a simian ancestry. Hæckel, however,
> advances gaily to the charge. Starting from his prosimia, “the ancestor
> common to all other catarrhini including man”—a “link” now, however,
> disposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries—he endeavours to
> find a habitat for the primeval pithecanthropus alalus.
> 
>     In all probability it [the transformation of animal into man]
>     occurred in Southern Asia, in which region many evidences are
>     forthcoming that here was the original home of the different
>     species of man. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest
>     cradle of the human race, but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the
>     south of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian
>     Ocean. The period during which the evolution of the anthropoid
>     apes into ape‐like men took place was probably the last part of
>     the Tertiary period, the Pliocene age, and perhaps the Miocene
>     age, its forerunner.(1619)
> 
> Of the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring to
> Lemuria, which _was_ the cradle of mankind—of the physical sexual creature
> who materialized through long æons out of the ethereal hermaphrodites.
> Only, if it is proved that Easter Island is an actual relic of Lemuria, we
> must believe that according to Hæckel the “dumb ape‐men,” just removed
> from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait‐statues, two
> of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming
> Hæckelian doctrines “abominable, revolutionary, immoral”—though
> Materialism is the legitimate outcome of the ape‐ancestor myth—they are
> simply too absurd to demand disproof.
> 
> B. Western Evolutionism: The Comparative Anatomy Of Man And The Anthropoid
> In No Way A Confirmation Of Darwinism.
> 
> We are told that while every other heresy against Modern Science may be
> disregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as applied to man,
> will be the one “unpardonable” sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock
> on the evidence of similarity of structure between the ape and man. The
> anatomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it
> is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain conformation being
> very much the same.
> 
> Well, what of that? All this was known before King Herod; and the writers
> of the _Râmâyana_, the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanumân,
> the Monkey‐God, “whose feats were great and wisdom never rivalled,” must
> have known as much about his anatomy and brain as does any Hæckel or
> Huxley in our modern day. Volumes upon volumes have been written upon this
> similarity, in antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is
> nothing new given to the world or to philosophy in such volumes as
> Mivart’s _Man and Apes_, or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley’s defence of
> Darwinism. But what are those crucial proofs of man’s descent from a
> pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one, we are
> told, if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we must
> explain the reason of:
> 
> (i) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the higher
> animal world—man and beast—is physically of one type or pattern.
> 
> (ii) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, _i.e._, traces of former
> organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted,
> could not have had any scope for employment, except in a semi‐animal,
> semi‐arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in man those “rudimentary”
> organs—as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the apteryx of
> Australia—the vermiform appendix of the cæcum, the ear muscles,(1620) the
> “rudimentary tail” with which children are still sometimes born, etc.?
> 
> Such is the war cry; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the
> Darwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific
> Evolutionists themselves!
> 
> Furthermore, the latter—with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such
> eminent Zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others—while defending the Darwinian
> theory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties in
> the way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of Science
> as the above‐named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled‐for
> assumption, and loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the
> question of this supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the
> works of Broca, Gratiolet, Owen, Pruner‐Bey, and finally at the last great
> work of de Quatrefages, _Introduction à __ l’Étude des Races Humaines,
> Questions Générales_, to discover the fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may
> say more: the exaggerations concerning this alleged similarity of
> structure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring
> and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley has found himself forced to
> protest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great Anatomist
> personally who called the “smaller fry” to order, by declaring in one of
> his articles that the differences between the structure of the human body
> and that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only _far
> from being trifling and unimportant_, but were, on the contrary, very
> great and suggestive:
> 
>     Every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be
>     distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man.(1621)
> 
> Among the existing creatures there is not one single intermediate form
> that could fill the gap between man and the ape. To ignore that gap, he
> added, “would be no less wrong than absurd.”
> 
> Finally, the absurdity of such an _unnatural_ descent of man is so
> palpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence as to the skull of the
> pithecoid compared to that of man, that de Quatrefages resorted
> unconsciously to our Esoteric theory by saying that it is rather the apes
> that can claim descent from man than _vice versâ_. As proven by Gratiolet,
> with regard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids—in which
> species that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case
> were the corresponding organs in man really the product of the development
> of the said organs in the apes—the size of the human skull and its brain,
> as well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man.
> His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and
> jaws diminish and straighten, thus becoming more and more spiritualized;
> whereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far
> more intelligent and good‐natured, while with age it becomes duller; and,
> as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones
> and jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely
> back, to make with every day more room for the animal type. The organ of
> thought—the brain—recedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced
> by that of the wild beast—the jaw apparatus.
> 
> Thus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla could with perfect
> justice address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from him.
> It would say to him: We, anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure
> from the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are
> expressed by a transition from a human‐like to an animal‐like structure of
> organism; but in what way could _you_, men, descend from us—how can you
> form a continuation of our genus? For, to make this possible, your
> organization would have to differ still more than ours does from the human
> structure, it would have to approach still closer to that of the beast
> than ours does; and in such a case justice demands that you should give up
> to us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you
> insist on tracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our
> organization and its development are such that we are unable to generate
> forms of a higher organization than our own.
> 
> This is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatrefages.
> Owing to the very type of his development man cannot _descend_ from either
> an ape or an ancestor common to both apes and men, but shows his origin to
> be from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the “Heavenly
> Man”—the Dhyân Chohans, or the Pitris so‐called, as shown in the first
> Part of this Volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang‐outang,
> the gorilla, and the chimpanzee _can_, and, as the Occult Sciences teach,
> _do_, descend from the animalized Fourth human Root‐Race, being the
> product of man and an extinct species of mammal—whose remote ancestors
> were themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality—which lived in the
> Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi‐human monster is explained in the
> Stanzas as originating in the sin of the “mind‐less” races of the middle
> Third Race period.
> 
> When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the Earth are so
> many variations on _basic types_ originally thrown off by the Man of the
> Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on
> the “unity of structural plan” characterizing all vertebrates, loses its
> edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison
> with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise; but a
> general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the
> ages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the coëxistence of several
> utterly opposed “ground plans” of organic evolution on one planet. Once,
> however, that the general drift of the Occult explanation is formulated,
> inference as to detail may well be left to the intuitive reader.
> 
> Similarly with the important question of the “rudimentary” organs
> discovered by Anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this line of
> argument, when wielded by Darwin and Hæckel against their European
> adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists, who ventured to
> dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry, were sorely puzzled
> how to deal with the presence of gill‐clefts, with the “tail” problem, and
> so on. Here again Occultism comes to our assistance with the necessary
> data.
> 
> The fact is that, as previously stated, the human type is the repertory of
> all potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter
> radiate. In this postulate we find a true “evolution” or “unfolding”—in a
> sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of Natural
> Selection. Criticizing Darwin’s inference from “rudiments,” an able writer
> remarks:
> 
>     Why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that
>     man was first created with these rudimentary sketches in his
>     organization, and that they became useful appendages in the lower
>     animals into which man degenerated, as it is to suppose that these
>     parts existed in full development, activity and practical use, in
>     the lower animals out of whom man was generated?(1622)
> 
> Read for “into which man degenerated,” “the prototypes which man _shed_ in
> the course of his astral developments,” and an aspect of the true Esoteric
> solution is before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
> 
> So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the
> mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed
> by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of
> the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of
> the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the
> deposition of the first Laurentian rocks. “Evolution” has to deal with the
> progressive modifications, which Palæontology shows to have affected the
> lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It
> does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of
> the pre‐physical types which served as the basis for future
> differentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling the development of
> physical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it has
> acquitted itself ably of the task.
> 
> To return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia, whose
> first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the
> Secondary period, were evolved from _purely_ astral progenitors
> contemporary with the Second Race. They are thus _post‐human_, and,
> consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between
> their embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in
> himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he
> originated. This explanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief.
> 
>     But how to account for the presence of the gill‐clefts in the
>     human fœtus, which represent the stage through which the branchiæ
>     of the fish are developed;(1623) for the pulsating vessel
>     corresponding to the heart of the lower fishes, which constitutes
>     the fœtal heart; for the entire analogy presented by the
>     segmentation of the human ovum, the formation of the blastoderm,
>     and the appearance of the “gastrula” stage, with corresponding
>     stages in lower vertebrate life and even among the sponges; for
>     the various types of lower animal life which the form of the
>     future child shadows forth in the cycle of its growth?... How
>     comes it to pass that stages in the life of fishes, whose
>     ancestors swam [æons before the epoch of the First Root‐Race] in
>     the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages in that of the
>     later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored in the “epitomized
>     history” of human fœtal development?
> 
> This plausible objection is met by the reply that the Third Round
> terrestrial animal forms were just as much referable to types thrown off
> by Third Round Man, as that new importation into our planet’s area—the
> mammalian stock—is to the Fourth Round Humanity of the Second Root‐Race.
> The process of human fœtal growth epitomizes not only the general
> characteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life.
> The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no
> loss to “account for” the birth of children with an actual caudal
> appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human fœtus is, at one
> period, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every
> organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man—the Microcosm of the
> Macrocosm—and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the
> strange phenomena which Darwinists regard as “reversion to ancestral
> features.”(1624) Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated
> by our present‐day empiricists!
> 
> C. Darwinism And The Antiquity Of Man: The Anthropoids And Their Ancestry.
> 
> The public has been notified by more than one eminent modern Geologist and
> man of Science, that:
> 
>     All estimate of geological duration is not merely imperfect, but
>     necessarily impossible; for we are ignorant of the causes, though
>     they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress
>     of the sedimentary deposits.(1625)
> 
> And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll) calculating that the
> Tertiary age began either fifteen or two‐and‐a‐half million years ago—the
> former being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric Doctrine,
> than the latter—there seems in this case, at least, no very great
> disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man a “special creation”
> (to a certain degree the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to
> ignore the first three, or rather two‐and‐a‐half Races—the spiritual, the
> semi‐astral, and the semi‐human—of our teachings. But it can hardly do the
> same in the case of the Third, at its closing period, the Fourth, and the
> Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palæolithic and
> Neolithic man.(1626) The Geologists of France place man in the Mid‐Miocene
> age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de
> Quatrefages suggests; while the English _savants_ do not generally accept
> such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For,
> as says Sir Charles Lyell:
> 
>     If we consider the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and
>     works of art in all strata, whether marine or fresh‐water, even in
>     those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by
>     millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general
>     dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent,
>     pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few
>     wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested
>     with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in
>     moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of
>     thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must
>     be infinitesimally small.(1627)
> 
> The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement
> concerning the age of man, as indeed they are hardly able to make any, and
> thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while
> the majority of the Anthropologists carry back the existence of man _only_
> into the period of the post‐glacial drift, or what is called the
> Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a
> common origin with the monkey, do not show great consistency in their
> speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater
> antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers.
> This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question—Mr. Huxley, for
> instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, _ipso
> facto_ hold very tenaciously to an antiquity of man so very great, indeed,
> that it falls not so far short of the Occultist’s estimate.(1628) The
> modest thousands of years of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ and the 100,000
> years, to which Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem
> quite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley’s
> bold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men
> ape‐like cave‐dwellers. The great English Biologist, in his desire to
> prove man’s pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the
> primordial ape into a human being must have occurred _millions of years
> back_. For in criticizing the excellent cranial capacity of the
> Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with
> “pithecoid bony walls,” coupled with Mr. Grant Allen’s assurances that
> this skull—
> 
>     Possesses large bosses on the forehead, strikingly [?] suggestive
>     of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce
>     appearance(1629)—
> 
> still Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is
> once more defeated by the—
> 
>     Completely human proportions of the accompanying limb‐bones,
>     together with the fair development of the Engis skull.
> 
> In consequence of all this we are notified that these skulls—
> 
>     Clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock
>     whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who
>     entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in
>     the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch
>     more distant from the age of the elephas primigenius than that is
>     from us.(1630)
> 
> An _untold_ antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific _sine quâ non_
> in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palæolithic man
> shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It
> is only of late that Modern Science has with every year begun to widen the
> abyss that now separates her from ancient Science, as that of Pliny and
> Hippocrates; none of the old writers would have derided the Archaic
> Teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal
> species, as the present day Scientist—Geologist or Anthropologist—is sure
> to do.
> 
> The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally
> emancipated herself from the shackles of Theology, Science has embraced
> the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely
> materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the
> ages—the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has
> this doctrine now become, in one form and another, that the most Herculean
> efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian
> Anthropology is the incubus of the Ethnologist, a sturdy child of modern
> Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the
> ineptitude of the theological legend of Man’s “creation” became more and
> more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that—as a
> Scientist of repute puts it:
> 
>     All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be
>     reduced to two [the evolutionist and the biblical exoteric
>     account].... There is no other hypothesis conceivable [!!].
> 
> The anthropology of the Secret Volumes is, however, the best possible
> answer to such a worthless contention.
> 
> The anatomical resemblance between man and the higher ape, so frequently
> cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both,
> presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be
> sought for in the Esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid
> stocks. We have given it as far as it was useful, by stating that the
> bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of
> huge man‐like monsters—the offspring of human and animal parents. As time
> rolled on, and the still semi‐astral forms consolidated into the physical,
> the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions,
> until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the
> Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the
> “Mindless”—this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their
> crime were the apes now known as anthropoid.
> 
> It may be useful to compare this very simple theory—and we are willing to
> offer it merely as a hypothesis to the unbelievers—with the Darwinian
> scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of them
> overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse
> difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.
> 
> Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the
> Antiquity of Man.
> 
> Millions of years have sunk into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in
> the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western
> chronology as to the Origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
> 
> All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If
> the still‐debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the
> Homo primigenius, then Science _may_ be right (_argumenti causâ_) in
> basing its present Anthropology—as to the date and mode of origin of Homo
> sapiens—on the Darwinian theory.(1631) But if the skeletons of man should
> at any time be discovered in the Eocene strata, while no fossil ape is
> found there, and the existence of man is thus proved to be prior to that
> of the anthropoid—then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in
> another direction. Moreover, it is said in well‐informed quarters that the
> twentieth century will be still in its earliest teens when such undeniable
> proof of man’s priority will be forthcoming.
> 
> Even now much evidence is being brought forward to prove that the dates
> hitherto assigned for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various
> other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a
> peace‐offering to biblical chronology. The well‐known Palæontologist Ed.
> Lartet writes:
> 
>     No date is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the
>     birth of primitive humanity.
> 
> But Chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the
> _Bible_ facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one
> hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single
> date of “Creation.”
> 
>     And between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194
>     years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the
>     world and the birth of Christ. Within the last few years,
>     archæologists have had also to throw back by nearly 3,000 years
>     the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the foundation
>     cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by
>     Cyrus—are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of
>     his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the
>     original temple built by Naram‐Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the
>     conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years
>     before his own time.(1632)
> 
> We have shown in _Isis Unveiled_ that those who based history on the
> chronology of the Jews—a race which had none of its own and rejected the
> Western till the twelfth century—would lose their way, for the Jewish
> account could only be followed through kabalistic computation, and only
> then with key in hand. We characterized the late George Smith’s chronology
> of the Chaldæans and Assyrians, which he had made to fit in with that of
> Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later
> Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas George Smith
> makes Sargon I (the prototype of Moses) reign in the city of Akkad about
> 1600 B.C.—probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the _Bible_
> makes to flourish 1571 B.C.—we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert
> Lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that:
> 
>     Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have
>     been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire,
>     it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a
>     great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests
>     across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as
>     early as B.C. 3,750.... The Accadian monuments found by the French
>     at Tel‐loh must be even older, reaching back to about B.C. 4,000.
> 
> In other words, to the fourth year of the World’s creation agreeably with
> _Bible_ chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance,
> in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well‐
> known Oxford lecturer remarked in his disquisitions upon “The Origin and
> Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient
> Babylonians,” that:
> 
>     The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history
>     of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our
>     knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very
>     little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers.
>     Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood
>     intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in
>     coils of almost insuperable difficulty.
> 
> That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events
> “intentionally,” is undeniable, and for a very good reason: their writings
> and records were all Esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the
> priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the
> Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were
> furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor Sayce’s remarks
> are promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as:
> 
>     The Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian
>     texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of
>     special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a
>     comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all
>     our difficulties—namely, our being so often left in the dark as to
>     the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our
>     materials for history.
> 
> Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead
> to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year
> 4,000 B.C., as to make them _pre‐cosmic_ in the judgment of every _Bible_
> worshipper.
> 
> How much more would Palæontology have learned had not millions of works
> been destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian Library, which has been thrice
> destroyed, namely, by Julius Cæsar 48 B.C., in A.D. 390, and lastly in the
> year A.D. 640 by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison
> with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries,
> wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of
> gigantic antediluvian monsters? Or again in comparison with the
> destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of
> the Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang‐ti, in 213 B.C.? Surely the
> brick‐clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless
> treasures of the Chinese collections, could never have contained such
> information as one of the aforesaid “Atlantean” skins would have furnished
> to the ignorant world.
> 
> But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to
> see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has
> done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the
> archaic statues at Tel‐loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been
> assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt.(1633)
> Unfortunately, dynasties and pyramids share the fate of geological
> periods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the whims of the
> respective men of Science. Archæologists know now, it is said, that the
> afore‐mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only
> be got in the Peninsula of Sinai; and
> 
>     They accord in the style of art, and in the standard of
>     measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the
>     pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties....
>     Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of
>     the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of
>     the epoch at which the pyramids were built; and thus only can we
>     understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that
>     of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon‐god.
> 
> This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these dynasties?
> Sanchuniathon’s and Manetho’s synchronistic tables—or whatever remained of
> these after holy Eusebius had the handling of them—have been rejected; and
> still we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years
> B.C., so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained.
> There is, at last, a city on the face of the Earth which is allowed, at
> least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has discovered it. According
> to Professor Sayce again:
> 
>     They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the
>     head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000
>     and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty‐five miles
>     inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the
>     seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More
>     than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of
>     eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called “The
>     Observations of Bel”; and we are also enabled to understand the
>     otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox,
>     which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by
>     the earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar
>     was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the sun at the
>     vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but
>     in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being
>     known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus
>     from about 4,700 years B.C., and we thus obtain astronomical
>     limits of date which cannot be impugned.(1634)
> 
> It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C.
> Lyell’s nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of
> the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene
> periods—this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these
> ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations,
> two‐and‐a‐half and fifteen million years being assigned at different times
> to one and the same age (the Tertiary); and since no two Geologists or
> Naturalists seem to agree on this point—Esoteric Teachings may remain
> quite indifferent to the appearance of man in the Secondary or the
> Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as fifteen
> million years’ duration—well and good; for the Occult Doctrine, jealously
> guarding its real and correct figures so far as concerns the First,
> Second, and two‐thirds of the Third Root‐Race, gives clear information
> upon one point only—the age of Vaivasvata Manu’s humanity.(1635)
> 
> Another definite statement is that during the so‐called Eocene period the
> Continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and
> perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking, and that it was in the
> Miocene age that it was finally destroyed—save the small island mentioned
> by Plato. These points have now to be checked by scientific data.
> 
> A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe, Animal
> Evolution, And Man.
> 
> May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of specialists? The
> work on _World‐Life: Comparative Geology_, by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes
> us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the nebular theory
> smiting with all the force of the hammer of his _odium theologicum_ on the
> rather contradictory hypotheses of the great stars of Science, in the
> matter of sidereal and cosmic phenomena based on their respective
> relations to terrestrial durations. The “too imaginative physicists and
> naturalists” do not fare very easily under this shower of their own
> speculative computations placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry
> figure. Thus he writes:
> 
>     Sir William Thompson, on the basis of the observed principles of
>     cooling, concludes that no more than 10 million years [elsewhere
>     he makes it 100,000,000] can have elapsed since the temperature of
>     the earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable
>     life.(1636) Helmholz calculates that 20 million years would
>     suffice for the original nebula to condense to the present
>     dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only 10 millions
>     to attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.(1637) Croll estimates 70
>     million years for the diffusion of the heat....(1638) Bischof
>     calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth
>     to cool from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Reade,
>     basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500
>     million years since sedimentation began in Europe.(1639) Lyell
>     ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300
>     million years demanded by the organic transformations which his
>     theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand 1,000
>     millions [!!].... Some biologists ... seem to close their eyes
>     tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years,
>     of which they have no more adequate estimate than of
>     infinity.(1640)
> 
> Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological
> figures: a few will suffice.
> 
> According to Sir William Thompson “the whole incrusted age of the world is
> 80,000,000 years”; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton’s calculations of a
> minimum limit for the time since the elevation of Europe and Asia, three
> hypothetical ages for three _possible_ and different modes of upheaval are
> given, varying from the modest figure of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000
> years to the tremendous figure of 27,491,000 years!!
> 
> This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four
> Continents and even the figures of the Brâhmans.
> 
> Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof.
> Winchell’s work,(1641) bring Houghton to an approximation of the
> sedimentary age of the globe—11,700,000 years. These figures are found too
> small by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
> 
> Again, according to Croll,(1642) 2,500,000 years “represents the time
> since the beginning of the Tertiary age” in one work; and according to
> another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the
> beginning of the Eocene period,(1643) this, being the first of the three
> Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between two‐and‐a‐half and
> fifteen millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures,
> then the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000
> years.(1644)
> 
> As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago
> (Prof. Croll’s view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from
> 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference
> to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race:
> 
>     It is generally believed to have made its appearance during the
>     later decline of the continental glaciers. It does not concern,
>     however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there
>     are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern
>     regions, in times remotely pre‐glacial.(1645)
> 
> As a specimen of geological _certainty_ and _agreement_, these figures
> also may be added. Three authorities—Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S., Robert Hunt,
> F.R.S., and J. Croll, F.R.S.,—in estimating the time that has elapsed
> since the Glacial epoch, give figures that vary to an almost incredible
> extent:
> 
> Belt:         20,000 years.
> Hunt:         80,000 years
> Croll:       240,000 years(1646)
> 
> No wonder that Mr. Pengelly confesses that:
> 
>     It is at present and perhaps always will be impossible to reduce,
>     even approximately, geological time into years or even into
>     millenniums.
> 
> A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen Geologists;
> they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they
> say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their “Antient and
> Primitive Rite” uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.
> 
> The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other
> subjects.
> 
> The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all
> practical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many Anti‐Darwinists
> in the British Association, and Natural Selection begins to lose ground.
> Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned
> theorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless
> hypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs
> of truancy, and thinks “natural selection _not the sole_ factor”:
> 
> We greatly suspect that she [Nature] does make considerable jumps in the
> way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some
> of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.(1647)
> 
> Again, C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps
> in Mr. Darwin’s theory:
> 
>     It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must
>     have been vast in numbers.... Mr. St. George Mivart believes that
>     change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally
>     believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again
>     tells us “_natura non facit saltum_.”(1648)
> 
> Herein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.
> 
> Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of Nature’s slowness and
> dignified progression. “Planetary impulses” are all periodical. Yet this
> Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more
> with Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his _Contributions to the
> Theory of Natural Selection_, shows pretty conclusively that something
> _more_ than Natural Selection is requisite to produce physical man.
> 
> Let us, meanwhile, examine the _scientific_ objections to this scientific
> theory, and see what they are.
> 
> Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that:
> 
>     It will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the
>     deposit of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian.
>     If, then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only
>     represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require
>     2,500,000,000 (two thousand five hundred million) years for the
>     complete development of the whole animal kingdom to its present
>     state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the
>     time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the
>     completion of the process.
> 
>     Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of
>     rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata—if life was then
>     as abundant and varied, as, on the Darwinian theory, it must have
>     been. Mr. Darwin himself admits “the case at present must remain
>     inexplicable; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument
>     against the views” entertained in his book.
> 
>     Thus, then, we find a remarkable (and on Darwinian principles all
>     but inexplicable) absence of minutely graduated transitional
>     forms. All the most marked groups—bats, pterodactyles, chelonians,
>     ichthyosaurians, amoura, etc.—appear at once upon the scene. Even
>     the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best
>     preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by
>     significant fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the
>     labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual
>     change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the
>     sort.... All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new
>     forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time
>     to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to
>     laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part
>     internal—similar to the way in which crystals (and, perhaps from
>     recent researches, the lowest forms of life) build themselves up
>     according to the internal laws of their component substance, and
>     in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and
>     conditions.(1649)
> 
> “The internal laws of their component substance.” These are wise words,
> and the admission of the possibility is prudent. But how can these
> internal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching be discarded? As a
> friend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations:
> 
>     In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life‐Impulses must be
>     admitted. Otherwise, why are species now _stereotyped_, and why do
>     even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into
>     their ancestral types when left to themselves?
> 
> But the teaching about Planetary Life‐Impulses has to be clearly defined
> and as clearly understood, if present confusion is not to be made still
> more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of
> night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following
> Esoteric Axioms were admitted:
> 
> (_a_) The existence and the enormous antiquity of our Planetary Chain;
> 
> (_b_) The actuality of the Seven Rounds
> 
> (_c_) The separation of human Races (outside the purely anthropological
> division) into seven distinct Root‐Races, of which our present European
> Humanity is the Fifth;
> 
> (_d_) The antiquity of man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally
> 
> (_e_) That as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from
> the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every
> living (so‐called) _organic_ species of animals, with vegetation included,
> changes with every new Root‐Race.
> 
> Were this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer
> consideration, no less absurd, suppositions—if Occult theories have to be
> considered “absurd” at present—then every difficulty would be made away
> with. Surely Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as
> it can hardly maintain the theory of man’s descent from an anthropoidal
> ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to such a
> man! Once Mr. Huxley talks of “the vast intellectual chasm between the ape
> and man,” and “the present enormous gulf between them,”(1650) and admits
> the necessity of extending scientific allowances for the age of man on
> Earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men of
> Science who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to at
> least some approximate figures, and agree upon the probable duration of
> those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and
> about which nothing definite is known—even if they dare not venture
> _beyond_. But no two Scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a
> mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the Geologists; and,
> as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with
> regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no
> reliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with
> them it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!
> 
> That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by
> themselves and the synopsis of these, to be found in that “Circle of
> Sciences,” the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, which shows the mean accepted in
> the geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the
> most authoritative opinions is skimmed off and presented; nevertheless, we
> find in it a refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to
> such comparatively speaking late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for
> a wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological
> periods; at any rate for some few, the duration of which could hardly be
> any more shortened, without an immediate conflict with facts.
> 
> Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopædia that:
> 
>     One hundred million years have passed ... since the solidification
>     of our earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon
>     it.(1651)
> 
> But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and
> Ethnologists, as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their
> mistakes. About the Âryan Root‐Race and its origins, Science knows as
> little as of the men from other Planets. With the exception of Flammarion,
> and of a few Mystics among Astronomers, even the habitableness of other
> Planets is mostly denied. Yet such great Adept Astronomers were the
> Scientists of the earliest races of the Âryan stock, that they seem to
> have known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern
> Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.
> 
> Let us leave Modern Science aside for a moment and turn to Ancient
> Knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such
> geological cataclysms—from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting
> of continents, down to the present year’s cyclones, hurricanes,
> earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary
> weather and seeming shifting of seasons which are perplexing all European
> and American Meteorologists—are due to, and depend on the Moon and
> Planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the
> greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and
> within our Earth—let us give one moment’s attention to our sidereal
> despots, the rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such
> influence; Archaic Science affirms it. We will see what both say with
> regard to this question.
> 
> B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.
> 
> Did the Ancients know of Worlds besides their own? What are the data of
> the Occultists in affirming that every Globe is a Septenary Chain of
> Worlds—of which only one member is visible—and that these are, were, or
> will be, “man‐bearing,” just as is every visible Star or Planet? What do
> they mean by “a moral and physical influence” exerted on our Globe by the
> Sidereal Worlds?
> 
> Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered
> from every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is: We
> believe it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and
> the second is analogy. “As above, so below.” The time is gone by for ever
> when our pious ancestors believed that our Earth was in the centre of the
> Universe, and the Church and her arrogant servants could insist that the
> supposition that any other Planet could be inhabited should be regarded as
> blasphemy. Adam and Eve, the Serpent and Original Sin, followed by
> Atonement through Blood, have been too long in the way of progress, and
> universal truth has thus been sacrificed to the insane conceit of us
> little men.
> 
> Now what are the proofs thereof? Beyond inferential evidence and logical
> reasoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe
> in the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates,
> the data offered in the Secret Books are all‐sufficient. The general
> public needs other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists, and even
> some Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this
> point in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the
> teaching. Even such “uniform evidence” will be forthcoming presently.
> Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see
> whether belief in it is so very absurd, as some Scientists along with
> other Nicodemuses would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a
> plurality of inhabited “Worlds,” we imagine them to be like the Globe we
> inhabit, and to be peopled by beings more or less resembling ourselves.
> And in so doing we are only following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long
> as the enquiry is confined to the life‐history of this Globe, we can
> speculate on the question with some profit, and ask ourselves, with some
> hope of at least asking an intelligible question, what were the “Worlds”
> spoken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity? But how do we know
> (_a_) what kind of beings inhabit the Globes in general; and (_b_) whether
> those who rule Planets superior to our own do not exercise the same
> influence on our Earth _consciously_, that we may exercise
> _unconsciously_, say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the
> long run, by our cutting the Earth in pieces, opening canals, and thereby
> entirely changing our climates. Of course, like Cæsar’s wife, the
> planetoids, cannot be affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc.
> Believing in Esoteric Astronomy, however, we are not so sure of that.
> 
> But when, extending our speculations beyond our Planetary Chain, we try to
> cross the limits of the Solar System, then indeed we act as do
> presumptuous fools. For—while accepting the old Hermetic axiom, “as above,
> so below”—as we may well believe that Nature on Earth displays the most
> careful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous
> transformations, and withal _never_ repeating herself, so we may justly
> conclude that there is no other Globe in all her infinite systems so
> closely resembling this Earth, that the ordinary powers of man’s thought
> should be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and
> containment.(1652)
> 
> And indeed we find in the romances as in all the so‐called scientific
> fictions and spiritistic “revelations” from Moon, Stars, and Planets,
> merely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and things, the
> passions and forms of life, with which we are familiar, though even on the
> other Planets of our own System nature and life are entirely different
> from those prevailing on our own. Swedenborg was preeminent in inculcating
> such an erroneous belief.
> 
> But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of
> consciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men
> dream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for its dreams to
> impress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be
> consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can
> _we_ hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the
> economy of Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and
> quite different from _any_ which man experiences here?
> 
> And this is true to the letter. For even great Adepts (those initiated of
> course), trained Seers though they be, can only claim thorough
> acquaintance with the nature and appearance of Planets and their
> inhabitants belonging to our Solar System. They _know_ that almost all the
> Planetary Worlds are inhabited, but—even in spirit—they can have access
> only to those of our System; and they are also aware how difficult it is,
> _even for them_, to put themselves into full rapport even with the planes
> of consciousness _within_ our System, differing as they do from the states
> of consciousness possible on this Globe; such, for instance, as those
> which exist on the Chain of Spheres on the three planes beyond that of our
> Earth. Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them because they
> have learned how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed
> to the perceptions of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their
> knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because men lack that experience
> of other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what
> they might be told.
> 
> Still the fact remains that most of the Planets, like the Stars beyond our
> System, are inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of
> Science themselves. Laplace and Herschel believed it, though they wisely
> abstained from imprudent speculation; and the same conclusion has been
> worked out and supported with an array of scientific considerations by C.
> Flammarion, the well‐known French Astronomer. The arguments he brings
> forward are strictly scientific, and are such as appeal even to a
> materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those
> of Sir David Brewster, the famous Physicist, who writes:
> 
>     Those “barren spirits” or “base souls,” as the poet calls them,
>     who might be led to believe that the earth is the only inhabited
>     body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the
>     earth also to have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if
>     such minds were acquainted with the deductions of geology, they
>     would admit that it was uninhabited for myriads of years; and here
>     we come to the impossible conclusion that during these myriads of
>     years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast
>     domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic
>     formations there existed neither plant nor animal in all the
>     infinity of space.(1653)
> 
> Flammarion shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life—even as
> _we_ know it—are present on some at least of the Planets, and points to
> the fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than
> they are on our Earth.
> 
> Thus scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concurs with the
> statements of the Seer, and the innate voice in man’s own heart in
> declaring that life—intelligent, conscious life—_must_ exist on other
> worlds than ours.
> 
> But this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot
> carry him. Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others
> bristling with scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and
> describe life on other Globes. But one and all they give but some
> distorted copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with
> Voltaire, the men of our own race under a microscope, or, with de
> Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at
> bottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is
> this tendency that even great natural, though non‐initiated, Seers, fall
> victims to it when untrained; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to
> dress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit‐world,
> in clothes such as are worn in Europe!
> 
> Commenting on this tendency, Flammarion says:
> 
>     It seems as if in the eyes of those authors who have written on
>     this subject, the Earth were the type of the Universe, and the man
>     of Earth, the type of the inhabitants of the Heavens. It is, on
>     the contrary, much more probable, that, since the nature of other
>     planets is essentially varied, and the surroundings and conditions
>     of existence essentially different, while the forces which preside
>     over the creation of beings and the substances which enter into
>     their mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would
>     follow that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way
>     applicable to other globes. Those who have written on this subject
>     have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and
>     have therefore fallen into error.(1654)
> 
> But Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns,
> for he tacitly takes the conditions of life on Earth as the standard by
> which to determine the degree to which other Planets are adapted for
> habitation by “other humanities.”
> 
> Let us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which,
> though they seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to
> enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a
> factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not
> only of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within
> ourselves.
> 
> When, therefore, we find “other worlds” spoken of in the Bibles of
> Humanity, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states
> of our Planetary Chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited Globes—Stars
> and Planets; withal, that no speculations were ever made about the latter.
> The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of Life. But no really
> initiated Seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other
> Stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life. What is
> generally meant by “Earths” and “Worlds,” relates (_a_) to the “rebirths”
> of our Globe after each Manvantara and a long period of Obscuration; and
> (_b_) to the periodical and entire changes of the Earth’s surface, when
> continents disappear to make room for oceans, and oceans and seas are
> violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their
> emplacements to new continents.
> 
> We may begin with the _Bible_—the youngest of the World‐scriptures. In
> _Ecclesiastes_, we read these words of the King‐Initiate:
> 
>     One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the
>     earth abideth for ever.... The thing that hath been, it is that
>     which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be
>     done, and there is no new thing under the sun.(1655)
> 
> Under these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive
> cataclysms by which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further
> back, to the various transitions of the Globe during the process of its
> formation. But if we are told that this refers only to _our_ world _as we
> now see it_, then we shall refer the reader to the _New Testament_, where
> St. Paul speaks of the Son (the manifested Power) whom God hath appointed
> heir of all things, “by whom also he made the worlds” (plural).(1656) This
> “Power” is Chokmah, the Wisdom and the Word.
> 
> We shall probably be told that by the term “worlds,” the stars, heavenly
> bodies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that “stars” were not
> known as “worlds” to the ignorant editors of the Epistles, even if they
> must have been thus known to Paul, who was an Initiate, a “Master‐
> Builder,” we can quote on this point an eminent Theologian, Cardinal
> Wiseman. In his work (i. 309) treating of the indefinite period of the six
> days—or shall we say “too definite” period of the six days—of creation and
> the 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in total darkness as to the
> meaning of this statement of St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose
> that allusion is made in it to the period which elapsed between the
> _first_ and _second_ verses of chapter i of _Genesis_, and thus to those
> primitive revolutions, _i.e._, the destructions and the reproductions of
> the world, indicated in chapter i of _Ecclesiastes_; or, to accept, with
> so many others, and in its _literal sense_, the passage in chapter i of
> _Hebrews_, that speaks of the creation of “worlds”—in the plural. It is
> very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest
> the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of
> revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.
> 
> Had the Cardinal studied the _Zohar_ his doubts would have been changed
> into certainties. Thus saith the “Idra Suta”:
> 
>     There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into
>     existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas—for they
>     were like the sparks under the smith’s hammer, flying in all
>     directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not
>     continue long, because the “Aged”—his name be sanctified—had not
>     as yet assumed his form,(1657) the workman was not yet the
>     “Heavenly Man.”(1658)
> 
> Again in the _Midrash_, written long before the _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben
> Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains:
> 
>     The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and
>     destroyed sundry worlds before this one(1659).... Now this refers
>     both to the first races [the “Kings of Edom”] and to the worlds
>     destroyed.(1660)
> 
> “Destroyed” means here what we call “obscuration.” This becomes evident
> when we read the explanation given further on:
> 
>     Still when it is said that they [the worlds] _perished_, it is
>     only meant thereby that they [their humanities] lacked the true
>     form, till the human [our] form came into being, in which all
>     things are comprised and which contains all forms ...—it does not
>     mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status
>     [that of worlds in activity].(1661)
> 
> When, therefore, we read of the “destruction” of the Worlds, the word has
> many meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the
> _Zohar_ and in Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only
> the destruction of many Worlds which have ended their life‐career, but
> also that of the several Continents which have disappeared, as also their
> decline and geographical change of place.
> 
> The mysterious “Kings of Edom” are sometimes referred to as the “Worlds”
> that had been destroyed; but it is a “cloak.” The Kings who reigned in
> Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the “Edomite Kings,” could
> never symbolize the “prior worlds,” but only the “attempts at men” on this
> Globe—the Pre‐Adamite Races, of which the _Zohar_ speaks, and which we
> explain as the First Root‐Race. For as, speaking of the six Earths (the
> six “Limbs” of Microprosopus), it is said that the seventh (our Earth)
> came not into the computation when the six were created (the six Spheres
> above our Globe in the Terrestrial Chain), so the first seven Kings of
> Edom are left out of calculation in _Genesis_. By the law of analogy and
> permutation, in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, as also in the _Books of
> Knowledge_ and of _Wisdom_, the “seven primordial worlds” mean also the
> “seven primordial” races (sub‐races of the First Root‐Race of the
> Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of “Esau, the father
> of the Edomites”;(1662) _i.e._, Esau represents in the _Bible_ the race
> which stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the
> Âryan. “Two _nations_ are in thy womb,” said the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau
> was _red_ and _hairy_. From verse 24 to 34, chapter xxv of _Genesis_
> contains the allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.
> 
> Says the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_:
> 
>     And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs [crowns] were
>     found no more.
> 
> And the _Zohar_ states:
> 
>     The Head of a nation that has not been formed at the beginning in
>     the likeness of the White Head: its people is not from this
>     Form.... Before it [the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of
>     the Ancients] arranged itself in its [own, or present] Form ...
>     all Worlds have been destroyed; therefore it is written: and Bela,
>     the Son of Beor, reigned in Edom [_Gen._, xxxvi. Here the “Worlds”
>     stand for Races]. And he [such or another King of Edom] died, and
>     another reigned in his stead.
> 
> No Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden
> under these “Kings of Edom” seems to have perceived more than one aspect
> of them. They are neither the “worlds that were destroyed,” nor the “Kings
> that died”—alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no
> space at present. Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the _Zohar_,
> we will return to the hard facts of materialistic Science; first, however,
> citing a few from the long list of great thinkers who have believed in the
> plurality of inhabited Worlds in general, and in Worlds that preceded our
> own. These are, the great mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Sir
> Isaac Newton himself, as may be read in his _Optics_; Buffon, the
> Naturalist; Condillac, the Sceptic; Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St.
> Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last named—suspected at least of
> Mysticism—Diderot and most of the writers of the _Encyclopædia_. Following
> these come Kant, the founder of modern Philosophy; the poet Philosophers,
> Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many Astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and
> Herschel, to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in more recent
> years.
> 
> A brilliant list of honoured names indeed; but the facts of physical
> Astronomy speak even more strongly than these names in favour of the
> presence of life, of even organized life, on other Planets. Thus in four
> meteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, in the Cape of Good
> Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, on analysis, there was found
> graphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic
> life on this Earth of ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not
> due to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown by the fact
> that carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite; while in one
> which fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was found
> water and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of
> vegetable substances.
> 
> And further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other Planets,
> it is easy to show that several are far better adapted for the development
> of life and intelligence—even under the conditions with which men are
> acquainted—than is our Earth. For instance, on the Planet Jupiter the
> seasons, instead of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by
> almost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times as long as ours. Owing
> to the inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost
> entirely to the eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and
> regularly. We shall be told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is
> in an incandescent state. But not all Astronomers agree with this. For
> instance, what we state is declared by M. Flammarion; and _he_ ought to
> know.
> 
> On the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as
> exists on Earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of
> temperature more sudden; though it is curious that the duration of the day
> is nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth
> and Mars.
> 
> On Mercury, the Sun’s heat and light are seven times what they are on the
> Earth, and Astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense
> atmosphere. And as we see that life appears more active on Earth in
> proportion to the light and heat of the Sun, it would seem more than
> probable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.
> 
> Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars, and
> the snows which cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface,
> the geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the
> variations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous—at least to
> the eye of the physical Astronomer. But such facts and the considerations
> to which they give rise have reference only to the possibility of the
> existence on these Planets of human life as known on Earth. That some
> forms of life such as we know are _possible_ on these Planets, has been
> long since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go
> into detailed questions of the physiology, etc., of these hypothetical
> inhabitants, since, after all, the reader can arrive only at an imaginary
> extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with
> the three conclusions which M. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted,
> formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known _facts_ and
> laws of Science.
> 
> i. The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave
> birth to a great variety of beings on the several worlds; both in the
> organic and inorganic kingdoms.
> 
> ii. The animated beings were constituted from the first according to forms
> and organisms in correlation with the physiological state of each
> inhabited globe.
> 
> iii. The humanities of other worlds differ from us, as much in their inner
> organization as in their external physical type.
> 
> Finally the reader who may be disposed to question the validity of these
> conclusions as being opposed to the _Bible_, may be referred to an
> Appendix in M. Flammarion’s work dealing in detail with this question,
> since in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to point out the
> logical absurdity of those churchmen who deny the plurality of worlds on
> the ground of biblical authority.
> 
> In this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of
> the Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity, on the
> ground that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of
> salvation; and again, we may remember how long it took for a nascent
> Science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in the grooves of
> which the stars moved for the special edification of terrestrial humanity.
> 
> The theory of the Earth’s rotation was met by a like opposition—even to
> the martyrdom of its discoverers—because, besides depriving our orb of its
> dignified central position in space, the theory produced an appalling
> confusion of ideas as to the Ascension—the terms “up” and “down” being
> proved to be merely relative, thus complicating not a little the question
> of the precise locality of Heaven!(1663)
> 
> According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than
> 500,000,000 Stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best
> telescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable. Is,
> then, our microscopical Earth—a “grain of sand on an infinite sea‐
> shore”—the only centre of intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300,000
> times larger than our Planet, sinks into insignificance beside the giant
> Sun, Sirius, and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in
> infinite Space. The self‐centred conception of Jehovah as the special
> guardian of a small and obscure semi‐nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside
> that which confines sentient existence to our microscopical Globe. The
> primary reasons were without doubt: (_a_) astronomical ignorance on the
> part of the early Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of
> man’s own importance—a crude form of selfishness; and (_b_) the dread
> that, if the hypothesis of millions of other inhabited Globes were
> accepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue: “Was there then a Revelation
> to each World?”—involving the idea of the Son of God eternally “going the
> rounds,” as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and
> energy in proving the possibility of the existence of such Worlds. All
> intelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated
> is, that if it is once proven that there are inhabited Worlds besides our
> own, with humanities entirely different from each other as from our own—as
> maintained in the Occult Sciences—then the evolution of the preceding
> Races is half proved. For where is that Physicist or Geologist who is
> prepared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in
> the millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence;
> and that changing its “skin,” as it is called in Occultism, the Earth has
> not had each time her special Humanities adapted to such atmospheric and
> climatic conditions as were entailed by such change? And if so, why should
> not our preceding four and entirely different Mankinds have existed and
> thrived before our Adamic Fifth Root Race?
> 
> Before closing our debate, however, we have to examine the so‐called
> organic evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is
> quite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree—up to a
> certain point—with those of Science.
> 
> C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.
> 
> It seems possible to calculate the approximate duration at any rate of the
> geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now
> before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine one thing with almost
> certainty—the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to
> reason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea‐
> bottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus
> formed. Doubtless the _rate_ of the erosion of land, and of the sorting
> out of matter on to ocean beds, has varied from age to age, and
> cataclysmic changes of various kinds have broken the “uniformity” of
> ordinary geological processes. Provided, then, that we have some definite
> numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than
> it might at first sight appear. Making due allowance for variations in the
> rate of deposit, Professor Lefèvre gives us the relative figures which sum
> up geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years
> since the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating
> that time as _x_, he presents us with the relative proportions in which
> the various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating
> that, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary
> 42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the
> Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness:
> 
>     Dividing into a hundred parts the time, _whatever its actual
>     length_, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth
>     [lower Laurentian strata], we shall be led to attribute to the
>     Primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to
>     the Primary 32.2; to the Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to
>     the Quaternary 0.5 or one‐half per cent.(1664)
> 
> Now, as it is certain, on Occult data, that the time which has elapsed
> since the first sedimentary deposits is 320,000,000 years, we are able to
> construct the following table:
> 
> ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS OF LENGTH OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS IN YEARS.
> 
> Primordial (Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian): 171,200,000.
> 
> Primary (Devonian, Coal, Permian): 103,040,000.
> 
> Secondary (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous): 36,800,000.
> 
> Tertiary (Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene): 7,360,000.
> 
> Quaternary: 1,600,000.(1665)
> 
> Such estimates harmonize with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in
> almost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part‐cycle, from the “apex
> of glory” of that Race in the early Eocene to the great Mid‐Miocene
> cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some three‐and‐a‐half to four
> million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not, as seems likely,
> rather over‐estimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be Post‐
> Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too
> long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes
> very far back into the Secondary age. Nevertheless, the figures are most
> suggestive.
> 
> But the argument from geological evidence being in favour of only
> 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of
> exact Science.
> 
> Mr. Edward Clodd,(1666) in referring to M. de Mortillet’s work _Matériaux
> pour l’Histoire de l’Homme_, which places man in the Mid‐Miocene
> period,(1667) remarks that:
> 
>     It would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolution
>     teaches, and moreover win no support from believers in special
>     creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly
>     specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life‐
>     history of the globe.
> 
> To this, one could answer: (_a_) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated
> by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of
> infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of Science, _e.g._,
> de Quatrefages, in France, Dr. Weismann, an ex‐evolutionist in Germany,
> and many others, the ranks of the Anti‐Darwinists growing stronger with
> every year;(1668) and (_b_) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain
> truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect.
> For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would
> never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and _vice versâ_. Truth must
> rest upon its own firm foundation of facts, and take its chance of
> recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the
> question has been already fully considered in its main aspect, it is,
> nevertheless, advisable to combat every so‐called “scientific” objection
> as we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and anti‐
> scientific statements.
> 
> Let us briefly glance at the divergencies between orthodox and Esoteric
> Science, on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two
> respective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to
> see at a glance the importance of these divergencies; and to perceive, at
> the same time, that it is not impossible—nay, it is most likely—that
> further discoveries in Geology and the finding of fossil remains of man
> will force Science to confess that it is Esoteric Philosophy which is
> right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.
> 
> PARALLELISM OF LIFE.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES: Science divides the period of the Globe’s history,
> since the beginning of life on Earth (or the Azoic age), into five main
> divisions or periods, according to Hæckel.(1669)
> 
> ESOTERIC THEORY: Leaving the classification of the geological periods to
> Western Science, Esoteric Philosophy divides only the Life‐periods on the
> Globe. In the present Manvantara the actual period is separated into seven
> Kalpas and seven great human Races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the
> Primordial Epoch is the age of the Primeval.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC: PRIMORDIAL EPOCH: Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian. The
> Primordial epoch, Science tells us, is by no means devoid of vegetable and
> animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon
> canadense—a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea‐weeds
> (algæ), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first
> trace of fishes. The Primordial epoch shows algæ, molluscs, crustacea,
> polyps, and marine organisms, etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine
> life was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to
> speculate for ourselves as to _how_ life appeared on Earth. If it rejects
> the biblical “creation” (as we do), why does it not give us another,
> approximately plausible hypothesis?
> 
> ESOTERIC: “PRIMEVAL”(1670): Devas or Divine Men, the “Creators” and
> Progenitors.(1671) The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made
> by Science (see preceding), demurring, however, to one particular. The
> 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see “Brâhmanical Chronology”)
> preceded the “Divine Men,” or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that
> there were traces of life _within_ the Earth, besides the Eozoon
> canadense, in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation
> belonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian,
> Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the _relics_ of the Third
> Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized
> _pari passu_ with the new vegetation.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC: PRIMARY: Devonian,(1672) Coal, Permian. “Fern‐forests,
> sigillaria, coniferæ, fishes, first trace of reptiles.” Thus saith Modern
> Science.
> 
> ESOTERIC: “PRIMARY”: Divine Progenitors (Secondary Groups), and the two
> and a half Races. The Esoteric Doctrine repeats that which was said above.
> These are all relics of the preceding Round.(1673)
> 
> Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the Astral Envelope of
> the Earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC: SECONDARY: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. This is the age of
> Reptiles, of the gigantic megalosauri, ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, etc.
> Science denies the presence of man in this period. But it has still to
> explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them _before_
> the age of Cuvier! The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of
> Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also
> appear the first marsupial mammals(1674)—insectivorous, carnivorous,
> phytophagous; and, as Prof. Owen thinks, a herbiferous hoofed mammal.
> 
> Science does not admit the appearance of man before _the close_ of the
> Tertiary period.(1675) Why? Because man has to be shown younger than the
> higher mammals. But Esoteric Philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as
> Science is quite unable to come to anything like an approximate conclusion
> as to the age of man, or even as to the geological periods, the Occult
> teaching is, therefore, more logical and reasonable, even if accepted only
> as a hypothesis.
> 
> ESOTERIC: “SECONDARY”: According to every calculation the Third Race had
> already made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a
> few mammals, and it must have separated before their appearance.
> 
> This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the
> early Fourth may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left
> entirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the
> Initiates.
> 
> The analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early
> mammalia and pre‐mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one
> kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their
> procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the
> monotremata, didelphia (or marsupialia) and the placental mammals, divided
> in their turn into three orders(1676) like the First, Second, and Third
> Root‐Races of men.(1677) But this would require more space than can be now
> allotted to the subject.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC: TERTIARY(1678): Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene. No man is yet
> allowed to have lived during this period.
> 
> Says Mr. E. Clodd, in _Knowledge_: “Although the placental mammals and the
> order of primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times, and
> the climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene, and
> temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of
> his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch ... are not
> generally accepted here.”
> 
> ESOTERIC: “TERTIARY”: The Third Race has now almost utterly disappeared,
> carried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary age,
> leaving behind it but a few hybrid races.
> 
> The Fourth, born millions of years before(1679) the said cataclysm took
> place, perished during the Miocene period,(1680) when the Fifth (our Âryan
> Race) had had one million years of independent existence.(1681) How much
> older it is from its origin—who knows? As the “historical” period began
> with the Indian Âryans, with their _Vedas_ for their multitudes,(1682) and
> far earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any
> parallels.
> 
> Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the Quaternary.
> 
> SCIENTIFIC: QUATERNARY: Palæolithic Man, Neolithic Man, Historical Period.
> 
> ESOTERIC: “QUATERNARY”: If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000
> years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.
> 
> Yet—_mirabile dictu_—while the non‐cannibal Palæolithic man, who must have
> certainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of
> years,(1683) is shown to be a remarkable artist, Neolithic man is made out
> to be almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.(1684)
> For see what a learned Geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in
> his _Mythical Monsters_:
> 
>     Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of
>     weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of
>     cultivation; but the Neolithic lake‐dwellers of Switzerland had
>     looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses, etc. Implements of horn,
>     bone, and wood were in common use among both races, but those of
>     the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured
>     with great ability, or ornamented with life‐like engravings of the
>     various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to
>     have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability(1685)
>     on the part of Neolithic man.(1686)
> 
> Let us give the reasons for this.
> 
> (1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave‐men of the old Palæolithic
> period, and of the Pre‐Glacial period (of whatever length, and however far
> back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains
> proving for him
> 
>     What the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus
>     horse—that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple
>     ancestral type to more complex existing forms.(1687)
> 
> (2) As to the so‐called Palæolithic hatchets:
> 
>     When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets
>     actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult
>     to detect any difference.(1688)
> 
> This goes to prove that there have been savages _at all times_; and the
> inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those
> days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We
> see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
> 
> (3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man,
> if no older than the Palæolithic period, could not possibly have had the
> actual time necessary for his transformation from the “missing link” into
> what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time,
> _i.e._, even _a finer specimen of manhood than many of the now existing
> races_.
> 
> The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The
> _primitive_ man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man
> of his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was
> _less_ anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion: Even
> though a _missing link_ were found, the balance of evidence would remain
> more in favour of the ape _being a degenerated man_, made dumb by some
> fortuitous circumstances,(1689) than in favour of the descent of man from
> a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
> 
> On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis be accepted, and the
> statement be believed that in the Eocene age—
> 
>     Even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race
>     men, the Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point,(1690)
> 
> then some of the present difficulties of Science might easily be made to
> disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palæolithic tools proves nothing
> against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations
> highly civilized. We are told that:
> 
>     Only a very small portion of the earth’s surface has been
>     explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient
>     land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect
>     to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life. And even
>     these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet
>     with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains
>     lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty
>     years that their existence has even been suspected.(1691)
> 
> It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hatchets of the lowest
> savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic
> merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging
> to any European country—unless in exceptional cases. The “portrait” of the
> “Reindeer Feeding,” from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of
> the man running, with two horses’ heads sketched close to him—a work of
> the Reindeer period, _i.e._, at least 50,000 years ago—are pronounced by
> Mr. Laing to be not only exceedingly well done, but the former, the
> “Reindeer Feeding,” is described as one that “would do credit to any
> modern animal painter”—by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see,
> by glancing at the sketch given below from Mr. Gould’s work. Now, since we
> have our greatest painters of Europe side by side with the modern
> Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palæolithic ancestors of
> the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly
> drawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the
> chase, etc., why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared
> with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching—7,000 years ago—the
> “earliest portraits” of men, horses’ heads, and reindeer, made 50,000
> years ago, _are certainly superior_. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those
> periods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the
> Palæolithic men are called _savages_ of the lower type. This is a small
> matter seemingly, yet it is extremely suggestive as showing how every new
> geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of
> fitting the theories to include the discovery. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in
> saying, “Time will show.” It will, and it must vindicate Occultism.
> 
> Meanwhile, the most uncompromising Materialists are driven by necessity
> into the most Occult‐like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most
> materialistic—those of the German school—who, with regard to _physical_
> development, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus,
> Professor Baumgärtner believes that:
> 
>     The germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the
>     lower animals; ... besides the advance of the vegetable and animal
>     world in development, there occurred in that period the formation
>     of _new original germs_ [which formed the basis of new
>     metamorphoses, etc.] ... the first men who proceeded from the
>     germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state.
> 
> Just so; in a larva state, we say too, only from no “animal” germ; and
> that larva was the soulless astral form of the pre‐physical Races. And we
> believe, as the German professor does, with several other men of Science
> in Europe now, that the human races—
> 
>     Have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in
>     numerous races.(1692)
> 
> Therefore, when we read _Force and Matter_, and find that Emperor of
> Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that:
> 
>     Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, the animal into
>     the man(1693)
> 
> —we need only add “and man into a spirit,” to complete the kabalistic
> axiom. The more so, since we read the following admission:
> 
>     Evolved by spontaneous generation ... that whole rich and
>     multiform organic world ... has developed itself progressively, in
>     the course of endless periods of time, by the aid of natural
>     phenomena.(1694)
> 
> The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic
> theory of primordial germs on Earth, and the _last germ_ of life on this
> Globe, of man, and everything else, between _two voids_. Whence the
> _first_ germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of
> external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we
> are told, by Sir William Thompson, came to our Earth in some meteor. This
> helps in no way, and only shifts the difficulty from this Earth to the
> supposed meteor.
> 
> These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the
> “endless periods” we are, of course, at one even with materialistic
> speculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines.
> Professor Huxley very wisely says:
> 
>     If any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct,
>     we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has
>     yet been made of the antiquity of man.(1695)
> 
> But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces
> inherent _in_ Matter—Force, according to modern views, being but a quality
> of Matter, a “mode of motion,” etc.—and when we find Sir William Thompson
> repeating in 1885 what was asserted by Büchner and his school thirty years
> ago, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin
> air! One can hardly help thinking that Materialism is, in certain cases, a
> _disease_. For when men of Science, in the face of magnetic phenomena and
> the attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like
> glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to “molecular motion,” or
> to the “rotation of the molecules of the magnet,” then, whether the
> teaching comes from a “credulous” Theosophist innocent of any notion of
> Physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The
> individual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of _fact_, is only one
> more proof that: “When people have not a niche in their minds into which
> to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts.”
> 
> At present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their
> opponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the
> latter. But even they are forced to admit, as Büchner did, and Messrs.
> Tyndall and Huxley still do—that spontaneous generation _must have
> occurred once_, under “special thermal conditions.” Virchow refuses even
> to argue the question; it _must_ have taken place some time in the history
> of our planet; and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural
> than Sir William Thompson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of
> organic life fell on our Earth in some meteor; or the other “scientific”
> hypothesis coupled with the recently adopted belief that there exists _no_
> “vital principle” whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be
> traced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does
> not help Science to solve the still greater problem—the origin and the
> _descent_ of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.
> 
>     While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several
>     directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man
>     presents the phenomenon of an _unspecialized_ skeleton which
>     cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.(1696)
> 
> The secret could be soon told, not only from the Esoteric but even from
> the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the
> Occultists. The “specialized skeleton” is sought for in the wrong place,
> where it can never be found. Scientists expect to discover it in the
> physical remains of man, in some pithecoid “missing link,” with a skull
> larger than that of the ape’s, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in
> man, instead of looking for that specialization in _the super‐physical
> essence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated
> from any geological strata_! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self‐
> degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
> 
> Meanwhile, there are specimens of engravings made by Palæolithic
> “savages”: Palæolithic meaning the “earlier Stone‐age” man, one supposed
> to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with. Leaving the
> modern South Sea islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any
> grown‐up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied
> drawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch as good.
> Here we have the true artistic _raccourci_, and correct lights and shadows
> without any _plane_ model before the artist, who copied direct from
> nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist
> who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the
> primitive “semi‐animal” savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the
> woolly rhinoceros), whom some over‐zealous Evolutionists once sought to
> picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical
> “pithecoid man”!
> 
> This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can do, that the
> evolution of the Races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls,
> that man is, perhaps, as old as incrustated Earth, and—if we can call his
> divine ancestor “man”—is far older still.
> 
> Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the
> conclusions of modern Archæologists, when he writes:
> 
>     The pre‐historic is a new science, far, very far, from having said
>     its last word.(1697)
> 
> According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the
> “father” of Geology:
> 
>     The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human
>     skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, _is based on
>     the theory of progressive development_, and it _may_ prove to be
>     sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet _we have no
>     distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are
>     called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in
>     chronological order that of the higher races_.(1698)
> 
> Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for
> sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!
> 
> This concession of Lyell’s reads most suggestively with the subjoined
> utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on Darwinian Anthropology
> from the standpoint of language has, by the way, never been satisfactorily
> answered:
> 
>     What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their
>     history? [Compare this with the Esoteric view of the Australians,
>     Bushmen, as well as of Palæolithic European man, the Atlantean
>     offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when
>     the parent Root‐Race was in its prime.] Do we ever get an insight
>     into their antecedents? Can we ever understand what after all is
>     everywhere the most important and the most instructive lesson to
>     learn—how they have come to be what they are?... Their language
>     proves, indeed, that these so‐called heathens, with their
>     complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their
>     unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to‐
>     day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these
>     savages, they must be as old as the Hindûs, the Greeks and Romans
>     [far older] ... They may have passed through ever so many
>     vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all
>     we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of something that
>     was more rational and intelligible in former stages.(1699)
> 
> Professor George Rawlinson, M.A., remarks:
> 
>     “The primeval savage” is a familiar term in modern literature, but
>     there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather
>     _all the evidence looks the other way_.(1700)
> 
> In his _Origin of Nations_, he rightly adds:
> 
>     _The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the
>     beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection_, a
>     “golden age” which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but
>     many of civilization and refinement.(1701)
> 
> How is the modern Evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?
> 
> We repeat the question asked in _Isis Unveiled_:
> 
>     Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that
>     there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized?
>     When the present population of the Earth has disappeared, and some
>     Archæologist belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future
>     shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or
>     Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that
>     mankind in the nineteenth century was “just emerging from the
>     Stone age”?(1702)
> 
> Another strange inconsistency in scientific theories is that Neolithic man
> is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than Palæolithic. Either
> Lubbock’s _Pre‐historic Man_, or Evans’ _Ancient Stone Implements_ must be
> at fault, or—both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:
> 
> (1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, the stone implements
> become rude lumbering makeshifts, instead of gracefully shaped and
> polished instruments. Pottery, and other useful arts disappear as we
> descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!
> 
> (2) Palæolithic man lived in caves which he shared with hyænas and
> lions,(1703) whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake‐villages and buildings.
> 
> Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries
> of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from
> the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palæolithic hatchets,
> to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic
> period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is _in Europe_,
> only a few portions of which were barely rising from the waters in the
> days of the highest Atlantean civilization. There were rude savages and
> highly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence,
> pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far
> earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta
> by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason for maintaining that in our age
> all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas
> of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all
> down as Palæolithic savages? All the articles which Geologists now
> excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than the close of the
> Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before
> that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by
> theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by
> Palæolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer
> period—for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of
> the Geologists’ ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
> 
> The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and
> falls of civilization; and now we learn that:
> 
>     It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more
>     frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its
>     traces are frequent in Neolithic times they become very scarce or
>     altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the
>     reindeer....(1704)
> 
> —another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings.
> Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the
> Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter
> (Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The
> _Vedas_ countenance no idols; all the modern Hindû writings do.
> 
>     In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre‐
>     historic cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl‐ and
>     ox‐headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols, are
>     found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such
>     idols are no longer found, or, if found, it is so rarely that
>     archæologists still dispute as to their existence ... the only
>     ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are
>     one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of
>     the Neolithic period ... which appear to be intended for female
>     figures of life size.(1705)
> 
> And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the
> many proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The
> fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond
> Post‐Tertiary or Quaternary times—though Abbé Bourgeois’ flints may serve
> as a warning(1706)—seems to point to the truth of another Esoteric
> statement, which runs thus:
> 
> _Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales
> have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of
> the seas._
> 
> Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two‐thirds of its
> population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that
> _reäppeared_—while their predecessors formed the floors of new
> oceans—deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for
> the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the
> latter having since “retreated” and made room for the table lands of
> Central Asia.
> 
> The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded
> by the celebrated Kent’s Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess,
> excavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious
> record preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the Earth. Under the
> blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were
> discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the
> Neolithic period of _fairly excellent workmanship_, with a few fragments
> of pottery—possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There
> is no trace of Palæolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct
> animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper
> through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the black mould into the red
> earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat,
> things assume a very different aspect. _Not one implement_ fit to bear
> comparison with the _finely‐chipped weapons found in the overlying
> stratum_ is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little
> hatchets (with which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued
> and killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the
> Palæolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either
> extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the
> artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the
> reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above! In all cases we
> meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from
> Neolithic to Palæolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane
> from the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism—_in Europe
> again_. We are made also to face the “Mammoth age”—the extreme or earliest
> division of the Palæolithic age—in which the great rudeness of implements
> reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls,
> such as the Neanderthal, points to a very low type of humanity. But they
> may sometimes point also to something else; to a race of men quite
> distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
> 
> As said by an Anthropologist in _Modern Thought_:
> 
>     The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrère may be
>     considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two
>     species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists
>     have recognized that the lower race of man, comprising the
>     Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and
>     the Northern Africans, _should be placed apart_. The fact that in
>     this species, or rather sub‐species, the third lower molars are
>     usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal
>     bones are generally united by suture, places the _Homo afer_ on
>     the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds
>     of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from
>     mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor
>     Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages
>     of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has _never originated a
>     system of architecture or a religion of its own_.(1707)
> 
> It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians.
> However it may be, _fossil_ man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove
> the antiquity of man on this Earth, nor the age of his earliest
> civilizations.
> 
> It is time that the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at
> them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of Science as much
> as the pop‐guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain
> either proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better
> than can the hypotheses of the Scientists, at any rate. As to the proof of
> the antiquity which they claim for man, they have Darwin himself and Lyell
> with them. The latter confesses that they, the Naturalists—
> 
>     Have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so
>     remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous
>     mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and _this even
>     before the era of the earliest_ historical records.(1708)
> 
> This is a statement made by one of England’s great authorities upon the
> question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be
> remembered by students of Occultism, for with all others he says:
> 
>     In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he
>     [man] must have flourished on earth, _there is no proof of any
>     perceptible change in his bodily structure_. If, therefore, he
>     ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must
>     suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, _possibly
>     on some continents or islands now submerged_ beneath the ocean.
> 
> Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds, and also
> races, are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and
> water, in turn, and are periodically renewed, is a doctrine as old as man.
> Manu, Hermes, the Chaldæans, all antiquity, believed in this. Twice
> already has the face of the Globe been changed by fire, and twice by
> water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new
> forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a
> periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all
> brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the
> axis of the Earth. Astronomers may pooh‐pooh the idea of a periodical
> change in the behaviour of the Globe’s axis, and smile at the conversation
> given in the _Book of Enoch_ between Noah and his “grandfather” Enoch; the
> allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact. There is
> a secular change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis, and its appointed
> time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other
> questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr.
> Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the _Popular Science Review_:
> 
>     If it be necessary to call in extra‐mundane causes to explain the
>     great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the
>     theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir
>     Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E.,
>     F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the
>     ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known
>     astronomical facts, and the introduction of which involves no
>     disturbance of the harmony which is essential to our cosmical
>     condition as a unit in the great solar system.(1709)
> 
> The following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.,
> delivered in March, 1885, on “The Extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey,” shows the
> hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept
> the fact.
> 
>     Evergreen figs, laurels, palms, and ferns having gigantic rhizomes
>     have their existing congeners _in a sub‐tropical climate, such, it
>     cannot be doubted, as prevailed in __ Devonshire in Miocene
>     times_, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the
>     _present climate_ of any district is regarded as normal.
> 
>     When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the
>     west coast of Greenland, lying between 69° 20´ and 70° 30´ N.
>     lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at
>     Bovey (Sequoia couttsiæ, Quercus lyelli); when, to quote Professor
>     Heer, we find that “the ‘splendid evergreen’ (Magnolia
>     inglefieldi) ‘ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel
>     of 70°’ ” (_Phil. Trans._, clix. 457, 1869); when also the number,
>     variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found
>     to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them
>     would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the
>     problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view,
>     but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the
>     _time for its solution has not yet arrived_.
> 
>     It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of
>     Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in
>     North America, and hence arises the question: How was the
>     migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some
>     have believed, an Atlantis?—a continent, or an archipelago of
>     large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is
>     perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis; for since, as
>     geologists state, “the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some
>     places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the
>     commencement of the Eocene period” (Lyell’s _Principles_, 11th
>     ed., p. 256, 1872), a Post‐Miocene[?] depression might have
>     carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But
>     an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According
>     to Professor Oliver, “A close and very peculiar analogy subsists
>     between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras
>     of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much
>     closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary
>     and recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the
>     Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin, if
>     not in numerical preponderance of genera, yet in features which
>     especially give a character to the Fossil Flora.... This accession
>     of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed
>     in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we
>     may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia
>     ... then along the Himâlaya and through China.... We learn also
>     that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European
>     Miocene genera certainly grew in North‐West America.... We note
>     further that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no
>     substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the
>     mainland of the New World.... The consideration of these facts
>     lead me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the
>     hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours
>     the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North‐Eastern
>     Asia was united to North‐Western America, perhaps by the line
>     where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.” (_Nat. Hist.
>     Rev._, ii. 164, 1862, Art., “The Atlantis Hypothesis in its
>     Botanical Aspect.”)
> 
> See, however, on these points, “Scientific and Geological Proofs of the
> Reality of Several Submerged Continents.”
> 
> But nothing short of a pithecoid man will ever satisfy the luckless
> searchers after the thrice hypothetical “missing link.” Yet, if beneath
> the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the
> ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to
> be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists
> would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks, no missing links between man
> and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the
> Tertiary strata, if these forms had gone down with the continents now
> covered with the sea, they might still have been found—
> 
>     In those beds of contemporary geological strata which have _not_
>     gone down to the bottom of the sea.(1710)
> 
> Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Did not
> preconceptions fasten vampire‐like on man’s mind, the author of The
> _Antiquity of Man_ would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same
> work of his, by going ten pages back (to p. 530) and reading over a
> quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston’s work. This
> Physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity
> in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the
> adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the
> development theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends
> on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not _the soul, or the
> higher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the
> second part in a progressive scheme_?
> 
> This hypothesis is made in relation to evolution _not being entirely due_
> to “natural selection”; but it applies as well to the case in hand. For
> we, too, claim that it is the “Soul,” or the Inner Man, that descends on
> Earth first, the psychic Astral, the mould on which physical man is
> gradually built—his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening
> later on as that physical stature grows and develops.
> 
> “Thus incorporeal spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense,”
> and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages
> after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from what we should
> call the still gigantic stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half
> that size at present.
> 
> Man is certainly _no_ special creation. He is the product of Nature’s
> gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But
> this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and
> thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution—is the
> “Eternal Pilgrim,” the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the
> One Absolute “Unknowable.”
> 
> In his _Antiquity of Man_(1711) Sir Charles Lyell quotes—perhaps in rather
> a mocking spirit—what Hallam says in his _Introduction to the Literature
> of Europe_:
> 
>     If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image
>     of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the
>     stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a
>     speechless brute who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus
>     standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures,
>     what wonder that he should partake of both!(1712)
> 
> An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed
> made in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating
> Angel‐Force, or Dhyân Chohan; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra
> was made _in the image of man_, since the framework of the ape, we say
> again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual
> form of the Third Round and of the Fourth Round Man as well, later on.
> Nothing is lost in Nature, _not an atom_: this is at least certain on
> scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that _form_ should be
> equally endowed with permanency.
> 
> And yet what do we find? Says Sir William Dawson, F.R.S.:
> 
>     It is farther significant that Professor Huxley, in his lectures
>     in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals mainly
>     on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown
>     to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the
>     discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously
>     complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart
>     are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures
>     (_Nature_, 1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the
>     Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the
>     monkeys; and Hæckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his
>     phylogeny, the ape‐like man, is absolutely unknown (_History of
>     Creation_).... The so‐called “tallies” found with the bones of
>     Palæocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the
>     admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments
>     even of writing were already in possession of the oldest race of
>     men known to archæology or geology.(1713)
> 
> Again, in Dr. C. R. Bree’s _Fallacies of Darwinism_, we read:
> 
>     Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more
>     especially, mentally, between the lowest form of man and the
>     highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, _the
>     time_—which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably
>     slow—must have been _enormous_ also during man’s development from
>     the monkey(1714). The chance, therefore, of some of these
>     variations being found in the different gravels or fresh‐water
>     formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not
>     one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a
>     monkey and a man has ever been found! Neither in the gravel, not
>     the drift‐clay, nor the fresh‐water beds and gravel and drift, nor
>     in the tertiaries below them, has there ever been discovered the
>     remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey
>     and the man, as _assumed_ to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they
>     gone down with the depression of the earth’s surface and are they
>     now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that
>     they should not also be found in those beds of contemporary
>     geological strata which have _not_ gone down to the bottom of the
>     sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be
>     dredged from the ocean‐bed like the remains of the mammoth and the
>     rhinoceros, which are also found in fresh‐water beds and gravel
>     and drift!... The celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so
>     much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote period
>     [bronze and stone ages], and yet presents, although it may have
>     been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest
>     known anthropomorphous ape.(1715)
> 
> Our Globe being convulsed each time that it _reäwakens_ for a new period
> of activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before
> fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it—it does seem quite hopeless
> that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds
> of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara
> brings along with it the renovation of forms, types and species; every
> type of the preceding organic forms—vegetable, animal and human—changes
> and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in
> this Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions formed the
> present vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna
> were utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and in determining
> the structure of the primeval Root‐Types of the highest mammalia. And,
> finally, the form of the gigantic ape‐man of the former Round has been
> reproduced in this one by human bestiality, and transfigured into the
> _parent_ form in the modern anthropoid.
> 
> This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient
> pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and _far more_
> probable, than many “scientific” theories; that, for instance, of the
> first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth—like Ain Suph on
> its Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as
> every one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of
> speech for acceptance in its dead‐letter garb. But the germ‐in‐the‐meteor
> theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible
> candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound
> to accept, if they would be on a right level with Modern Science. What the
> next theory necessitated by the materialistic premisses will be—no one can
> tell. Meanwhile, the _present_ theories, as anyone can see, clash far more
> discordantly among themselves than even with those of the Occultists
> outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in
> order, now that exact Science has made even of the life‐principle an empty
> word, a meaningless term, and insists that life is an effect _due to the
> molecular action of the primordial protoplasm_? The new doctrine of the
> Darwinists may be defined and summarized in the few words, from Mr.
> Herbert Spencer:
> 
>     The hypothesis of special creations turns out to be
>     worthless—worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its
>     intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence;
>     worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as
>     not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as
>     counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis
>     respecting the origin of organic beings.(1716)
> 
> Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.
> 
> It is argued that Universal Evolution, otherwise the gradual development
> of species in all the kingdoms of Nature, works by uniform laws. This is
> admitted, and the law is enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in
> Modern Science. But we are also told, that it is equally a law that:
> 
>     Development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the
>     simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in
>     themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required
>     direction(1717).
> 
> It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic
> species are produced.
> 
> Esoteric Science agrees with this, but adds that this law applies only to
> what is known to it as the Primary Creation—the evolution of Worlds from
> Primordial Atoms, and the Pre‐primordial ATOM, at the first
> differentiation of the former; and that during the period of cyclic
> evolution in Space and Time, this law is limited and works only in the
> lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from
> simple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the
> Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial
> activity recommences.
> 
> No more than Science, does the Esoteric Philosophy admit “design” or
> “special creation.” It rejects every claim to the “miraculous,” and
> accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it
> teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of Force (or Spirit) and of Matter,
> which, starting from the Neutral Centre of Being, develops by its cyclic
> progress and incessant transformations. The primitive germ from which all
> vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the
> primitive germ from which vegetable and animal life have evolved, there
> are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in which the
> materials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which
> Science—Physiology and Anthropology especially—seems to be little aware.
> Its votaries speak of this “primitive germ,” and maintain that it is shown
> beyond any doubt that:
> 
>     The design [and the “designer”], if there be any [in the case of
>     man, with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand
>     especially], must be placed very much farther back, and is, in
>     fact, involved in the primitive germ, from which all vertebrate
>     life certainly, and probably all life, animal or vegetable, have
>     been slowly developed.(1718)
> 
> This is as true of the “primitive germ” as it is false that that “germ” is
> only “very much farther back” than man is; for it is at an immeasurable
> and inconceivable distance, _in Time_, though not in Space, from the
> origin even of our Solar System. As the Hindû philosophy very justly
> teaches, the “Aniyâmsam Anîyasâm,” can be known only through false
> notions. It is the “Many” that proceed from the “One”—the living spiritual
> germs _or centres of forces_—each in a septenary form, which first
> generate, and then give the primary impulse to the law of evolution and
> gradual slow development.
> 
> Limiting the teaching strictly to this our Earth, it may be shown that, as
> the ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by
> seven Dhyân‐Chohanic Centres of Force, so there are centres of creative
> power for every root or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable
> and animal life. This is, again, no “special creation,” nor is there any
> “design,” except in the general “ground‐plan” worked out by the Universal
> Law. But there are certainly “designers,” though these are neither
> omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are
> simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the
> ever‐to‐be‐unknown (on our plane) Master Mason—the One Life and Law.
> Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, nor possibility of working
> on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work
> in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of
> progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that
> they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues,
> etc.) is sufficiently proved by natural history. In the “creation” of new
> species, departing sometimes very widely from the parent stock, as in the
> great variety of the genus Felis—like the lynx, the tiger, the cat,
> etc.—it is the “designers” who direct the new evolution by adding to, or
> depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming
> useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides
> for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly.
> For it is these terrestrial Spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated
> Nature—which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be
> considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a
> _differentiated_ sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that
> alone _conditioned and imperfect_.
> 
> Were there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, as an eternal spiral
> progress into Matter with a proportionate _obscuration_ of Spirit (though
> the two are one) followed by an inverse ascent into Spirit and the defeat
> of Matter—active and passive by turn—how could we explain the discoveries
> of Zoology and Geology? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative
> Science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great
> sea‐dragon, from the smallest land‐worm up again to the gigantic animals
> of the Tertiary period; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by
> the fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down and becoming
> dwarfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to
> the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a
> universal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of
> a mere secondary nature in the great cosmic process, and if there were no
> such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to
> change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the plesiosauri and the
> ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea‐ and
> river‐reptiles, instead of these giving place to their dwarfed modern
> analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good‐tempered elephant, that
> would be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene
> age who would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic
> megatherium would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of
> South America, in which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods
> would take the place of the mosses and the present trees—dwarfs, even the
> giants of California, in comparison with the Titan‐trees of past
> geological periods. Surely the organisms of the megasthenian world of the
> Tertiary and the Mesozoic ages must have been _more complex and perfect_
> than those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the present age? The
> dryopithecus, for instance, is more perfect anatomically, is more fit for
> a greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon.
> How is all this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all
> those colossal land‐ and sea‐dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was
> not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards,
> turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales—in short, of all those animals
> with which we are acquainted?
> 
> Let us admit, however, for argument’s sake, that all those cycles, races,
> septenary forms of evolution, and the _tutti quanti_ of Esoteric teaching,
> are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and
> say that man—instead of being an imprisoned “spirit,” and his vehicle, the
> shell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete mechanism for
> material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists—is simply a
> more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one and the same
> primitive germ on this Earth as the flying dragon and the gnat, the whale
> and the amoeba, the crocodile and the frog, etc. In this case, he must
> have passed through the identical developments and through the same
> process of growth as all the other mammals. If man is an animal, _and
> nothing more_, a highly intellectual “ex‐brute,” he should at least be
> allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a “meganthropus” in
> his day. This is exactly what Esoteric Science shows to have taken place
> in the first three Rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is
> more logical and consistent than Modern Science. It classifies the human
> body with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal
> evolution, from first to last, while Science leaves man a parentless
> orphan born of sires unknown, an “unspecialized skeleton” truly! And this
> mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.
> 
> A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric
> Phylogeny.
> 
> Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of man in
> the foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to
> define the position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation
> of species. The pre‐human fauna and flora have been already dealt with
> generally in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the truth of much of
> modern biological speculation has been admitted, _e.g._, the derivation of
> birds from reptiles, the _partial_ truth of “natural selection,” and the
> transformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of
> the origin of those first mammalian faunæ which M. de Quatrefages so
> brilliantly endeavours to prove contemporary with the Homo primigenius of
> the Secondary Age.
> 
> The somewhat complicated problem relating to the “Origin of Species”—more
> especially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian faunæ—will
> be rendered less obscure by the aid of a diagram. It will then be apparent
> to what extent the “factors of organic evolution,” relied upon by Western
> Biologists,(1719) are to be considered as adequate to meet the facts. The
> line of demarcation between ethereo‐spiritual, astral and physical
> evolution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the
> possibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the
> fact that:
> 
>     We are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the
>     origin of the mammals!(1720)
> 
> At present the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the
> oviparous vertebrates and mammalia constitutes a hopeless crux to those
> thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic
> forms in a continuous line of descent.
> 
> Let us take, for instance, the case of the ungulate mammals, since it is
> said that in no other division do we possess such abundant fossil
> material. So much progress has been made in this direction, that in some
> instances the intermediate links between the modern and Eocene ungulates
> have been unearthed; a notable example being that of the complete proof of
> the derivation of the present one‐toed horse from the three‐toed
> anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison between
> Western Biology and the Eastern Doctrine could not, therefore, be improved
> upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views of Scientists in
> general, is that of Schmidt, based on the exhaustive researches of
> Rütimeyer. Its _approximate_ accuracy—from the standpoint of
> evolutionism—leaves little to be desired:
> 
>                      [Illustration: Ungulate Mammals]
> 
>                              Ungulate Mammals
> 
> At this, the midway point of evolution, Science comes to a standstill.
> 
>     The _root_ to which these two families lead back is unknown.(1721)
> 
>                          [Illustration: The Root]
> 
>                      The Root According to Occultism
> 
> Schmidt’s diagram represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists,
> the area in which climatic influences, “natural selection,” and all the
> other _physical_ causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology
> and Palæontology find their province here in investigating the many
> physical agencies which so largely contribute, as has been shown by
> Darwin, Spencer and others, to the “segregation of species.” But even in
> this domain the sub‐conscious workings of the Dhyân‐Chohanic wisdom are at
> the root of all the “ceaseless striving towards perfection,” though its
> influence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de
> Quatrefages terms the “milieu” and Spencer the “environment.”
> 
> The “midway point of evolution” is that stage where the _astral_
> prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become
> subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical
> causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of the “coats of
> skin”—_i.e._, the physiological equipment in general. The forms of men and
> of other mammals previous to the separation of the sexes(1722) are woven
> out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the
> physical organisms which eat, drink, digest, etc. The known physiological
> contrivances requisite for these functions were almost entirely evolved
> subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the seven Root‐Types out
> of the astral—during the “midway halt” between the two planes of
> existence. Hardly had the “ground‐plan” of evolution been limned out in
> these ancestral types, than there supervened the influence of the
> accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, resulting in the whole crop of
> mammalian species. Æons of slow differentiation were, however, required to
> effect this end.
> 
> The second diagram represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes
> previous to their descent into gross matter. Astral matter, it must be
> noted, is fourth‐state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own
> “protyle.” There are several protyles in Nature, corresponding to the
> various planes of matter. The two sub‐physical elemental kingdoms, the
> plane of mind, Manas, or fifth‐state matter, as also that of Buddhi,
> sixth‐state matter, are each and all evolved from one of the six protyles
> which constitute the basis of the Object‐Universe. The three “states” so‐
> called of our terrestrial matter, known as the “solid,” “liquid,” and
> “gaseous,” are only, in strict accuracy, _sub_‐states. As to the former
> reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in
> physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of
> the so‐called spiritualistic “materializations.”
> 
> In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into
> the physical takes place. The evolution of _physiological_ man out of the
> astral races of the _early_ Lemurian age—the Jurassic age of Geology—is
> exactly paralleled by the “materialization” of “spirits” (?) in the séance
> room. In the case of Professor Crookes’ “Katie King,” the presence of a
> _physiological_ mechanism—heart, lungs, etc.—was indubitably demonstrated!
> 
> This, in a way, is the Archetype of Goethe. Listen to his words:
> 
>     Thus much we should have gained ... all the nine perfect organic
>     beings ... [are] formed according to an archetype which merely
>     fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts and,
>     moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of
>     reproduction.
> 
> This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the Occult fact of the
> differentiation of species from the primal astral Root‐Types. Whatever the
> whole _posse comitatus_ of “natural selection,” etc., may effect, the
> _fundamental unity of structural plan_ remains practically unaffected by
> all subsequent modifications. The “unity of type” common, in a sense, to
> all the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to
> hold, a proof of the consanguinity of _all_ organic forms, but a witness
> to the essential unity of the “ground‐plan” Nature has followed in
> fashioning her creatures.
> 
> To sum up the case we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the
> actual factors concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of
> the process itself need no further comment here, for they follow the basic
> principles underlying organic development, and we do not need to enter on
> the domain of the biological specialist.
> 
> FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.
> 
> Basic astral prototypes pass into the physical, the Dhyân‐Chohanic
> impulse, constituting Lamarck’s “inherent and necessary” law of
> development. It lies behind all minor agencies: variation transmitted by
> Heredity, Natural Selection, Sexual Selection Physiological Selection,
> Isolation. Correlation of Growth, Adaptation to Environment. (Intelligent
> as opposed to Mechanical Causation.)
> 
> B. The European Palæolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.
> 
> Is Science opposed to those who maintain that, down to the Quaternary
> period, the distribution of the human races was widely different from what
> it is now? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil
> men found in Europe‐although they have almost reached a plane of sameness
> and unity which continues till this day, regarded from the fundamental
> physiological and anthropological aspects—still differ, sometimes greatly,
> from the type of the now existing populations? The late M. Littré admits
> this in an article published by him in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (March
> 1st, 1859) on the Mémoire called _Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes_
> by Boucher de Perthes (1849). Littré therein states that: (_a_) in these
> periods when the mammoths, exhumed in Picardy in company with man‐made
> hatchets, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal
> spring reigning over all the terrestrial globe;(1723) nature was the
> contrary of what it is now, and thus is left _an enormous margin for the
> antiquity of those __“__periods__”_; he then adds (_b_):
> 
>     Spring, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liège, found in a
>     grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human
>     bones “of a race quite distinct from ours.”
> 
> Skulls exhumed in Austria offer a great analogy with those of negro races
> in Africa, according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of
> the Danube and the Rhine, resemble the skulls of the Caribs and of the
> ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical
> or Atlantean, is denied. But further geological discoveries made Gaudry
> write conclusively:
> 
>     Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the
>     rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus major.
> 
> And he added that the soil called _diluvial_ in geology—
> 
>     Was formed partially at least after man’s apparition on earth.
> 
> Upon this, Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed the
> necessity, in face of “the resurrection of so many old witnesses,” of
> rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was an
> age hitherto unknown to study—
> 
>     Either at the dawn of the actual epoch, or, as I believe, at the
>     beginning of the epoch which preceded it.
> 
> The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well
> known: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the
> Negroid types—such as are now found only among the African and the lower
> savage tribes. Professor Heer—who argues that the facts of Botany
> necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis—has shown that the plants of the
> Neolithic lake‐villagers are mainly of African origin. How did these
> plants appear in Europe if there were no former point of union between
> Europe and Africa? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live
> whose skeletons were exhumed in the department of the Haute Garonne, in a
> squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and
> broken crockery around them, and in company with the ursus spelæus, the
> elephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct
> species), the megaceros hibernicus—all antediluvian mammals? Certainly
> they must have lived in a most distant epoch, but not in one which carries
> us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for man has
> yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the
> Anthropological Society, puts it at nine million years. This man of
> Science, at any rate, makes some approach to our Esoteric computation, if
> we leave out of the computation the first two semi‐human, ethereal Races,
> and the early Third Race.
> 
> The question, however, arises—who were these Palæolithic men of the
> European Quaternary epoch? Were they aboriginal, or were they the outcome
> of some immigration dating back into the unknown past? The latter is the
> only tenable hypothesis, as all Scientists agree in eliminating Europe
> from the category of possible “cradles of mankind.” Whence, then, radiated
> the various successive streams of “primitive” men?
> 
> The earliest Palæeolithic men in Europe—about whose origin Ethnology is
> silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though
> expatiated on as “ape‐like” by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant
> Allen—were of pure Atlantean and “Africo”‐Atlantean stocks.(1724) (It must
> be borne in mind that by this time the Atlantean Continent itself was a
> dream of the past.) Europe in the Quaternary epoch was very different from
> the Europe of to‐day, being then only in process of formation. It was
> united to Northern Africa—or rather to what is now Northern Africa—by a
> neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar—Northern
> Africa thus constituting as it were an extension of the present Spain,
> while a broad sea filled the great basin of the Sahara. Of the vast
> Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only
> Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the
> forefathers(1725) of the Palæolithic cave‐men are evidenced by the
> upturning of fossil skulls in Europe, reverting closely to the type of the
> West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian—a mystery indeed for all those who
> refuse to sanction the “hypothesis” of a former Atlantic continent to
> bridge what is now an ocean. What are we also to make of the fact that
> while de Quatrefages points to that “magnificent race,” the tall Cro‐
> Magnon cave‐men, and to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, as
> representatives of one type, Virchow also allies the Basques with the
> latter in a similar way? Professor Retzius independently proves the
> relationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these
> same Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are thus
> securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to
> the African tribes—themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified
> by climate and conditions—they crossed into Europe over the peninsula
> which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these
> European cave‐men, as the Cro‐Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be
> expected, _progress is almost non‐existent_ through the whole of the vast
> period allotted by Science to the Chipped‐Stone age.(1726) _The cyclic
> impulse downwards_ weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted—the
> incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palæolithic man
> makes room for his successor—and disappears almost entirely from the
> scene. Professor André Lefèvre asks in this connection:
> 
>     Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped‐Stone Age by an
>     imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of
>     brachycephalous Kelts? But whether the deterioration produced in
>     the populations of La Vézère was the result of violent crossings,
>     or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is
>     of little moment to us.
> 
> He continues:
> 
>     Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now
>     fully formed, her flora and fauna are fixed. With the taming of
>     the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone
>     and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular
>     intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical
>     migrations and fusions, at once more confused and of shorter
>     duration than less advanced and more rudimentary ages. The
>     primitive European populations are interrupted in their special
>     evolution, and without perishing, become absorbed in other races,
>     engulfed, as it were, by the successive waves of migration
>     overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? far too
>     late by æons of years] and from prolific Asia. On the one hand
>     came the Iberians, on the other Pelasgians, Ligurians, Sicanians,
>     Etruscans—all forerunners of the great Âryan Invasion [Fifth
>     Race].(1727)
> 
> Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in
> History.
> 
> When statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought
> forward, the writer is, of course, expected to furnish _historical_
> instead of _legendary_ evidence in support of such claims. Is this
> possible? Yes; for evidence of such a nature is plentiful, and has simply
> to be collected and brought together in order to become overwhelming in
> the eyes of the unprejudiced.
> 
> Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find out
> such evidence for himself. We give _facts_ and show landmarks; let the
> wayfarer follow them. What is adduced here is amply sufficient for _this_
> century.
> 
> In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies
> of the “grand old invalid of Ferney” should be attracted to the
> representatives of “knowledge and wisdom,” the ancient Brâhmans. He then
> adds a curious statement. He says:
> 
>     But your Brâhmans are very young in comparison with their archaic
>     instructors.(1728)
> 
> Bailly, who knew nought of the Esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria,
> believed, nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in
> several pre‐historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without
> leaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and
> _traditions_ extensively, and he saw that the Arts and Sciences known to
> those we now call the “ancients,” were—
> 
>     Not the achievements of any of the now or even then existing
>     nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of Asia....
> 
> and that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindûs, their undeniable
> priority in the early part of their race had to be referred to a people or
> a race still more ancient and more learned than were even the Brâhmans
> themselves.(1729)
> 
> Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist _par
> excellence_, shared Bailly’s belief. He thought it quite likely that:
> 
>     Long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations
>     cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians
>     overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of
>     ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure
>     nature.(1730)
> 
> That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect,
> was with Bailly a “question of historical facts.” For, he wrote:
> 
>     I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long
>     series of generations.
> 
> It _was_ possible, he thought, that a _foreign_ nation should, after
> instructing another nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces
> behind. When asked how it could have happened that this ancient, or rather
> archaic, nation should not have left at least some recollection in the
> human mind, he answered that Time was a pitiless devourer of facts and
> events. But the history of the Past was never entirely lost, for the Sages
> of old Egypt had preserved it, and “it is so preserved to this day
> elsewhere.” The priests of Saïs said to Solon, according to Plato:
> 
>     You are unacquainted with that most noble and excellent race of
>     men, who once inhabited your country, from whom you and your whole
>     present state are descended,(1731) though only a small remnant of
>     this admirable people is now remaining.... These writings relate
>     what a prodigious force your city once overcame, when a mighty
>     warlike power, rushing from the Atlantic sea, spread itself with
>     hostile fury over all Europe and Asia.(1732)
> 
> The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious
> nation.(1733)
> 
> What was this nation? The Secret Doctrine teaches that it was the latest
> seventh sub‐race of the Atlantean, already swallowed up in one of the
> early sub‐races of the Âryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading
> over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to
> emerge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the
> two races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had
> been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The
> immigrant sub‐race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin
> soil; had divided into many family races, which in their turn divided into
> nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phœnicians, and the Northern stocks, had
> thus proceeded from that one sub‐race. Thousands of years later, other
> races—the remnants of the Atlanteans—“yellow and red, brown and black,”
> began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers
> were defeated, and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries.
> Some of these lands became islands in course of time, owing to new
> geological convulsions. Being thus forcibly separated from the continents,
> the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean
> stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.
> 
> Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with _white_ savage
> chiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the
> pre‐historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a foreign
> type associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the
> Mongolian, which is the stumbling‐block of Anthropology. The individual
> who lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium, is
> an example. Says an Anthropologist:
> 
>     The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South‐Eastern Belgium,
>     afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by
>     the Naulette jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone,
>     perforated for the purpose of ornament; these are made of a
>     psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde.(1734)
> 
> Thus Belgian man was extremely ancient. The man who was antecedent to the
> great flood of waters—which covered the highlands of Belgium with a
> deposit of lehm or upland gravel thirty metres above the level of the
> present rivers—must have combined the characters of the Turanian and the
> Negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man may have been black, and he had
> nothing to do with the Âryan type whose remains are contemporary with
> those of the cave bear at Engis. The denizens of the Aquitaine bone‐caves
> belong to a far later period of history, and may not be as ancient as the
> former.
> 
> If the statement be objected to on the ground that Science does not deny
> the presence of man on Earth from an enormous antiquity, though that
> antiquity cannot be determined, since such presence is conditioned by the
> duration of geological periods, the age of which is not ascertained; if it
> is argued that the Scientists object most decidedly to the claim that man
> preceded the animals, for instance; or that civilization dates from the
> earliest Eocene period; or again, that there have ever existed giants,
> three‐eyed and four‐armed and four‐legged men, androgynes, etc.—then the
> objectors are asked in their turn, “How do you know? What proof have you
> besides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by
> new discoveries?” And these future discoveries are sure to prove that,
> whatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists may have been
> in complexion, he was in no respect _apish_. The Canstadt man, the Engis
> man, alike possessed essentially human attributes.(1735) People have
> looked for the missing link at the wrong end of the chain; and the
> Neanderthal man has long since been dismissed to the “limbo of all hasty
> blunders.” Disraeli divided man into the associates of the apes and the
> angels. Reasons are here given in favour of an “angelic theory”—as
> Christians would call it, as applicable to at least some of the races of
> men. At all events, if man be held to exist only since the Miocene period,
> even then humanity as a whole could not be composed of the abject savages
> of the Palæolithic age, as they are now represented by the Scientists. All
> they say is mere arbitrary speculative guess‐work, invented by them to
> answer to, and fit in with, their own fanciful theories.
> 
> We speak of events hundreds of thousands of years old, nay, even millions
> of years old—if man date from the geological periods(1736)—not of any of
> those events which happened during the few thousand years of the pre‐
> historic margin allowed by timid and ever‐cautious history. Yet there are
> men of Science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the brave
> confession of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says that:
> 
>     Traditions, whose traces recur in Mexico, in Central America, in
>     Peru, and in Bolivia, suggest the idea that man existed in these
>     different countries at the time of the gigantic upheaval of the
>     Andes, and that he has retained the memory of it—
> 
> down to the latest Palæontologists and Anthropologists, the majority of
> scientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. _Àpropos_ of Peru,
> has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological
> affinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean
> erections, the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization?
> At Cuelap, for instance, such are found, consisting—
> 
>     Of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150
>     feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this
>     mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high,
>     making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and
>     cells.(1737)
> 
> A most suggestive fact is the _startling resemblance between the
> architecture of these colossal buildings and that of the archaic European
> nations_. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between the ruins of “Inca”
> civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and
> Greece, as a coincidence—
> 
>     The most remarkable in the history of architecture.... It is
>     difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation
>     between them.
> 
> The “relation” is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks who
> devised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent.
> The acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of
> this and similar problems in almost every branch of Modern Science.
> 
> Dr. Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring
> that:
> 
>     The truth, so long contested, of the coëxistence of man with the
>     great extinct species [elephas primigenius, rhinoceros
>     tichorrhinus, hyæna spelæa, ursus spelæus, etc.], appears to me to
>     be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by
>     science.(1738)
> 
> It is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages’ opinion. He says:
> 
>     Man has in all probability seen Miocene times(1739) and
>     consequently the entire Pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for
>     believing that his traces will be found further back still?... He
>     may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and
>     go back as far as the Secondary period.(1740)
> 
> Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto‐Âryan
> tribes began to settle on it when the British Islands(1741) and France
> were not even in existence. It is well known that “the tongue of the
> Ægyptian Sea,” or the Delta of lower Egypt, became firm land very
> gradually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia; unlike the latter,
> which arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very slowly formed,
> through long ages, from successive layers of sea‐slime and mud, deposited
> annually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile. Yet
> even the Delta, as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more
> than 100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Âryan blood in them than
> their predecessors, arrived from the East, and _conquered_ it from a
> people whose very name is lost to posterity, except in the Secret Books.
> It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely
> every boat that approached those inhospitable shores, that was, till
> within a few thousand years B.C., the best safeguard of the later
> Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and
> Nubia, led on by Manu Vînâ in the day of Vishvâmitra.(1742)
> 
> So evident does the antiquity of man become with every day, that even the
> Church is preparing for an _honourable_ surrender and retreat. The learned
> Abbé Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared that
> pre‐historic Palæontology and Archæology may, without any harm to the
> Scriptures, discover in the Tertiary beds as many traces as they please of
> Pre‐Adamite man.
> 
>     Since it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but
>     one [that which produced the diluvium, according to the Abbé],
>     Bible revelation leaves us free to admit the existence of man in
>     the grey diluvium, in Pliocene, and even Eocene strata. On the
>     other hand, however, geologists are not all agreed on regarding
>     the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our
>     ancestors.(1743)
> 
> The day on which the Church shall find that its only salvation lies in the
> Occult interpretation of the _Bible_ may not be so far off as some
> imagine. Already many an Abbé and ecclesiastic has become an ardent
> Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with
> Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation
> of the _Bible_. But they commence, unfortunately for them, at the wrong
> end. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the
> _metaphysical_ in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates
> to the purely _physical_—_e.g._, its hints on Geology and Ethnology. For
> such allusions to the septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the
> seven Rounds and Races, abound in the _New_ as in the _Old Testament_, and
> are as visible as the Sun in the heavens to him who reads both
> symbolically. To what do the laws in chapter xxiii of _Leviticus_ apply?
> What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadal offerings and
> symbolical calculations as:
> 
>     Ye shall count ... from the morrow after the Sabbath ... that ye
>     brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be
>     complete.... And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without
>     blemish, etc.(1744)
> 
> We shall be contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these “wave” and
> “peace” offerings were in commemoration of the _seven_ “Sabbaths” of the
> Mysteries. These Sabbaths are seven Pralayas between seven Manvantaras, or
> what we call Rounds; for “Sabbath” is an elastic word, meaning a period of
> rest of whatever nature, as explained elsewhere. And if this is not
> sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which adds:
> 
>     Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number
>     fifty days [forty‐nine, 7 × 7, stages of activity, and forty‐nine
>     stages of rest, on the seven Globes of the Chain, and then comes
>     the rest of Sabbath, the _fiftieth_]; and ye shall offer _a new
>     meat offering_ unto the Lord.(1745)
> 
> That is, ye shall make an offering of your flesh or “coats of skin,” and,
> divesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This
> law of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution
> that dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews _viâ_ the
> “Chaldees,” who were the “wise men” of a _caste_, not of a nation, a
> community of great Adepts come from their “Serpent‐holes,” who had settled
> in Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from _Leviticus_
> (full of the disfigured _Laws of Manu_) is found too far‐fetched, then
> turn to _Revelation_. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to
> the famous chapter xvii, with its riddle of the woman in purple and
> scarlet; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics, when reading
> “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the
> Earth,” or Roman Catholics glare at the Protestants, the Occultists
> pronounce, in their impartiality, that these words have applied from the
> first _to all and every exoteric_ Churchianity—“ceremonial magic” of old,
> with its terrible effects, and now the harmless, because distorted, farce
> of ritualistic worship. The “mystery” of the woman and of the beast, are
> the symbols of soul‐killing Churchianity and of Superstition.
> 
>     The beast that ... was, and is not, ... and yet is. And here is
>     the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains
>     [seven Continents and seven Races] on which the woman sitteth—
> 
> the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous faiths which have
> covered that symbol “with the blood of the saints and the blood of the
> martyrs” who protested and do protest.
> 
>     And there are seven kings [seven Races]; five are fallen [our
>     Fifth Race included], and one is [the Fifth continues], and the
>     other [the Sixth and the Seventh Races] is not yet come; and when
>     he [the Race “king”] cometh, he must continue a short space.(1746)
> 
> There are many such apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find
> them out for himself.
> 
> If the _Bible_ combines with Archæology and Geology to show that human
> civilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in
> Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in
> Asia, dates from geological epochs—why should not the statements of _The
> Secret Doctrine_ be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or
> logical and scientific to _disbelieve_, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene
> man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints(1747) “were carved by
> the dryopithecus monkey”; or, with the Occultist, that the
> anthropomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded,
> and even scientifically demonstrated, that:
> 
>     There was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species
>     of mammal identical with species now extant(1748)
> 
> —and that man was then just as he is now; only taller, and more athletic
> than we are(1749)—then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be
> the descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the
> Miocene epoch,(1750) is, on the other hand, testified to by several
> eminent Naturalists:
> 
>     Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages, who had to fight against
>     the mammoth with stone weapons for arms, we find all those
>     craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great
>     intellectual development.(1751)
> 
> Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and
> wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired
> such brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe
> the learned Abbé Bourgeois.
> 
> As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in
> Europe among fossils is the “Mentone man” (6ft. 8in.), others may yet be
> excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that:
> 
>     In a tomb of the Neolithic age ... a skeleton of extraordinary
>     size was found in 1807.
> 
> It was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
> 
> And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7ft. to even
> 9ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves—on the law of atavism, or the
> reäppearance of ancestral features of character—that there was a time when
> 9ft. and 10ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest
> Indo‐European race.
> 
> But as the subject has been sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on
> to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of
> these early races and what the moderns now know.
> 
> The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended
> the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred,
> had fought with the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race
> of Palæolithic savages. Nevertheless, even in the days of Plato, with the
> exception of priests and initiates, no one seems to have preserved any
> distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had
> been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were
> themselves descended from an _alien_ race, and had settled in Egypt some
> 400,000 years before,(1752) but their Initiates had preserved all the
> records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their
> possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little
> Atlanto‐Aryan sub‐race.(1753) If we allow only twenty years as an average
> figure for the reign of each king, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has
> to be pushed back, from the days of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.
> 
> Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern
> Archæologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000
> years, and generously concede to Thebes, with its hundred gates, 7,000
> years from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which
> show Egyptian priests—Initiates—journeying in a north‐westerly direction,
> _by land_, _viâ_ what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North
> and travelling through the future Phœnician settlements of Southern Gaul;
> then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to
> the West again and arrived, _still travelling by land_, on the north‐
> western promontory of the New Continent.(1754)
> 
> What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place
> the date of such visits? The Archaic Records show the Initiates of the
> second sub‐race of the Âryan family moving from one land to the other for
> the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of
> colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles
> for the ashes of generations to come. When did this occur? The fact of
> their crossing from France to Great Britain _by land_ may give an idea of
> the date when such a journey could have been performed on _terra firma_.
> 
> It was when:
> 
>     The level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher
>     than it is at the present day. The valley of the Somme was not
>     hollowed to the depth it has now attained; Sicily was joined to
>     Africa, Barbary to Spain. Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the
>     palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not yet in existence, and the
>     bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to
>     undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were
>     yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that European man was
>     contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch
>     ... that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps(1755) and the
>     extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands
>     of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions. It
>     is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia
>     of species yet more ancient ... of the elephas meridionalis of the
>     sands of St. Prest, or at the least of the elephas antiquus,
>     assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones
>     are found in company with carved flints in several English caves,
>     associated with those of the rhinoceros hæemitechus and even of
>     the machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date. M. Ed.
>     Lartet is also of opinion that there is nothing really impossible
>     in the existence of man as early as the Tertiary period.(1756)
> 
> If “there is nothing impossible” scientifically, in the idea, and it may
> be admitted that man was already in existence as early as the Tertiary
> period, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places
> the beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back; but there was a time
> when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
> 
> And if all this may be said of _European_ man, how great is the antiquity
> of the Lemuro‐Atlantean and of the Atlanto‐Âryan man? Every educated
> person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man
> during the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on
> Desnoyers in 1863, when he announced to the Institute of France that he
> had made a discovery
> 
>     In the undisturbed Pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres,
>     proving the coëxistence of man and the elephas meridionalis—
> 
> were equal to the occasion. The later discovery, in 1867, by the Abbé
> Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was
> given at the Pre‐historic Congress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that
> the average man of Science will see _only that which he wishes to
> see_.(1757)
> 
> The modern Archæologist, though speculating _ad infinitum_ upon the
> dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing either of them or of
> their origin. Yet these weird and often colossal monuments of unhewn
> stones—which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed
> together—are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or
> rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously
> upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People
> name them “devil’s altars,” druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of
> Carnac in Morbihan, Brittany—nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000
> ranged in eleven rows—are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The conical
> menhir of Loch‐maria‐ker, in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and
> nearly two yards across. The menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises
> thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such
> dolmens and pre‐historic monuments are met with in almost every latitude.
> They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local
> tumuli from twenty‐seven to thirty‐five feet in height); in Shetland; in
> Sweden, where they are called Ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in
> Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hünengräben); in Spain,
> where is the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga; in Africa; in Palestine and
> Algeria; in Sardinia, with the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei Giganti, or tombs
> of giants; in Malabar; in India, where they are called the tombs of the
> Daityas (Giants) and of the Râkshasas, the Men‐demons of Lankâ; in Russia
> and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan; in Peru and Bolivia,
> where they are termed the Chulpas or burial places, etc.
> 
> There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are
> they all connected with serpents and dragons, with alligators and
> crocodiles? Because remains of “Palæolithic man” were, it is thought,
> found in some of them, and because, in the funeral mounds of America,
> bodies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone
> necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., they are, therefore,
> ancient _tombs_! But surely the two famous mounds—one in the Mississippi
> valley and the other in Ohio—known respectively as the “Alligator Mound”
> and the “Great Serpent Mound,” were never meant for tombs.(1758) Yet one
> is told authoritatively that the mounds, and the mound or dolmen builders,
> are all “Pelasgic” in Europe, antecedent to the Incas in America, yet not
> of “extremely distant times.” They are built by “no race of dolmen
> builders,” who _never existed_ save in the earlier archæological fancy
> (opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp). Finally Virchow’s
> opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom. Says
> that German Biologist:
> 
>     The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain.
> 
> And Archæology has but to bow and submit to the decision.(1759)
> 
> That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the “tombs” is no
> reason for saying that the remains of giants were never in them.
> _Cremation was universal_ till a comparatively recent period—some 80,000
> or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned
> with Atlantis. Nevertheless, classical writers, as we have shown
> elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons being excavated in their day.
> Moreover, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton
> ever yet found is older than between 50,000 or 60,000 years,(1760) and
> man’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, from the time of the
> third sub‐race of the Âryan stock, which sub‐race—born and developed in
> Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions—had become
> European. Since then, as we have said, it has been steadily decreasing. It
> is truer, therefore, to say that the tombs alone are archaic, and not
> necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those
> tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,(1761) or
> rather the ashes of generations of giants.
> 
> Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with
> the so‐called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge
> in Great Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to
> do. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World’s
> history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build
> them, for they were only the heirs of the cyclopean lore left to them by
> generations of mighty builders and—“magicians,” both good and bad.
> 
> It will always be a subject of regret that History, rejecting _à priori_
> the actual existence of giants, has preserved to us so little of the
> records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every Mythology—which
> after all _is_ Ancient History—the giants play an important part. In the
> old Norse Mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom
> the sons of the Gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of
> deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants the brethren
> of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the Gods to the history of the
> development of the Âryan Race, will only receive credence amongst the
> believers in the Âryan theory as expounded by Max Müller. Granting that
> the Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark,
> round‐headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair‐faced
> Scandinavians, or Æsir, the Gods being like unto men, there still exists
> neither in history nor in any other scientific work any anthropological
> proof whatever of the existence in Time or Space of a race of giants. Yet
> that such exist, relatively and _de facto_ side by side with dwarfs,
> Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam‐Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs,
> while their next neighbours, several tribes of comparatively fair‐
> complexioned Africans, are giants when confronted with the Nyam‐Nyams, and
> very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above six and a
> half feet high.
> 
> In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on
> the other hand, excessively common; they are said to have lived even down
> to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later
> date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.
> 
> If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants of
> Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated
> Gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities “Los Campos
> de los Gigantes,” the “Fields of Giants,” are always concomitant with the
> existence of Pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of Pliocene raised
> beaches. “All the giants are not under Mount Ossa,” and it would be poor
> Anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek
> and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with
> legends about the Bogaterey (mighty giants) of old; and Slavonian
> folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national
> histories, the oldest songs, and the most archaic traditions, speaks of
> the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would
> make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real
> living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric
> heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the
> history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight
> beyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.
> 
>     Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,
>     Such men as live in these degenerate days.
> 
> If the fossil footprints at Carson, Nevada, U.S.A., are human, they
> indicate gigantic men, and of their genuineness there can remain no doubt.
> It is to be deplored that the modern and scientific evidence for gigantic
> men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of
> hypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and
> mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of Geology, and even the
> traveller’s tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants
> fifty‐six feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of
> giants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.
> 
> That which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men
> have existed and left distinct traces. In the _Journal of the
> Anthropological Institute_(1762) such a race is shown as having existed at
> Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different
> from those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race
> existed in Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone
> circles in Galilee, hewed Neolithic flints in the Jordan valley, and
> preserved an ancient Semitic language quite distinct from the square
> Hebrew character, were of very large stature. The English translations of
> the _Bible_ can never be relied upon, even in their modern revised forms.
> They tell us of the Nephilim, translating the word by “giants,” and
> further adding that they were “hairy” men, probably the large and powerful
> prototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently described by patristic fancy;
> some of the Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they
> had themselves seen these “satyrs”—some alive, others “pickled” and
> “preserved.” The word “giants” being once adopted as a synonym of
> Nephilim, the commentators have since identified them with the sons of
> Anak. The filibusters who seized on the Promised Land found a preëxisting
> population far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of
> giants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before
> the birth of Moses. These tall people existed in Canaan, and even in
> Bashan, and may have had representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They
> were of far greater stature than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years
> ago their cranial conformation and large stature separated them from the
> children of Heber. Forty thousand years ago their ancestors may have been
> of still more gigantic size, and four hundred thousand years earlier they
> must have been in proportion to men in our days as the Brobdingnagians
> were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the middle period were called
> the “Great Dragons,” and the first symbol of their tribal deities, when
> the “Gods” and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken them, was that of a giant
> serpent.
> 
> The mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids is as great
> as that of their supposed fanes to the modern Symbologist, but not to the
> initiated Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last
> Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference
> that they were Eastern priests, akin to the Chaldæans and Indians, though
> little more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their deity as the
> Hindûs do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the
> builders of the Ohio great Serpent Mound worshipped theirs—namely under
> the form of the “Mighty Serpent,” the emblem of the eternal deity Time—the
> Hindû Kâla. Pliny called them the “Magi of the Gauls and Britons.” But
> they were more than that. The author of _Indian Antiquities_ finds much
> affinity between the Druids and the Brâhmans of India. Dr. Borlase points
> to a close analogy between them and the Magi of Persia;(1763) others will
> see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of Thrace—simply
> because they were connected, in their Esoteric Teachings, with the
> universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric
> worship of all.
> 
> Like the Hindûs, the Greeks and Romans—we speak of the Initiates—the
> Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a
> succession of “worlds,” as also in that of seven “creations” (of new
> continents) and transformations of the face of the Earth, and in a seven‐
> fold night and day for each Earth or Globe. Wherever the serpent with the
> egg is found, there this tenet was surely present. Their Dracontia are a
> proof of it. This belief was so universal that, if we seek for it in the
> Esotericism of various religions, we shall discover it in all. We shall
> find it among the Âryan Hindûs and Mazdeans, the Greeks, the Latins, and
> even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose modern stocks hardly
> comprehend now what they read in their Scriptures. In the _Book of God_ we
> read:
> 
>     The world, says Seneca, being melted and having reëntered into the
>     bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time totally
>     concentred in himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly
>     immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas. Afterwards we see
>     a new world spring from him, perfect in all its parts. Animals are
>     produced anew. An innocent race of men is formed.
> 
> And again, speaking of a mundane dissolution as involving the destruction
> or death of all, he teaches us that:
> 
>     When the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day
>     of the world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it
>     falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North Pole shall
>     overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis. _The affrighted Sun
>     shall be deprived of its light_; the palace of heaven falling to
>     decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind of
>     dissolution shall equally seize upon all the deities, who thus
>     shall return into their original chaos.(1764)
> 
> One might imagine oneself reading the Paurânic account by Parâshara of the
> great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has
> Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open any
> English _Bible_ and read chapter iii of the Second _Epistle of Peter_, and
> he will find there the same ideas:
> 
>     There shall come in the last days scoffers ... saying, Where is
>     the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all
>     things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
>     For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God
>     the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water
>     and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being
>     overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth
>     which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto
>     fire ... the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the
>     elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless we ... look
>     for new heavens and a new earth.(1765)
> 
> If the interpreters choose to see in this a reference to the creation, the
> deluge, and the promised coming of Christ, when they shall live in a New
> Jerusalem in Heaven, this is no fault of “Peter.” What the writer of the
> Epistle meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by
> subterranean fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents
> for the Sixth Root‐Race. For the writers of the Epistles were all learned
> in symbology if not in science.
> 
> It has been mentioned elsewhere that the belief in the septenary
> constitution of our Chain was the oldest tenet of the early Iranians, who
> got it from the first Zarathushtra. It is time to prove it to those Parsîs
> who have lost the key to the meaning of their Scriptures. In the _Avesta_
> the Earth is considered septempartite and tripartite at one and the same
> time. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger as an incongruity, for the following
> reasons, which he calls discrepancies. The _Avesta_ speaks of the three
> thirds of the Earth because the _Rig Veda_ mentions:
> 
>     Three earths.... Three strata or layers, one lying above the
>     other, are said to be meant by this.(1766)
> 
> But he is quite mistaken, as are all exoteric profane translators. The
> _Avesta_ has not borrowed the idea from the _Rig Veda_, but simply repeats
> the Esoteric Teaching. The “three strata or layers” do not refer to our
> Globe alone, but to three layers of the Globes of our Terrestrial
> Chain—two by two, on each plane, one on the descending, the other on the
> ascending arc. Thus, with reference to the six Spheres or Globes above our
> Earth, the seventh and the fourth, the Earth is _septempartite_, while
> with regard to the planes over our plane—it is _tripartite_. This meaning
> is carried out and corroborated by the text of the _Avesta_, and even by
> the speculations—most laborious and unsatisfactory guess‐work—of the
> translators and commentators. It thus follows that the division of the
> Earth, or rather the Earth’s Chain, into seven Karshvars is not in
> contradiction with the three “zones,” if this word is read “planes.” As
> Geiger remarks, this septenary division is very old—the oldest of
> all—since the Gâthas already speak of the “septempartite earth.”(1767)
> For:
> 
>     According to the statements of the later Parsî Scriptures, the
>     _seven Kêrshvars are to be considered as completely disconnected
>     parts of the earth_ [which they surely are. For] between them
>     _there flows the ocean_, so that it is impossible, as stated in
>     several passages, to pass from one Kêrshvar to another.(1768)
> 
> The “Ocean” is _Space_, of course, for the latter was called “Waters of
> Space” before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the word Karshvar is
> consistently rendered as Dvîpa, and Hvaniratha is rendered by Jambudvîpa
> (Neryosangh, the translator of the _Yasna_).(1769) But this fact is not
> taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even such a
> learned Zoroastrian and Parsî by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger’s
> work, passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of
> the former on the “incongruities” of this kind abounding in the Mazdean
> Scriptures. One of such “incongruities” and “coïncidences” concerns the
> similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the
> seven Dvîpas—islands, or continents, rather—as met with in the _Purânas_,
> namely:
> 
>     The Dvîpas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean,
>     surround Jambudvîpa, which is situated in the centre, [and]
>     according to the Iranian view, the Kêrshvar Qaniratha is likewise
>     situated in the centre of the rest, they form no concentric
>     circles, but each of them [the six other Karshvars] is a peculiar
>     individual space, and so they group themselves round [above]
>     Qaniratha.(1770)
> 
> Now Qaniratha—better Hvaniratha—is not, as believed by Geiger and his
> translator, “the country inhabited by the Irânian tribes,” and “the other
> names” do not mean “the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the
> North, South, West, and East,” but signify our Globe or Earth. For that
> which is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely,
> that:
> 
>     Two, Vorubarshti and Voruzarshti, lie in the North; two,
>     Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in
>     the East and West
> 
> —is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the Chain of our
> Planet, the Earth, represented in the _Book of Dzyan_ (11) thus:
> 
>                     [Illustration: The Chain of Earth]
> 
> The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in
> the Secret Doctrine to present us with the Esoteric tenet. The “Earth”
> (our world) _is_ tripartite, because the Chain of the Worlds is situated
> on three different planes above our Globe; and it is septempartite because
> of the seven Globes or Spheres which compose the Chain. Hence the further
> meaning given in _Vendidâd_ (xix. 39), showing that:
> 
>     Qaniratha alone is combined with _imat_, “this” (earth), while all
>     other Karshvares are combined with the word “_avat_,” “that” or
>     _those_—upper earths.
> 
> Nothing could be plainer. The same may be said of the modern comprehension
> of all other ancient beliefs.
> 
> The Druids, then, understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, when, all
> other fires being extinguished on the first of November, their sacred and
> inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those
> of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and
> later Chaldees, like the Greeks, and again like the Christians—who do the
> same to this day, without suspecting the real meaning—they greeted the
> Morning Star, the beautiful Venus‐Lucifer.(1771) Strabo speaks of an
> island near to Britannia:
> 
>     Where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites as
>     in Samothrace and this island was Sacred Ierna(1772)—
> 
> where a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man,
> not as Lucian explains:
> 
>     That the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a
>     different world—
> 
> but in a series of reïncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus
> says, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods,
> would pass into other bodies.(1773)
> 
> These tenets came to the Fifth Race Âryans from their predecessors of the
> Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings,
> which told them how their parent Root‐Race, becoming with every generation
> more arrogant, owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been
> gradually gliding toward its end. Those records reminded them of the giant
> intellect of the preceding races as well as of their giant size. We find
> the repetition of those records in every age of history, in almost every
> old fragment which has descended to us from antiquity.
> 
> Ælian preserved an extract from Theophrastus written during the days of
> Alexander the Great. It is a dialogue between Midas, the Phrygian, and
> Silenus. The former is told of a continent that had existed in times of
> old, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa seemed like poor islands
> compared with it. _It was the last to produce_ animals and plants of
> gigantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of
> the tallest man in his (the narrator’s) time, and they lived till they
> were twice as old. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such
> cities held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver
> being found there in great abundance.
> 
> Grote’s suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a
> mirage—clouds on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a
> golden sea—is too disingenuous to be further noticed.
> 
> A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The
> Classics, Explained Esoterically.
> 
> All that which precedes was known to Plato, and to many others. But as no
> Initiate had the right to divulge and declare all he knew, posterity got
> only hints. Aiming more to instruct as a Moralist than as a Geographer and
> Ethnologist or Historian, the Greek Philosopher merged the history of
> Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he
> located on one comparatively small island 3,000 stadia long by 2,000 wide
> (or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland); whereas
> the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as “all Asia and Lybia”
> put together.(1774) But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato’s
> narrative bears the impress of truth upon it.(1775) It was not he who
> invented it, at any rate, since Homer, who preceded him by many centuries,
> also speaks in his _Odyssey_ of the Atlantes—who are our Atlanteans—and of
> their island. Therefore the tradition was older than the bard of Ulysses.
> The Atlantes and the Atlantides of Mythology are based upon the Atlantes
> and the Atlantides of History. Both Sanchuniathon and Diodorus have
> preserved the histories of those heroes and heroines, however much their
> accounts may have become mixed up with the mythical element.
> 
> In our own day we witness the extraordinary fact that such comparatively
> recent personages as Shakspere and William Tell are all but denied, an
> attempt being made to show one to be a _nom de plume_, and the other a
> person who never existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful
> Races—the Lemurians and the Atlanteans—have been merged into and
> identified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the
> same patronymic.
> 
> Herodotus speaks of the Atlantes—a people of Western Africa—who gave their
> name to Mount Atlas: who were vegetarians, and “whose sleep was never
> disturbed by dreams”; and who, moreover,
> 
>     Daily cursed the sun at his rising and at his setting because his
>     excessive heat scorched and tormented them.
> 
> These statements are based upon moral and psychic facts and not on
> physiological disturbance. The story of Atlas gives the key to this. If
> the Atlanteans never had their sleep disturbed by dreams, it is because
> that particular tradition is concerned with the earliest Atlanteans, whose
> physical frame and brain were not yet sufficiently consolidated, in the
> physiological sense, to permit the nervous centres to act during sleep.
> With regard to the other statement—that they daily “cursed the sun”—this
> again had nothing to do with the heat, but with the moral degeneration
> that grew with the Race. It is explained in our Commentaries.
> 
> _They [the sixth sub‐race of the Atlanteans] used magic incantations even
> against the Sun_—
> 
> failing in which they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited
> with the power of calling down the Moon, as Greek history assures us. The
> Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and
> wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the Gods. Thence the same
> traditions, taking form in the _Bible_, about the antediluvian giants and
> the Tower of Babel, and found also in the _Book of Enoch_.
> 
> Diodorus records another fact or two: the Atlanteans boasted of possessing
> the land in which all the Gods had received their birth; as also of having
> had Uranus for their first King, he being also the first to teach them
> Astronomy. Very little more than this has come down to us from antiquity.
> 
> The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old
> Continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one
> symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and
> a universal knowledge, and especially _a thorough acquaintance with the
> depths of the ocean_; for both Continents bore Races instructed by
> _divine_ Masters, and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas,
> where they now slumber until their next reäppearance above the waters.
> Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is Calypso—the
> “watery deep.” Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the
> ocean, and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean
> floors. The _Odyssey_ makes of him the guardian and the “sustainer” of the
> huge pillars that separate the Heavens from the Earth. He is their
> “supporter.” And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and
> Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps,(1776) Atlas
> is said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the Earth, and join
> his brother Iapetus in the depths of Tartarus.(1777) Sir Theodore Martin
> is right in interpreting this allegory as meaning:
> 
>     [Atlas] standing on the solid floor of the inferior hemisphere of
>     the universe, and thus carrying at the same time the disc of the
>     earth and the celestial vault—the solid envelope of the superior
>     hemisphere.(1778)
> 
> For Atlas is Atlantis, which supports the new continents and their
> horizons on its “shoulders.”
> 
> Decharme, in his _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, expresses a doubt as to
> the correctness of Pierron’s translation of the Homeric word ἕχει by
> _sustinet_, as it is not possible to see:
> 
>     How Atlas can support or bear at once several pillars situated in
>     various localities.
> 
> If Atlas were an individual it would be an awkward translation. But, as he
> personifies a Continent in the West said to support Heaven and Earth at
> once,(1779) _i.e._, the feet of the giant tread the earth while his
> shoulders support the celestial vault—an allusion to the gigantic peaks of
> the Lemurian and Atlantean Continents—the epithet “supporter” becomes very
> correct. The term _conservator_ for the Greek word ἕχει, which Decharme,
> following Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning φυλάσσει and
> ἐπιμελεῖταυ, does not render the same sense.
> 
> The conception was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running
> along the terrestrial border or disc. These mountain peaks plunged their
> roots into the very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads
> heavenward, their summits being lost in the clouds. The ancient continents
> had more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now
> two of the dwarfed relics of the two lost Continents, were thrice as lofty
> during the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the
> Lybians called Mount Atlas the “Pillar of Heaven,” according to
> Herodotus,(1780) and Pindar qualified the later Ætna as the “Celestial
> Pillar.”(1781) Atlas was an inaccessible island peak in the days of
> Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been raised. It is the
> sole Western relic which survives, _independent_, belonging to the
> Continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell,(1782) for
> Australia is now part of the Eastern Continent. Proud Atlas, according to
> Esoteric tradition, having sunk one‐third of its size into the waters, its
> two parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.
> 
> This again was known to the priests of Egypt and to Plato himself, the
> solemn oath of secrecy, which extended even to the mysteries of Neo‐
> Platonism, alone preventing the whole truth from being told.(1783) So
> secret was the knowledge of the last island of Atlantis, indeed—on account
> of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants, the last direct
> descendants of the Gods or Divine Kings, as it was thought—that to divulge
> its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. Theopompus says as
> much in his ever‐suspected _Meropis_, when he speaks of the Phœnicians as
> being the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western coast of
> Africa; who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk their own
> vessels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of them.
> 
> There are Orientalists and Historians—and they form the majority—who,
> while feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the _Bible_,
> and some of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the
> “immorality” in the Pantheons of India and Greece.(1784) We may be told
> that before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the same
> disgust; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented—“those
> miserable stories of the poets,” as Euripides phrases it.(1785)
> 
> But there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who
> knew that there was more than one key to Theogonic Symbolism, it was a
> mistake to have expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if
> the educated and learned Philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom
> under the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the
> greatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well as the
> origin of all things—not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the
> dead‐letter was religion; the interpretation—sacrilege. And this dead‐
> letter could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an
> example was given him by his Gods. But to the Philosopher—especially the
> Initiate—Hesiod’s _Theogony_ is as historical as any history can be. Plato
> accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges
> permitted.
> 
> The fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranus for their first king, and that
> Plato commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great
> Continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranus, shows that there were
> continents before Atlantis and kings before Uranus. For Neptune, to whose
> lot the great Continent fell, finds on a small island only one human
> couple made of clay—_i.e._, the first physical _human_ man, whose origin
> began with the last sub‐races of the Third Root‐Race. It is their daughter
> Clito that the God marries, and it is his eldest son Atlas who receives
> for his part the mountain and the continent which were called by his
> name.(1786)
> 
> Now all the Gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindû Pantheon and
> the Rishis, were the septiform personations (1) of the Noumena of the
> Intelligent Powers of Nature; (2) of Cosmic Forces; (3) of Celestial
> Bodies; (4) of Gods or Dhyân Chohans; (5) of Psychic and Spiritual Powers;
> (6) of Divine Kings on Earth, or the incarnations of the Gods; and (7) of
> Terrestrial Heroes or Men. The knowledge how to discern among these seven
> forms the one that is intended, belonged at all times to the Initiates,
> whose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and allegorical
> system.
> 
> Thus while Uranus, or the Host representing this celestial group, reigned
> and ruled over the Second Race and their then Continent, Cronus or Saturn
> governed the Lemurians; and Jupiter, Neptune(1787) and others fought in
> the allegory for Atlantis, which was the whole Earth in the day of the
> Fourth Race. Poseidonis, or the last island of Atlantis—the “third step”
> of Idas‐pati, or Vishnu, in the mystic language of the Secret Books—lasted
> till about 12,000 years ago.(1788) The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in
> claiming that it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas,
> where “the Gods were born”—_i.e._, “incarnated.” But it was after their
> fourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human kings and
> rulers.
> 
> Diodorus speaks of Uranus as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either
> consciously or otherwise, the Continents; but as we have shown, Plato
> indirectly corrects the statement. The first astronomical teacher of men
> was Uranus, because he is one of the seven Dhyân Chohans of that Second
> Period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara, that of Svârochisha,
> among the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding Gods or Rishis of that
> race, we find Jyotis,(1789) the teacher of Astronomy (Jyotisha), one of
> the names of Brahmâ. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the Sky,
> Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of Astronomy. Uranus gave
> birth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they, personified by
> Saturn‐Cronus, who mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who _fell into
> generation_, when “creation by _will_ was superseded by physical
> procreation,” they needed Uranus no more.
> 
> And here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence
> of the last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the _Nineteenth
> Century_, “The Greater Gods of Olympos,” the ideas of the general public
> about Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer
> is credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as,
> “the true key to the Homeric conception,” whereas this “key” is merely a
> “blind.”
> 
>     [Poseidon] is indeed essentially of the earth earthy ... strong
>     and self‐asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive—
> 
> but this is because he symbolizes the Spirit of the Fourth Root‐Race, the
> Ruler of the Seas, that Race which lives above the surface of the
> seas,(1790) which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon,
> the race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan, and the one‐eyed
> Cyclops. Though Zeus reign over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules,
> and who is the true key to the triad of the Cronid Brothers, and to our
> _human_ races. Poseidon and Nereus are _one_; the former the Ruler or
> Spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion, the latter,
> after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the _living_ Race, Nereus, its
> Spirit, reïncarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Âryan Race; and this is
> what the Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or even dimly
> perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the “artfulness” of
> Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we arrive only through
> the patronymic of the Nereids!
> 
> Thus the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their
> speculations to the exoteric images of Mythology and to lose sight of
> their inner meaning; and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of Mr.
> Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of
> our age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured
> scholars to whom England has given birth. Grecian literature has been the
> beloved study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public
> affairs to enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek
> scholarship, which will make his name famous through coming generations.
> At the same time, as his sincere admirer, the present writer cannot but
> feel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound
> erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which
> _must_ then shine upon the whole question of Symbolism and Mythology,
> judge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which
> he has often criticized from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that
> future day it will be perceived that the Esoteric key to the mysteries of
> the Christian as well as of the Grecian Theogonies and Sciences, is the
> Secret Doctrine of the pre‐historic nations, which, along with others, he
> has denied. It is that doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all
> human religious speculations, or even of so‐called “revelations,” and it
> is this teaching which infuses the spirit of life into the lay figures on
> the Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a
> younger man, his admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be
> crowned by the discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes
> the golden hours of his declining years in futile disputations with that
> giant free‐thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of
> exoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorant Literalism. These two
> great controversialists are equally blind to the true Esoteric meaning of
> the texts which they hurl at each other’s heads like iron bullets, while
> the world alone suffers by such controversies; since the one helps to
> strengthen the ranks of Materialism, and the other those of blind
> Sectarianism of the dead‐letter. And now we may return once more to our
> immediate subject.
> 
> Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our
> commentators. The _power of names_ is great, and has been known since the
> first men were instructed by the _Divine_ Masters. And as Solon had
> studied it, he translated the “Atlantean” names into names devised by
> himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to
> bear in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old
> Greek writers contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the
> great Continent and others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has
> become customary to take them all as referring to the latter only, but
> that this is incorrect is evident from the incompatibility of the various
> statements as to the size, etc., of “Atlantis.”
> 
> Thus, in the _Critias_, Plato says, that the plain surrounding the city
> was itself surrounded by mountain chains, and the plain was smooth and
> level, and of an oblong shape, lying north and south, three thousand
> stadia in one direction and two thousand in the other; they surrounded the
> plain by an enormous canal or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and
> 1,250 miles in length.(1791)
> 
> Now in other places the entire size of the _island_ of Poseidonis is given
> as about the same as that assigned here to the “_plain_ around the city”
> alone. Obviously, one set of statements refers to the great Continent, and
> the other to its last remnant—Plato’s island.
> 
> And, again, the standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million
> men; its navy as 1,200 ships and 240,000 men. Such statements are quite
> inapplicable to a small island state, of about the size of Ireland!
> 
> The Greek allegories give to Atlas, or Atlantis, seven daughters—seven
> sub‐races—whose respective names are Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope,
> Merope, Alcyone, and Celæno. This ethnologically—as they are credited with
> having married Gods and with having become the mothers of famous heroes,
> the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides
> have become the seven Pleiades (?). In Occult Science the two are
> connected with the destinies of nations, those destinies being shaped by
> the past events of their early lives according to Karmic Law.
> 
> Three great nations claimed in antiquity a direct descent from the kingdom
> of Saturn or Lemuria, confused with Atlantis several thousands of years
> before our era; and these were the Egyptians, the Phœnicians
> (Sanchuniathon), and the old Greeks (Diodorus, after Plato). But the
> oldest civilized country of Asia—India—can likewise be shown to claim the
> same descent. Sub‐races, guided by Karmic Law or destiny, repeat
> unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother‐races. As the
> comparatively fair Brâhmans—when invading India with its dark‐coloured
> Dravidians—have come from the North, so the Âryan Fifth Race must claim
> its origin from northern regions. The Occult Sciences show that the
> founders, the respective groups of the seven Prajâpatis, of the Root‐Races
> have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find:
> 
>     _He who understands the age of Dhruva_(_1792_)_ who measures 9090
>     mortal years, will understand the times of the Pralayas, the final
>     destiny of nations, O Lanoo._
> 
> Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should
> locate its great Progenitors and Saints in Ursa Major, a _northern
> constellation_. It is 70,000 years, however, _since the Pole of the Earth
> pointed to the further end of Ursa Minor’s tail_; and many more thousand
> years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the
> constellation of Ursa Major.
> 
> The Âryan Race was born and developed in the far North, though after the
> sinking of the Continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further South
> into Asia. Hence Prometheus is the son of Asia, and Deucalion, his son,
> the Greek Noah—he who created men out of the stones of mother Earth—is
> called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of
> Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the snows.(1793)
> 
> Greece had her _Hyperborean_ as well as her _Southern_ Apollo. Thus nearly
> all the Gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phœnicia, as well as those of other
> Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the
> close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological
> evolution had been completed.(1794) All the “fables” of Greece would be
> found to be built on historical facts, if that history had only passed to
> posterity unadulterated by myths. The “one‐eyed” Cyclopes, the giants
> fabled as the sons of Cœlus and Terra—three in number, according to
> Hesiod—were the last three sub‐races of the Lemurians, the “one‐eye”
> referring to the wisdom‐eye;(1795) for the two front eyes were fully
> developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The
> allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of
> Ithaca himself was saved by putting out the eye of Polyphemus with a fire‐
> brand, is based upon the psycho‐physiological atrophy of the “third eye.”
> Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though
> a “Sage” in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the
> opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.(1796) His adventure with the latter—a
> savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the
> _Odyssey_—is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the
> Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual
> and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of
> the Third Race to lose their all‐penetrating _spiritual_ eye. The other
> allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclopes to avenge the death of his
> son Asclepius, does not refer to the three sub‐races represented by the
> three sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian
> Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the “wisdom‐eye.” The former
> have left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the South as much as in
> the North; the latter were confined to the North solely. Thus Apollo—pre‐
> eminently the God of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration,
> killed them—his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal—and
> hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions.(1797)
> Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean God is the Sun personified,
> which during the course of the Sidereal Year—25,868 years—changes the
> climates on the Earth’s surface, making frigid regions of tropical, and
> _vice versâ_. Psychically and spiritually his significance is far more
> important. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his “Greater Gods of
> Olympos”:
> 
>     The qualities of Apollo (jointly with Athenê) are impossible to be
>     accounted for without repairing to sources, which lie beyond the
>     limit of the traditions most commonly explored for the elucidation
>     of the Greek mythology.(1798)
> 
> The history of Latona (Leto), Apollo’s mother, is most pregnant in various
> meanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving
> birth to the Sun, Apollo, Phœbus, etc. She is born in the Hyperborean
> countries, wherein all the inhabitants were priests of her son,
> celebrating his resurrection and descent to their country every nineteen
> years at the renewal of the lunar cycle.(1799)  Latona is the Hyperborean
> Continent, and its Race—geologically.(1800)
> 
> When the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and
> divine—Apollo and Athene transforming themselves into the form of “birds,”
> the symbol and glyph of the higher divinities and angels—then the bright
> God assumes divine creative powers. Apollo becomes the personification of
> seership, when he sends the astral double of Æneas to the battle
> field,(1801) and has the gift of appearing to his seers without being
> visible to other persons present,(1802) a gift, however, shared by every
> high Adept.
> 
> The King of the Hyperboreans was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the North
> Wind, and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe—the
> Atlantean Race—the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, personifying
> the seven sub‐races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches(1803)
> allegorizes the history of the two Continents. The wrath of the “Sons of
> God,” or of “Will and Yoga,” at seeing the steady degradation of the
> Atlanteans was great;(1804) and the destruction of the children of Niobe
> by the children of Latona—Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom
> and purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes
> changes in the Earth’s axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms—is thus
> very clear.(1805) The fable about the never‐ceasing tears of Niobe, whose
> grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain—Atlantis covered with
> water—is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the
> daughter of one of the Pleiades, or Atlantides, the grand‐daughter of
> Atlas therefore,(1806) because she represents the last generations of the
> doomed Continent.
> 
> A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous
> influence on antiquity. He adds:
> 
>     If these mythical names are mere allegories, then all that they
>     have of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real
>     tradition—however altered—then the ancient history is wholly their
>     history.(1807)
> 
> So much so, that all ancient writings—prose and poetry—are full of the
> reminiscences of the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first _physical_ Races, though
> the Third and the Fourth in number in the evolution of Fourth Round
> Humanity on our Globe. Hesiod records the tradition about the men of the
> Age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash‐wood and who had hearts
> harder than diamond. Clad in bronze from head to foot, they passed their
> lives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength,
> invincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the
> poet.(1808) Such were the giants of the first physical Races.
> 
> The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in _Yasna_, ix. 15.
> Tradition maintains that the “Sons of God,” or the great Initiates of the
> Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge to rid the Earth of all the
> Sorcerers among the Atlanteans. The said verse addresses Zarathushtra as
> one of the “Sons of God.” It says:
> 
>     Thou, O Zarathushtra, didst make all demons [Sorcerers], who
>     before roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the
>     earth [helped them to submersion].
> 
> The Lemurians, and also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two
> distinct classes—the “Sons of Night” or Darkness, and the “Sons of the
> Sun” or Light. The old books tell us of terrible battles between the two,
> when the former, leaving their land of Darkness, whence the Sun departed
> for long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and “tried to
> wrench the Lord of Light” from their better‐favoured brothers of the
> equatorial regions. We may be told that the Ancients knew nothing of the
> long night of six months’ duration in the polar regions. Even Herodotus,
> more learned than the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six
> months in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew
> well that there was a country in the North where the year was divided into
> a day and night each of six months’ duration, for Pliny distinctly says
> so.(1809) They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a
> distinction between the two. The former inhabited the Palus Mæotis—between
> 45° and 50° latitude. Plutarch explains that they were but a _small
> portion_ of a _great nation_ driven away by the Scythians—which nation
> stopped near the Tanais, after _having crossed Asia_.
> 
>     These warlike multitudes lived formerly on the ocean shores, in
>     dense forests, and _under a tenebrous sky_. There the pole is
>     almost touching the head, there _long nights and days divide the
>     year_.(1810)
> 
> As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor:
> 
>     Sow in the morning, reap at noon, gather their fruits in the
>     evening, and store them during the night in their caves.(1811)
> 
> Even the writers of the _Zohar_ knew this fact, as it is written:
> 
>     In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old [or the Ancient], we learn ...
>     there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst
>     others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it
>     is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day,
>     or in which at least the night continues only some instants.(1812)
> 
> The island of Delos, the Asteria of Greek Mythology, was never in Greece,
> for this country, in that day, was not yet in existence, not even in its
> molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country
> or an island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece.
> Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern Seas. One calls
> it Basilea, or “Royal”;(1813) the other, Pliny, names it Osericta,(1814) a
> word which, according to Rudbeck,(1815) had
> 
>     A significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island
>     of the Divine Kings or God‐kings—
> 
> or again the “Royal Island of the Gods,” because the Gods were born there,
> _i.e._, the Divine Dynasties of the Kings of Atlantis proceeded from that
> place. Let Geographers and Geologists seek for it among that group of
> islands discovered by Nordenskiöld on his “Vega” voyage in the Arctic
> regions.(1816) The Secret Books inform us that _the climate has changed in
> those regions more than once_, since the first men inhabited those now
> almost inaccessible latitudes. They were a Paradise before they became
> Hell; the dark Hades of the Greeks, and the cold Realm of Shades where the
> Scandinavian Hel, the Goddess‐Queen of the country of the dead, “holds
> sway deep down in Helheim and Niflheim.” Yet it was the birthplace of
> Apollo, who was the brightest of Gods, in Heaven—astronomically—as he was
> the most enlightened of the Divine Kings who ruled over the early nations,
> in his human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the _Iliad_, wherein
> Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the God of
> the Four Races) and six times in human form,(1817) _i.e._, as connected
> with the Divine Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians.
> 
> It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries—which have now
> become uninhabitable—as well as the name given to “man” both dead and
> alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church Fathers
> for inventing a Hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead
> of a freezing locality.(1818)
> 
> It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the
> Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths—known to and communicating
> with the Greeks—who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants
> of their last sub‐races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root‐
> races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub‐race of Atlantis.
> Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name, it is averred,
> came from _pelagus_, the “great sea.” Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and
> allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same
> archaic tradition of men—or rather of nations—who were saved during the
> cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that
> the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, the Hindû Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun—the
> “Beloved of the Gods,” who rescued him from the flood in a canoe—or the
> Swedish Belgamer, for whom the Gods did the same in the North, are all
> identical as personages. But their legends have all sprung from the
> catastrophe which involved both the Continent and the Island of Atlantis.
> 
> The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in
> sorcery is no myth. Biblical events _are_ revealed indeed. But it is
> neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, nor
> by a divine finger tracing the record on tablets of stone, but simply
> through tradition _viâ_ Pagan sources. It was not surely the _Pentateuch_
> that Diodorus was repeating when he wrote about the Titans—the giants born
> of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who took to
> themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was
> Pherecydes quoting from _Genesis_ when giving details on those giants
> which are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the
> Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, a race which descended from
> the earliest giants, and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the
> birthplace of the first giants. The Commentaries on the Sacred Books
> explain that the said region was the far North, the Polar Lands now, the
> Pre‐Lemurian earliest Continent, embracing once upon a time the present
> Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.
> 
> But who were the Nephilim of _Genesis_ (vi. 4)? There were Palæolithic and
> Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the events recorded in the Book of
> the Beginnings. The theological tradition identifies these Nephilim with
> hairy men or satyrs, the latter being mythical in the Fifth Race, and the
> former historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races. We have stated
> elsewhere what the prototypes of these satyrs were, and have spoken of the
> bestiality of the early and later Atlantean Race. What is the meaning of
> Poseidon’s amours under such a variety of _animal_ forms? He became a
> dolphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive
> Theophane, etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and
> Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and
> others devote an enormous space to the meaning of the word Nephilim and
> explain very little. But Esoteric Records show these hairy creatures to be
> the last descendants of those Lemuro‐Atlantean Races, which begot children
> on female animals, of species now long extinct; thus producing dumb men,
> “monsters,” as the Stanzas have it.
> 
> Now Mythology, built upon Hesiod’s _Theogony_, which is but a poetized
> record of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants,
> called Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they
> were imprisoned by Cronus for their rebellion against him. All the three
> are endowed by myth with a hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter
> standing for races, the former for sub‐races and tribes. Bearing in mind
> that in Mythology every personage almost is a God or Demi‐god, and also a
> king or simple mortal in his second aspect,(1819) and that both stand as
> symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and
> sub‐races, the Esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says
> that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form
> several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to
> make room for another. The whole Globe is convulsed periodically; and has
> been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times.
> Yet, though the whole face of the Earth was transformed thereby each time,
> the conformation of the Arctic and Antarctic Poles has but little altered.
> The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and
> peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore Northern Asia is called
> the “Eternal or Perpetual Land,” and the Antarctic the “Ever‐living” and
> the “Concealed”; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other
> regions disappear and reäppear in turn, into and above the Great Waters.
> 
> From the first appearance of the great Continent of Lemuria, the three
> polar giants have been imprisoned in their circle by Cronus. Their gaol is
> surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated
> by Poseidon—or Neptune—hence by the seas, which they cannot cross; and it
> is in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three
> brothers languish. The _Iliad_ makes it Tartarus.(1820) When the Gods and
> Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus—the deity of the Fourth
> Race—the Father of the Gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants
> that they might help him to conquer the Gods and Titans, and to
> precipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria
> hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make
> room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.(1821)
> The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small
> scale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of
> the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate
> of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Râkshasas of Lankâ and the
> Bhârateans, the _mèlée_ of the Atlanteans and Âryans in their supreme
> struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds, or Peris, became,
> ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and
> still later the war between the Angels of God and the Angels of Satan.
> Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a
> small sub‐race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the
> Âryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the
> world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed
> thinking humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.
> 
> But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar—as it was
> that of Bailly and Voltaire—that Hesiod’s _Theogony_ is based upon
> historical facts,(1822) it becomes easier for the Occult Teachings to find
> their way into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these
> passages from Mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern
> learning in this Addendum.
> 
> Such symbols as are found in all the exoteric creeds are so many landmarks
> of pre‐historic truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the
> earliest human races, has become several times since then Hyperborean and
> Saturnine;(1823) thus showing the Golden Age and Reign of Saturn from
> multiform aspects. It was many‐sided in its character indeed—climatically,
> ethnologically and morally. For the Third, Lemurian Race must be
> physiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi‐sexual
> race; and the climate of its dwelling‐places and continents into that of
> an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and
> impurity. The cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by
> popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on
> its way through many nations, and through the countless minds which have
> added their own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a
> while the Greek interpretations, we may seek for some more corroborations
> of the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.
> 
> Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of Several
> Submerged Continents.
> 
> It may not be amiss—for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of
> a lost Miocene Atlantis into an “antiquated myth”—to append a few
> scientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely
> indifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit
> that, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems
> concerning the remote past is far more philosophical than _à priori_
> denial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.
> 
> Meanwhile two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with,
> may be pointed out as “confirming” certain passages in the letter of a
> Master, published in _Esoteric Buddhism_. The eminence of the authorities
> will not be questioned (we italicize the corresponding passages):
> 
>     Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 70.
> 
>     (1.)
> 
>     The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and isles) began
>     during the Miocene period ... and it culminated first in the final
>     disappearance of the largest continent, _an event coincident with
>     the elevation of the Alps_, and second with that of the last of
>     the fair islands mentioned by Plato.
> 
>     Extract from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.
> 
>     (1.)
> 
>     Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis—a continent or
>     archipelago of large islands occupying the area of the North
>     Atlantic? There is, perhaps, nothing unphilosophical in the
>     hypothesis. For since, as geologists state, “_The Alps have
>     acquired 4,000 and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of
>     their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene
>     epoch_” (Lyell’s _Principles_, p. 256, 2nd Ed.)—_a Post‐Miocene
>     depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into
>     almost abysmal depths_.(1824)
> 
>     Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 64, 65.
> 
>     (2.)
> 
>     Lemuria ... should no more be confounded with the Atlantis
>     Continent than Europe with America. Both sank and were drowned
>     with their high civilizations and “gods”; yet between the two
>     catastrophes a period of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuria
>     flourishing and ending her career just about that lapse of time
>     before the early part of the _Eocene_ age, since its Race was the
>     Third. Behold _the relics of that once great nation in some of the
>     flat‐headed aborigines of your Australia_.
> 
>     Extract from an article in the _Popular Science Review_, v. 18, by
>     Professor Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S., V.‐P.A.S.
> 
>     (2.)
> 
>     It would be premature to say, because no evidence has yet been
>     adduced, _that men may not have existed in the Eocene age_,
>     especially as it can be shown that _a race of men, the lowest we
>     know of, co‐exists with that remnant of the Eocene flora which
>     still survives on the continent and islands of Australia_.
> 
>     Extract from _The Pedigree of Man_, p. 81.
> 
>     Hæckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also
>     regards the _Australians as direct descendants of the Lemurians_.
>     Persistent forms of both [his Lemurian] stems are in all
>     probability still surviving, of the former in the Papuans and
>     Hottentots, of the latter in the _Australians_ and in one division
>     of the Malays.
> 
> With regard to a former civilization, of which a _portion_ of these
> degraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of
> Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology
> of the tribes, he writes:
> 
>     The statement that Australian civilization [?] indicates a higher
>     grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here [in the province
>     of religion] where everything resounds like the expiring voices of
>     a previous and richer age.... The idea that the Australians have
>     no trace of religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this
>     religion is certainly quite deteriorated.(1825)
> 
> As to Hæckel’s view of the relationship between the Australians and the
> Malays, as two branches of a common stock, he is in error when he classes
> the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a _mixed_ stock,
> resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub‐races with the
> seventh sub‐race of the Third Root‐Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of
> indirect Lemuro‐Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact—to those
> concrete thinkers who demand a _physical_ proof of Karma—that the lowest
> races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an
> extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that
> they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is
> taking place all over the Globe, among those races, whose “time is
> up”—among just those stocks, be it remarked, which Esoteric Philosophy
> regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is
> inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is _invariably_
> due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet,
> drunkenness, etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as
> offering an all‐sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the
> phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. Even the Materialist Lefèvre
> says:
> 
>     Nothing can save those that have run their course. It would be
>     necessary to extend their destined cycle.... _The peoples that
>     have been relatively most spared, those who have defended
>     themselves most valiantly, Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less
>     decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European
>     intrusion._(1826)
> 
> True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed, an instance of the
> operation of Cyclic Law, difficult to account for on materialist lines?
> Whence the “destined cycle” and the order here testified to? Why does this
> (Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their “appointed
> hour”? The answer that it is due to a “mental disproportion” between the
> colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not
> explain the sudden “checks to fertility” which so frequently supervene.
> The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most
> mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to
> recognize, with Occultists, that the true solution has to be sought for in
> a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lèfevre remarks:
> 
>     The time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three
>     great human types.
> 
> The time is before the Sixth Root‐Race dawns; the three types are the
> white (Âryan, Fifth Root‐Race), the yellow, and the African negro—with
> their crossings (Atlanto‐European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans,
> Australians, Polynesians, etc.—all are dying out. Those who realize that
> every Root‐Race runs through a gamut of seven sub‐races with seven
> branchlets, etc., will understand the “why.” The tide‐wave of incarnating
> Egos has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less
> senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some
> extraordinary and _unexplained_ statistics as to race extinction are given
> by de Quatrefages.(1827) No solution, except on Occult lines, is able to
> account for these.
> 
> But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what
> Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific
> Continents.
> 
> He writes in _Nature_:
> 
>     There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or
>     geological evidence at present accessible, to render untenable the
>     hypothesis that _an area of the Mid‐Atlantic or Pacific sea‐bed as
>     big as Europe_, should have been upheaved as high as Mont Blanc,
>     and have subsided again any time since the Palæozoic epoch, if
>     there were any grounds for entertaining it.(1828)
> 
> That is to say, then, that there is nothing to militate against _positive_
> evidence of the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological
> postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Berthold Seemann assures us in
> the _Popular Science Review_ that:
> 
>     The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing
>     these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they
>     have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of
>     several large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by great
>     oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present
>     floras of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to
>     assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a
>     continental connection between South‐Eastern Asia and Western
>     America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the
>     Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe
>     induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and
>     America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland,
>     Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in
>     fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to
>     Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests upon a solid historical
>     basis.... Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which
>     spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river‐banks (from
>     Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the
>     East. The West also furnished additions, and if at that period
>     these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the
>     bridge was already building, which, at a later period, was to
>     facilitate communication between the two continents in such a
>     remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western
>     Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of
>     Atlantis, then probably just [?] just rising above the
>     ocean.(1829)
> 
> And in another number of the same review(1830) Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, M.A.,
> F.L.S., in an article entitled “The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations,”
> alludes to the same subject:
> 
>     Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad
>     Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records speak
>     of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself
>     is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon
>     its surface prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a
>     sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the “Challenger”
>     has proved the existence of three long ridges(1831) in the
>     Atlantic Ocean,(1832) one extending for more than three thousand
>     miles, and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account
>     for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic
>     islands.(1833)...
> 
>     The submerged continent of _Lemuria_, in what is now the Indian
>     Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties
>     in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence
>     of a _Miocene Atlantis_ will be found to have a strong elucidative
>     bearing on subjects of greater interest [truly so!] than the
>     migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that
>     land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls,
>     not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal
>     migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call
>     instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial
>     inheritance of previously acquired experience.
> 
> At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and
> perish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful
> instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their
> progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now
> submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.
> 
> In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace’s _Island
> Life_—a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of
> animals, etc.—Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes:
> 
>     By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of
>     different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the
>     distribution of life upon the land as we now see it has been
>     accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative
>     positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we
>     must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New
>     Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at
>     some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of
>     1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as
>     “utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at
>     our command” [! !], the supposition that temperate Europe and
>     temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been
>     connected, except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic Circles, and
>     that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth
>     have ever been united.
> 
>     Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the
>     chief features of existing life distribution, without bridging the
>     Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help
>     thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily
>     explained by admitting the former existence of the connection
>     between the coast of Chili and Polynesia(1834) and Great Britain
>     and Florida, shadowed by the sub‐marine banks which stretch
>     between them. Nothing is urged that renders these more direct
>     connections impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the
>     floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The
>     route by which [according to the Anti‐Atlantean and Lemurian
>     hypotheses of Wallace] the floras of South America and Australia
>     are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable
>     obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of
>     subtropical American plants in our Eocenes necessitates a
>     connection more to the South than the present 1,000 fathom line.
>     Forces are unceasingly acting, and there is _no reason why an
>     elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean
>     should cease to act until a continent is formed_. They have acted
>     and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological
>     time, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits
>     repeatedly that sea‐beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms, and
>     islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to
>     suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it
>     seems to me, to again quote from _Island Life_, “utterly
>     gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our
>     command.”(1835)
> 
> The “father” of English Geology—Sir Charles Lyell—was a uniformitarian in
> his views of continental formation. We find him saying:
> 
>     Professors Unger (_Die Versunkene Insel Atlantis_) and Heer
>     (_Flora Tertiaria Helvetiæ_) have advocated on botanical grounds
>     _the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of
>     the tertiary period_, as affording the only plausible explanation
>     that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of
>     Central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America.
>     Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the
>     American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan,
>     inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the
>     migration of species, to which the community of types in the
>     Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe
>     is due, took place when there was an overland communication from
>     America to Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth
>     parallels of latitude, or south of Behring’s Straits, following
>     the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may
>     have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or
>     Postpliocene, antecedently to the Glacial epoch, to Amoorland, on
>     the East coast of Northern Asia.(1836)
> 
> The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to
> avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too apparent to
> escape notice. _If the botanical evidences stood alone_, scepticism would
> be partially reasonable; but in this case all branches of Science converge
> to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater
> errors than it would be exposed to by the admission of our two now
> invisible Continents. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of
> the Mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years
> ago.(1837) We have Professor Huxley’s authority for saying that there is
> no _à priori_ improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting
> the belief. But now that the _positive evidence is brought forward_, will
> that eminent Scientist admit the corollary?
> 
> Touching on the problem in another place Sir Charles Lyell tells us:
> 
>     Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much
>     information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost
>     all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former
>     successive destruction and renovation of the world [_continental_,
>     not cosmic, catastrophes]. We learn from Plutarch that this was
>     the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the
>     fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of
>     the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian
>     systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every
>     successive world. The returns of great catastrophes were
>     determined by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year, a
>     cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets,
>     and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence
>     they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out.... We
>     learn particularly from the _Timæus_ of Plato that the Egyptians
>     believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and
>     deluges. The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of
>     catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world.
>     These, they taught, were of two kinds—the cataclysm, or
>     _destruction by deluge_, which sweeps away the whole human race,
>     and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of
>     nature, and the _ecpyrosis_, or _conflagration_, which destroys
>     the globe itself [submarine volcanoes]. From the Egyptians they
>     derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state
>     of innocence [nascent simplicity of the first sub‐races of each
>     Root‐Race]. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no
>     longer bear with the wickedness of men [degeneracy into magical
>     practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans], and a shock of
>     the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; after which calamity,
>     Astræa again descended on the earth to renew the golden age [dawn
>     of a new Root‐Race].(1838)
> 
> Astræa, the Goddess of Justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the
> Earth, when the Gods are said to abandon it and to be taken up again into
> heaven by Jupiter. But, no sooner does Zeus carry from Earth Ganymedes—the
> object of _lust_, personified—than the Father of the Gods throws down
> Astræa on the Earth again, on which she falls _upon her head_. Astræa is
> Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain
> significance, and one which gives the key to the occult meaning. But it is
> inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and
> their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All
> these are connected with the periodical renovations of the Earth, with
> regard to its continents—even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It
> has already been shown that while the South Pole is the “Pit” (or the
> infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is
> geographically the First Continent; while astronomically and
> metaphorically the Celestial Pole, with its Pole Star in Heaven, is Meru,
> or the Seat of Brahmâ, the Throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the
> Gods forsook the Earth and were said to ascend into Heaven, the ecliptic
> had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to
> descend from the North Pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in
> conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great
> festival in commemoration of that Annus Magnus, of which Plutarch spoke.
> Since that Year—40,000 years ago—there has been a retrograde motion of the
> equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the
> vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian
> Mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic Hymn on
> the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole Esotericism of the
> event. Pluto, in the Pit, carries off Eurydice, bitten by the Polar
> Serpent. Then Leo, the Lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is “in the
> Pit,” or below the South Pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him,
> and when her head, down to the waist, is below the southern horizon—she is
> inverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge
> constellations; and Aldebaran—he who follows, or _succeeds_ the daughters
> of Atlas, or the Pleiades—looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from
> this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were
> commenced. The student has to remember also, that when
> Ganymedes—Aquarius—is raised to heaven—or above the horizon of the North
> Pole—Virgo or Astræa, who is Venus‐Lucifer, descends head downwards below
> the horizon of the South Pole, or the Pit; which Pit, or the Pole, is also
> the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by
> placing these facts together; no more can be said. Lyell remarks:
> 
>     The connection between the doctrine of successive catastrophes and
>     repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race,
>     is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined. For,
>     in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by
>     the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.... In
>     like manner in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests
>     of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of
>     the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that
>     _the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of
>     the inhabitants_.(1839)
> 
> True; but was it not owing to the fact that all Esoteric truths were given
> out to the public by the Initiates of the temples _under the guise of
> allegories_? “Jupiter,” is merely the personification of that immutable
> Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward tendency of each Root‐Race after
> attaining the zenith of its glory.(1840) We must admit allegorical
> teaching, unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske’s singularly dogmatic
> opinion that a myth:
> 
>     Is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural
>     phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the
>     ingenuity is wasted [!!] which strives to detect in myths the
>     remnants of a refined primeval science—but an explanation.
>     Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of
>     allegory [how does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry
>     pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve
>     their purpose.(1841)
> 
> We venture to say the language of the initiated few was far more “plain,”
> and their Science‐Philosophy far more comprehensive and satisfying alike
> to the physical and _spiritual_ wants of man, than even the terminology
> and system elaborated by Mr. Fiske’s master—Herbert Spencer. What,
> however, is Sir Charles Lyell’s “explanation” of the “myth”? Certainly, he
> in no way countenances the idea of its “astronomical” origin, as asserted
> by some writers.
> 
> The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell’s
> solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes from the
> absence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from
> a strong bias to the uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,(1842)
> he attempts to trace the Atlantis “tradition” to the following sources:
> 
> (1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is
> assumed in this way to punish immoral races.
> 
> (2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one.
> 
> (3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia—a
> continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus
> be handed down the ages.
> 
> (4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not
> inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.
> 
> An ingenious “explanation,” as all such are! But proving a negative is
> proverbially a difficult task. Students of Esoteric Science, who know what
> the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such
> laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always
> able to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of
> Science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic
> changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic who is not a
> specialist, will recognize the immense difficulty of explaining away the
> cumulative evidences—namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological,
> traditional, botanical, and even biological—in favour of former continents
> now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the
> cumulative force of the evidence is almost invariably lost sight of.
> 
> In the _Theosophist_ we wrote:
> 
>     We have as evidence the most ancient traditions of various and
>     wide‐separated peoples—legends in India, in ancient Greece,
>     Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of
>     Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages,
>     and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world—the
>     Sanskrit literature of India—there is an agreement in saying,
>     that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large
>     Continent, which by a geological upheaval was engulfed by the
>     sea(1843) [Lemuria]. And it is our firm belief ... that most, if
>     not all, of the islands from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia,
>     are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent. Both
>     Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the
>     ocean, and which, since the memory of man, never had nor could
>     have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have
>     yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their
>     respective countries extended far, far into the Sea; that there
>     were in the world but two immense continents, one inhabited by
>     yellow, the other by dark men; and that the Ocean, by command of
>     the Gods, and to punish them for their incessant quarrelling,
>     swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical fact that New
>     Zealand, and Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from
>     each other of between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according
>     to every testimony, neither these nor any other intermediate
>     islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society, Fiji, Tahitian,
>     Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands,
>     ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated
>     with each other before the arrival of Europeans; yet they one and
>     all maintain that their respective countries extended far toward
>     the West, on the Asian side. Moreover with very small differences,
>     they all speak dialects evidently of the same language, and
>     understand each other with little difficulty, have the same
>     religious beliefs and superstitions, and pretty much the same
>     customs. And as few of the Polynesian islands were discovered
>     earlier than a century ago, and the Pacific Ocean itself was
>     unknown to Europe until the days of Columbus, and these islanders
>     have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the
>     Europeans first set foot on their shores, it seems to us a logical
>     inference that our theory is nearer to the truth than any other.
>     Chance would have to change its name and meaning, were all this
>     due but to chance alone.(1844)
> 
> Professor Schmidt, writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former
> Lemuria, declares:
> 
>     A great series of animal‐geographical facts is explicable only on
>     the hypothesis of the former existence of a Southern Continent of
>     which the Australian mainland is a remnant.... [The distribution
>     of species] points to the vanished land of the south, where
>     perhaps the home of the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may
>     also be looked for.(1845)
> 
> Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his _Malay Archipelago_, arrives at the following
> conclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand:
> 
>     The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly
>     that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do
>     essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific
>     Continent, although some of them may never have been actually
>     joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only
>     before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably
>     before the extreme south‐eastern portion of Asia was raised above
>     the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of Borneo
>     and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent
>     formation.(1846)
> 
> According to Hæckel:
> 
>     Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the
>     human race; but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the South of
>     Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian
>     Ocean.(1847)
> 
> In one sense Hæckel is right as to Lemuria—the “cradle of the human race.”
> That Continent _was_ the home of the first _physical_ human stock—the
> later Third‐Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were far less
> consolidated and physiologically quite different. Hæckel makes Lemuria
> extend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to Upper
> India.
> 
> Professor Rütimeyer, the eminent Palæontologist, asks:
> 
>     Need the conjecture that the almost exclusively graminivorous and
>     insectivorous marsupials, sloths, armadilloes, ant‐eaters and
>     ostriches, once possessed an actual point of union in a Southern
>     Continent of which the present flora of Terra del Fuego and
>     Australia must be the remains—need this conjecture raise
>     difficulties at a moment when, from their fossil remains, Heer
>     restores to our sight the ancient forests of Smith’s Sound and
>     Spitzbergen?(1848)
> 
> Having now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two
> questions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up
> the more striking isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention
> of Esoteric Ethnologists—the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria is so widely
> accepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard,
> however, to the former, it is found that:
> 
> (1) The Miocene floræ of Europe have their most numerous and striking
> analogues in the floræ of the United States. In the forests of Virginia
> and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip‐trees, evergreen oaks, plane
> trees, etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora, term for term.
> How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an Atlantic
> Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe? The proposed
> “explanation” to the effect that the transition was by way of Asia and the
> Aleutian Islands is a mere uncalled‐for theory, obviously upset by the
> fact that a large number of these floræ only appear _East_ of the Rocky
> Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a Trans‐Pacific migration. They
> are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.
> 
> (2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a _striking
> similarity_ to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians (Littré). Monuments
> have been exhumed in Central America, which bear representations of
> undoubted _negro_ heads and faces. How are such facts to be accounted for
> except on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N.W. Africa was once
> connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.
> 
> (3) According to Farrar the “_isolated_ language” of the Basques has no
> affinities with the other languages of Europe,(1849) but with:
> 
>     The aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent [America]
>     and those alone.(1850)
> 
> Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
> 
> Palæolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure
> Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a
> much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to
> prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The “mysterious”
> affinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India
> will be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental
> formations and shiftings.
> 
> (4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured
> symbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet
> was induced by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early
> men of the Canary Islands and America.(1851)
> 
> The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the
> Atlanteans. This fact will account for the _great stature_ evidenced by
> their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners, the
> Cro‐Magnon Palæolithic men.
> 
> (5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along
> the Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of
> volcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every
> side by that vast watery space. Frequent questions of this kind led
> finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place
> in the first quarter of the present century. Some Geologists maintained
> that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the
> ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies
> from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these
> groups—including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verde—the
> remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united
> Africa with America. The latter men of Science supported their hypothesis
> by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient “myths.” Hoary
> “superstitions,” such as the fairy‐like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of
> the Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them
> mythoi connected with the Peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical
> Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species, showing either a
> previous connection between America and the remaining groups of the
> islands—the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the
> Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long—found more serious
> consideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly’s book had
> been published several years, that the theory has had a greater chance
> than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils found on the _Eastern
> Coast_ of South America have now been _proved_ to belong to the Jurassic
> formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of
> _Western_ Europe and _Northern_ Africa. The geological structure of both
> coasts is also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller
> marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of the South American,
> the Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great.
> All such facts are bound to bring Naturalists to the conclusion that there
> has been, in distant pre‐historic ages, a continent which extended from
> the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands
> and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
> 
> (6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South America,
> North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and
> admits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis.
> But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna of the
> (now) isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna
> dredged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe?
> Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West
> Indian animal groups? Again:
> 
>     When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared,
>     one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, or nearly all,
>     belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are
>     common to both continents ... indicating that they radiated from a
>     common centre [Atlantis].(1852)
> 
> The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large
> proportion of the once “missing links” connecting it with inferior forms
> have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into
> Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces?
> Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the Old World, how did
> such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance
> on the migration hypothesis?
> 
> Again:
> 
>     Buffon had ... remarked the repetition of the African in the
>     American fauna, how, for example, the llama is a juvenescent and
>     feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represents
>     the lion of the Old World.(1853)
> 
> (7) The following quotation runs with No. 2, but its significance is such
> and the writer cited is so authoritative, that it deserves a place to
> itself:
> 
>     With regard to the primitive dolichocephalæ of America, I
>     entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are
>     nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the
>     Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which
>     Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian‐Atlantidæ. We find one
>     and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the
>     African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast
>     which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the
>     Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a
>     reddish‐brown.(1854)
> 
> If, then, Basques and Cro‐Magnon Cave‐Men are of the same race as the
> Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the
> aborigines of America. This is the conclusion necessitated by the
> independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages. The
> Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.
> 
> (8) The sea‐soundings undertaken by H.M.S. “Challenger” and the “Dolphin,”
> have established the fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in
> length, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the Atlantic,
> extends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving round
> near Cape de Verde, and running in a south‐easterly direction along the
> West African coast. This elevation averages some 9,000 feet in height, and
> rises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the
> ocean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a once
> massive piece of land have been discovered.(1855)
> 
>     The inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could
>     never have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the
>     deposition of sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the
>     contrary, must have been carved by agencies acting above the
>     water‐level.(1856)
> 
> It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed knitting Atlantis
> to South America, somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa near
> Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with Spain is not
> unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly.(1857) Whether the latter existed
> or not, is of no consequence, in view of the fact that what is now N.W.
> Africa was—before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the
> Gibraltar connection—an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can
> be raised as to how the migration of the European fauna, etc., took place.
> 
> Enough has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is
> needless, in view of the manner in which the subject has already been
> developed on the lines of Esoteric Knowledge, to swell the mass of
> testimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive
> writers of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions
> of the Occultist, who awaits in patience the dawn of the coming day:
> 
>     We are but beginning to understand the past; one hundred years ago
>     the world knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum; nothing of the
>     lingual tie that binds together the Indo‐European nations; nothing
>     of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the
>     tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow‐
>     headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous
>     civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and
>     Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is
>     advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that one hundred years
>     from now, the great museums of the world may not be adorned with
>     gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the
>     libraries of the world shall contain translations of its
>     inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the
>     human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the
>     thinkers of to‐day.(1858)
> 
> And now to conclude.
> 
> We have concerned ourself with the ancient records of the nations, with
> the doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records
> are the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first
> sight, seem out of place in this Volume. But they are necessary in truth.
> In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose
> very origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than
> inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more
> than pre‐historic races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject
> matter as it would be if only the philosophy and evolution of one special
> race, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine was the common property of the
> countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which
> history refuses to deal, and to which Esoteric Teachings assign dates
> incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and
> evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of
> Time, and that even which is historic—_i.e._, that which is found
> scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature—is,
> in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of
> observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the
> ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject
> as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well‐
> known historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an
> abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every
> condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every
> nation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical
> system and its fundamental traditions—that he can be made to see that so
> many streams of the same water must have had a common source from which
> they started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast
> their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress
> behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their
> fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every Religion and
> Philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along and comparing
> them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth
> and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the
> foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said:
> 
>     Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and
>     all will be clear.
> 
> The public has hitherto had access to, and has heard but one side, or
> rather the one‐sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men,
> whose _primâ facie_ propositions or respective premises differ widely, but
> whose final conclusions are the same—the men of Science and Theology. And
> now our readers have an opportunity of hearing the other, and so of
> learning the defendants’ justification and the nature of our arguments.
> 
> If the public is to be left to its old opinions—namely, on one side, that
> Occultism, Magic, the legends of old etc., are all the outcome of
> ignorance and superstition; and on the other, that everything outside the
> orthodox groove is the work of the devil—what will be the result? In other
> words, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for
> the last few years, the present work would have had but a poor chance of
> impartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed—and by many will
> still be proclaimed—a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised
> in, and based on the air; built of soap‐bubbles, bursting at the slightest
> touch of serious reflection, with no foundation to stand upon. Even the
> ancient “superstitious and credulous” classical writers have no word of
> reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols
> themselves fail to yield a hint of the existence of such a system. Such
> would be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that
> the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an
> Esoteric History of the world is based on fact; that though hitherto
> unknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned—because
> they have never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints
> thrown out by the ancient classics—it is still no fairy tale, but an
> actuality; then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more
> such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some
> great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they are but the
> silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are
> unreachable without a new key, is borne out by too many proofs to be
> easily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the
> history of Freemasonry.
> 
> In his _Maçonnerie Occulte_, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian
> Mason, rightly or wrongly reproaches the English Masons with having
> materialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient
> Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the
> craft, the name of “Free Masonry” and “Free Masons.” The mistake is due,
> he says, to those who connect Masonry with the _building_ of Solomon’s
> Temple. He derides the idea, and says:
> 
>     The Frenchman knew well, when he adopted the title of Freemason,
>     that it was no question of building the smallest wall, but that,
>     initiated into the Mysteries veiled under the name of Freemasonry,
>     which could only be the continuation or the renovation of the
>     ancient Mysteries, he was to become a “Mason” after the manner of
>     Apollo or Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated
>     poets, when speaking of the _foundation of a city_, meant thereby
>     the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, God of reasoning,
>     and Apollo, God of hidden things, presented themselves as masons
>     before Laomedon, Priam’s father, to help him to build the city of
>     Troy—that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion.(1859)
> 
> Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical
> writers. Therefore, if an attempt had been made to show that, for
> instance, Laomedon was the founder of a branch of Archaic Mysteries, in
> which the earth‐bound material soul, the Fourth Principle, was personified
> in Menelaus’ faithless wife, the fair Helen, and if Ragon had not come to
> corroborate what we asserted, we might have been told that no classical
> author speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a _city_, not
> founding an _Esoteric Worship_ or _Mysteries_. Who are those left now,
> save a few Initiates, who understand the language and correct meaning of
> such symbolical terms?
> 
> But though we have pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our
> thesis, there still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most
> important among several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this
> could hardly be helped. Wedged in between theological chronology and that
> of the Geologists, backed by all the materialistic Anthropologists, who
> assign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own theories
> alone—what could the writer do except what she has done? Since Theology
> places the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the World’s Creation only 5890 years ago;
> and since the accurate researches by the methods of “exact” Science, have
> led the Geologists and Physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our
> Globe between ten million and one thousand million of years(1860) (a
> _trifling_ difference, verily!); and since the Anthropologists, to vary
> their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man, ask for between
> 25,000 and 500,000 years—what can one who studies the Occult Doctrine do,
> but bravely present the Esoteric calculations before the world?
> 
> But to do this, corroboration by even a few “historical” proofs has been
> necessary, though all know the real value of the so‐called “historical
> evidence.” For, whether man appeared on Earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years
> ago, can make no difference to profane history, since it only begins about
> a couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it
> grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually‐
> destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect in
> which the average reader has been brought up for exact Science, even that
> short Past would remain meaningless, unless the Esoteric Teachings were
> corroborated and supported on the spot—_whenever possible_—by references
> to historical names of a so‐called historical period. This is the only
> guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start
> among the, to him, unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the
> pre‐historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped
> that the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly
> bringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the archaic and
> quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having
> sorely jumbled up, without order or method, the various and widely‐
> separated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method
> had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.
> 
> To accomplish the proposed task, the writer has had to resort to the
> rather unusual means of dividing each Volume into three Parts; the first
> of which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the
> Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this Globe. In treating of Cosmogony
> and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that
> on religion, from the very earliest, has ever been based entirely on
> fiction, that none was the object of special revelation, and that it is
> dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth; finally, that no
> human‐born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity,
> can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom
> that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost
> sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only; and that bosom is in
> the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century, Emanuel
> Swedenborg. There lies the Heart of Nature, that shrine whence issued the
> early races of primeval humanity, and which is the cradle of _physical_
> man.
> 
> Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of
> the archaic, earliest Races, contained in their hitherto secret scriptural
> Records. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they
> pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of
> more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of Esoteric
> interpretation; and even this has only been partially accomplished. The
> work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to
> accomplish. Our main concern has been simply to prepare the soil. This, we
> trust we have done. These two Volumes only constitute the work of a
> pioneer who has forced his way into the well‐nigh impenetrable jungle of
> the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made
> in felling and uprooting the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice,
> and conceited ignorance, so that these two Volumes should form for the
> student a fitting prelude for other works. Until the rubbish of the ages
> is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these pages are
> dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in
> the Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends
> upon the reception with which Volumes I and II shall meet at the hands of
> Theosophists and Mystics, whether the last Volume will ever be published.
> 
> SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
> 
> THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.
> 
> END OF VOLUME II.
> 
> [Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]
> 
> FOOTNOTES
> 
>     1 See _Genesis_ ii. 19. Adam is formed in verse 7, and in verse 19 it
>       is said: “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the
>       field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see
>       what he would call them.” Thus man was created _before_ the animals;
>       for the animals mentioned in chapter i are the signs of the Zodiac,
>       while the man, “male and female,” is not man, but the Host of the
>       Sephiroth, Forces, or Angels, “made in his [God’s] image and after
>       his likeness.” The Adam, man, is not made in that likeness, nor is
>       it so asserted in the _Bible_. Moreover, the Second Adam is
>       Esoterically a septenary which represents seven men, or rather
>       groups of men. For the first Adam, the Kadmon, is the synthesis of
>       the _ten_ Sephiroth. Of these, the upper Triad remains in the
>       Archetypal World as the future “Trinity,” while the seven lower
>       Sephiroth create the manifested material world; and this septennate
>       is the Second Adam. _Genesis_, and the mysteries upon which it was
>       fabricated, came from Egypt. The “God” of the 1st chapter of
>       _Genesis_ is the Logos, and the “Lord God” of the 2nd chapter the
>       Creative Elohim, the lower Powers.
> 
>     2 Thus saith Pymander: “This is the mystery that to this day was
>       hidden. Nature being mingled with the Heavenly Man [Elohim, or
>       Dhyânis], brought forth a wonder ... seven Men, all males and
>       females [Hermaphrodite] ... according to the nature of the seven
>       Governors” (ii. 29), or the seven Hosts of the Pitris or Elohim, who
>       projected or created him. This is very clear, but yet, see the
>       interpretations of even our modern theologians, men supposed to be
>       intellectual and learned. In the _Theological and Philosophical
>       Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian [?] Neoplatonist_, a work
>       compiled by John David Chambers, of Oriel College, Oxford, the
>       translator wonders “for whom these seven Men are intended?” He
>       solves the difficulty by concluding that, as “the original pattern
>       Man [Adam Kadmon of _Genesis_ i] was masculine‐feminine, ... the
>       seven may signify the succeeding patriarchs named in _Genesis_” (p.
>       9). A truly theological way of cutting the Gordian knot!
> 
>     3 George Smith’s _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 103.
> 
>     4 Compare _Zohar_, _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, _Idra Suta_, 2928, Franck,
>       _La Kabbale_, p. 205.
> 
>     5 _Siphra Dtzenioutha._
> 
>     6 As it is now asserted that the Chaldæan tablets, which give the
>       allegorical description of Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, even
>       to the legend of the Tower of Babel, were written “before the time
>       of Moses” (Smith’s _Chaldean Account of Genesis_), how can the
>       _Pentateuch_ be called a “revelation”? It is simply another version
>       of the same story.
> 
>     7 _Philosophumena_, v. 7; Miller’s edition, p. 98.
> 
>     8 _Ibid._, p. 108.
> 
>     9 P. 86.
> 
>    10 See Pliny, iv, c. 12; Strabo, 10; Herodotus, vii, c. 109; Pausanias,
>       vii, c. 4, etc.
> 
>    11 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 82.
> 
>    12 See _Bund._, 79, 12.
> 
>    13 By “original” we mean the Amshaspend, called “Zarathushtra, the lord
>       and ruler of the Vara made by Yima in that land.” There were several
>       Zarathushtras or Zertusts, the _Dabistan_ alone enumerating
>       thirteen; but these were all reincarnations of the first one. The
>       last Zoroaster was the founder of the Fire‐temple of Azareksh, and
>       the writer of the works on the primeval sacred Magian religion
>       destroyed by Alexander.
> 
>    14 In India called a “Day of Brahmâ.”
> 
>    15 x. 86.
> 
>    16 See Volcker, _Mythological Geography_, pp. 145 to 170.
> 
>    17 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 47.
> 
>    18 It is to be remarked, however, that Mr. Wallace does not accept Mr.
>       Sclater’s idea, and even opposes it. Mr. Sclater supposes a land or
>       continent formerly uniting Africa, Madagascar, and India but not
>       Australia and India; and Mr. A. R. Wallace shows, in his
>       _Geographical Distribution of Animals_ and _Island Life_, that the
>       hypothesis of such a land is quite uncalled for on the alleged
>       zoological grounds. But he admits that a much closer proximity of
>       India and Australia did certainly exist, and at a time so very
>       remote that it was “certainly pre‐tertiary,” adding in a private
>       letter that “no name has been given to this supposed land.” Yet the
>       land did exist, and was of course “pre‐tertiary,” for Lemuria, if we
>       accept this name for the third Continent, had perished before
>       Atlantis fully developed, and Atlantis had sunk and its chief
>       portions disappeared before the end of the Miocene period.
> 
>    19 See _Esoteric Buddhism_.
> 
>    20 One more “coincidence”:
> 
>       “Now it is proved that in geologically recent times, this region of
>       North Africa was in fact a peninsula of Spain, and that its union
>       with Africa (proper) was effected on the North by the rupture of
>       Gibraltar, and on the South by an upheaval to which the Sahara owes
>       its existence. The shores of this former sea of Sahara are still
>       marked by the shells of the same Gastropoda that live on the shores
>       of the Mediterranean.” (Prof. Oscar Schmidt, _Doctrine of Descent
>       and Darwinism_, p. 244.)
> 
>    21 iii. fol. 10a.
> 
>    22 A. Winchell, Professor of Geology, _World‐Life_, p. 369.
> 
>    23 Mr. Charles Gould, late geological surveyor of Tasmania, in
>       _Mythical Monsters_, p. 84.
> 
>    24 Sir Charles Lyell, who is credited with having “happily invented”
>       the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, to mark the three divisions
>       of the Tertiary Age, ought really to have settled upon some
>       approximate length for his “mind‐offspring.” Having left the
>       duration of these periods, however, to the speculations of
>       specialists, the greatest confusion and perplexity are the result of
>       that happy thought. It seems like a hopeless task to succeed in
>       quoting a single set of figures from one work, without the risk of
>       finding it contradicted by the same author in an earlier or a
>       subsequent volume. Sir William Thomson, one of the most eminent
>       among the modern authorities, has changed his opinion about half‐a‐
>       dozen times upon the age of the Sun and the date of the
>       consolidation of the Earth’s crust. In Thomson and Tait’s _Natural
>       Philosophy_, we find only ten million years allowed since the time
>       when the temperature of the Earth permitted vegetable life to appear
>       on it. (App. E _et seq._; also _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin._, xxiii. Pt.
>       1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled.) Mr. Darwin gives Sir William
>       Thomson’s estimate as “a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 200 millions
>       of years since the consolidation of the crust.” (See Ch. Gould, _op.
>       cit._, p. 83.) In the same work (_Nat. Phil._) 80 millions are given
>       from the time of incipient incrustation to the present state of the
>       world. And in his last lecture, as shown elsewhere, Sir William
>       Thomson declares (1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions
>       of years! Meanwhile, basing his arguments as to the limits of the
>       age of the Sun’s heat, on figures previously established by Sir
>       William Thomson, Mr. Croll allows 60 millions of years since the
>       beginning of the Cambrian period. This is hopeful for the lovers of
>       _exact_ knowledge. Thus, whatever figures are given by Occult
>       Science, they are sure to be corroborated by those of some one among
>       the modern men of Science who are considered as authorities.
> 
>    25 See _Proceedings_, Royal Society, London, xxviii. 281.
> 
>    26 Gould, _Mythical Monsters_, p. 91.
> 
>    27 Only forty‐nine Shlokas out of several hundred are here given, and
>       not every verse is translated verbatim, a periphrasis being
>       sometimes used for the sake of clearness and intelligibility, where
>       a literal translation would be quite unintelligible.
> 
>    28 The idea and the spirit of the sentence only is here given, as a
>       verbal translation would convey very little to the reader.
> 
>    29 The Fourth Globe, or our Earth. All the glosses on the translation
>       of the text of the Stanzas and Commentaries are the writer’s. In
>       some places they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the
>       Hindû standpoint; but in the meaning attached to them in Trans‐
>       Himâlayan Esotericism they are correct. In every case the writer
>       takes any blame upon herself. As she has never claimed personal
>       infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave
>       much to be desired, particularly in the very abstruse cases where
>       too deep metaphysic is involved. The teaching is offered as it is
>       understood; and seeing that there are seven keys of interpretation
>       to every symbol and allegory, a meaning which may not be suitable
>       from, say, the psychological or astronomical aspect, will
>       nevertheless be found quite correct from the physical or
>       metaphysical.
> 
>    30 The Planetary Spirits.
> 
>    31 Loka Chakshus.
> 
>    32 The Planets.
> 
>    33 According to Dr. A. Wilder’s learned definition, Genesis, γένεσις,
>       is not generation, but “_a coming out of the eternal_ into the
>       Cosmos and Time”; “a coming from _esse_ into _exsistere_,” or from
>       “Be‐ness” into “Being”—as a Theosophist would say.
> 
>    34 For a clearer explanation of the origins, as contained in the
>       Esotericism of the _Bhagavad Gita_, see the Notes thereon published
>       in _The Theosophist_ for February, March and June, 1887, Madras.
> 
>    35 See the Sephirothal Tree.
> 
>    36 _Zohar_, _Idra Suta_, Sec. VII.
> 
>    37 J. B. Alden; New York, 1888: ii. 432, 434.
> 
>    38 It has been repeatedly stated that the Serpent is the symbol of
>       wisdom and of Occult knowledge. “The Serpent has been connected with
>       the god of wisdom from the earliest times of which we have any
>       historical notice,” writes C. Staniland Wake. “This animal was the
>       especial symbol of Thoth or Taut ... and of all those gods, such as
>       Hermes [?] and Seth who can be connected with him. This is true also
>       of the third member of the primitive Chaldæan triad, Hea or Hoa.”
>       According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, “the most important titles of this
>       deity refer to ‘his functions as the source of all knowledge and
>       science.’ Not only is he ‘the intelligent fish,’ but his name may be
>       read as signifying both ‘life’ and a ‘serpent’ [an initiated Adept],
>       and he may be considered as ‘figured by the great serpent which
>       occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the
>       black stones recording Babylonian benefactions.’ ” (_The Great
>       Pyramid_, p. 75). Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Esmun and Kneph, are
>       all deities with the attributes of the serpent, says Dupuis. They
>       are all _healers_, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of
>       _enlightenment_. The crown formed of an asp, the Thermuthis belongs
>       to Isis, Goddess of Life and Healing. The _Upanishads_ have a
>       treatise on the _Science of Serpents_—in other words, the Science of
>       Occult Knowledge; and the Nâgas of the exoteric Buddhist are not
>       “the fabulous creatures, of the nature of serpents ... being
>       superior to man, and regarded as protectors of the law of Buddha,”
>       as Schlagintweit believes, but real living men, some superior to men
>       by virtue of their Occult Knowledge, and the _protectors of Buddha’s
>       law_, inasmuch as _they interpret his metaphysical tenets
>       correctly_, others inferior _morally_ as being “black magicians.”
>       Therefore it is truly declared that Gautama Buddha “is said to have
>       taught them a more philosophical religious system than to men, who
>       were not sufficiently advanced to understand it at the time of his
>       appearance” (_ibid._, p. 72).
> 
>    39 Compare the _Symbols of the Bonzes_.
> 
>    40 The Mandragora is the Mandrake of the _Bible_, of Rachel and Leah.
>       The roots of the plant are fleshy, hairy, and forked, representing
>       roughly the limbs, the body, and even head of a man. Its magical and
>       mysterious properties have been proclaimed in fable and play from
>       the most archaic ages. From Rachel and Leah, who indulged in
>       witchcraft with them, down to Shakespeare, who speaks of
>       “shrieking”—
> 
>       “Like mandrakes torn out of the earth
>       That living mortals, hearing them, run mad”
> 
>       —the mandragora was _the_ magic plant _par excellence_.
> 
>       These roots are without any apparent stalk, large leaves growing out
>       of the head of the root, like a gigantic crop of hair. They present
>       little similitude to man when found in Spain, Italy, Asia Minor, or
>       Syria, but on the Isle of Candia, and in Karamania near the city of
>       Adan, they have a wonderfully human form, and are very highly prized
>       as amulets. They are also worn by women as a charm against
>       sterility, and for other purposes. They are especially effective in
>       “Black Magic.”
> 
>    41 The Sun.
> 
>    42 Earth.
> 
>    43 Copernicus wrote his theories on the “Revolution of the Heavenly
>       Bodies” in the sixteenth century, and the _Zohar_, even if compiled
>       by Moses de Leon in the thirteenth century, states that:
> 
>       “In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old (or, the Ancient), we learn ...
>       that the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle; that some
>       are on top, the others below; that ... there are some countries of
>       the earth which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these
>       have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are
>       countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the
>       night continues only some instants.” (_Zohar_, iii, fol. 10a, quoted
>       in Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 139.)
> 
>    44 See also the 21st Fargard of the _Vendídád_ on the celestial
>       militia.
> 
>    45 _Idolat._, II. 373.
> 
>    46 Science teaches that Venus receives from the Sun twice as much light
>       and heat as the Earth. Thus this Planet, precursor of the dawn and
>       the twilight, the most radiant of all the Planets, is said to give
>       the Earth one‐third of the supply she receives, and has two parts
>       left for herself. This has an Occult as well as an astronomical
>       meaning.
> 
>    47 “As it is above, so below,” is the fundamental axiom of Occult
>       Philosophy. As the Logos is seven‐fold, _i.e._, throughout Kosmos it
>       appears as seven Logoi under seven different forms, or, as taught by
>       learned Brâhmans, “each of these is the central figure of one of the
>       seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom Religion”; and, as the
>       seven principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of
>       Prajnâ, or Consciousness, are allied to seven states of Matter and
>       seven forms of Force, the division must be the same in all that
>       concerns the Earth.
> 
>    48 Venus is thus ♀, the Earth ♁.
> 
>    49 In the Esoteric Philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite;
>       hence the “bearded” Venus in mythology.
> 
>    50 Therefore, putting aside its religio‐metaphysical aspect, the Cross
>       of the Christians is symbolically far more phallic than the Pagan
>       Svastika. Compare vol. i. pp. 34, 35.
> 
>    51 The ansated cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus,
>       “signifying the existence of _parturient energy_ in the sexual
>       sense, and this was one of the attributes of Isis, the Mother, of
>       Eve, Hauvah, or Mother‐Earth, and was so recognized among all the
>       ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression.” (From a
>       modern Kabalistic MS.)
> 
>    52 See Moore’s _Hindû Pantheon_.
> 
>    53 Athenæus shows that the first letter of Satan’s name was represented
>       in days of old by an arc and crescent; and some Roman Catholics,
>       kind, good men, would persuade the public that it is in honour of
>       Lucifer’s crescent‐like horns that Mussulmans have chosen the
>       crescent for their national arms. Venus, ever since the
>       establishment of Roman Catholic dogmatism, has been identified with
>       Satan and Lucifer, or the Great Dragon, contrary to all reason and
>       logic. As shown by symbologists and Astronomers:
> 
>       “The association between the serpent and the idea of darkness had an
>       astronomical foundation. The position which the constellation Draco
>       at one time occupied showed that the Great Serpent was the ruler of
>       the night. This constellation was formerly at the very centre of the
>       heavens, and is so extensive that it was called the Great Dragon.
>       Its body spreads over seven signs of the Zodiac; and Dupuis, who
>       sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference to the celestial
>       serpent, says, ‘It is not astonishing that a constellation so
>       extended should be represented by the author of that book as a great
>       dragon with seven heads, who drew the third part of the stars from
>       heaven and cast them to the earth.’ ” (Staniland Wake, _The Great
>       Pyramid_, p. 79; Dupuis, iii. 255.)
> 
>       Only Dupuis never knew _why_ Draco, once the pole‐star—the symbol of
>       Guide, Guru and Director—had been thus degraded by posterity. “The
>       Gods of our fathers are our devils,” says an Asiatic proverb. When
>       Draco ceased to be the “lode‐star,” the guiding sidereal divinity,
>       it shared the fate of all the fallen Gods. Seth and Typhon was at
>       one time, Bunsen tells us, “a great God universally adored
>       throughout Egypt, who conferred on the sovereigns of the 18th and
>       19th Dynasties the symbols of life and power. But subsequently, in
>       the course of the 20th Dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil
>       Demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all
>       the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.” The real
>       Occult reason will be given in these pages.
> 
>    54 _De Civitate Dei_, LXXI. viii.
> 
>    55 Shukra is the son of Bhrigu the great Rishi, and one of the Seven
>       Prajâpati, the founder of the Race of Bhârgavas, in which Parashu
>       Râma is born.
> 
>    56 This is a flat contradiction of Swedenborg, who _saw_, in “the first
>       Earth of the Astral World,” inhabitants dressed as are the peasants
>       in Europe; and on the Fourth Earth women clad as are the
>       shepherdesses in a _bal masqué_! Even the famous astronomer Huygens
>       laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have
>       species of beings identical with those who live on our Earth,
>       possessing the same figures, senses, brain‐power, arts, sciences,
>       dwellings, even to the same fabric for their wearing apparel!
>       (_Théorie du Monde._)
> 
>    57 This is a modern gloss. It is added to the old Commentaries for the
>       clearer comprehension of those disciples who study Esoteric
>       Cosmogony after having passed through Western learning. The earlier
>       Glosses are too redundant with adjectives and figures of speech to
>       be easily assimilated.
> 
>    58 “Beyond” the Great Range, means, in this case, India, as being the
>       Trans‐Himâlayan region for the Tibetan region.
> 
>    59 The term Pitris is used by us in these Shlokas to facilitate their
>       comprehension, but it is not so used in the original Stanzas, where
>       they have distinct appellations of their own, besides being called
>       “Fathers” and “Progenitors.”
> 
>    60 It is erroneous to take literally the _worship_ of the human
>       Bodhisattvas, or Manjushrî. It is true that, exoterically, the
>       Mahâyâna school teaches adoration of these without distinction, and
>       that Huien‐Tsang speaks of some disciples of Buddha as being
>       worshipped. But, Esoterically, it is not the disciple or the learned
>       Manjushrî _personally_ that received honours, but the divine
>       Bodhisattvas and Dhyâni‐Buddhas that animated (_amilakha_, as the
>       Mongolians say) the human forms.
> 
>    61 The author of this work is Augustus Le Plongeon. He and his wife are
>       well known in the United States for their untiring labours in
>       Central America. It is they who discovered the sepulchre of the
>       royal Kan Coh, at Cichen‐Itza. The author seems to believe and to
>       seek to prove that the Esoteric learning of the Âryans and the
>       Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, although certainly coëval
>       with Plato’s Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth Continent,
>       which was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria.
> 
>    62 More correctly _In Matrem Deorum_, _Oratio_ v.
> 
>    63 P. 143.
> 
>    64 These _seven caves_, _seven cities_, etc., etc., stand in every case
>       for the seven centres, or zones, upon which the seven primitive
>       groups of the first Root‐Race were born.
> 
>    65 The engraving is reproduced in the _Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas
>       and the Quiches_ on p. 134.
> 
>    66 See _Source of Measures_, p. 50‐53.
> 
>    67 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. pp. 300 _et seq._, for a proof of the
>       antiquity of the decimal system of figures.
> 
>    68 See _Masonic Review_, Cincinnati, June, 1886, Art. “The
>       Cabbalah.—No. VI,” p. 10.
> 
>    69 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>    70 _Ibid._, p. 11.
> 
>    71 See _Source of Measures_, pp. 276, _et seq._, App. VII.
> 
>    72 Art., _Masonic Review_, pp. 11, 12.
> 
>    73 In the Book _Al‐Chazari_, by Jehuda‐ha‐Levi, translated by Dr. D.
>       Cassel.
> 
>    74 Art. cited, pp. 12, 13.
> 
>    75 i. pp. 117 _et seq._
> 
>    76 Art. cited, p. 2.
> 
>    77 _Ibid._, p. 14.
> 
>    78 The appellation _Ak‐ad_ (or Akkadians) is of the same class as _Ad‐
>       m_, _Ha‐va_ (Eve) _Æd‐en_ (Eden); _Ak‐Ad_ meaning “Son of _Ad_,”
>       like the sons of Ad in Ancient Arabia. _Ad‐ad_, the “only one” and
>       the “first,” was the _Ad‐on_ or “Lord” of Syria and consort of _Ad‐
>       ar‐gat_ or Aster’t, the Syrian Goddess. And Gan‐Æden (Eden) or
>       Gandunia was Babylonia and Mesopotamia. In Assyrian _Ak_ meant
>       Creator, the letter _k_ being pronounced _kh_ (_ah_) gutturally.
>       According to Swedenborg’s mysticism Adam was not a man but a church
>       (?) of primitive light. In the _Vedas_, _Ad_‐iti is the primitive
>       light, the Âkâsha of the phenomenal world.
> 
>    79 Adam‐Jehovah, Brahmâ and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are
>       all symbols for primitive or initial _generative powers_ for the
>       purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are
>       Brahmâ‐Virâj and Mars—God and Planet. Water is the “blood” of the
>       Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and
>       Water. “It takes _earth_ and _water_ to create a _human_ soul,” says
>       Moses. Mars is identical with Kârttikeya, God of War (in one
>       sense)—which God is born of the Sweat of Shiva, Shiva‐gharmaja and
>       the Earth. In the _Mahâbhârata_ he is shown as born without the
>       intervention of a woman. And he is also called Lohita, the Red, like
>       Adam, and the other “first men.” Hence, the author of _The Source of
>       Measures_ is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other
>       Gods of like attributes), “being the _god of war_ and of
>       _bloodshed_, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one
>       of shedding of blood in conception for the first time.” Hence
>       Jehovah became later a fighting God, “Lord of Hosts,” and one who
>       commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh—or Cain, by permutation, who
>       _slew_ his (female) _brother_, whose “blood crieth from the ground,”
>       the _Earth_ having opened _her mouth_ to receive the _blood_.
>       (_Genesis_ iii.)
> 
>    80 Apollo Karneios is certainly a Greek transformation from the Hindû
>       Krishna‐Karna. Karna means radiant, and Karneios, which was a title
>       of Apollo with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant “Sun‐born.”
> 
>    81 Kumuda‐Pati.
> 
>    82 Pitri‐Pati.
> 
>    83 Budha, Mercury.
> 
>    84 The Moon.
> 
>    85 Ushanas‐Shukra, or Venus, is our Lucifer, the Morning‐Star, of
>       course. The ingenuity of this allegory in its manifold meanings is
>       great indeed. Thus Brihaspati (the Planet Jupiter), or
>       Brahmanaspati, is, in the _Rig Veda_, a deity who is the symbol and
>       the prototype of the _exoteric_ or ritualistic worship. He is
>       priest, sacrificer, suppliant, and the medium through which the
>       prayers of mortals reach the Gods. He is the Purohita (Family
>       Priest, or Court Chaplain) of the Hindû Olympus and the spiritual
>       Guru of the Gods. Soma is the Mystery God and presides over the
>       mystic and Occult nature in man and the Universe. Târâ, the priest’s
>       wife, who symbolizes the worshipper, prefers Esoteric truths to
>       their mere shell, exotericism; hence she is shown as carried off by
>       Soma. Now Soma is the sacred juice of that name, giving mystic
>       visions and trance revelations, the _result of which union_ is Budha
>       (Wisdom), Mercury, Hermes, etc.; that Science in short which to this
>       day is proclaimed by the Brihaspatis of Theology as Devilish and
>       Satanic. What wonder that by expanding the cycle of this allegory we
>       find Christian Theology espousing the quarrel of the Hindû Gods, and
>       regarding Ushanas (Lucifer), who helped Soma against that ancient
>       personification of ritualistic worship (Brahmanaspati, the Lord of
>       the Brâhmans, now become Jupiter‐Jehovah) as Satan, the “Enemy of
>       God”!
> 
>    86 As shown elsewhere, it is only the Heavenly Man, Adam‐Kadmon, of the
>       first chapter of _Genesis_, who is made “in the image and likeness
>       of God.” Adam of the second chapter is not said to be made in that
>       _image_ nor in the divine likeness, before he ate of the forbidden
>       fruit. The former Adam is the Sephirothal Host; the second Adam is
>       the mindless First human Root‐Race; the third Adam is the Race that
>       separated, whose eyes are opened.
> 
>    87 The Earth.
> 
>    88 Achyuta is an almost untranslatable term. It means that which is not
>       subject to fall or change for the worse: the Unfalling; and it is
>       the reverse of Chyuta, the Fallen. The Dhyânîs who incarnate in the
>       human forms of the Third Root‐Race and endow them with intellect
>       (Manas) are called the Chyuta for they fall into generation.
> 
>    89 This is perhaps the reason why, in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, we are told
>       that Brahmâ had communicated to Nârada in the beginning that all men
>       whatsoever, even Mlechchhas, outcasts and barbarians, might know the
>       true nature of Vâsudeva and learn to have faith in that Deity.
> 
>    90 See _Asiatic Researches_, i. 265.
> 
>    91 _Book of God_, 60.
> 
>    92 Shesha, who is also Ananta, the infinite, and the “Cycle of
>       Eternity” in Esotericism, is credited with having given his
>       astronomical knowledge to Garga, the oldest astronomer of India, who
>       propitiated him, and forthwith knew all about the Planets and how to
>       read omens.
> 
>    93 See _The History of Indian Literature_, p. 253, by Prof. A. Weber:
>       in Trübner’s Oriental Series.
> 
>    94 Even the Maya Indians of Guatemala had their Zodiac from untold
>       antiquity. And “primitive man acted in the same manner independently
>       of time or locality in every age,” observes a French writer.
> 
>    95 _Ibid._, p. 2.
> 
>    96 The _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, for the Kali Yuga 4986, by Chintamany
>       Raghauaracharya, son of the famous Government astronomer of Madras,
>       and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna Rao.
> 
>    97 Of years, 300 million years, or Three Occult Ages. The _Rig Veda_
>       has the same division. In the “Physician’s Hymn,” (X 97 1) it is
>       said that “the plants came into being _Three Ages_ (Triyugam) before
>       the gods” on our Earth. (See “Chronology of the Brâhmans” at the end
>       of this Stanza.)
> 
>    98 Forms.
> 
>    99 Minerals.
> 
>   100 Vegetation.
> 
>   101 Sarísripa, svapada.
> 
>   102 The Earth.
> 
>   103 These two must not be confused with the Seven Creations or Divisions
>       in each Kalpa. The _Primary_ and _Secondary_ Creations are here
>       meant.
> 
>   104 In _Bereschith Rabba_, Parscha IX.
> 
>   105 i. 31.
> 
>   106 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, Sayce, p. 39.
> 
>   107 Whence the identity of the ideas? The Chinese have the same
>       traditions. According to the commentator Kwoh P’oh, in the work
>       called _Shan‐Hai‐King_, “Wonders by Sea and Land,” a work which was
>       written by the historiographer Chung Ku from engravings on nine urns
>       made by the Emperor Yü (B.C. 2255), an interview is mentioned with
>       men _having two distinct faces on their heads_, before and behind,
>       monsters with bodies of goats and human faces, etc. Gould, in his
>       _Mythical Monsters_ (p. 27), giving the names of some authors on
>       Natural History, mentions _Shan‐Hai‐King_. “According to the
>       commentator Kwoh P’oh (A.D. 276‐324) this work was compiled three
>       thousand years before his time, or at seven dynasties’ distance.
>       Yang Sun of the Ming Dynasty (commencing A.D. 1368) states that it
>       was compiled by Kung Chia and Chung Ku (?)”—as stated above. “Chung
>       Ku ... at the time of the last emperor of the Hia dynasty (B.C.
>       1818), fearing that the emperor might destroy the books treating of
>       the ancient time, carried them in his flight to Yin.”
> 
>   108 Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, original edition, p. 25.
> 
>   109 _Qabbalah_, p. 246.
> 
>   110 From the mineral, vegetable, and animal remains.
> 
>   111 Rounds.
> 
>   112 Solar‐lunar.
> 
>   113 Gods and Planetary Spirits, especially the Ribhus. “The three
>       Ribhus” who also become “thrice seven” in number of their gifts.
> 
>   114 Remember the “winged races” of Plato, and the _Popol Vuh_ accounts
>       of the first human race, which could walk, fly, and see objects,
>       however distant.
> 
>   115 See _Mythical Monsters_, by Charles Gould.
> 
>   116 In the first volume of the lately published _Introduction à l’Étude
>       des Races Humaines_, by M. de Quatrefages, there is proof that since
>       the Post‐Tertiary Period and even before that time—since many Races
>       were already scattered during that Age on the face of the Earth—man
>       has not altered one iota in his physical structure. And if man was
>       surrounded for ages by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle
>       to another, which died out, which was reborn in other forms—so that
>       now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large or small,
>       contemporary with the man of that period—if, then, every animal has
>       been transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only
>       his antiquity, but that he is a _distinct Kingdom_. Why should he
>       alone have escaped transformation? Because, says de Quatrefages, the
>       weapon used by him, in his struggle with Nature, and the ever‐
>       changing geological conditions and elements, was “his _psychic
>       force_, not his physical strength or body,” as in the case of
>       animals. Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with
>       which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily
>       organization he will show himself the most helpless of creatures of
>       Earth. And as everything goes to prove that the human organism with
>       all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies existed
>       already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when
>       there was not yet _one single specimen of the now‐existing forms of
>       mammalia_, what is the unavoidable conclusion? Why this: Since all
>       the human races are of one and the same species, it follows that
>       this species is the _most ancient of all_ the now‐living mammalia.
>       Therefore it is the most stable and persevering of all, and was
>       already as fully developed as it is now when all the other mammalia
>       now known had not made even their first approach to appearance on
>       this Earth. Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who
>       gives thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism.
> 
>   117 They said.
> 
>   118 The Monads of the “presentments” of men of the Third Round, the huge
>       ape‐like forms.
> 
>   119 The Waters.
> 
>   120 In the Esoteric System the seven “principles” in man are represented
>       by seven letters. The first two are _more_ sacred than the four
>       letters of the Tetragrammaton.
> 
>   121 The Intermediate Spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached
>       Nirvâna, are said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the
>       Manvantaras.
> 
>   122 Explained elsewhere. The Three Fires, Pâvaka, Pavamâna, and Shuchi,
>       who had forty‐five Sons, who, with their three Fathers, and their
>       Father Agni, constitute the forty‐nine Fires. Pavamâna, Fire
>       produced by friction, is the parent of the “Fire of the Asuras”;
>       Shuchi, Solar Fire, is the parent of the “Fire of the Gods”; and
>       Pâvaka, Electric Fire, is the Father of the “Fire of the Pitris.”
>       (See _Vâyu Purâna_.) But this is an explanation on the material and
>       terrestrial plane. The Flames are evanescent and only periodical;
>       the Fires—eternal in their triple unity. They correspond to the
>       _four_ lower, and the _three_ higher human “principles.”
> 
>   123 The Suras, who become later the A‐Suras.
> 
>   124 Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas. In Devachan the higher element of the Manas
>       is needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the
>       disembodied Monad.
> 
>   125 _Catechism_, Book iii. Sec. 9.
> 
>   126 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Book I. Ch. V., closing Shloka. Fitzedward
>       Hall’s rendering of the text, in Wilson’s Translation, i. 88. Also
>       _Mânava‐Dharma Shâstra_, i. 30.
> 
>   127 This has in Esotericism a direct bearing upon the seven “principles”
>       of the manifested Brahmâ, or Universe, in the same order as in man.
>       Exoterically, it is only four “principles.”
> 
>   128 Wilson’s Translation, i. 81.
> 
>   129 Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to a great number
>       of inferior—_i.e._, more material—Spirits, or minor Gods, who are so
>       termed because they “war” with the higher ones; but they are no
>       devils.
> 
>   130 The same order of principles in man: Âtmâ (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul),
>       its vehicle, as Matter is the Vâhan of Spirit, and Manas (Mind), the
>       third, or the fifth microcosmically. On the _plane of personality_,
>       Manas is the first.
> 
>   131 Thus, says the Commentary, the saying, “by day the Gods are most
>       powerful, and by night the Demons,” is purely allegorical.
> 
>   132 This “thinking of oneself” as this, that, or the other, is the chief
>       factor in the production of every kind of psychic or even physical
>       phenomena. The words “whosoever shall say to this mountain be thou
>       removed and cast into the sea, and _shall not doubt_ ... that thing
>       will come to pass,” are no vain words. Only the word “faith” ought
>       to be translated by “Will.” Faith without Will is like a wind‐mill
>       without _wind_—barren of results.
> 
>   133 The same idea is found in the first four chapters of _Genesis_, with
>       their “Lord” and “God,” which are the Elohim and the Androgynous
>       Eloha.
> 
>   134 P. 398.
> 
>   135 P. 107.
> 
>   136 Spirits.
> 
>   137 Also Spirits.
> 
>   138 vi. 2‐6.
> 
>   139 But see the difficulties suggested later, in the works of various
>       Geologists, against this theory. Compare Sir R. S. Ball’s articles
>       in _Nature_, xxv, 79‐82, 103‐107, Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1881.
> 
>   140 The Rûpas.
> 
>   141 The Goddess who gave birth to these primordial monsters, in the
>       account of Berosus, was Thalatth, in Greek Thalassa, the “Sea.”
> 
>   142 See, for comparison, the account of creation by Berosus, as
>       preserved in Alexander Polyhistor, and the hideous beings born from
>       the two‐fold principle—Earth and Water—in the abyss of Primordial
>       Creation: Narâs (Centaurs, men with the limbs of horses and human
>       bodies), and Kinnaras (men with the heads of horses) created by
>       Brahmâ in the commencement of the Kalpa.
> 
>   143 For a similar admission see Prof. Lefèvre’s _Philosophy_, 481.
> 
>   144 xii. 10,308.
> 
>   145 The Esoteric Doctrine says that this “Cosmic Evolution” refers only
>       to our Solar System; while exoteric Hindûism makes the figures
>       refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole Universal System.
> 
>   146 Another point of disagreement. Occultism says that the astral
>       prototypes of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man
>       have taken that time (300 million years) to evolve, reforming out of
>       the cast‐off materials of the preceding Round, which, though very
>       dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatively ethereal as
>       compared with the materiality of our present middle Round. At the
>       expiration of these 300 million years, Nature, on the way to the
>       physical and material, down the arc of descent, begins with mankind
>       and works downwards, hardening or materializing forms as it
>       proceeds. Thus the fossils found in strata, to which an antiquity,
>       not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of millions of years, must be
>       ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Round, which,
>       while living, were far more ethereal than physical, _as we know the
>       physical_. That we perceive and disinter them as tangible forms, is
>       due to the process of materialization or crystallization referred
>       to, which took place subsequently, at the beginning of the Fourth
>       Round, and reached its maximum after the appearance of man,
>       proceeding parallel with his physical evolution. This alone
>       illustrates the fact that the degree of materiality of the Earth
>       changes _pari passu_ with that of its inhabitants. And thus man now
>       finds, as tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present
>       senses) ethereal forms of the lower kingdoms. The above Brâhmanical
>       figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and in the First
>       Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round.
> 
>   147 This difference and the change of cyphers in the last three triplets
>       of figures, the writer cannot undertake to account for. According to
>       every calculation, once the three hundred millions are subtracted,
>       the figures ought to stand, 1,655,884,687. But they are given as
>       stated in the Tamil calendar above‐named and as they were
>       translated. The school of the late Pandit Dayânand Sarasvati,
>       founder of the Ârya Samâj, gives a date of 1,960,852,987. See the
>       _Ârya Magazine_ of Lahore, the cover of which bears the words:
>       “Âryan era 1,960,852,987.”
> 
>   148 Vaivasvata Manu is the one Human Being—some versions add to him the
>       seven Rishis—who in the Matsya Avatâra allegory is saved from the
>       Deluge in a boat, like Noah in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivasvata
>       Manvantara would be the “post‐diluvian” period. This, however, does
>       not refer to the later “Atlantean” or Noah’s Deluge, nor to the
>       Cosmic “Deluge” or Pralaya of obscuration, which preceded our Round,
>       but to the appearance of mankind in the latter Round. There is a
>       great difference made, however, between the Naimitika, Occasional or
>       Incidental, Prâkritika, Elemental, Atyantika, the Absolute, and
>       Nitya, the Perpetual Pralaya; the latter being described as
>       “Brahmâ’s contingent recoalescence of the Universe at the end of
>       Brahmâ’s Day.” The question was raised by a learned Brâhman
>       Theosophist: “Whether there is such a thing as Cosmic Pralaya;
>       because, otherwise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and
>       he is Aja (unborn).” We cannot see why. The Logos is said to be born
>       only metaphorically, as the Sun is born daily, or rather a beam of
>       that Sun is born in the morning and is said to die when it
>       disappears, whereas it is simply reäbsorbed into the parent essence.
>       Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arûpa, Formless,
>       World. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one
>       hundred Years of Brahmâ, when the Universal Dissolution is said to
>       take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric Scriptures, the
>       Eternal Life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra,
>       the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up
>       all the waters of the Universe. “Thus fed, the seven Solar Rays
>       dilate to _seven suns_ and set fire to the whole Cosmos.”
> 
>   149 Since a Mahâ Yuga is the 1,000th part of a Day of Brahmâ.
> 
>   150 _Op. cit._, Art. “Geology.”
> 
>   151 _Ibid._ This allows a chance even to the Biblical “Adam Chronology”
>       of 6,000 years.
> 
>   152 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, 48.
> 
>   153 To the Silurian period as regards molluscs and animal life—granted;
>       but what do they know of man?
> 
>   154 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   155 _Ibid._, 49.
> 
>   156 Winchell, _World‐Life_, 180.
> 
>   157 _Op. cit._, 49.
> 
>   158 Wilson’s _Vishnu Purâna_, i. 51.
> 
>   159 i. 32.
> 
>   160 The atmosphere, or the air, the firmament.
> 
>   161 _Harivamsha_, i. 36.
> 
>   162 _Genesis_, i. 6‐9.
> 
>   163 Lords.
> 
>   164 They were told.
> 
>   165 _i.e._, the Jivas or Monads.
> 
>   166 Mother Earth or Nature.
> 
>   167 For external bodies.
> 
>   168 According to the wonderful chronology of Bentley, who wrote in days
>       when Biblical chronology was still undisputed; and also according to
>       that of those modern Orientalists who dwarf the Hindû dates as far
>       as they can.
> 
>   169 Now Shrî is the daughter of Bhrigu, one of the Prajâpatis and
>       Rishis, the chief of the Bhrigus, the “Consumers,” the Aërial Class
>       of Gods. She is Lakshmî, the wife of Vishnu, and she is Gaurî, the
>       “bride of Shiva,” and she is Sarasvatî, the “watery,” the wife of
>       Brahmâ, because the three Gods and Goddesses are one, under three
>       aspects. Read the explanation by Parâshara, in _Vishnu Purâna_ (I.
>       viii., Wilson’s Trans., i. 119), and you will understand. “The lord
>       of Shrî is the moon,” he says, and “Shrî is the wife of Nârâyana,
>       the God of Gods”: Shrî or Lakshmî (Venus) is Indrânî, as she is
>       Sarasvatî, for in the words of Parâshara: “Harî [or Îshvara, the
>       ‘Lord’] is all that is called male [in the Universe]; Lakshmî is all
>       that is termed female. There is nothing else than they.” Hence she
>       is female, and “God” is male Nature.
> 
>   170 Shrî is Goddess of, and herself “Fortune and Prosperity.”
> 
>   171 _Masonic Review_ (Cincinnati), June, 1886. Art. “The Cabbalah.—No.
>       VI,” 15‐17.
> 
>   172 The Moon‐Gods.
> 
>   173 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. vii., Wilson’s Trans., i. 101.
> 
>   174 See _Mahâbhârata_, _Mokshadharma Parvan_.
> 
>   175 Because, as the allegory shows, the Gods who had no personal merit
>       of their own, dreading the sanctity of those self‐striving
>       incarnated Beings who had become Ascetics and Yogîs, and thus
>       threatened to upset the power of the former by their _self‐acquired_
>       powers—denounced them. All this has a deep philosophical meaning and
>       refers to the evolution and acquirement of divine powers through
>       _self‐exertion_. Some Rishi‐Yogîs are shown in the _Purânas_ to be
>       far more powerful than the Gods. Secondary Gods or temporary Powers
>       in Nature (the Forces) are doomed to disappear; it is only the
>       spiritual Potentiality in man which can lead him to become one with
>       the INFINITE and the ABSOLUTE.
> 
>   176 The Triangle becomes a Pentagon (five‐fold) on Earth.
> 
>   177 Seth, as Bunsen and others have shown, is not only the “primitive
>       God” of the Semites—early Jews included—but also their “semi‐divine
>       ancestor.” For, says Bunsen (_God in History_, i. 233, 234): “The
>       Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man) must be considered as
>       originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim,
>       Adam’s father.” “According to Bunsen, the Deity (the God Seth) was
>       the _primitive god_ of Northern Egypt and Palestine,” says Staniland
>       Wake, in _The Great Pyramid_ (p. 61). And Seth became considered in
>       the later Theology of the Egyptians as an “evil demon,” says the
>       same Bunsen, for he is one with Typhon and one with the Hindû Demons
>       as a logical sequel.
> 
>   178 _I Corinth._, xv. 47.
> 
>   179 _Vâyu Purâna_; _Harivamsha_, 170.
> 
>   180 See Mather’s _Kabbalah Unveiled_, p. 302.
> 
>   181 Translated in Isaac Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 386.
> 
>   182 _Zohar_ iii., 135a, 292a, _Idra Zootah_. Brody Ed., _Idrah Zootah_.
> 
>   183 _Gen._ xxvi. 31 _et seq._; Myer’s _Qabbalah_, _ibid._
> 
>   184 _Zohar_, iii. 290a, Brody Ed. Indrah Zootah, quoted in Isaac Myer’s
>       _Qabbalah_, pp. 387, 388.
> 
>   185 ii. 5.
> 
>   186 Or Mind‐born.
> 
>   187 Fohat.
> 
>   188 “Huxley, supported by the most evident discoveries in Comparative
>       Anatomy, could utter the momentous sentence that the anatomical
>       differences between man and the highest apes are less than those
>       between the latter and the lowest apes. In relation to our
>       genealogical tree of man, the necessary conclusion follows that the
>       human race has _evolved gradually from the true apes_.” (_The
>       Pedigree of Man_, by Ernst Hæckel, translated by Ed. B. Aveling, p.
>       49.)
> 
>       What may be the scientific and logical objections to the opposite
>       conclusion—we would ask? The anatomical resemblances between Man and
>       the Anthropoids—grossly exaggerated as they are by Darwinists, as M.
>       de Quatrefages shows—are simply enough accounted for when the origin
>       of the latter is taken into consideration.
> 
>       “Nowhere, in the older deposits, is an ape to be found that
>       approximates more closely to man, or a man that approximates more
>       closely to an ape.”
> 
>       “The same gulf which is found to‐day between man and ape, goes back
>       with undiminished breadth and depth to the Tertiary period. This
>       fact alone is enough to make its untenability clear.” (Dr. F. Pfaff,
>       Prof. of Natural Science in the University of Erlangen.)
> 
>   189 See _Yoga Shâstra_, ii. 32.
> 
>   190 Voltaire.
> 
>   191 _Mânava‐Dharma Shâstra_, iii. 196.
> 
>   192 _Matsya_ and _Padma Purânas_ and Kullûka on the _Mânava‐Dharma
>       Shâstra_, iii. 195. We are quite aware that the _Vâyu_ and _Matsya
>       Purânas_ identify (agreeably to Western interpretation) the
>       Agnishvâtta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the
>       months; adding a fourth class—Kâvyas—cyclic years. But do not
>       Christian Roman Catholics identify their Angels with Planets, and
>       are not the Seven Rishis become the Saptarshis—a constellation? They
>       are Deities presiding over all the cyclic divisions.
> 
>   193 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, iii. 158, 159.
> 
>   194 Shll. 935, 936.
> 
>   195 The _Vâyu Purâna_ shows the region called Virâja‐loka inhabited by
>       the Agnishvâttas.
> 
>   196 Wilson, _ibid._, iii. 17. Note by Fitzedward Hall.
> 
>   197 _Loc. cit._, _ibid._
> 
>   198 See _Theosophist_, February, 1887, p. 360.
> 
>   199 See Wilson, ii. 26.
> 
>   200 See _Vâyu Purâna_.
> 
>   201 Chhâyâs.
> 
>   202 Or Amânasas.
> 
>   203 Thus.
> 
>   204 Complexion.
> 
>   205 Also.
> 
>   206 Creator.
> 
>   207 Phantoms.
> 
>   208 Image or shadow.
> 
>   209 This was hinted at in _Isis Unveiled_ (I. xxxviii.), though the full
>       explanation could not then be given: “The Pitris are not the
>       ancestors of the present living men, but those of the [first] human
>       kind or Adamic race; the spirits of _human_ races, which, on the
>       great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and
>       were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern
>       pigmies. In _Mânava‐Dharma Shâstra_ they are called the _Lunar_
>       ancestors.”
> 
>   210 See the “Laws of Manu”—_Mânava‐Dharma Shâstra_, iii. 203.
> 
>   211 “Sacred Books of the East,” Vol. IV, _The Zend‐Avesta_, Pt. I.
>       lviii, Trans. by James Darmesteter.
> 
>   212 Compare also what is said about Makara and the Kumâras in connection
>       with the Zodiac.
> 
>   213 Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John’s vision, referred to
>       in his Apocalypse, about, “the great red dragon having seven heads
>       and _ten_ horns, and seven crowns upon his heads,” whose “tail drew
>       the _third part_ of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the
>       earth.” (Ch. xii.)
> 
>   214 See _Harivamsha_, 932.
> 
>   215 The verse “did cast them to the earth,” plainly shows its origin in
>       the grandest and oldest allegory of the Âryan Mystics, who, after
>       the destruction of the Atlantean _giants_ and _sorcerers_, concealed
>       the truth—_astronomical_, _physical_, and _divine_, as it is a page
>       out of _pre‐cosmic_ Theogony—under various allegories. Its true
>       Esoteric interpretation is a veritable Theodice of the “Fallen
>       Angels,” so called: the _willing_ and the _unwilling_, the
>       _creators_ and those who _refused to create_, being now mixed up
>       most perplexingly by Christian Catholics, who forget that their
>       highest Archangel, St. Michael, who is shown to conquer (to master
>       and to assimilate) the _Dragon of Wisdom_ and of divine Self‐
>       sacrifice—now miscalled and calumniated as Satan—_was the first to
>       refuse to create_! This has led to endless confusion. So little does
>       Christian Theology understand the paradoxical language of the East
>       and its symbolism, that it even explains, in its _dead‐letter
>       sense_, the Chinese Buddhist and Hindû exoteric rite of raising a
>       noise during certain eclipses to scare away the “great red dragon,”
>       which laid a plot to carry away the “light”! But here “light” means
>       Esoteric Wisdom, and we have sufficiently explained the secret
>       meaning of the terms Dragon, Serpent, etc., all of which refer to
>       Adepts and Initiates.
> 
>   216 See _Genesis_ and Plato’s _Timæus_.
> 
>   217 In spite of all efforts to the contrary, Christian Theology—having
>       burdened itself with the Hebrew Esoteric account of the creation of
>       man, which it understands _literally_—cannot find any reasonable
>       excuse for its “God, the Creator,” who produces a man devoid of mind
>       and sense; nor can it justify the punishment following an act, for
>       which Adam and Eve might plead _non compos_. For if the couple be
>       admitted to be ignorant of good and evil before the eating of the
>       forbidden fruit, how could it be expected to know that _disobedience
>       was evil_? If primeval man was meant to remain a half‐witted, or
>       rather witless, being, then his creation was aimless and even
>       _cruel_, if produced by an omnipotent and perfect God. But Adam and
>       Eve are shown, even in _Genesis_, to be created by a Class of lower
>       divine Beings, the Elohim, who are so jealous of their personal
>       prerogatives as reasonable and intelligent creatures, that they will
>       not allow man to become “as one of us.” This is plain, even from the
>       dead‐letter meaning of the _Bible_. The Gnostics, then, were right
>       in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a Class of lower,
>       material and not very holy denizens of the invisible World.
> 
>   218 In _Isis Unveiled_ several of these Gnostic systems are given. One
>       is taken from the _Codex Nazaræus_, the Scripture of the Nazarenes,
>       who, although they existed long before the days of Christ, and even
>       before the laws of Moses, were Gnostics, and many of them Initiates.
>       They held their “Mysteries of Life” in Nazara (ancient and modern
>       Nazareth), and their doctrines are a faithful echo of the teachings
>       of the Secret Doctrine—some of which we are now endeavouring to
>       explain.
> 
>   219 i. 18. See the translation from the Greek by François, Monsieur de
>       Foix, Evesque d’Ayre: the work dedicated to Marguerite de France,
>       Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, Bordeaux.
> 
>   220 _Asgard and the Gods_, p. 4.
> 
>   221 Mr. James Darmesteter, the translator of the _Vendidâd_, speaking of
>       it, says: “The tree, _whatever it is_....”—“Sacred Books of the
>       East,” vol. iv. p. 209.
> 
>   222 Plato’s _Timæus_.
> 
>   223 See _Asgard and the Gods_, p. 305.
> 
>   224 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   225 “The father of the sacred fire,” writes Prof. Jolly, “bore the name
>       of Tvashtri ... His mother was Mâyâ. He himself was styled Akta
>       (_anointed_ χριστὸς) after the priest had poured upon his head the
>       spirituous (?) Soma, and on his body butter purified by sacrifice.”
>       (_Man before Metals_, p. 190.) The source of his information is not
>       given by the French Darwinist. But the lines are quoted to show that
>       light begins to dawn even upon the Materialists. Adalbert Kühn, in
>       his _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, identifies the two signs [Symbol:
>       swastika] and [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] with
>       Arani, and designates them under this name. He adds: “This process
>       of kindling fire naturally led men to the idea of sexual
>       reproduction,” etc. Why could not a more dignified idea, and one
>       more Occult, have led man to invent this symbol, in so far as it is
>       connected, in one of its aspects, with human reproduction? But its
>       chief symbolism refers to Cosmogony.
> 
>       “Agni, in the condition of Akta, or anointed, is suggestive of
>       Christ,” remarks Prof. Jolly. “Mâyâ, Mary, His mother; Tvashtri, St.
>       Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible.” In the _Rig Veda_, Vishvakarman
>       is the highest and oldest of the Gods and their “Father.” He is the
>       “carpenter or builder,” because God is called even by the
>       Monotheists, the “Architect of the Universe.” Still, the original
>       idea is purely metaphysical, and had no connection with the later
>       Phallicism.
> 
>   226 The real Manushya.
> 
>   227 Barishad (?).
> 
>   228 The Kavyavâhana, electric fire.
> 
>   229 Shuchi, the spirit in the Sun.
> 
>   230 The Pitris and the two Fires.
> 
>   231 The form.
> 
>   232 It is not clear why Bhûtas should be rendered by the Orientalists as
>       “evil spirits” in the _Purânas_. In the _Vishnu Purâna_ (I. v,
>       Wilson’s Trans., Fitzedward Hall’s note, i. 83) the Shloka simply
>       says: “Fiends, frightful from being monkey‐coloured and
>       carnivorous”; and the word in India now means “ghosts,” ethereal or
>       _astral_ phantoms, while in Esoteric Teaching it means _elementary_
>       substances, something made of attenuated, non‐compound essence, and,
>       specifically, the astral Double of any man or animal. In this case
>       these primitive men are the Doubles of the first ethereal Dhyânîs or
>       Pitris.
> 
>   233 See _Pymander_, Everard’s Trans., II. 17‐29.
> 
>   234 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 92.
> 
>   235 P. 91.
> 
>   236 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   237 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   238 Human Monad.
> 
>   239 Astral shadow.
> 
>   240 Kâma Rûpa.
> 
>   241 Shuchi, the fire of passion and animal instinct.
> 
>   242 Solar Fire.
> 
>   243 Nascent Man.
> 
>   244 Later.
> 
>   245 Race.
> 
>   246 See Shloka 22.
> 
>   247 See _Genesis of the Elements_, by W. Crookes, p. 21.
> 
>   248 _Pymander_, i. 6. The opponents of Hindûism may call the above
>       Pantheism, Polytheism, or anything they may please. If Science is
>       not entirely blinded by prejudice, it will see in this account a
>       profound knowledge of Natural Sciences and Physics, as well as of
>       Metaphysics and Psychology. But to find this out, one has to study
>       the personifications, and then convert them into chemical atoms. It
>       will then be found to satisfy both physical and even purely
>       materialistic Science, as well as those who see in evolution the
>       work of the “Great Unknown Cause” in its phenomenal and illusive
>       aspects.
> 
>   249 _Sc._ Race.
> 
>   250 Shlokas, 153, 154.
> 
>   251 It is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle, the ten yods within,
>       and the seven points of the Triangle and the Square.
> 
>   252 Whence the Kabalistic name of “Shells” given to the Astral Form, the
>       Body called Kâma Rûpa, left behind by the Higher Angels in the shape
>       of the Higher Manas, when the latter leaves for Devachan, forsaking
>       its residue.
> 
>   253 Mackenzie’s _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_, pp. 409‐411.
> 
>   254 viii. 20.
> 
>   255 _De Bell. Jud._, ii. 12.
> 
>   256 _De Gignat_, p. 222C.; _De Somniis_, p. 455D.; which shows that the
>       Essenes believed in re‐birth and many reïncarnations on Earth, as
>       Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the _New Testament_
>       itself.
> 
>   257 I. vi. 3.
> 
>   258 _Zohar_, ii. 229b.
> 
>   259 It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the Esotericism of
>       _Genesis_. Not only are the animals created therein after the “Adam
>       of Dust,” but vegetation is shown _in_ the Earth before “the heavens
>       and the earth were created.” “Every plant of the field before it was
>       in the earth” (ii. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is
>       accepted—which shows that in this Fourth Round the Globe was covered
>       with vegetation, and the First (Astral) Humanity was produced before
>       almost anything could grow and develop thereon—what can the dead
>       letter mean? Simply that the grass was in the earth of the Globe
>       before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning of verse 6, which
>       says that “there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the
>       whole face of the ground,” before it rained, and caused the trees,
>       etc., to grow, is plain enough. It shows also in what geological
>       period it occurred, and further what is meant by “heaven” and
>       “earth.” It meant the firmament and dry _incrustated_ land,
>       separated and ridden of its vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the
>       student must bear in mind that, as Adam Kadmon, the “male and female
>       being” of _Genesis_ i, is no physical human being but the host of
>       the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself—so the animals,
>       mentioned in that chapter as “created” before man in the dead‐letter
>       text, were no animals, but the zodiacal signs and other sidereal
>       bodies.
> 
>   260 _Book of Dzyan_, iii. 19.
> 
>   261 Kenealy, _The Book of God_, pp. 114, 115.
> 
>   262 To those who would enquire: What has Hydrogen to do with air or
>       oxygenation?—it is answered: Study first the ABC of Occult Alchemy.
>       In their anxiety, however, to identify Pymander, the “mouth of
>       mystery,” with St. John the Baptist prophetically, the Christian
>       Symbologists thus identified also the seven Kabiri and the Assyrian
>       Bulls with the Cherubs of the Jews and the Apostles. Having,
>       moreover, to draw a line of demarcation between the _four_ and the
>       _three_ the latter being the _Fallen_ Angels; and furthermore to
>       avoid connecting these with the “Seven Spirits of the Face,” the
>       Archangels, they unceremoniously threw out all they did not choose
>       to recognize. Hence the perversion in the order of the Elements, in
>       order to make them dovetail with the order of the Gospels, and to
>       identify the Angel‐Man with Christ. With the Chaldees, the
>       Egyptians—from whom Moses adopted the Chroub (Cherubs in their
>       animal form)—and the Ophites; with all these, the Angels, the
>       Planets, and the Elements, were symbolized mystically and
>       alchemically by the Lion (Mikael); the Bull (Uriel); the Dragon
>       (Raphael); the Eagle (Gabriel); the Bear (Thot‐Sabaoth); the Dog
>       (Era‐taoth); the Mule (Uriel or Thantabaoth). All these have a
>       qualificative meaning.
> 
>   263 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, pp. 370 _et seqq._
> 
>   264 Sepher _M’bo Sha‐arim_, near the end, translated by Isaac Myer,
>       _Qabbalah_, p. 110.
> 
>   265 Form.
> 
>   266 Shadow.
> 
>   267 S. Laing, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 90.
> 
>   268 And why not all the progenitive First Races, human as well as
>       animal; and why _one_ “remote progenitor”?
> 
>   269 Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the
>       Mammalia to some amphibian ancestor.
> 
>   270 Second Edition, p. 161.
> 
>   271 _Ibid._, p. 162.
> 
>   272 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 124; “International
>       Scientific Series,” Volume XXVI.
> 
>   273 _Ibid._, p. 125.
> 
>   274 Fol. 186.
> 
>   275 _Odyssey_, xi. 298‐305; _Iliad_, iii. 243.
> 
>   276 Hyg., _Fab._, 80. Ovid., _Fast._, 700, etc. See Decharme’s
>       _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, p. 6.
> 
>   277 See Decharme, _ibid._, p. 652.
> 
>   278 _Nem._, x. 80 _et seqq._ Theocr., xxiv. 131.
> 
>   279 XXXIV. v. 5. Theocr., xxii. 1.
> 
>   280 iii. 10. 7.
> 
>   281 Apollodorus, iii. 1.
> 
>   282 Castor’s tomb was shown in Sparta, in days of old, says Pausanias
>       (iii. 13, 1); and Plutarch says that he was called at Argos the
>       demi‐mortal or demi‐hero, μιξαρχαγέτας. (_Quæst. Gr._, 23.)
> 
>   283 Pindar, _Nem._, x. 60, _seqq._, Dissen.
> 
>   284 Schol. Eurip., _Orest._, 463, Dindorf. See Decharme, _op. cit._, p.
>       654.
> 
>   285 The Monad is impersonal and a God _per se_, albeit unconscious on
>       this plane. For divorced from its third (often called fifth)
>       principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line of the first
>       manifested Triangle or Trinity, it can have no consciousness or
>       perception of things on this earthly plane. “The highest sees
>       through the eye of the lowest” in the manifested world; Purusha
>       (Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakriti (Matter) in the
>       material spheres; and so does Âtmâ‐Buddhi without Manas.
> 
>   286 _Moral._, p. 484f.
> 
>   287 This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his
>       _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_ (p. 655). “Castor and Pollux,” he
>       says, “are nothing but the Sun and Moon, conceived as twins.... The
>       Sun, the immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening
>       from the horizon and descends under the Earth, as though he would
>       make room for the fraternal orb which comes to life with night, is
>       Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, inferior to
>       his brother, owes to him his immortality; for the Moon, says
>       Theophrastus, is only another, but feebler Sun (_De Ventis_, 17).”
> 
>   288 See _Book of Enoch_, Trans. by Bishop Laurence, 1883.
> 
>   289 Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahmâ and Mars, the symbol of the
>       _generative_ and _creative_ power typifying Water and Earth—an
>       Alchemical secret. “It takes Earth and Water to create a human
>       Soul,” said Moses. Mars is the Hindû Mangala, the planet Mars,
>       identical with Kârttikeya, the “War‐God”; he is Gharma‐ja, born of
>       Shiva’s _sweat_, and of the Earth. He is Lohita, the red, like
>       Brahmâ also and Adam. The Hindû Mars is, like Adam, born from no
>       woman and mother. With the Egyptians, Mars was the primeval
>       generative Principle, and so are Brahmâ, in exoteric teaching, and
>       Adam, in the Kabalah.
> 
>   290 Abel is Chebel, meaning “pains of birth,” conception.
> 
>   291 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and
>       Eve blended, and Hevah, and Abel, the _feminine serpent_.
> 
>   292 See _Isis Unveiled_, I. 305: “The union of these two Races produced
>       a _third_ ... Race.”
> 
>   293 _Genesis_, v. 2.
> 
>   294 _Ibid._, v. 3.
> 
>   295 P. 159.
> 
>   296 Jod in the Kabalah has for symbol the hand, the forefinger and the
>       lingam, while numerically it is the perfect one; but it is also the
>       number 10, male and female, when divided.
> 
>   297 _Vishnu Purâna_, i. ii.: Wilson’s Trans., i. 20.
> 
>   298 Quoted in Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 110.
> 
>   299 See _Source of Measures_, p. 277.
> 
>   300 II. 464, _et seqq._
> 
>   301 _Jeremiah_, x. 11.
> 
>   302 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 462, 463.
> 
>   303 See for comparison _Hosea_, xii. 6, where it is so punctuated.
> 
>   304 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 156.
> 
>   305 Race.
> 
>   306 The Moon.
> 
>   307 Hamsa.
> 
>   308 _Text‐Book of Physiology_, Third Edition, 1879, p. 623.
> 
>   309 See the _Timæus_.
> 
>   310 See Extracts from that Essay in _The Theosophist_, of February,
>       1883, from which the following is condensed.
> 
>   311 Compare Ezekiel’s vision (chap. i) of the four Divine Beings who
>       “had the likeness of a man” and yet had the appearance of a wheel,
>       “when they went, they went upon their four sides ... for the spirit
>       of the living creature was in the wheels.”
> 
>   312 Eugibinus, a Christian, and the Rabbis Samuel, Menasseh ben Israel,
>       and Maimonides taught that “Adam had _two_ faces and _one_ person,
>       and from the beginning he was both male and female—male on one side
>       and female on the other [like Manu’s Brahmâ]; but afterwards the
>       parts were separated.” The one hundred and thirty‐ninth Psalm of
>       David was cited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar as evidence of this:
>       “Thou hast _fashioned_ me _behind_ and _before_,” not _beset_ as in
>       the _Bible_, which is absurd and meaningless, and this shows, as
>       Prof. Wilder thinks, “that the primeval form of mankind was
>       androgynous.”
> 
>   313 See the union of Chokmah, Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or
>       Jehovah, the Demiurge, called Understanding in the _Proverbs of
>       Solomon_ (vii). Unto men Wisdom (divine Occult Wisdom) crieth: “Oh,
>       ye simple, understand Wisdom; and ye fools, be of an understanding
>       heart.” It is Spirit and Matter, the Nous and the Psyche; of the
>       latter of which St. James says that it is “earthly, sensual, and
>       devilish.”
> 
>   314 _Pluralité des Mondes_, p. 69.
> 
>   315 A hypothesis evolved in 1881 by Mr. W. Mattieu Williams seems to
>       have impressed Astronomers but little. Says the author of “The Fuel
>       of the Sun,” in _Knowledge_, Dec. 23, 1881:
> 
>       “Applying now the researches of Dr. Andrews to the conditions of
>       solar existence ... I conclude that the sun has _no nucleus_, either
>       solid, liquid, or gaseous, but is composed of dissociated matter in
>       the critical state, surrounded, first, by  a flaming envelope, due
>       to the recombination of the dissociated matter, and outside of this,
>       by another envelope of vapours due to this combination.”
> 
>       This is a novel theory to be added to other hypotheses, _all
>       scientific and orthodox_. The meaning of the “critical state” is
>       explained by Mr. W. Mattieu Williams in the same journal (Dec. 9,
>       1881), in an article on “Solids, liquids, and Gases.” Speaking of an
>       experiment by Dr. Andrews on carbonic acid, the Scientist says that:
> 
>       “When 88° is reached, the boundary between liquid and gas vanishes;
>       liquid and gas have blended into one mysterious intermediate fluid;
>       an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the whole of
>       the tube—an etherealized liquid or a visible gas. Hold a red‐hot
>       poker between your eye and the light; you will see an upflowing wave
>       of movement of what appears like liquid air. The appearance of the
>       hybrid fluid in the tube resembles this, but is sensibly denser, and
>       evidently stands between the liquid and gaseous states of matter, as
>       pitch or treacle stands between solid and liquid.”
> 
>       The temperature at which this occurs has been named by Dr. Andrews
>       the “critical temperature”; here the gaseous and the liquid states
>       are “continuous,” and it is probable that all other substances
>       capable of existing in both states have their own particular
>       critical temperatures.
> 
>       Speculating further upon this “critical” state, Mr. W. Mattieu
>       Williams emits some quite Occult theories about Jupiter and other
>       Planets. He says:
> 
>       “Our notions of solids, liquids, and gases are derived from our
>       experiences of the state of matter here upon this Earth. Could we be
>       removed to another planet, they would be curiously changed. On
>       Mercury water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars,
>       as a fusible solid; but what on Jupiter?
> 
>       “Recent observations justify us in regarding this as a miniature
>       sun, with an external envelope of cloudy matter, apparently of
>       partially‐condensed water, but red‐hot, or probably still hotter
>       within. His vaporous atmosphere is evidently of enormous depth, and
>       the force of gravitation being on his visible outer surface two‐and‐
>       a‐half times greater than that on our earth’s surface, the
>       atmospheric pressure, in descending below this visible surface, must
>       soon reach that at which the vapour of water would be brought to its
>       critical condition. Therefore we may infer that the oceans of
>       Jupiter are neither of frozen, liquid, nor gaseous water, but are
>       oceans, or atmospheres of _critical_ water. If any fish or birds
>       swim or fly therein, they must be very _critically_ organized.”
> 
>       As the whole mass of Jupiter is 300 times greater than that of the
>       Earth, and its compressing energy towards the centre proportional to
>       this, its materials, if similar to those of the Earth, and no
>       hotter, would be considerably more dense, and the whole planet would
>       have a higher specific gravity; but we know by the movement of its
>       satellites that, instead of this, its specific gravity is less than
>       a fourth of that of the Earth. This justifies the conclusion that it
>       is intensely hot; for even hydrogen, if cold, would become denser
>       than Jupiter under such pressure.
> 
>       “As all elementary substances may exist as solids, liquids, or
>       gases, or, critically, according to the conditions of temperature
>       and pressure, I am justified in hypothetically concluding that
>       Jupiter is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gaseous planet, but a
>       _critical_ planet, or an orb composed internally of associated
>       elements in the _critical_ state, and surrounded by a dense
>       atmosphere of their vapours and those of some of their compounds
>       such as water. The same reasoning applies to Saturn and other large
>       and rarefied planets.”
> 
>       It is gratifying to see how “scientific imagination” approaches
>       every year more closely to the borderland of our Occult Teachings.
> 
>   316 _The Day after Death_, p. 23.
> 
>   317 Cremona Ed., iii. 76a; Brody Ed., iii. 159a; _Qabbalah_. Isaac Myer,
>       p. 420.
> 
>   318 So destroyed.
> 
>   319 The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated
>       from the later Continents.
> 
>   320 We must remember that at the head of all the Babylonian Gods were
>       Ea, Anu, and the primeval Bel; and that Ea, the first, was the God
>       of Wisdom, the great “God of Light” and of the Deep, and that he was
>       identified with Oannes, or the Biblical Dagon—the Man‐Fish who rose
>       out of the Persian Gulf.
> 
>   321 It is far later on that the Moon became a male God; with the Hindus
>       it was Soma, with the Chaldæans Nanak or Nanar, and Sin, the son of
>       Mulil, the older Bel. The Akkadians called him the “Lord of Ghosts”;
>       and he was the God of Nipur (Niffer) in northern Babylonia. It is
>       Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood to fall from Heaven on
>       Earth, because of which Xisuthrus would not allow him to approach
>       his altar. As the modern Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is
>       the northern Nipur which is the centre whence Chaldæan (Black) Magic
>       spread; and Eridu (the Southern) which was the primitive seat of the
>       worship of the culture God, the God of Divine Wisdom—the Sun‐God
>       being the Supreme Deity everywhere. With the Jews, the Moon is
>       connected with Israël’s Jehovah and his seed, for Ur was the chief
>       seat of the worship of the Moon‐God, and Abraham is said to have
>       come from Ur, when from A‐bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham.
> 
>   322 When Nârada, the virgin‐ascetic, threatened to put an end to the
>       human race by preventing Daksha’s sons from procreating it.
> 
>   323 x. 6.
> 
>   324 This is corroborated by a learned Brahman. In his most excellent
>       Lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_ (_Theosophist_, April, 1887, p. 444)
>       the lecturer says:
> 
>       “There is a peculiarity to which I must call your attention. He
>       [Krishna] speaks here of four Manus. Why does he speak of four? We
>       are now in the seventh Manvantara—that of Vaivasvata. If he is
>       speaking of the past Manus, he ought to speak of six, but he only
>       mentions four. In some commentaries an attempt has been made to
>       interpret this in a peculiar manner.
> 
>       “The word ‘Chatvârah’ is separated from the word ‘Manavah,’ and is
>       made to refer to Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumâra, and Sanatsujâta,
>       who were also included among the mind‐born sons of Prajâpati.
> 
>       “But this interpretation will lead to a most absurd conclusion, and
>       make the sentence contradict itself. The persons alluded to in the
>       text have a qualifying clause in the sentence. It is well known that
>       Sanaka and the other three refused to create, though the other sons
>       had consented to do so: therefore, in speaking of those persons from
>       whom humanity has sprung into existence, it would be absurd to
>       include these four also in the list. The passage must be interpreted
>       without splitting the compound into two nouns. The number of Manus
>       will then be four, and the statement would then contradict the
>       Paurânic account, though it would be in harmony with the Occult
>       theory. You will recollect that it is stated [in Occultism] that we
>       are now in the Fifth Root‐Race. Each Root‐Race is considered as the
>       Santati of a particular Manu. Now, the Fourth Race has passed, or,
>       in other words, there have been four past Manus.”
> 
>   325 Stockwell, _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, xviii.; R. W.
>       McFarland, _American Journal of Science_, III. xi. 450; and Croll’s
>       _Climate and Time_. Lemuria was not submerged by a flood, but was
>       destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank.
> 
>   326 Coste, I. iv. 19.
> 
>   327 Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israëlitish
>       Jehovah. As connected with Argha, the Moon or Ark of salvation, Noah
>       is mythologically one with Saturn. But then this cannot relate to
>       the terrestrial flood. (See Faber’s _Cabiri_, I. 35, 43, and 45.)
> 
>   328 _Ibid._, II. 240.
> 
>   329 Sanchuniathon says that the Titans were the sons of Kronos, and
>       seven in number; and he calls them fire‐worshippers, Aletæ (Sons of
>       Agni?) and diluvians. Al‐ait is the God of Fire.
> 
>   330 _Ibid._, i. 130, note.
> 
>   331 Of which _seven_, let us remark, the Âryans, and not the Semites,
>       were the originators, while the Jews got that number from the
>       Chaldæans.
> 
>   332 Seven individual Sons of God, or Pitaras, Pitris; also in this case
>       the sons of Kronos or Saturn (Kâla, “Time”) and Arkites, like the
>       Kabiri and Titans, as their name—“_Lunar_ Ancestors”—shows; the Moon
>       being the Ark, or Argha, on the Watery Abyss of Space.
> 
>   333 _Asiatic Researches_, v. 246.
> 
>   334 _Kabiri_, _ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   335 Orpheus apud Proclum _in Timæum_, v. 295.
> 
>   336 Arnobius, _Contra Gentes_, iii. 124; quoted by Faber, _op. cit._, i.
>       135.
> 
>   337 _Ant._, iii. 8.
> 
>   338 _Bibl._, iii. 170.
> 
>   339 Aretia is the female form of Artes, the Egyptian Mars. Thence the
>       Chaldæan (and now Hebrew) word ארצ (Arets), “Earth.” Seyffarth, the
>       author of _Beiträge zur Kenntniss_ (under “_Artes_,” _Mars_) quotes
>       as follows: “Addit Cedrenus (Salm. I. c): Stella Martis ab Ægyptiis
>       vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). Significat autem hoc omnis
>       generis procreationem et _vivificationem_, omnisque substantiæ et
>       materiæ naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem.” It is Earth as
>       “source of being”; or, as explained by the author of _The Source of
>       Measures_ (p. 186), Arts is the same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and
>       both “combine the primal idea of _earth as source_; precisely as in
>       the Hebrew itself, under another form, _Adam_ and _Mâdim_, _Mars_,
>       are the same, and combine the idea of _earth_, with _Adam_ under the
>       form of _h‐adam‐h_.”
> 
>   340 _Ant._, v. 64.
> 
>   341 Nonnus, _Dionys._, xviii. 319. Quoted by Faber, _op. cit._, i. 328.
> 
>   342 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 420 _et seq._, where one or two of the
>       seven meanings are hinted at.
> 
>   343 Chap. lxiv (Sect. xi).
> 
>   344 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 423, 424.
> 
>   345 _Ibid._, 423, note.
> 
>   346 One has to remember that, in the Hindû Philosophy, every
>       differentiated unit is such only through the Cycles of Mâyâ, being
>       one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. Hence arises the
>       seeming confusion and contradiction in the various _Purânas_, and at
>       times in the same _Purâna_, about the same individual. Vishnu—as the
>       many‐formed Brahmâ, and as Brahma (neuter)—is one, and yet he is
>       said to be all the twenty‐eight Vyâsas.
> 
>       “In every Dvâpara (or third) age, Vishnu, in the person of Vyâsa,
>       divides the Veda, which is (properly, but) one, into many
>       portions.... Twenty‐eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the
>       great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvâpara age; and,
>       consequently, eight and twenty Vyâsas have passed away.” (_Vishnu
>       Purâna_, iii. 3; Wilson’s Trans., iii. 33, 34.) “[They who were all]
>       in the form of Veda‐Vyâsa; who were the Vyâsas of their respective
>       eras.” (_Ibid._, _loc. cit._, p. 33.) “This world is Brahmâ, in
>       Brahmâ, from Brahmâ ... nothing further to be known.” Then, again,
>       in the _Harivamsha_: “There were (in the first Manvantara) seven
>       celebrated sons of Vasishtha, who (in the _third_ Manvantara) were
>       sons of Brahmâ (_i.e._, Rishis), the illustrious progeny of Ûrjâ.”
>       (_Ibid._, iii. 6, note.) This is plain: the Humanity of the First
>       Manvantara is that of the seventh and of all the intermediate ones.
>       The Mankind of the First Root‐Race is the mankind of the Second,
>       Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and
>       constant reïncarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyân Chohans
>       of our Planetary Chain.
> 
>   347 The Dvâpara Yuga differs for each Race. All Races have their own
>       Cycles, which fact causes a great difference. For instance, the
>       Fourth Sub‐Race of the Atlanteans was in its Kali Yuga, when they
>       were destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga.
>       The Âryan Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in
>       it for 427,000 years longer, while various “Family Races,” called
>       the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. The
>       forthcoming Sixth Sub‐Race—which may begin very soon—will be in its
>       Satya (Golden) Age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our
>       Kali Yuga.
> 
>   348 See _Asiatic Researches_, viii. 280.
> 
>   349 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_, _sub voce_ “Idâ.”
> 
>   350 See _Posthumous Humanity_: Translated by H. S. Olcott London, 1887.
> 
>   351 Professor Newcomb says the heat evolved by contraction would last
>       only 18,000,000 years. (_Popular Astronomy_, 509.) While a
>       temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached
>       earlier than 10,000,000 years ago. (Winchell’s _World‐Life_, 356.)
>       But Sir William Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation
>       of the Earth is 80,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again
>       altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of
>       the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of
>       scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed
>       upon _scientific_ speculation.
> 
>   352 The essay on _The Plurality of Worlds_ (1853)—an anonymous work, yet
>       well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell—is a good
>       proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality
>       of Worlds or the geological age of the Globe, argues the author;
>       because, if it is asserted that this World is only one among the
>       many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself;
>       that all are the seat of life, all the realm and dwelling of
>       intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable
>       of free‐will; then, it would be extravagant to think that _our_
>       World should have been the subject of God’s favours and His special
>       interference, of His communications and His _personal visit_. Can
>       the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and
>       religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction
>       to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it not as absurd to uphold
>       such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it
>       would be to‐day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed
>       the Earth in the centre of our system? The above is quoted from
>       memory, yet _almost textually_. The author fails to see that he is
>       bursting his own soap‐bubble with such a defence.
> 
>   353 _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 58.
> 
>   354 _De Cœlo_, II. 13.
> 
>   355 Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance
>       received the name of “Sarcode” from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far
>       earlier than its present appellation.
> 
>   356 The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals nor plants,
>       writes Hæckel; “the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing
>       more than a single thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a
>       firmly adhesive condition.” (_Journal of Microscopical Science_,
>       Jan., 1869, p. 28.)
> 
>   357 Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages—the monster 100 feet
>       long—now transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America.
>       Popular traditions about “giants” in days of old, and their mention
>       in every mythology, including that of the _Bible_, may some day be
>       shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone
>       should make us accept these _traditions_ as scientific verities.
> 
>   358 These are the opinions of Burmeister and Czolbe. See _Force and
>       Matter_, by L. Büchner, edited, by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p.
>       61.
> 
>   359 _Vishnu Purâna_, II. viii; Fitzedward Hall’s rendering in Wilson’s
>       Translation, ii. 241.
> 
>   360 _Ibid._, p. 242.
> 
>   361 _Introduction à l’Étude des Races Humaines._
> 
>   362 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, by S. Laing, p. 32.
> 
>   363 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 70.
> 
>   364 The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the
>       other psychological manifestations of the _inner_ man. Since the
>       days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic Idealism,
>       Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass
>       Materialism. Hume is regarded as a Psychologist, and yet he denied
>       _à priori_ the possibility of phenomena in which millions now
>       believe, including many men of Science. The Hylo‐Idealists of to‐day
>       are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are
>       respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at
>       all. It is _Psychism_ and not Psychology; it reminds one as little
>       of the Vedântic teaching as does the pessimism of Schopenhauer and
>       von Hartmann recall the Esoteric Philosophy, the heart and soul of
>       _true_ Buddhism.
> 
>   365 It must be noted that, though the astral and physical planes of
>       Matter ran parallel with one another even in the earliest geological
>       ages, yet they were not in the same phases of manifestation in which
>       they are _now_. The Earth did not reach its present _grade of
>       density_ till 18,000,000 years ago. Since then _both_ the physical
>       and astral planes have become grosser.
> 
>   366 The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may
>       satisfy only the Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself,
>       and entirely degenerated, by long centuries of scholastic and
>       theological sophistry. But this “recent philosophy of the Absolute,”
>       traced by Sir William Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more
>       acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindû Vedântin.
> 
>   367 Cudworth’s _Intellectual System_, I. 328.
> 
>   368 Issued from the Body of Brahmâ when it became Night.
> 
>   369 Intellectually vile.
> 
>   370 Still senseless Race.
> 
>   371 Race.
> 
>   372 Intensified.
> 
>   373 The vehicle of Desire.
> 
>   374 Higher knowledge.
> 
>   375 Monads.
> 
>   376 Primitive human species.
> 
>   377 _Inst. Div._, II. viii; quoted in Myer’s _Qabbalah_, 116.
> 
>   378 _Op. cit._, I. v; Wilson’s Trans., Fitzedward Hall’s rendering, i.
>       72.
> 
>   379 _Ibid._, ii. 10.
> 
>   380 _Ibid._, i. 83.
> 
>   381 Whom Manu calls “paternal grandfathers” (iii. 284). The Rudras are
>       the seven manifestations of Rudra‐Shiva, the “destroying God,” and
>       _also_ the grand Yogi and Ascetic.
> 
>   382 To speak of _life_ as having arisen, and of the human race as having
>       originated, in this _absurdly unscientific_ way, in the face of the
>       modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court instantaneous annihilation. The
>       Esoteric Doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even goes so
>       far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis
>       (if it is one) with Hæckel’s theory—now fast becoming an axiom with
>       Science—which we quote verbatim as follows:
> 
>       “How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly,
>       the special question: How did the human race originate? The first of
>       these two enquiries, that as to the first appearance of living
>       beings, can only be decided empirically [!!] by proof of the so‐
>       called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous
>       production of organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are
>       the Monera (Protogenes, Protamœba, Protomyxa, Vampyrella),
>       exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without
>       structure or organization, which take in nutriment and _reproduce
>       themselves by division_. Such a Moneron as that primordial organism
>       _discovered_ by the renowned English zoologist Huxley and named
>       Bathybius Hæckelii, appears as a continuous thick protoplasmic
>       covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and
>       30,000 feet. _It is true that the first appearance of such Monera
>       has not up to the present moment been actually observed_; but there
>       is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an Evolution.” (_The
>       Pedigree of Man_, Aveling’s translation, p. 33.)
> 
>       The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic
>       substance at all, there remains little to be said. Nor, after
>       reading this, does one need to consume further time in refuting the
>       further assertion that: “In that case man also has, _beyond a doubt_
>       [to the minds of Hæckel and his like], arisen from the lower
>       Mammalia, apes, the earlier simian creatures, the still earlier
>       Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations” (p.
>       36)—all produced by “a series of _natural forces working blindly,
>       ... without aim, without design_.”
> 
>       The above‐quoted passage bears its criticism on its own face.
>       Science is made to teach that, which, up to the present time, “_has
>       never been actually observed_.” She is made to deny the phenomenon
>       of an _intelligent_ nature and a vital force independent of form and
>       matter, and to find it more scientific to teach the miraculous
>       performance of “natural forces _working blindly without aim or
>       design_.” If so, then we are led to think that the physico‐
>       mechanical forces of the brains of certain eminent Scientists are
>       leading them on as blindly to sacrifice logic and common sense on
>       the altar of mutual admiration. Why should the protoplasmic Moneron
>       producing the first living creature through _self‐division_ be held
>       as a very scientific hypothesis, and an ethereal pre‐human race
>       generating the primeval men in the same fashion be tabooed as
>       unscientific superstition? Or has Materialism obtained a sole
>       monopoly in Science?
> 
>   383 The Râkshasas, regarded in Indian popular theology as Demons, are
>       called the “Preservers” beyond the Himâlayas. This double meaning
>       has its origin in a philosophical allegory, which is variously
>       rendered in the _Purânas_. It is stated that when Brahmâ created the
>       Demons, Yakshas (from _yaksh_, to eat) and the Râkshasas, both of
>       which kinds of Demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their
>       Creator, “those among them that called out ‘Not so: oh! let him be
>       saved [preserved]!’ were named Râkshasas.” (_Vishnu Purâna_, I. v.;
>       Wilson, i. 82.) The _Bhâgavata Purâna_ (III. 20, 19‐21; _ibid._,
>       _loc. cit._) renders the allegory differently. “Brahmâ transformed
>       himself into night [or ignorance] invested with a body.” This the
>       Yakshas and Râkshasas seized, exclaiming, “Do not spare it; devour
>       it.” Brahmâ cried out, “Do not devour me; spare me.” This has an
>       inner meaning of course. The “Body of Night” is the darkness of
>       ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the
>       Râkshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogîs, pious Sâdhus
>       and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for Demons. The meaning
>       then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of
>       ignorance—“devour it”—we have to preserve the sacred truth from
>       profanation. “Brahmâ is for the Brâhmans alone,” says that proud
>       caste. The moral of the _fable_ is evident.
> 
>   384 The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all
>       the later (to the profane the earliest) Races have their _physical_
>       origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is the sub‐race, which
>       preceded the one that separated sexually, that is to be regarded as
>       the _spiritual_ ancestors of our present generations, and especially
>       of the Eastern Âryan Races. Weber’s idea that the Indo‐Germanic Race
>       preceded the Âryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the
>       last degree.
> 
>   385 _Cf._ especially Schmidt’s _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp.
>       39 _et seqq._, and Laing’s _A Modern Zoroastrian_, pp. 102‐111.
> 
>   386 Every process of healing and cicatrization in the higher animal
>       groups—even in the case of reproduction of mutilated limbs with the
>       Amphibians—is effected by _fission_ and _gemmation_ of the
>       elementary morphological elements.
> 
>   387 The term here means neither the dolicho‐cephalic nor the brachyo‐
>       cephalic, nor yet skulls of a smaller volume, but simply brains
>       devoid of intellect generally. The theory which would judge of the
>       intellectual capacity of a man according to his cranial capacity,
>       seems absurdly illogical to one who has studied the subject. The
>       skulls of the stone period, as well as those of African races
>       (Bushmen included) show that the first are above rather than below
>       the average of the brain capacity of the modern man, and the skulls
>       of the last are on the whole (as also in the case of Papuans and
>       Polynesians generally) larger by one cubic inch than that of the
>       average Frenchman. Again, the cranial capacity of the Parisian of
>       to‐day represents an average of 1437 cubic centimetres compared to
>       1523 of the Auvergnat.
> 
>   388 A. Lefèvre, _Philosophy_, p. 498.
> 
>   389 _Principles of Zoology_, p. 206.
> 
>   390 i. 154.
> 
>   391 The boneless.
> 
>   392 The _first_ Sweat‐born. This is explained in the Section which
>       follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from the _Purânas_
>       concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlochâ, the nymph who is
>       alleged to have hypnotized him; a suggestive allegory,
>       scientifically, as the drops of perspiration which she exuded, are
>       the symbols of the spores of Science.
> 
>   393 This will be explained as we proceed. This unwillingness to fashion
>       men, or create, is symbolized in the _Purânas_ by Daksha’s dealings
>       with his opponent Nârada, the “strife‐making ascetic.”
> 
>   394 Androgyne Third Race. The Evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to
>       “the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which
>       from species _once hermaphrodite_ all [the believers in Creation
>       naturally excepted] are assuredly of one accord.” (_Doctrine of
>       Descent and Darwinism_, p. 159.) Such indeed is the incontestable
>       evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. Apart from
>       such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be
>       noted that, as Laing writes, “a study of embryology ... shows that
>       in the _human higher animal_ species the distinction of sex is not
>       developed until a _considerable progress_ has been made in the
>       growth of the embryo.” (_A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 106.) The Law of
>       Retardation—operative alike in the case of human races, animal
>       species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved—still
>       preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority
>       of plants and many lower animals.
> 
>   395 Vehicle.
> 
>   396 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. vii; Wilson, i. 100.
> 
>   397 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 111.
> 
>   398 For explanations and a philosophical account of the nature of those
>       Beings, which are now viewed as the “evil” and rebellious Spirits,
>       the Creators by Kriyâshakti, the reader is referred to the chapters
>       on “The Myth of the ‘Fallen Angel,’ in its Various Aspects,” in Part
>       II of this Volume.
> 
>   399 _Vishnu Purâna_, III. ii.
> 
>   400 In the oldest MS. of the _Vishnu Purâna_ in the possession of an
>       Initiate in Southern India, the God is not Indra, but Kâma, the God
>       of love and desire.
> 
>   401 These are the exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and
>       distorted way, being the figure of the duration of the cycle between
>       the First and Second human Race. All Orientalists to the contrary,
>       there is not a word in any of the _Purânas_ that has not a special
>       esoteric meaning.
> 
>   402 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. xv; Wilson, ii. 5. Compare also Vivien’s
>       temptation of Merlin (Tennyson)—the same legend in Irish tradition.
> 
>   403 x. 129.
> 
>   404 The text has: “From Brahmâ, continuing to meditate, were born mind‐
>       engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his
>       corporeal nature, _embodied spirits_, produced from the limbs
>       (Gâtra) of Dhîmat (all‐wise deity).” All these beings were the abode
>       of the three qualities of Devasarga, or divine creation, which, as
>       the five‐fold creation, is _devoid of clearness of perception,
>       without reflection_, dull of nature. “But as they _did not multiply
>       themselves_, Brahmâ created other mind‐born sons like himself,”
>       namely, the Brahmarshis, or the Prajâpatis, ten and seven in number.
>       “Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahmâ) were previously
>       created,” but as shown elsewhere, they were “_without desire or
>       passion_, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and
>       undesirous of progeny.” (_Vishnu Purâna_, X. vii; Wilson’s Trans.,
>       i. 100, 101.) These Sanandana and other Kumâras are then the Gods,
>       who after refusing to “create progeny” are forced to incarnate in
>       senseless men. The reader must pardon unavoidable repetitions in
>       view of the great number of facts given.
> 
>   405 Compare Schlagintweit’s _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 88‐90.
> 
>   406 See Edkins’ _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 208.
> 
>   407 The previous Third Round.
> 
>   408 Of this Round.
> 
>   409 An allegorical reference to the “Sacred Animals” of the Zodiac and
>       other heavenly bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of
>       the animals.
> 
>   410 In _Hesiod_, Zeus creates his Third Race of men out of ash‐trees. In
>       the _Popol Vuh_ the Third Race of men is created out of the tree
>       Tzita and the marrow of the reed called Sibac. But Sibac means “egg”
>       in the mystery language of the Artufas, or Initiation caves. In a
>       report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by Don Baptista Pino it is said:
>       “All the Pueblos have their Artufas—so the natives call subterranean
>       rooms with only a single door where they (secretly) assemble....
>       These are impenetrable temples ... and the doors are always closed
>       to the Spaniards.... They adore the Sun and Moon ... fire and the
>       great _Snake_ (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibac.”
> 
>   411 There is a notable difference _esoterically_ between the words Sarpa
>       and Nâga, though they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa,
>       serpent, is from the root _srip_, to creep, compare, Lat., _serp‐o_;
>       and they are called Ahi, from _hâ_, to abandon. The Sarpas were
>       produced from Brahmâ’s hair, which, owing to his fright at beholding
>       the Yakshas, whom he had created horrible to behold, fell off from
>       the head, each hair becoming a serpent. They are called “Sarpa from
>       their creeping and Ahi because they had deserted the head.” (Wilson,
>       i. 83.) But the Nâgas, in the allegories, their serpent’s tail
>       notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight.
> 
>   412 Wilson translates the word as “demigods” (_Vishnu Purâna_, i. 130);
>       but Raumas are simply a race, a tribe.
> 
>   413 xii. 10,308.
> 
>   414 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 123.
> 
>   415 _Ibid._, ii. 10.
> 
>   416 Serpents.
> 
>   417 Race.
> 
>   418 Also.
> 
>   419 Into male and female.
> 
>   420 Then.
> 
>   421 Man.
> 
>   422 The “narrow‐headed.” Compare Shloka 24.
> 
>   423 The “narrow‐headed.”
> 
>   424 See Commentary on Shloka 36.
> 
>   425 These “animals,” or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other
>       apes, but verily what the Anthropologists might call the “missing
>       link,” the primitive lower man.
> 
>   426 The shame of their animal origin which our modern Scientists would
>       emphasize if they could.
> 
>   427 _The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 186, 187. The “unknown
>       ancestry” referred to are the _primæval_ astral prototypes.
> 
>   428 “A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the
>       science of embryology. Is not a man in the uterus ... a simple cell,
>       a vegetable with three or four leaflets, a tadpole with branchiæ, a
>       mammal with a tail, lastly a primate [?] and a biped? It is scarcely
>       possible not to recognize in the embryonic evolution a rapid sketch,
>       a faithful summary, of the entire organic series.” (Lefèvre,
>       _Philosophy_, p. 484.)
> 
>       The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the _store of
>       types_ hoarded up in man, the microcosm. This simple explanation
>       meets all such objections, as the presence of the rudimentary tail
>       in the fœtus—a fact triumphantly paraded by Hæckel and Darwin as
>       conclusively in favour of the Ape‐Ancestor Theory. It may also be
>       pointed out that _the presence of a vegetable with leaflets_ in the
>       embryonic stages is _not explained_ on ordinary evolutionist
>       principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the vegetable,
>       but Occultists have. _Why then this feature in the embryo_, and how
>       do the former explain it?
> 
>   429 “The Proofs of Evolution,” a lecture by Hæckel.
> 
>   430 Vol. i. pp. 388‐390.
> 
>   431 See Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, pp. 21, _et seqq._
> 
>   432 _Origin of Species_, pp. 448, 449, first edition.
> 
>   433 Vol. i. p. 154.
> 
>   434 The sin committed with the animals.
> 
>   435 The Spirits, the “Sons of Wisdom.”
> 
>   436 Who had refused to “create.”
> 
>   437 Mindless.
> 
>   438 Mind.
> 
>   439 This verse in the _Rig Veda_ (x. 5, 6): “The Seven Wise Ones [Rays
>       of Wisdom, Dhyânis] fashion Seven Paths [or Lines, and also Races in
>       another sense]. To one of these may the distressed mortal come”—a
>       verse interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic aspect, is
>       one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The “Paths” may mean
>       Lines (Maryâdâh), but they are primarily Beams of Light falling on
>       the Paths leading to Wisdom. (See _Rig Veda_, iv. 5‐13.) It means
>       “Ways” or Paths. They are, in short, the seven Rays which fall free
>       from the Macrocosmic Centre, the seven Principles in the
>       metaphysical, the seven Races in the physical sense. All depends
>       upon the key used.
> 
>   440 _Rig Veda_, x. 10, 5, 2.
> 
>   441 It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old
>       Commentaries. We are often obliged to give the meaning only, and
>       thus retranslate the verbatim translations.
> 
>   442 Rudra, as a Kumâra, is Nîlalohita—red and blue.
> 
>   443 This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates
>       in this wise: “The primitive human form, whence as we think all
>       human species sprang, has perished this long time. [This we deny: it
>       has only decreased in size and changed in texture.] But many facts
>       point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic.
>       [African races are even _now_ dolichocephalic in a great measure,
>       but the palæolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of
>       a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla’s cranium
>       than that of any other now‐living man.] Let us, for the time being,
>       call this hypothetical species _homo primigenius_.... This first
>       species, or the ape‐man, the ancestor of all the others, _probably_
>       arose in the _tropical regions_ of the old world from _anthropoid
>       apes_.” Asked for proofs, the Evolutionist, not the least daunted,
>       replies: “Of these _no fossil remains are as yet known to us, but
>       they were probably akin to the Gorilla and Orang of the present
>       day_.” And then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable
>       descendant in the first line. (_Pedigree of Man_, p. 80.)
> 
>       Hæckel holds fast to Lemuria, which, with East Africa and South Asia
>       also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the primitive ape‐men.
>       So also do many Geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality,
>       though in a rather modified sense, in his _Geographical Distribution
>       of Animals_. But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the
>       comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very
>       _unscientific_, especially when they pretend to see no difference
>       between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed
>       that, while the highest of the apes, the Gorilla, has a brain of
>       only 30 to 51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the
>       Australian aborigines amounts to 99·35 cubic inches. The former is
>       thus “not half of the size of the brain of a new‐born babe,” says
>       Pfaff.
> 
>   444 Ellis’ _Polynesian Researches_, Vol. II, p. 38. Missionaries seem to
>       have pounced upon this name _Ivi_ and made of it _Eve_. But, as
>       shown by Professor Max Müller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but a
>       European transformation of חוה, Châvah, life, or mother of all
>       living; “while the Tahitian _ivi_, and the Maori, _wheva_, meant
>       bone, and bone only.” (_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p.
>       304.)
> 
>   445 _Chaire d’Hébreu au Collége de France_, p. 20.
> 
>   446 Of such semi‐animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology
>       were the Tasmanians, a _portion_ of the Australians and a mountain
>       tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with
>       hair. They were the last descendants in a _direct_ line of the semi‐
>       animal latter‐day Lemurians referred to. There are, however,
>       considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro‐Atlantean peoples produced
>       by various crossings with such semi‐human stocks—_e.g._, the wild
>       men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among
>       Âryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos,
>       Andaman Islanders, etc.
> 
>       The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of
>       Adelaide are _very hairy_, and the brown down on the skin of boys of
>       five or six years of age assumes a _furry appearance_. They are,
>       however, degraded _men_; not the closest approximation to the
>       “pithecoid man,” as Hæckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of
>       these men are a Lemurian relic. (_Cf._ _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 64
>       _et seqq._)
> 
>   447 In calling the animal “soulless” we do not deprive the beast, from
>       the humblest to the highest species, of a Soul, but only of a
>       conscious surviving Ego‐Soul, _i.e._, that principle which survives
>       after a man, and reïncarnates in a like man. The animal has an
>       Astral Body, that survives the physical form for a short period;
>       nevertheless its (animal) Monad does not reïncarnate in the same,
>       but in a higher species, and has no “Devachan” of course. It has the
>       _seeds_ of all the human principles in itself, but they are
>       _latent_.
> 
>   448 _Manual of Geology_, p. 302.
> 
>   449 The “fables” and “myths” about Leda and Jupiter, and such like,
>       could never have sprung up in people’s fancy, had not the allegory
>       rested on a fact in Nature. Evolution, gradually transforming man
>       into a mammal, did in his case only what it did in that of other
>       animals. But this does not prevent man from having always stood at
>       the head of the animal world and other organic species, and from
>       having preceded the former.
> 
>   450 See the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans,” p. 69.
> 
>   451 To avoid confusion, let the reader remember that the term Root‐Race
>       applies to one of the seven great Races, sub‐race to one of its
>       great Branches, and family‐race to one of the sub‐divisions, which
>       include nations and large tribes.
> 
>   452 In the Section on “The Fifth Race and its Divine Instructors,” in
>       the Commentary on Stanza XII, the nature of these “Instructors” is
>       explained.
> 
>   453 The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early
>       branches of the Fourth Race. Of the Third, the only _pure and
>       direct_ descendants are, as said above, a portion of the fallen and
>       degenerated Australians, whose far distant ancestors belonged to a
>       division of the seventh sub‐race of the Third. The rest are of mixed
>       Lemuro‐Atlantean descent. They have since then entirely changed in
>       stature and intellectual capacities.
> 
>   454 _Language_ is certainly coëval with reason, and could never have
>       been developed before men became one with the informing principles
>       in them—those who fructified and awoke to life the mânasic element
>       dormant in primitive man. For, as Professor Max Müller tells us in
>       his _Science of Thought_: “Thought and language are identical.” To
>       add to this, however, the reflection that _thoughts which are too
>       deep for words, do not really exist at all_, is rather risky, for
>       thought impressed upon the astral tablets exists in eternity whether
>       expressed or not. _Logos_ is both reason and speech. But language,
>       proceeding in cycles, is not always adequate to express _spiritual_
>       thoughts. Moreover, in one sense, the Greek Logos is the equivalent
>       of the Sanskrit Vâch, “the immortal (intellectual) ray of spirit.”
>       And the fact that Vâch (as Devasenâ, an _aspect_ of Sarasvatî, the
>       Goddess of Hidden Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate
>       Kumâra, unveils a suggestive, though veiled, reference to the
>       Kumâras, those “who refused to create,” but who were compelled later
>       on to complete _divine_ Man by incarnating in him. All this will be
>       fully explained in the Sections that follow.
> 
>   455 Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitæ or Kabul
>       tribes, calls them Ἀριστόφυλοι, Aristophyli, the aristocratic or
>       noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben‐Issraël, children of
>       Is (sa) raël, from Issa, “woman and also earth,” sons of Mother
>       Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you.
>       The names of the supposed twelve tribes of the Jews, and the names
>       of the real twelve tribes of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans
>       being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the
>       Israëlites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among
>       them as Youssoufzic, sons of Joseph, in Punjcaure and Boonere;
>       Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben‐manasseh, sons of Manasseh, among the
>       Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar, now Ashnagor in Afghanistan,
>       etc. The whole twelve names of the so‐called twelve tribes are names
>       of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. In any case, the
>       names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re‐transliterated, yield the
>       names of the zodiacal signs and likewise of the mythical sons of
>       Jacob. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere.
>       But there is a trace, and a deep one, that the Jews have tried to
>       deceive people with the help of these names. For, see what happens
>       ages after the _ten tribes_ had wholly disappeared from Babylon.
>       Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for
>       him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest of
>       the Jews, Eleazar, to send him _six men from each of the twelve
>       tribes_; and the _seventy‐two representatives_ (of whom sixty were
>       ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the Law
>       amid miracles and wonders. See Butler’s _Horæ Biblicæ_, Josephus,
>       and Philo Judæus.
> 
>   456 The Commentary explains that the apes are the only species, among
>       the animals, which has gradually, and with every generation and
>       variety, tended more and more to return to the original type of its
>       male forefather—the dark gigantic Lemurian and Atlantean.
> 
>   457 Androgyne.
> 
>   458 Dr. A. Wilder; who says that Gan‐duniyas is a name of Babylonia.
> 
>   459 Vol. i. pp. 575, 576.
> 
>   460 _Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki; ou Relations des Royaumes Bouddhiques_; par Chy Fa‐
>       hian: translated by Abel Remusat.
> 
>   461 Seventh year, 1855.
> 
>   462 De Mirville’s _Des Esprits_, ii. 423. See also Moses Maimonides,
>       _More Nevochim_.
> 
>   463 _Sciences Occultes_, p. 464.
> 
>   464 _Révolution du Globe_, Vol. v. p. 247.
> 
>   465 We read in De Mirville’s “Mémoire â l’Académie” (ii. 431) of the
>       “naïve astonishment of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey
>       showed to him, in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles,
>       dragons, ... ornithorhynchuses and saurians (aquatic animals _found
>       only in Australia_), etc., extinct animals that he had thought
>       unknown on earth ... till his own day.”
> 
>   466 See _Isaiah_, xxx. 6: “The viper and the flying serpent,” and the
>       fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
> 
>   467 The fossils, reconstructed by Science which we know, ought to be
>       sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, not to
>       mention Isaiah’s flying serpents, or Saraph Mehophep, words which
>       are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries as “Saraph,” enflamed
>       or fiery venom, and “Mehophep,” flying. But, although Christian
>       Theology has always connected both Leviathan and Saraph Mehophep
>       with the Devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to
>       do with the “Evil One.” Nevertheless, the word “Dragon” has now
>       become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now
>       signifies “Devil,” whence, as we are told by Cambry (_Monuments
>       Celtiques_, p. 299), the Devil’s Tomb in England, Droghedanum
>       Sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will‐o’‐the‐wisps are
>       called Drac, and in Bretagne Dreag and Wraie or wraith; the castle
>       of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the Devil’s castle. (De Mirville,
>       _ibid._, ii. 423.)
> 
>   468 The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian
>       stories given by Father Kircher, in his _Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, “De
>       Genesi Draconum,” quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he
>       himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as
>       the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the
>       beast’s likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in
>       one of his _in‐folios_. After this he received a letter from
>       Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland,
>       in which that official certifies to his having seen himself, _with
>       his own eyes_, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon.
>       Having remained on his balcony “to contemplate the perfect purity of
>       the firmament,” he writes, “I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from
>       one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct himself rapidly towards
>       Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was
>       still longer and his neck stretched out. His head and jaws were
>       those of a serpent. In flying, he emitted on his way numerous sparks
>       (? !).... I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon,
>       looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the
>       conformation of his body that I saw a _veritable dragon_. I am happy
>       to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the _very real_
>       existence of those animals”—in _dreams_, the writer ought to have
>       added, of long past ages. (_Ibid._, p. 424.)
> 
>   469 As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic
>       refers the reader to the picture of the incident painted by Simon de
>       Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame
>       du Don at Avignon, notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign
>       Pontiff, who “would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned
>       in the holy place”; and adds: “Time has injured the work of art, but
>       has not weakened its tradition.” (_Ibid._, p. 425.) De Mirville’s
>       “Dragon‐Devils” of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear
>       most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been.
>       Thus the Dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldovrandus and presented to the
>       Musée du Sénat, either in Naples or Bologna, “was there still in
>       1700,” but is there no more. (_Ibid._, p. 427.)
> 
>   470 _Op. cit._, ii. 422.
> 
>   471 _Ibid._, p. 433.
> 
>   472 _Ibid._, pp. 432, 433. This is about as just as though, a few
>       millenniums hence, a fanatic of some future new creed, who was bent
>       upon glorifying _his_ religion at the expense of _ancient_
>       Christianity, were to say: Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored.
>       The nun, calling it the Agnus, placed it on her bosom; the priest
>       laid it on the altar. It figured in every Paschal meal, and was
>       glorified loudly in every temple. And yet the Christians dreaded it
>       and hated it, for they slew and devoured it. Heathens, at any rate,
>       do not eat their sacred symbols. We know of no serpent or reptile‐
>       eaters, except in Christian civilized countries, where they begin
>       with frogs and eels, and must end with real snakes, as they have
>       begun with lamb and ended with horse‐flesh.
> 
>   473 _Ibid._, p. 423.
> 
>   474 _Pantheon_, 3.
> 
>   475 The Solar Chnouphis, or Agathodæmon, is the Christos of the
>       Gnostics, as every scholar knows. He is intimately connected with
>       the Seven Sons of Sophia (Wisdom), the Seven Sons of Aditi,
>       Universal Wisdom, her eighth being Mârttânda, the Sun, which Seven
>       are the Seven Planetary Regents or Genii. Therefore Chnouphis was
>       the Spiritual Sun of Enlightenment, of Wisdom, hence the patron of
>       all the Egyptian Initiates, as Bel‐Merodach, or Bel‐Belitanus,
>       became later with the Chaldæans.
> 
>   476 Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Feda shows in his
>       _Historia Anti‐Islamitica_, five Hermes, and the names of Hermes,
>       Nebo, Thot were given respectively in various countries to great
>       Initiates. Thus Nebo, the son of Merodach and Zarpanitu, whom
>       Herodotus calls Zeus‐Belos, gave his name to all the great Prophets,
>       Seers and Initiates. They were all “Serpents of Wisdom,” as
>       connected with the Sun astronomically, and with Wisdom spiritually.
> 
>   477 _Pantheon_, text 15.
> 
>   478 i. 555.
> 
>   479 _Genesis_, xlix. 17, 18, and 5, 6.
> 
>   480 Dunlap, in his Introduction to _Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni_ (xi),
>       explains the word “Sod” as _arcanum_, religious mystery, on the
>       authority of Schindler’s _Penteglott_, 1201. “The secret of the Lord
>       is with them that fear him,” says _Psalm_, xxv. 14. This is a
>       mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read: “Sod Ihoh
>       (the Mysteries of Ihoh) are for _those who fear him_.” “Al [El] is
>       terrible in the great Sod of the Kedeshim (the Priests, the Holy,
>       the Initiated).”—_Psalm_, lxxxix. 7 (_ibid._). The Kedeshim were
>       very far from holy. See the Section on “The Holy of Holies,” in Part
>       II of this Volume.
> 
>   481 “The members of the Priest‐Colleges were called Sodales,” says
>       Freund’s _Latin Lexicon_ (iv. 448). “Sodalities were constituted in
>       the Idæan Mysteries of the Mighty Mother,” writes Cicero in _De
>       Senectute_. (Dunlap, _ibid._, p. xii.)
> 
>   482 xxx. 6.
> 
>   483 The priests of Baal who jumped over the fires. But this was a Hebrew
>       term and a local one. Saraph means “fiery or flaming venom.”
> 
>   484 _Book of the Dead_, ch. xxxix.
> 
>   485 The same ram’s horns are found on the heads of Moses which were seen
>       on some old medals by the writer in Palestine, one of which is still
>       in her possession. The horns, forming part of the shining aureole on
>       the statue of Moses in Rome by Michael Angelo, are vertical instead
>       of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem is the same; hence
>       the Brazen Serpent.
> 
>   486 But see Harris’ _Magic Papyrus_, No. v, and the ram‐headed Ammon
>       manufacturing men on a potter’s wheel.
> 
>   487 Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Mexique_, pp. 135 and 574.
> 
>   488 Ulûpî (Ulûpl) has an entirely Atlantean ring about it. Like
>       Atlantis, it is neither a Greek nor a Sanskrit name, but reminds one
>       of Mexican names.
> 
>   489 _Mahâbhârata_, Âdi Parva, Shlokas 7788, 7789. The _Bhâgavata Purâna_
>       (ix. xx. 31), as explained by Shrîdhara, the commentator, makes
>       Ulûpî the daughter of the king of Manipûra (see _Vishnu Purâna_,
>       Wilson, iv. 160); but the late Pandit Dayânand Sarasvatî, certainly
>       the greatest Sanskrit and Paurânic authority in India on such
>       questions, personally corroborated that Ulûpî was daughter of the
>       king of the Nâgas in Pâtâla, or America, 5,000 years ago, and that
>       the Nâgas were Initiates.
> 
>   490 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 293.
> 
>   491 Foh‐tchou, in Chinese meaning literally Buddha’s lord, or the
>       teacher of the doctrines of Buddha—Foh.
> 
>   492 This mountain is situated south‐west of China, almost between China
>       and Tibet.
> 
>   493 _Ibid._, pp. 293, 294.
> 
>   494 Let the reader be reminded that in the _Zohar_, and also in all the
>       Kabalistic works, it is maintained that “Metatron united with
>       Shekinah.” Now Shekinah as the Veil (Grace) of Ain Suph,
>       representing the Logos, is that very Tree of Knowledge; while
>       Shamaël—the dark _aspect_ of the Logos—occupies only the bark of
>       that tree, and has the knowledge of _evil_ alone. As Lacour, who saw
>       in the scene of the Fall (_Genesis_, iii) an incident pertaining to
>       Egyptian Initiation, says: “The Tree of the Divination, or of the
>       Knowledge of Good and Evil ... is the science of Tzyphon, the Genius
>       of Doubt, _tzy_ to teach, and _phon_, doubt. Tzyphon is one of the
>       Aleim; we shall see him presently under the name of Nach, the
>       tempter” (_Les Œloim_, vol. ii. p. 218). He is now known to
>       Symbologists under the name of Jehovah.
> 
>   495 This is the view taken and adopted by all the Church Fathers, but it
>       is not the real Esoteric Teaching. The _curse_ did not begin with
>       the formation of either man or woman, for their separation was a
>       natural sequence of evolution, but with _the breaking of the law_.
> 
>   496 By which _human_ nature lives; not even the animal—but the
>       misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which _men_, not Nature,
>       created. See the Section “Cross and Circle.”
> 
>   497 See _Zohar_, i. 172, _a_ and _b_.
> 
>   498 Compare the Section on “The Mysteries of the Hebdomad” in Part II of
>       this Volume.
> 
>   499 Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_, p. 1.
> 
>   500 _The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation_, Robert Brown, junr.,
>       F.S.A. London, 1881.
> 
>   501 _Mythical Monsters_, pp. 2‐4.
> 
>   502 _Ibid._, p. 20.
> 
>   503 _Ibid._, pp. 36, 37.
> 
>   504 _The Human Species_, p. 52.
> 
>   505 _Manual of Geology_, p. 301.
> 
>   506 _Ibid._, p. 17.
> 
>   507 Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_, p. 16. See also _Recherches, etc., des
>       Mammifères_, plate 1. Paris, 1868 to 1874.
> 
>   508 Preface to the _Shan Hai King_, or “Wonders by Land and Sea.”
> 
>   509 Vol. i. pp. 589, _et seqq._
> 
>   510 There are Archæologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, refuse any
>       great antiquity to even one single monument in India. In his work,
>       _Illustrations of the Rock‐Cut Temples of India_, he ventures to
>       express the very extraordinary opinion that “Egypt had ceased to be
>       a nation before the earliest of the cave‐temples of India was
>       excavated.” In short, he does not admit the existence of any cave‐
>       temple anterior to the reign of Ashoka, and seems anxious to prove
>       that most of these rock‐cut temples were executed during a period
>       extending from the time of that pious Buddhist king until the
>       destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Magadha, in the beginning of
>       the fifth century. We believe such a claim to be perfectly
>       arbitrary. Further discoveries will show that it is erroneous and
>       unwarranted.
> 
>   511 America, at the time of its discovery, was called _Atlanta_ by some
>       native tribes.
> 
>   512 Since then Donnelly’s _Atlantis_ has appeared, and soon its actual
>       existence will have become a scientific fact.
> 
>   513 It is so divided to this day, and Theosophists and Occultists, who
>       have learned something of the occult but undeniable power of
>       Dugpaship at their own expense, know this but too well.
> 
>   514 See De Mirville’s _Pneumatologie: Des Esprits_, iii. 57, _et seqq._
> 
>   515 See Max Müller, _Chips_, i. 339; “Popol Vuh.” Compare also Holmberg,
>       _Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des Russischen Amerika_.
>       Helsingfors, 1855.
> 
>   516 _Op. cit._, pp. 13‐15.
> 
>   517 _Ibid._, p. 308.
> 
>   518 An approach to the statues at Bamian—also a Buddha 200 feet high—is
>       found near a Jain settlement in Southern India, and appears to be
>       the only one that remains at present.
> 
>   519 Even Wilson admits that Râma and Râvana were personages founded on
>       historical facts. “The traditions of the South of India uniformly
>       ascribe its civilization ... and the settlement of civilized Hindûs
>       [the Fifth Race] to the conquest of Lankâ by Râma” (_Vishnu Purâna_,
>       iii. 318)—the victory of the “Sons of Gods” over the Atlantean
>       sorcerers, says the _true_ tradition.
> 
>   520 Thus we are shown one hero, to give an instance, first born as the
>       “unrighteous but valiant monarch” (Purusha) of the Daityas,
>       Hiranyakashipu, slain by the Avatâra Nara‐sinha (Man‐lion). Then he
>       was born as Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, and killed by Râma;
>       after which he is reborn as Shishupâla, the son of Rajarshi (King
>       Rishi) Damaghosha, when he is again killed by Krishna, the last
>       incarnation of Vishnu. This parallel evolution of Vishnu (Spirit)
>       with a Daitya, as man, may seem meaningless, yet it gives us the key
>       not only to the respective dates of Râma and Krishna but even to a
>       certain psychological mystery.
> 
>   521 Compare _Hibbert Lectures_, 1877, Sayce, pp. 134‐138.
> 
>   522 The Gods became No‐Gods.
> 
>   523 Race.
> 
>   524 Yellow‐white.
> 
>   525 Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown
>       and yellow giant races, that one ought to speak of _man_, since it
>       was the Fourth Race only which was the first _completely human
>       species_, however much larger in size than we are now. In _Man:
>       Fragments of Forgotten History_ (by two Chelâs), all that is said of
>       the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly this Race which
>       became “black with sin,” that brought the divine names of the
>       Asuras, the Râkshasas and the Daityas, into disrepute, and passed
>       them on to posterity as the names of fiends. For, as said, the
>       Suras, Gods or Devas, having incarnated in the wise men of Atlantis,
>       the names of Asuras and Râkshasas were given to the ordinary
>       Atlanteans. Owing to the incessant conflicts of the latter with the
>       last remnants of the Third Race and the “Sons of Will and Yoga,”
>       their names have led to the later allegories about them in the
>       _Purânas_. “Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans
>       who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Âryans (Gods).”
>       (_Man_, p. 77.)
> 
>   526 In the beginning.
> 
>   527 The sub‐races.
> 
>   528 Their colours.
> 
>   529 Stanza VII, Shloka 24.
> 
>   530 See Shlokas 32, 34.
> 
>   531 In general, the so‐called orthodox Christian conceptions about the
>       “fallen” Angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd.
>       About a dozen could be cited, of the most varied character as to
>       details, and all from the pens of educated lay authors, “university
>       graduates” of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author
>       of _Earth’s Earliest Ages_, G. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick
>       volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Agnostics, Mystics,
>       metaphysicians, poets, and every contemporary author on Oriental
>       speculations, to be the devoted servants of the “Prince of the Air,”
>       and irretrievably damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in
>       this wise:
> 
>       “Satan is the ‘Anointed Cherub’ of old.... God created Satan, the
>       fairest and wisest of all His creatures in this part of His
>       Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the Power of the
>       Air.... He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the
>       Eden of Genesis ... and of an altogether different and more
>       substantial character, resembling the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan
>       being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, his vast empire is our earth,
>       if not the whole solar system.... Certainly no other angelic power
>       of greater or even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The
>       Archangel Michael himself is quoted by Jude as preserving towards
>       the Prince of Darkness _the respect due to a superior_, however
>       wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition.”
>       Then we are informed that “Satan was from the moment of his creation
>       surrounded by the _insignia of royalty_” (! !): that he “awoke to
>       consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing music of
>       those whom God had appointed.” Then the Devil “passes from the
>       royalty to his _priestly dignity_” (! ! !). “Satan was also a
>       _priest of the Most High_,” etc., etc. And now—“Antichrist will be
>       Satan incarnate.” (Chap. III and pp. 56‐59.) The pioneers of the
>       coming Apollyon have already appeared—they are the Theosophists, the
>       Occultists, the authors of the _Perfect Way_, of _Isis Unveiled_, of
>       the _Mystery of the Ages_, and even of the _Light of Asia_ ! ! The
>       author notes the “avowed origin” of Theosophy from the “descending
>       angels,” from the “Nephilim,” or the Angels of _Genesis_ (vi), and
>       the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as our
>       _Secret Doctrine_ endeavours to show—unless he refuses to belong to
>       the present humanity.
> 
>   532 Compare x. 8, where it speaks of all who have come before Jesus,
>       being “thieves and robbers.”
> 
>   533 Verse 14.
> 
>   534 _Luke_, x. 18.
> 
>   535 It is not correct to refer to Christ—as some Theosophists do—as
>       Buddhi, the sixth principle in man. The latter _per se_ is a passive
>       and latent principle, the Spiritual Vehicle of Âtmâ, inseparable
>       from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in
>       conjunction with _Self‐consciousness_ that Buddhi becomes the Higher
>       Self and the Divine, discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh
>       principle, if anything.
> 
>   536 xix. 7.
> 
>   537 _Ibid._, verse 8.
> 
>   538 xviii. 24.
> 
>   539 To make it plainer, any one who reads the passage in _Luke_, will
>       see that the remark follows the report of the _seventy_, who rejoice
>       that “even the devils [the spirit of controversy and reasoning, or
>       the opposing power, since Satan means simply ‘adversary’ or
>       ‘opponent’] are subject unto us through thy name.” (_Luke_, x. 17.)
>       Now, “thy name” means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the Spirit
>       of true Divine Wisdom, as distinct from the spirit of intellectual
>       or mere materialistic reasoning—the Higher Self in short. And when
>       Jesus remarks on this that he has “beheld Satan as lightning fall
>       from heaven,” it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers,
>       notifying to them that he already knew it, and a reference to the
>       incarnation of the Divine Ray—the Gods or Angels—which _falls into
>       generation_. For not all men, by any means, benefit by that
>       incarnation, and with some the power remains latent and dead during
>       the whole life. Truly “no man knoweth who the Son is, but the
>       Father; and who the Father is, but the Son,” as added by Jesus then
>       and there (verse 22)—the “Church of Christ” less than any one else.
>       The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the terms
>       “Father” and “Son,” and knew that it referred to Spirit and Soul on
>       the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were Occult teachings, which
>       could only be explained at Initiation. They were never intended for
>       the masses, for Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and
>       the Samaritans (_Matth._, x. 5), and repeated to his disciples that
>       the “mystery of the kingdom of God” was for them alone, not for the
>       multitudes (_Mark_, iv. 11).
> 
>   540 So, for instance, in the _Purânas_, Pulastya, a Prajâpati, or son of
>       Brahmâ—the progenitor of the Râkshasas, and the grandfather of
>       Râvana, the great king of Lankâ in the _Râmâyana_—had, in a _former
>       birth_, a son named Dattoli, “who is now known as the sage Agastya,”
>       says _Vishnu Purâna_ (Wilson’s Trans., i. 154). This name of Dattoli
>       alone, has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called
>       respectively, Dattoli, Dattâli, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri,
>       Dambhobhi and Dambholi. These seven variants have each a secret
>       sense, and refer in the Esoteric Commentaries to various
>       ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and
>       anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the
>       Râkshasas are not Demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious
>       Giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the Globe,
>       as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishtha is a warrant of this, if his
>       words addressed to Parâshara, who attempted a bit of Jadoo
>       (sorcery), which he calls “sacrifice,” for the destruction of the
>       Râkshasas, mean anything. For he says: “Let no more of these
>       _unoffending_ ‘Spirits of Darkness’ be consumed.” (See for details,
>       _Mahâbhârata_, Âdi Parvan, s. 176; also _Linga Purâna_, Pûrvârdha,
>       s. 64; Wilson, _ibid._, i. 8, 9.)
> 
>   541 We have a passage from a Master’s letter which has a direct bearing
>       upon these incarnating Angels. Says the letter: “Now there are, and
>       there must be, failures in the ethereal Races of the many Classes of
>       Dhyân Chohans, or Devas [_progressed entities_ of a _previous_
>       Planetary Period], as well as among men. But still, as the
>       _failures_ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown
>       back forcibly from Dhyân‐Chohanship into the vortex of a new
>       primordial evolution through the lower Kingdoms, this then happens.
>       Where a new Solar System has to be evolved, these Dhyân Chohans are
>       borne in by influx ‘ahead’ of the Elementals [entities ... to be
>       developed into humanity at a _future_ time] and remain as a latent
>       or inactive spiritual force, in the Aura of a nascent World ...
>       until the stage of human evolution is reached.... Then they become
>       an _active force_ and commingle with the Elementals, to _develop
>       little by little the full type of humanity_.” That is to say, to
>       develop in man, and endow him with his Self‐conscious Mind, or
>       Manas.
> 
>   542 Appendix XV, pp. 369, _et seqq._
> 
>   543 When the Earth with its Planetary Chain and Man were to appear.
> 
>   544 Our Earth and the physical plane of consciousness.
> 
>   545 When the pure, celestial Beings or Dhyân Chohans, and the great
>       Pitris of various classes were commissioned—the one to evolve their
>       Images or Chhâyâs, and make of them physical man, the others to
>       inform and thus endow him with divine intelligence and the
>       comprehension of the Mysteries of Creation.
> 
>   546 The “dynasties of kings” who all regard themselves as the
>       “anointed,” reigning by the “Grace of God,” whereas in truth, they
>       reign by the grace of Matter, the Great Illusion, the Deceiver.
> 
>   547 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._, verse 10.
> 
>   548 See the “Primeval Manus of Humanity.”
> 
>   549 The “Heavenly Man,” please mark again the word, is the “Logos” or
>       the “Son” Esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied
>       to Christ, who was declared to be God and the very God himself,
>       Christian Theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of a
>       personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it still does, that the
>       Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of
>       other religions are false, and are only the masquerading Evil
>       Principle, Satan. See whereto this has led Western Theology!
> 
>   550 “For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Light and
>       Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which,
>       being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven
>       other Governors, which in their Circles contain the Phenomenal
>       World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny.” (Sect. ix.
>       c. 1, ed. of 1579.)
> 
>       Here it is evident that Mind, the Primeval Universal Divine Thought,
>       is neither the Unknown Unmanifested One, since it abounds in both
>       sexes—is male and female—nor yet the Christian “Father,” as the
>       latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the
>       “Father,” “Son,” and “Man” are hopelessly mixed up in the
>       translations of _Pymander_.
> 
>   551 The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the
>       rebellion of the proud Lucifer, who was hurled down to the
>       “bottomless pit,” or simply on to our Earth, to live as man. The
>       Hindû Lucifer, the Mahâsura, is also said to have become envious of
>       the Creator’s resplendent Light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras
>       (not Gods, but Spirits), to have rebelled against Brahmâ; for which
>       Shiva hurled him down to Pâtâla. But, as philosophy goes hand in
>       hand with allegorical fiction in Hindû myths, the “Devil” is made to
>       repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful
>       man _esoterically_, and can by Yoga, devotion, and adeptship, reach
>       his status of “one with the deity,” once more. Hercules, the Sun‐
>       God, descends to Hades (the Cave of Initiation) to deliver the
>       victims from their tortures, etc. The Christian Church alone creates
>       _eternal_ torment for the Devil and the damned that she has
>       invented.
> 
>   552 Why, for instance, should Éliphas Lévi, the very fearless and
>       outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the
>       Fallen Angels so‐called? That he knew the fact and the real meaning
>       of the allegory, both in its religious and mystical, as well as in
>       its physiological sense, is proved by his voluminous writings and
>       frequent allusions and hints. Yet Éliphas, after having alluded to
>       it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his later
>       _Histoire de la Magie_ (pp. 220, 221): “We protest with all our
>       might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We _pretend
>       neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the
>       Angels_.... But if so ... then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can
>       be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned—now
>       that he is separated from deity—which is the principle of every
>       power.” This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave
>       Jennings writes in his weird, staccato‐like style:
> 
>       “Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted
>       personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are
>       each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes.
>       These are reproduced and stand multiplied—distinguished by different
>       names in all the mythologies [including the Christian]. But the idea
>       regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion
>       is that of the all‐powerful champion—child‐like in his ‘virgin
>       innocence’—so powerful that this God‐filled innocence (the Seraphim
>       ‘know most,’ the Cherubim ‘love most’) can shatter the world
>       (articulated—so to use the word—in the magic of Lucifer, but
>       condemned), in opposition to the artful constructions, won out of
>       the permission of the Supreme—artful constructions (‘this side
>       life’)—of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet, at
>       the same time, the ‘Light‐bringer,’ the Lucifer—the ‘Morning Star,’
>       the ‘Son of the Morning’—the very highest title ‘out of heaven,’ for
>       in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an
>       apparently incredible side of his character—for let the reader
>       carefully remark that qualities are of no sex—this Archangel Saint
>       Michael is the invincible, sexless, celestial ‘Energy’—to dignify
>       him by his grand characteristics—the invincible ‘Virgin‐Combatant,’
>       clothed ... and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the
>       Gnostic ‘refusal to create.’ This is another myth, a ‘myth within
>       myths,’ ... a stupendous ‘mystery of mysteries,’ because it is so
>       impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse.
>       Unrevealable as the ‘Revelation.’ ” (_Phallicism_, pp. 212, 213.)
> 
>       Nevertheless, this _unexplainable_ and _unrevealable_ mystery will
>       now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East. Though,
>       of course, as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of
>       _Phallicism_ gives it, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand
>       his real drift.
> 
>   553 “Creation”—out of preëxistent eternal Substance, or Matter, of
>       course, which Substance, according to our teachings, is Boundless,
>       Ever‐existing Space.
> 
>   554 The Luciferians, a sect of the fourth century who are alleged to
>       have taught that the soul was a _carnal_ body transmitted to the
>       child by its father, and the Lucianists, another and earlier sect of
>       the third century A.D., who taught all this, and further, that the
>       _animal_ soul was not immortal, philosophized on the grounds of the
>       real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.
> 
>   555 This “Central Sun” of the Occultists even Science is obliged to
>       accept astronomically, for it cannot deny the presence in sidereal
>       space of a central body in the Milky Way, a point unseen and
>       mysterious, the ever‐hidden centre of attraction of our Sun and
>       System. But this “Sun” is viewed differently by the Occultists of
>       the East. While the Western and Jewish Kabalists—and even some pious
>       modern Astronomers—claim that in this Sun the God‐head is specially
>       present, referring to it the volitional acts of God—the Eastern
>       Initiates maintain that, as the Supra‐divine Essence of the Unknown
>       Absolute is equally in every domain and place, the “Central Sun” is
>       simply the centre of Universal Life‐Electricity; the reservoir
>       within which that Divine Radiance, already differentiated at the
>       beginning of every “creation,” is focussed. Though still in a Laya,
>       or neutral condition, it is, nevertheless, the one attracting, as
>       also the ever‐emitting, Life‐Centre.
> 
>   556 _Op. cit._, pp. 287‐289.
> 
>   557 See Commentary to Stanza VII, Volume I.
> 
>   558 The _fourth_ and the _fifth_ from _below_ beginning with the
>       Physical Body; the _third_ and the _fourth_, if we reckon from Âtmâ.
> 
>   559 _New Aspects of Life._
> 
>   560 Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their Being, because
>       unconditioned in Eternity; but periodical and conditioned in their
>       Manvantaric manifestations.
> 
>   561 _Op. cit._, pp. 97, 98, 2nd ed., 1887.
> 
>   562 The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is to be
>       found in Part II, Section V.
> 
>   563 By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a
>       Protestant clergyman, he became a Mohammedan; then a rabid Atheist;
>       after meeting with a Master, a Guru, he became a Mystic; then a
>       Theosophist who doubted, despaired—threw up _white_ for _black_
>       magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning
>       round, anathematized her, re‐became an Atheist, and died cursing
>       humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe.
>       Furnished with all the Esoteric data to write his “War in Heaven,”
>       he made a semi‐political article out of it, mixing Malthus with
>       Satan, and Darwin with the Astral Light. Peace be to his—_Shell_. He
>       is a warning to the Chelâs who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be
>       seen in the Mussulman burial ground of Joonaghur, Kathiawar, India.
> 
>   564 The author talks of the _active, fighting_, damning Jehovah as
>       though he were a synonym of Parabrahman! We have quoted from this
>       article to show where it dissents from Theosophic teachings;
>       otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything
>       published in the _Theosophist_ generally is.
> 
>   565 _The Theosophist_, vol. iii. p. 68.
> 
>   566 Explaining the _Kabalah_, Dr. Henry Pratt says: “Spirit was to man
>       [to the Jewish Rabbin, rather!] a bodiless, disembodied, or
>       deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph
>       Nahash, ‘Deprived’; represented as appearing to and seducing the
>       human race—man through the woman.... In the picture from this
>       Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its
>       _destitution of bodily members_, the serpent was looked upon as a
>       deprived and depraved and degraded creature.” (_New Aspects of
>       Life_, p. 235.) Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer
>       that of the serpent—the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of
>       limbs as it is—to the Jod (י)—the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in
>       the _Kabalah_—the God of the male symbol of generation.
> 
>   567 _Zohar_, iii. 61c.
> 
>   568 Daksha, the “intelligent, the competent.” “This name generally
>       carries with it the idea of _creative power_.” He is a son of Brahmâ
>       and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, a self‐born power,
>       which, like Minerva, sprang from his father’s body. He is the chief
>       of the Prajâpatis, the Lords or Creators of Being. In _Vishnu
>       Purâna_, Parâshara says of him: “In every Kalpa [or Manvantara]
>       Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed.” And the _Rig
>       Veda_ says that “Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha,” a
>       reference to the eternal cyclic re‐birth of the same divine Essence.
> 
>   569 _Bhâgavata Purâna_, iv. 24, 4.
> 
>   570 No one of these Orders is distinct from the Pitris or Progenitors.
>       As says Manu (iii. 284): “The wise call our fathers Vasus; our
>       paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great grandfathers,
>       Âdityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas.” “This is an everlasting
>       Vedic text,” says another translation.
> 
>   571 As now discovered by the late G. Smith in the Babylonian cylinder
>       literature, it was the same in Chaldæan Theogony. Ishtar, “eldest of
>       Heaven and of Earth.” Below him the Igigi or Angels of Heaven, and
>       the Anûnaki, or Angels of Earth. Below these again various classes
>       of Spirits and “Genii” called Sadu, Vadukku, Ekimu, Gallu—of which
>       some were good, some evil. (See Smith’s _Babylonian Mythology_, also
>       Sayce’s _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 141.)
> 
>   572 Some superior, others inferior, _to suit the Karma_ of the various
>       reïncarnating Monads, which could not all be of the same degree of
>       purity in their last births in other Worlds. This accounts for the
>       difference of races, the inferiority of the savage and other human
>       varieties.
> 
>   573 “There are,” says Topinard in the English edition of his
>       _Anthropology_, with a preface by Professor Broca, “_three_
>       fundamental elements of colour in the human organism—namely, the
>       _red_, the _yellow_, and the _black_, which, mixed in variable
>       quantities with the white of the tissues, give rise to those
>       numerous shades seen in the human family.” Here is Science again
>       unintentionally supporting Occultism.
> 
>   574 It must be remembered that the “last remnants” here spoken of, refer
>       to those portions of the “Great Continent” which still remained, and
>       not to any of the numerous islands which existed contemporaneously
>       with the Continent. Plato’s “island,” for instance, was one of such
>       remnants; the others having sunk at various periods previously. An
>       Occult “tradition” teaches that such submersions occur whenever
>       there is an eclipse of the “Spiritual Sun.”
> 
>   575 See the remarks on the Root and Seed Manus _infra_, and the Section
>       on “The Primeval Manus of Humanity,” at the end of the Commentaries
>       on this Stanza.
> 
>   576 Mr. Gladstone’s unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account
>       with Science (see his “Dawn of Creation” and “Proem to Genesis,” in
>       _The Nineteenth Century_, 1886), has brought upon him the Jovian
>       thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead‐letter account warranted
>       no such attempt; and his fourfold order, or division, of animated
>       creation, has turned into the stone which, instead of killing the
>       fly on the sleeping friend’s brow, killed the man himself. Mr.
>       Gladstone has killed _Genesis_ for ever. But this does not prove
>       that there is no Esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews
>       and all the Christians, the modern as well as the early sects, have
>       accepted the narrative _literally_ for two thousand years, proves
>       only their ignorance, and shows the great ingenuity and constructive
>       ability of the Initiated Rabbis, who built the two accounts—the
>       Elohistic and Jehovistic—Esoterically, and purposely confused the
>       meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word‐signs in the original text.
>       The six days (Yom) of creation do mean six periods of evolution, and
>       the seventh day is that of culmination, of perfection—not of rest.
>       These refer to the seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct
>       “creation” in each; though the use of the words Boker, “dawn” or
>       “morning,” and Ereb, “evening twilight”—which have Esoterically the
>       same meaning as Sandhyâ, “twilight,” in Sanskrit—have led to a
>       charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.
> 
>   577 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 337.
> 
>   578 Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_, _sub voce_.
> 
>   579 _Op. cit._, p. 335.
> 
>   580 “Follow the law of analogy”—the Masters teach. Âtmâ‐Buddhi is dual
>       and Manas is triple, inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the
>       latter three, _i.e._, as a “principle” _per se_, which gravitates,
>       in its higher aspect, to Âtmâ‐Buddhi, and follows, in its lower
>       nature, Kâma, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and
>       passions. Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the
>       Second of which are of the nature of Âtmâ‐Buddhi, of which they are
>       the passive Spiritual progeny, while the Third Root‐Race shows three
>       distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically—the
>       earliest sinless, the middle portions awakening to intelligence, and
>       the third and last decidedly _animal_, _i.e._, Manas succumbs to the
>       temptations of Kâma.
> 
>   581 Laing, _op. cit._, _ibid._
> 
>   582 The whole trouble is this: neither Physiologists nor Pathologists
>       will recognize that the cell‐germinating substance, the
>       Cytoblastema, and the mother‐lye from which crystals originate, are
>       one and the same essence, save in differentiation for certain
>       purposes.
> 
>   583 Huxley, _Proceedings of the Royal Institution_, iii. 151.
> 
>   584 _Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera_, p. xi.
> 
>   585 _Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow_, vol. iii. Very
>       strangely, however, he has recently again changed his opinion. The
>       Sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 years old.
> 
>   586 Bastian, _The Beginnings of Life_, ii. 622.
> 
>   587 Laing, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 171.
> 
>   588 In _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i. p. 389, this is noticed and half
>       explained.
> 
>   589 Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21,
>       Prajâpatis, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all are made the “fathers” of
>       various beings and things. The order of the seven classes, or orders
>       of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in
>       the _Purânas_, is found in several commentaries in the correct
>       rotation. Thus, Prithu is the father of the Earth. He “milks” her,
>       and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, all enumerated
>       and specified. Kashyapa is the “father” of all the reptiles, snakes,
>       demons, etc.
> 
>   590 See vol. i. pp. 151, _et seqq._, concerning the “Tree of
>       Evolution”—the “Mundane Tree.”
> 
>   591 Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which
>       imposes a restriction on the advance of all species when a _higher
>       type_ makes its appearance.
> 
>   592 See _Origin of Species_, p. 145.
> 
>   593 Bastian, _Beginnings of Life_, ii. pp. 622, 623.
> 
>   594 Vol. ii. p. 278.
> 
>   595 _Op. cit._, i. 9.
> 
>   596 _Ibid._, ii. 283, 284.
> 
>   597 See his _Lettres sur l’Atlantide_.
> 
>   598 This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that: “The
>       Noëtic family also ... bore the appellations of Atlanteans and
>       Titans; and the great patriarch himself was called, by way of
>       eminence, Atlas and Titan.” (_Ibid._, ii. 285.) And if so, then,
>       _according to the Bible_, Noah must have been the progeny of the
>       Sons of God, the Fallen Angels, agreeably to the same authority, and
>       of the “daughters of men who were fair.” (See _Genesis_, vi.) And
>       why not, since his father Lamech slew a man, and was, with all his
>       sons and daughters, who perished in the Deluge, as bad as the rest
>       of mankind?
> 
>   599 In that wonderful volume of Donnelly, _Atlantis, the Antediluvian
>       World_, the author, speaking of the Âryan colonies from Atlantis,
>       and of the arts and sciences—the legacy of our Fourth Race—bravely
>       announces that “the roots of the institutions of to‐day reach back
>       to the Miocene age.” This is an enormous allowance for a modern
>       scholar to make; but civilization dates still further back than the
>       Miocene Atlanteans. Secondary‐period man will be discovered, and
>       with him his long forgotten civilization.
> 
>   600 Nature is the _Natural_ Body, the Shadow of the Progenitors.
> 
>   601 Man is the “Heavenly Man,” as already stated.
> 
>   602 _Divine Pymander_, i. 16.
> 
>   603 The _Pymander_ of our museums and libraries is an abridgment of one
>       of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third
>       Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phœnician MSS. by a
>       Jewish Kabalist, and called the _Genesis of Enoch_. But even its
>       disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the
>       Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators
>       and Seven Primitive Men. As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and
>       Cadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the
>       seven primordial Sages—incarnated Dhyân Chohans or Devas, in
>       _illusive_, not mortal bodies—who taught Humanity all it knew, and
>       whose earliest disciples assumed their Master’s names. This custom
>       passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the
>       traditions about Hermes—of whom Egyptologists count five—Enoch,
>       etc.; they are all inventors of letters; none of them die; they
>       still live, and are the first Initiators into, and Founders of, the
>       Mysteries. It was only very lately that the _Genesis of Enoch_
>       disappeared from among the Kabalists. Guillaume Postel saw it. It
>       was most certainly in a great measure a transcript from the Books of
>       Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Éliphas Lévi
>       tells his readers.
> 
>   604 Uranus is a modified Varuna, the “universal encompasser,” the “all‐
>       embracer,” and one of the oldest of the Vedic Deities—Space, the
>       maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or
>       its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the
>       Âdityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the “Leviathan”—Makara, now
>       the most sacred and mysterious of the Signs of the Zodiac. Varuna,
>       without whom “no creature can even wink,” was degraded like Uranus,
>       and, like him, _fell into generation_; his functions—“the grandest
>       cosmical functions,” as Muir calls them—having been degraded from
>       Heaven to Earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same
>       Orientalist says: “The attributes and functions ascribed to Varuna
>       [in the Vedas] impart to his character a moral elevation and
>       sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity.”
>       But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like as that of
>       Uranus, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and
>       sinful work of man’s fancy, and also to study the mysteries which
>       Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishtha. Only “his secrets and
>       those of Mitra _are not to be revealed to the foolish_.”
> 
>   605 _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, p. 7.
> 
>   606 Cronus is not only Χρόνος, Time, but also, as Bréal showed, in his
>       _Hercule et Cacus_ (p. 57), comes from the root _kar_, “to make, to
>       create.” Whether Bréal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in
>       saying that in the _Vedas_, Krânan (_sic_) is a Creative God, we
>       have our doubts. Bréal probably meant Karma, or rather Visvakarman,
>       the Creative God, the “omnificent” and the “great architect of the
>       world.”
> 
>   607 See Stanzas III—X, _et seqq._, and also Berosus’ account of primeval
>       creation.
> 
>   608 The Titanic struggle, in Theogony at least, is the fight for
>       supremacy between the children of Uranus and Gæa (or Heaven and
>       Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children of
>       Cronus, whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on
>       to this day between the Spiritual Inner Man and the man of flesh, in
>       one sense.
> 
>   609 Just as the “Lord God,” or Jehovah, is Cain, esoterically, and the
>       “tempting serpent” as well; the male portion of the androgynous
>       Eve—before her “Fall,” the female portion of Adam Kadmon—the left
>       side, or Binah, of the right side, Chokmah, in the first Sephirothal
>       Triad.
> 
>   610 Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 284.
> 
>   611 In the Egyptian legend, called the “Two Brothers,” translated by M.
>       Maspéro (the ex‐director of the Boulaq Museum), the original of
>       Pandora is given. Noom, the famous heavenly artist, creates a
>       marvellous beauty, a girl whom he sends to Batoo, after which the
>       happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl
>       Eve, of course. (See _Revue Archéologique_, March, 1878, and also
>       Decharme, _ibid._, p. 285.)
> 
>   612 Yima is not the “first man” in the _Vendîdâd_, but only in the
>       theories of the Orientalists.
> 
>   613 Bœotia was submerged and subsequently ancient Athens and Eleusis.
> 
>   614 _Opera et Dies_, v. 108.
> 
>   615 _Nem._, VI. i.
> 
>   616 See _Apollod._, i. 7, 2; and Ovid, _Metam._, i. 260, _et seqq._
> 
>   617 _Deutsche Mythol._, i. 545, 3rd edit., and Hanusch _Schlawische
>       Myth._, p. 235. See Decharme, _ibid._, p. 288, who gives “nine
>       times,” and not seven.
> 
>   618 Hesiod, _Opera et Dies_, 143‐155.
> 
>   619 See Æschylus, _Septem contra Thebas_.
> 
>   620 Decharme, _ibid._, pp. 289, 290.
> 
>   621 Races.
> 
>   622 It was said.
> 
>   623 In Sanskrit Dâkinî.
> 
>   624 The name is used here in the sense, and as a synonym, of
>       “sorcerers.” The Atlantean Races were many, and their evolution
>       lasted for millions of years. All of them were not bad, but became
>       so towards the end of their cycle, as we, the Fifth Race, are now
>       fast becoming.
> 
>   625 The “Gods of the Elements” are by no means the Elementals. The
>       latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials in which
>       to clothe themselves.
> 
>   626 Cain was the “sacrificer,” as shown at first in Chap. iv. of
>       _Genesis_, of “the fruit of the ground,” of which he was the _first
>       tiller_, while Abel “brought of the firstlings of his flock” to the
>       Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female
>       humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the Third Race. The
>       “murdering” is blood‐shedding, but not taking life.
> 
>   627 _Genesis_, vi.
> 
>   628 It is, perhaps, with an eye to this _degradation_ of the highest and
>       purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate planes of lower
>       consciousness, the “Seven Circles of Fire” of _Pymander_, that St.
>       James is made to say “This wisdom (_sophia_) descendeth not from
>       above, but is earthly, sensual, _devilish_”; now this Sophia is
>       Manas, the “Human Soul,” the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi,
>       which being so near the Absolute, is, _per se_, only _latent_
>       consciousness, and is dependent upon Manas for manifestation beyond
>       its own plane.
> 
>   629 This is the “Undying Race,” as it is called in Esotericism, and
>       exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny of
>       Daksha, who curses Nârada, the divine Rishi, for having dissuaded
>       the Haryashvas and the Shabalâshvas (the sons of Daksha) from
>       procreating their species, by saying: “Be born in the womb; there
>       shall not be a resting place for thee in all these regions.” After
>       this, Nârada, the representative of that race of _fruitless_
>       ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in
>       another.
> 
>   630 Âdi Parvan, p. 113.
> 
>   631 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., ii. 12.
> 
>   632 The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact.
>       Donnelly quotes from Father Duran’s _Historia Antigua de la Nueva
>       España_ of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian,
>       accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, as
>       follows: “In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been
>       created, this land [Cholula] was in obscurity and darkness ... but
>       immediately _after the light of the sun arose in the East_, there
>       appeared gigantic men ... who built the said pyramid, its builders
>       being scattered after that to all parts of the earth.”
> 
>       “A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the
>       doings of an ancient race of Giants called Quinanes,” says the
>       author of _Atlantis_ (p. 204).
> 
>   633 _Histoire de la Terre_, p. 154.
> 
>   634 There are critics who, finding no evidence for the existence of
>       Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius, “the veracious,” are
>       inclined to doubt it.
> 
>   635 _Heroica_, p. 35.
> 
>   636 _Hist. Nat._, VII. xvi.
> 
>   637 See for the above De Mirville, _Pneumatologie Des Esprits_, iii.
>       46‐48.
> 
>   638 _Élévations_, p. 56.
> 
>   639 And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church
>       Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that “the form
>       of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by
>       figure or shape.” In 692, the Council of Constantinople similarly
>       prohibited the faithful “to paint or represent Jesus _as a lamb_,”
>       as also “to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry.”
>       But the Council of Nicæa (787) brought this idolatry back, while
>       that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of
>       Constantinople, for showing himself an enemy of image worship.
> 
>   640 _Genesis_, v. Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of
>       China, Mr. Charles Gould, in his _Mythical Monsters_ (p. 212),
>       writes: “Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories, and
>       proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being _who has a
>       physical nature and spiritual attributes_. Gifted with an accepted
>       form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the
>       assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather,
>       producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising
>       tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the
>       scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject.”
> 
>       This “mysterious being” is the _mythical_ Dragon, _i.e._, the symbol
>       of the _historical_ and actual Adept, the Master and Professor of
>       Occult Sciences of old. It has already been stated elsewhere, that
>       the great “Magicians” of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally
>       called “Serpents” and “Dragons” after their Progenitors. All these
>       belonged to the Hierarchy of the so‐called “Fiery Dragons of
>       Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, answering to the Agnishvâtta Pitris, the
>       Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, who
>       is identified with the God of Fire. More is said in the text. Now
>       Clement, an initiated Neo‐Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of
>       the word “Dragon,” and why the initiated Adepts were so called, as
>       he knew the secret of the Agathodæmon, the Christ, the seven‐
>       vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new
>       faith required the transformation of all the _rivals_ of Jehovah—the
>       Angels supposed to have rebelled against that “Elohim,” as the Titan
>       Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father’s
>       kingdom—and that “Dragon” was the mystic appellation of the “Sons of
>       Wisdom”; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was
>       arbitrary, “serpents and giants signify _demons_,” _i.e._, not
>       “Spirits,” but _Devils_, in Church parlance.
> 
>   641 Part IV, Ch. xxvii, p. 291.
> 
>   642 “What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese—I now speak
>       of the inland, the true Chinamen, not of the hybrid mixture between
>       the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne—the aborigines
>       who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and
>       last branch of the Fourth Race, reached their highest civilization
>       when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia.” (_Esoteric Buddhism_,
>       p. 67.) And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very
>       high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that
>       of the aborigines of China) be got at and correctly translated, many
>       a priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare
>       as their language is unintelligible. So far, one or two European
>       Archæologists only have been able to procure such priceless works.
> 
>   643 Quoted in De Mirville, _op. cit._, iii. 53. Remember the same
>       statement in the _Book of Enoch_, as also the ladder seen by Jacob
>       in his dream. The “two worlds” mean, of course, the two _planes_ of
>       Consciousness and Being. A seer can commune with Beings of a higher
>       plane than the Earth, without quitting his arm‐chair.
> 
>   644 See the Commentary on the Four Races—and on the “Sons of Will and
>       Yoga,” the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.
> 
>   645 In the _Kabalah_ the pronunciation of the four‐lettered _ineffable_
>       Name is “a most secret arcanum”—“a secret of secrets.”
> 
>   646 _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 81.
> 
>   647 _Ibid._, p. 84, lines 12, 14 and 15.
> 
>   648 Returning once more to this most important subject in Archaic
>       Cosmogony, even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the
>       Goddess Saga, we find Loki, the brother by blood of Odin—just as
>       Typhon, Ahriman, and others are respectively brothers of Osiris and
>       Ormazd—becoming evil only later, when he had mingled too long with
>       humanity. Like all other Fire or Light Gods—Fire burning and
>       destroying as well as warming and giving life—he ended by being
>       regarded in the destructive sense of “Fire.” The name _Loki_, we
>       learn from _Asgard and the Gods_ (p. 250), has been derived from the
>       old word _liuhan_, to enlighten. It has, therefore, the same origin
>       as the Latin _lux_, light. Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer or
>       Light‐bringer. This title, being given to the Prince of Darkness, is
>       very suggestive and is in itself a vindication against theological
>       slander. But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, for
>       he is shown chained to a sharp rock, while Lucifer, also identified
>       with Satan, was chained down in Hell; a circumstance, however, which
>       prevented neither of them from acting with all freedom on Earth, if
>       we accept the theological paradox in its fulness. Loki is a
>       beneficent, generous and powerful God in the beginnings of time, and
>       the principle of good, and not of evil, in early Scandinavian
>       Theogony.
> 
>   649 The Greek mythos alluded to a few pages back, namely the mutilation
>       of Uranus by his son Cronus, is an allusion to this “theft” of the
>       _divine creative Fire_ by the Son of the Earth and Heavens. If
>       Uranus, the personification of the Celestial Powers, has to cease
>       creating (he is made impotent by Cronus (Chronos), the God _in
>       Time_), so, in the Egyptian Cosmogony, it is Thot, the God of
>       Wisdom, who regulates this fight between Horus and Set, the latter
>       being served by the former as Uranus is by Cronus. (See _Book of the
>       Dead_, xvii, line 26.) In the Babylonian account it is the God Zu,
>       who strips the “Father of the Gods” of “_umsimi_”—the ideal creative
>       organ, not the “crown” (!) as G. Smith thought (_op. cit._, pp. 115,
>       116). For, in the fragment K. 3454 (British Museum), it is said very
>       clearly, that Zu having stripped the “venerable of heaven” of his
>       _desire_, he carried away the “_umsimi_ of the gods,” and burnt
>       thereby “the _tereti_ [the power] of all the gods,” thus “governing
>       the whole of the _seed_ of all the angels.” As the _umsimi_ was “_on
>       the seat_” of Bel, it could hardly be the “crown.” A fourth version
>       is in the _Bible_. Ham is the Chaldæan Zu, and both are cursed for
>       the same allegorically described crime.
> 
>   650 Quoted by Christian Ginsburg from the _Kabalah_.
> 
>   651 Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 248. These are the Beings
>       whose legendary existence has served as a ground‐work upon which to
>       build the Rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the _Bible_
>       would term the Antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the Pre‐Adamite
>       races. They are no fiction—this is certain, however fantastic the
>       exuberance of later growth.
> 
>   652 _Op. cit._, pp. 101, 102.
> 
>   653 For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article by Visconde
>       de Figanière, F.T.S., in _The Theosophist_, entitled “Esoteric
>       Studies.” Its author expounds therein quite an Occult theory, though
>       to the world a new idea—“the _progress_ of the Monad concurring with
>       the _retrogression_ of Form, _i.e._, with decrease of the _vis
>       formativa_.” (Vol. viii. p. 666.) He says, “Who knows what shape
>       vehicled the Ego in remote rings [Rounds, or Races?]?... May not
>       man’s type ... have been that of the Simiadæ in its variety? Might
>       not the Monkey‐kingdom of Râmâyana fame rest on some far‐off
>       tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or
>       rather aspect, of man?” And the author winds up a very clever,
>       though too short, exposition of his theory by saying that which
>       every true Occultist will endorse: “With physico‐ethereal man there
>       must be _involution_ of sex. As physico‐astral man depended on
>       entities of the sub‐human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for
>       rebirth, so will physico‐ethereal man find among the graceful,
>       shapely orders issuing from the _air_‐plane, one or more which will
>       be developed for his successive embodiments _when procreated forms
>       are given_—a process which will include all mankind only very
>       gradually. The [_Pre_‐?] Adamic and Post‐Adamic races were giants;
>       their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians—beauteous,
>       luminous, diaphanous—but will assuredly be giants in mind” (p. 671).
> 
>   654 It may be objected that this is a contradiction. That, as the first
>       Root‐Race appeared 300,000,000 years after the vegetation had
>       evolved, the Seed of vegetable life could not be in the First Race.
>       We say it could; for up to man’s appearance in _this_ Round, the
>       vegetation was of quite another kind to what it is now, and quite
>       ethereal; this, for the simple reason that no grass or plants could
>       have been physical, before there were animal or other organisms to
>       breathe out the carbonic acid which vegetation has to imbibe for its
>       development, its nutrition and growth. They are interdependent in
>       their _physical_ and achieved forms.
> 
>   655 _Zohar_, i. 21a.
> 
>   656 _Ibid._, iii. 48a.
> 
>   657 _Ibid._, ii. 76a.
> 
>   658 _Op. cit._, p. 666.
> 
>   659 It is stated in the _Zohar_ that the “primordial worlds” (sparks)
>       could not continue because _man was not as yet_. “The _human_ form
>       contains everything; and as it did not as yet exist, the worlds were
>       destroyed.”
> 
>   660 “The Sacred Books of the East,” vol. iv; _The Vendîdâd_, J.
>       Darmesteter; Fargard ii. vv. 27 (70) and 28 (74).
> 
>   661 This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and read
>       by means of the _human_ key, or the key to Terrestrial
>       Anthroposophy. This interpretation of the “Ark” symbolism does not
>       in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even theogonic
>       keys; nor with any of the other six meanings. Nor does it seem less
>       scientific than the modern theories about the origin of man. As
>       said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.
> 
>   662 _Ibid._, v. 30 (87).
> 
>   663 _Ibid._, v. 31 (93).
> 
>   664 _Ibid._, v. 40 (131).
> 
>   665 See also _Bund._, xv.
> 
>   666 _Ibid._, 42 (137).
> 
>   667 _Bund._, xix and xxiv.
> 
>   668 S. L. MacGregor Mathers, _Kabbalah Unveiled_, p. 104.
> 
>   669 _Zohar_, ii. 8b.
> 
>   670 _Zohar_, iii. 278a; Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 217.
> 
>   671 Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of
>       _reversion to type_—the full meaning of which, in the case of human
>       monsters, is embraced in the Esoteric solution of the embryological
>       problem—as proof of their arguments, would do well to enquire into
>       those instances of _modern giants_ who are often 8, 9, and even 11
>       feet high. Such _reversions_ are imperfect, yet undeniable
>       reproductions of the original towering man of primeval times.
> 
>   672 See _Mythical Monsters_, by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and
>       scientific volume a few passages are quoted further on. See also, in
>       A. P. Sinnett’s _Occult World_, the description of a cavern in the
>       Himâlayas filled with relics of giant human and animal bones.
> 
>   673 _I.e._, the Third Eye was at the back of the head. The statement
>       that the latest hermaphrodite humanity was “four‐armed,” unriddles
>       probably the mystery of all the representations and idols of the
>       exoteric Gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there was a
>       ξόανον, a rudely carved wooden statue, attributed to Dædalus,
>       representing a three‐eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus
>       Triôpês, the “Three‐eyed.” The head of the “god” has two eyes in its
>       face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered the
>       most archaic of all the ancient statues. (_Schol. Vatic, ad Eurip.
>       Troad._, 14.)
> 
>   674 The _inner vision_ could henceforth be acquired only through
>       training and initiation, save in the cases of “natural and born
>       magicians”—sensitives and mediums, as they are called now.
> 
>   675 This expression “petrified” instead of “ossified” is curious. The
>       “back eye,” which is of course the Pineal Gland, so‐called, the
>       small pea‐like mass of grey nervous matter attached to the back of
>       the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably
>       contain _mineral concretions_ and _sand_, and “nothing more.”
> 
>   676 “Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles,
>       true eyes, that cannot see, are found in certain animals,” says
>       Hæckel. “Among the Vertebrata there are blind moles and field‐mice,
>       blind snakes and lizards.... They shun the daylight, dwelling ...
>       under the ground.... [They] were _not originally blind_, but have
>       evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well‐
>       developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be
>       found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion.” (Hæckel,
>       _Pedigree of Man_, “Sense Organs.” p. 343: Aveling’s Trans.) And if
>       _two_ eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not _one_
>       eye—the Pineal Gland—in man, who is but a higher animal in his
>       physical aspect?
> 
>   677 _Op. cit._, ii. 830, 831, ninth edition; “The Thalamencephalon or
>       Inter‐brain.”
> 
>   678 The “nervous ether” of Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S.; the nerve‐aura
>       of Occultism. The “animal spirits” (?) are equivalent to the
>       currents of nerve‐auric compound circulation.
> 
>   679 Let us remember that the _First_ Race is shown, in Occult Science,
>       as spiritual within and ethereal without; the _Second_, psycho‐
>       spiritual mentally, and ethereo‐physical bodily; the _Third_, still
>       bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro‐physical in its body,
>       and lives an inner life, in which the psycho‐spiritual element is in
>       no way as yet interfered with by the hardly nascent physiological
>       senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either
>       past or future. But the Third Eye “_embraces Eternity_.”
> 
>   680 But in a very different manner to that pictured by Hæckel as an
>       “_evolution by Natural Selection in the struggle for existence_”
>       (_Pedigree of Man_, “Sense Organs,” p. 335; Aveling’s Trans.). The
>       mere “thermal sensibility of the skin,” to hypothetical light‐waves,
>       is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of
>       adaptations existing in the eye. We have shown that “natural
>       selection” is a pure myth when credited with the _origination_ of
>       variations, as the “survival of the fittest” can only take place
>       after useful variations have sprung up, together with improved
>       organisms. Whence came the “useful variations,” which developed the
>       eye? Only from “blind forces ... without aim, without design”? The
>       argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found
>       in the impersonal Divine Wisdom, in its Ideation—reflected through
>       Matter.
> 
>   681 Palæontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Mesozoic
>       age—the Saurians especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon,
>       whose fossil skull exhibits a perforation otherwise inexplicable—the
>       third, or odd eye must have been much developed. Several
>       Naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that
>       whereas, notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in
>       the reptiles of the present period can only distinguish light from
>       darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a handkerchief, or
>       even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned
>       and was a real organ of vision.
> 
>   682 Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_, p. 27.
> 
>   683 Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost
>       every one of its aspects. As a synonym of sin, it means the
>       performance of some action for the attainment of an object of
>       _worldly_, hence _selfish_, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful
>       to somebody else. Karma is action, the cause; and Karma again is the
>       “Law of Ethical Causation”; the _effect_ of an act produced
>       egotistically, in face of the great Law of Harmony which depends on
>       altruism.
> 
>   684 Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is
>       absolutely out of the question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists
>       on other data. A firm grasp of the principles of Karmic Law knocks
>       away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the disciples
>       of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
> 
>   685 The doctrine and theology of the Calvinists. “The purpose of God
>       _from eternity_ respecting all events”—which becomes _fatalism_ and
>       kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for good. “It is the
>       preässignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or
>       misery.” (_Catechism._) A noble and encouraging doctrine this!
> 
>   686 In order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind,
>       which is better acquainted with the Greek than with Âryan
>       philosophy, some Theosophists have made an attempt to translate it
>       by Nemesis. Had Nemesis been known to the Profane in antiquity, as
>       it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term
>       would be unobjectionable. As it is, Nemesis has been too much
>       anthropomorphized by Greek fancy to permit our using it without an
>       elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, “from Homer to
>       Herodotus, she was no goddess, but a _moral feeling_ rather,” says
>       Decharme; the barrier to evil and immorality. He who transgresses
>       it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the Gods, and is pursued by
>       Nemesis. But, with time, that “feeling” was deified, and its
>       personification became an ever‐fatal and punishing Goddess.
>       Therefore, if we would connect Karma with Nemesis, we must do so in
>       her triple character as Nemesis, Adrasteia and Themis. For, while
>       the last is the Goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, like
>       Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess, and keep man
>       within the limits of Nature and righteousness under severe penalty,
>       Adrasteia, the “inevitable,” represents Nemesis as the immutable
>       effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the daughter of
>       Dikê, is the equitable Goddess reserving her wrath for those alone
>       who are maddened with pride, egoïsm, and impiety. (See Mesomed.,
>       _Hymn. Nemes._, v. 2, from Brunck, _Analecta_ II. p. 292; quoted in
>       _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, p. 304.) In short, while Nemesis
>       is a mythological, exoteric Goddess, or _Power_, personified and
>       anthropomorphized in its various aspects, Karma is a highly
>       philosophical truth, a most divine and noble expression of the
>       primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which
>       explains the origin of Evil, and ennobles our conceptions of what
>       divine immutable Justice ought to be, instead of degrading the
>       unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel
>       tyrant, which we call “Providence.”
> 
>   687 Pralaya—a word already explained—is not a term that applies _only_
>       to every “Night of Brahmâ,” or the World’s Dissolution following
>       every Manvantara, equal to 71 Mahâyugas. It applies also to each
>       “Obscuration” as well, and even to every Cataclysm that puts an end,
>       by Fire or by Water in turn, to each Root‐Race. Pralaya is a general
>       term like the word “Manu” the generic name for the Shishtas, who,
>       under the appellation of “Kings,” are said in the _Purânas_ to be
>       preserved “with the seed of all things, in an ark, from the waters
>       of that inundation [or the fires of a general volcanic
>       conflagration, the commencement of which we already see for our
>       Fifth Race in the terrible earthquakes and eruptions of these late
>       years, and especially in the present year (1888)], which, in the
>       season of a Pralaya overspreads the world [the Earth].” (_Vishnu
>       Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., I. lxxxi.) Time is only a form of
>       Vishnu—truly, as Parâshara says in the _Vishnu Purâna_. In the Hindû
>       Yugas and Kalpas, we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2,
>       with ciphers, multiplied, as occasion requires, for Esoteric
>       purposes, but not, as Wilson and other Orientalists thought, for
>       “sectarian embellishments.” A Kalpa may be an Age, or Day of Brahmâ,
>       or a sidereal Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. These calculations
>       are found in all the _Purânas_, but some differ—as for instance, the
>       “Year of the seven Rishis,” 3,030 mortal years, and the “Year of
>       Dhruva,” 9,090, in the _Linga Purâna_, which are again Esoteric, and
>       _do_ represent actual (and secret) chronology. As said in the
>       _Brahma Vaivarta_: “Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the life of
>       Brahmâ. _Minor_ Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous.”
>       “Minor Kalpas” denote here every period of Destruction, as was well
>       understood by Wilson himself, who explains the latter as “those in
>       which the Samvarta wind or other destructive agents operate.”
>       (_Ibid._, p. 54.)
> 
>   688 An intuition and a presentiment of the Shishtas may be found in Mr.
>       Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_. See the “Annotations”—the “Noah’s Ark
>       Theory,” pp. 146, 147, fifth edition.
> 
>   689 The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by
>       Virâj, and that he then produced the ten Prajápatis, who again
>       produced seven Manus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other
>       Manus (_Manu_, i. 33‐36) relates to other still earlier mysteries,
>       and is at the same time a “blind” with regard to the doctrine of the
>       Septenary Chain, and the simultaneous evolution of seven Humanities,
>       or Men. However, the present work is written on the records of Cis‐
>       Himâlayan Secret Teachings, and Brâhmanical Esoteric Philosophy may
>       now differ in form as does the Kabalah. But they were identical in
>       hoary antiquity.
> 
>   690 There is another Esoteric reason besides this for it. A Vaivasvata
>       is the _seventh_ Manu, because this our Round, although the Fourth,
>       is in the _preseptenary_ Manvantara, and the Round itself is in its
>       _seventh_ stage of materiality or physicality. The close of its
>       middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root‐Race, when Man
>       and all Nature reached their lowest state of gross Matter. From that
>       time, _i.e._, from the end of the three and a half Races, Humanity
>       and Nature entered on the ascending arc of their Racial Cycle.
> 
>   691 The interval that precedes each Yuga is called a Sandhyâ, composed
>       of as many hundreds of years as there are thousands in the Yuga; and
>       that which follows the latter is named Sandhyâmsha, and is of
>       similar duration, as we are told in _Vishnu Purâna_. “The interval
>       between the Sandhyâ and the Sandhyâmsha is the Yuga denominated
>       Krita, Tretâ, etc. The [four] Krita, Tretâ, Dvâpara, and Kali
>       constitute a great age, or aggregate of four ages: a thousand such
>       aggregates are a Day of Brahmâ; and fourteen _Manus reign within
>       that term_.” (_Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 49.) Now had we to accept this
>       literally then there would be only one Manu for every 4,320,000,000
>       years. As we are taught that it took 300 million years for the two
>       lower kingdoms to evolve, and that our Humanity is just 18 and some
>       odd millions old—where were the other Manus spoken of, unless the
>       allegory means what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches as to the 14 being
>       each multiplied by 49.
> 
>   692 The words “Creation,” “Dissolution,” etc., do not correctly render
>       the right meaning of either Manvantara or Pralaya. The _Vishnu
>       Purâna_ enumerates several: “The dissolution of all things is of
>       four kinds,” Parâshara is made to say: Naimittika (Occasional), when
>       Brahmâ slumbers (his Night, when, “at the end of this Day occurs a
>       re‐coalescence _of the Universe_, called Brahmâ’s contingent re‐
>       coalescence,” because Brahmâ _is_ this Universe itself); Prâkritika
>       (Elemental), when the return of this Universe to its original nature
>       is partial and physical; Âtyantika (Absolute), identification of the
>       _Embodied_ with the incorporeal Supreme Spirit—Mahâtmic state,
>       whether temporary or until the following Mahâ Kalpa: also Absolute
>       Obscuration—as of a whole Planetary Chain, etc.; and Nitya
>       (Perpetual), Mahâ Pralaya for the Universe, _Death_—for man. Nitya
>       is the extinction of life, like the “extinction of a lamp,” also “in
>       sleep at night.” Nitya Sarga is “constant or perpetual creation,” as
>       Nitya Pralaya is “constant or perpetual destruction of all that is
>       born.” “That which ensues after a minor dissolution is called
>       ephemeral creation.” (_Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., i. 113,
>       114.) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our
>       statements.
> 
>   693 But see the superb definitions of Parabrahman and the Logos in T.
>       Subba Row’s Lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_ in the early numbers of
>       _The Theosophist_ of 1887.
> 
>   694 See preceding foot‐note.
> 
>   695 See _Manu_, i. 32, 33. Vaishvânara is, in another sense, the living
>       magnetic fire that pervades the manifested Solar System. It is the
>       most objective (though to us the reverse) and ever present aspect of
>       the One Life, for it is the Vital Principle. (See _Theosophist_,
>       July, 1883, p. 249.) It is also a name of Agni.
> 
>   696 _Op. cit._, pp. 134, 135.
> 
>   697 This—in the period of _Secondary_ Creation, so called. Of the
>       _Primary_, when Earth is in possession of the three _Elemental_
>       Kingdoms, we cannot speak for several reasons, one of which is,
>       that, no one but a great seer, or one naturally intuitional, will be
>       able to realize that which can never be expressed in any existing
>       terms.
> 
>   698 Hippocrates said that number _seven_ “by its occult virtues tended
>       to the accomplishment of all things, to be the dispenser of life and
>       fountain of all its changes.” The life of man he divided into seven
>       ages, as did Shakespeare, for “as the moon changes her phases every
>       seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings,” and even
>       the Earth, as we know. The teeth of a child appear in the seventh
>       month, and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty
>       begins, at three times seven his mental and vital powers are
>       developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five
>       times seven his passions are most developed, etc. Thus also for the
>       Earth; it is now in its middle age, yet very little wiser for it.
>       The Tetragrammaton, the four‐lettered sacred name of the Deity, can
>       be resolved on Earth only by becoming septenary through the manifest
>       Triangle proceeding from the concealed Tetraktys. Therefore, the
>       number seven has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the
>       _Kabalah_ (“The Greater Holy Assembly,” v. 1161): “For assuredly
>       there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the
>       _seventh_. For _all things depend_ from the _seventh_.” (S. L.
>       MacGregor Mathers’ _Kabbalah_, p. 255.)
> 
>   699 Compare Stanzas III. _et seqq._
> 
>   700 St. Augustin says of Jesus: “He is a _fish_ that lives in the midst
>       of waters.” Christians called themselves “Little
>       Fishes”—_Pisciculi_—in their sacred Mysteries. “So many _fishes_
>       bred in the _water_, and saved by _one great fish_,” says Tertullian
>       of the Christians and Christ and the Church.
> 
>   701 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 55.
> 
>   702 This event—viz., the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and
>       the smaller island Daitya—which occurred 850,000 years ago in the
>       later Pliocene times, must not be confounded with the submersion of
>       the main Continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. Geologists
>       cannot bring the Miocene so near as 850,000 years, whatever they may
>       do; it is, in reality, several million years ago that the main
>       Atlantis perished.
> 
>   703 See _The Athenæum_, Aug. 25th, 1860.
> 
>   704 Mr. Huxley divides these races into the quintuple group of
>       Australoids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthochroics and
>       Melanochroics—all issuing from imaginary Anthropoids. And yet, while
>       protesting against those who say “that the structural differences
>       between man and apes are small and insignificant,” and adding that
>       “every bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which it can be
>       distinguished from a corresponding human bone, and that in the
>       present state of creation, at least, no intermediary being fills the
>       gap which separates the man from the troglodyte”—the great Anatomist
>       goes on speaking of the _simian_ characteristics in man! (See de
>       Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, P. 113.)
> 
>   705 _Op. cit._, Isaac Myer, p. 422.
> 
>   706 _Zohar_, i. 119b, col. 475; _ibid._, p. 412.
> 
>   707 The Lemurians.
> 
>   708 Lava.
> 
>   709 Marble.
> 
>   710 Of the subterranean fires.
> 
>   711 This is the reason, perhaps, why even Easter Island, with its
>       wondrous gigantic statues—a speaking witness to a submerged
>       continent with a civilized mankind on it—is hardly mentioned
>       anywhere in modern Encyclopædias. Its mention is carefully avoided
>       except in some books of travels. Modern Science has an undeniable
>       predilection for forcing hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, upon
>       the cultured public, as well‐established evidence: for offering it
>       _guesses_ instead of knowledge, and calling them “scientific
>       conclusions.” Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one
>       contradictory speculations rather than confess an _awkward self‐
>       evident fact_—preëminent among such specialists being Hæckel and his
>       English admirers and co‐thinkers. Yet “they are authorities”—we are
>       sternly reminded. What of that? The Pope of Rome is also an
>       authority and an infallible one—for _his_ followers; whereas the
>       remarkable fallibility of scientific speculations is being proven
>       periodically with every change of the moon.
> 
>   712 Our best modern novelists, although they are neither Theosophists
>       nor Spiritualists, nevertheless begin to have very psychological and
>       suggestively Occult dreams; witness Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and
>       his _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, than which no grander
>       psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist
>       Mr. Rider Haggard also had a prophetic, or rather a retrospective,
>       clairvoyant dream before he wrote _She_? His imperial Kor, the great
>       city of the dead, whose surviving inhabitants sailed northwards
>       after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems, in its
>       general outlines, to step out from the imperishable pages of the old
>       archaic records. Ayesha suggests “that those men who sailed north
>       may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians”; and then seems to
>       attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a Master quoted in
>       _Esoteric Buddhism_, for, she says: “Time after time have nations,
>       ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and
>       passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains.
>       This [the nation of Kor] is but one of several; for time eats up the
>       work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor,
>       and _then mayhap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes
>       them in_.... Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I
>       think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were
>       many. But the barbarians ... came down upon them, and took their
>       women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a
>       bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in
>       the tombs with its fathers’ bones” (pp. 180, 181).
> 
>       Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now
>       degraded and down‐fallen races of humanity. Geologists and
>       Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity—as descendants
>       of Homo Primigenius—the ape‐man, of which “_no fossil remains are as
>       yet known to us_,” though they “were _probably_ akin to the
>       _Gorilla_ and _Orang of the present day_” (Hæckel). In answer to
>       whose “probably,” Occultists point to another and a greater
>       probability—viz., the one given in our text.
> 
>   713 Robert Brown, _The Countries of the World_, vol. iv. p. 43.
> 
>   714 See Stanza II. This would account for the variation and great
>       difference between the intellectual capacities of races, nations,
>       and individual men. While incarnating into, and in other cases only
>       informing, the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless
>       (“manas‐less”) Race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to
>       take into account, and make their choice between, the past Karmas of
>       the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to become the
>       connecting link. Moreover, as correctly stated in _Esoteric
>       Buddhism_ (p. 30), “the fifth principle, or human (intellectual)
>       soul, in the majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed.”
> 
>   715 It is said by the incarnate Logos, Krishna, in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_,
>       “The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my
>       nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang [emanated or were
>       born] the human race and the world” (x. 6).
> 
>       Here, by the seven Great Rishis, the seven great Rûpa Hierarchies or
>       Classes of Dhyân Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the
>       seven Rishis, Saptarshi, are the Regents of the seven stars of the
>       Great Bear, and therefore, of the same nature as the Angels of the
>       Planets, or the seven Great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn
>       as men on Earth in various Kalpas and Races. Moreover, “the four
>       preceding Manus” are the four Classes of the originally Arûpa
>       Gods—the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.; who are also said
>       _to have incarnated_. They are not Prajâpatis, as are the first, but
>       their informing “principles”—some of which have incarnated in men,
>       while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their
>       “reflections.” As Krishna truly says—the same words being repeated
>       later by another _vehicle_ of the Logos—“I am the the same to all
>       beings ... those who worship me [the sixth principle or the _divine_
>       Intellectual Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the
>       higher faculties of Manas] _are in me, and I am in them_.” (_Ibid._,
>       x. 29.) The Logos, being no “personality” but the Universal
>       Principle, is represented by all the divine Powers, _born of its
>       Mind_—the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the
>       “Intellectual Breaths”—those Angels who are said to _have made
>       themselves independent_, _i.e._, passed from the passive and
>       quiescent, into the active state of Self‐Consciousness. When this is
>       recognized, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But
>       see Mr. Subba Row’s excellent Lecture on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_
>       (_Theosophist_, April, 1887, p. 444).
> 
>   716 _Op. cit._, p. 152.
> 
>   717 It was the northern parts of the Toyâmbudhi, or sea of fresh water,
>       in Shveta‐dvîpa, which the seven Kumâras—Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana,
>       Sanatkumâra, Jâta, Vodhu, and Panchashikha—visited agreeably with
>       exoteric tradition. (See the Uttara Khanda of the _Padma Purâna,
>       Asiatick Researches_, vol. xi. pp. 99, 100.)
> 
>   718 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., ii. 109.
> 
>   719 See _Bibliotheca Indica_, Trans. of the _Golâdhyâya of the
>       Siddhânta‐shiromani_, iii. 21‐44.
> 
>   720 _Ibid._, pp. 106, 107.
> 
>   721 P. 321.
> 
>   722 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 137.
> 
>   723 In a lecture, Professor Pengelly, F.R.S., quotes Professor Oliver to
>       the effect “that the present Atlantic islands’ flora affords no
>       substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the
>       mainland of the New World,” but adds himself that, at the same time,
>       “at some period of the Tertiary epoch, N.‐E. Asia was united to
>       N.‐W. America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of
>       islands now extends.” Thus Occult Science alone can reconcile the
>       contradictions and hesitations of Modern Science. But again, surely
>       the argument for the existence of Atlantis does not rest on Botany
>       alone.
> 
>   724 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, v. 381, 382.
> 
>   725 As shown in the “Preliminary Notes” to this Volume, it stands to
>       reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even of Atlantis are the
>       real _archaic_ names of the lost Continents. They have been adopted
>       by us simply for the sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given
>       to those portions of the submerged Fourth Race Continent which were
>       “beyond the Pillars of Hercules,” and which happened to keep above
>       water after the general Cataclysm. The last remnant of these—Plato’s
>       Atlantis, or “Poseidonis,” which is another _substitute_, or rather
>       a translation of the real name—was the last of the Continent above
>       water some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of the
>       countries and islands of both Continents are given in the _Purânas_;
>       but to mention them specially, as found in other more ancient works,
>       such as the _Sûrya Siddhânta_, would necessitate too lengthy
>       explanations. If, in earlier writings, the two seem to have been too
>       faintly distinguished, this must be due to careless reading and want
>       of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred to as Âryans,
>       and a reader confuses them with the Hindûs and the latter with the
>       Fourth Race, because some of them lived in ancient Lankâ—the blame
>       will not fall on the writer.
> 
>   726 See Part III, Section VI, of this Volume.
> 
>   727 See Professor J. D. Dana’s article, _American Journal of Science_,
>       III. v. 442, 443; Winchell’s _World‐Life_, p. 352.
> 
>   728 Speaking on periodical elevation and subsidence of the equatorial
>       and polar regions, and ensuing changes of climate, Dr. Winchell,
>       Professor of Geology in the University of Michigan, says: “As the
>       movements here contemplated are cyclical, the same conditions would
>       recur again and again; and accordingly the same fauna might return
>       again and again to the same region, with intervals of occupation by
>       another fauna. Progressive sedimentation would preserve the records
>       of such faunal alterations; and there would be presented the
>       phenomena of ‘colonies,’ ‘reäpparitions,’ and other faunal
>       dislocations in the vertical and horizontal distributions of fossil
>       remains. These phenomena are well known to the student of geology.”
>       (_Op. cit._, p. 281.)
> 
>   729 See _American Naturalist_, xviii. 15‐26.
> 
>   730 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 339, 340.
> 
>   731 _Pedigree of Man_, Aveling’s Trans., pp. 80, 81.
> 
>   732 _Ibid._, p. 82.
> 
>   733 _Op. cit._, p. 81.
> 
>   734 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
> 
>   735 “Half‐grown babes” in comparison with their giant brethren on other
>       Zones. So would we now, should a like calamity overtake us.
> 
>   736 This relates to Lemuria.
> 
>   737 There are other cycles, of course, _cycles within cycles_—and it is
>       just this which creates such a difficulty in the calculations of
>       racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 25,868
>       years, and, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the
>       equinoctial point falls back 50.1" annually. But there is another
>       cycle within this one. It is said that: “As the apsis goes forward
>       to meet it at the rate of 11.24”, annually, this would complete a
>       revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred and two
>       years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is
>       the sum of these motions, 61.34", and hence the equinox returns to
>       the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years. (See the
>       article on “Astronomy” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.) We
>       mentioned this cycle in _Isis Unveiled_ (vol. i), in relation to
>       other cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race.
> 
>   738 The Atlanteans.
> 
>   739 Twenty‐seven feet.
> 
>   740 The Lemurians.
> 
>   741 Race.
> 
>   742 Compare the following Section, entitled “Cyclopean Ruins and
>       Colossal Stones as Witnesses to Giants.”
> 
>   743 See Denon’s _Voyage en Egypte_, vol. ii.
> 
>   744 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
> 
>   745 _Cf._ the chart adapted from the _Challenger_ and _Dolphin_
>       soundings in Donnelly’s _Atlantis: the Antediluvian World_, p. 47.
> 
>   746 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 58.
> 
>   747 _History of English Literature_, p. 23.
> 
>   748 Quoted in _Atlantis_, p. 132.
> 
>   749 _Numbers_, xiii. 33.
> 
>   750 _Deut._, iii. 11.
> 
>   751 Robert Brown, _The Countries of the World_, p. 43.
> 
>   752 Mentioned on pp. 44, _et seqq._
> 
>   753 _Ibid._, pp. 43, 44, _et seqq._, and pp. 310, 311.
> 
>   754 De la Vega, IX. ix, quoted in De Mirville’s _Pneumatologie_, iii.
>       55.
> 
>   755 The first and second, in common with Bartholdi’s statue, have an
>       entrance at the foot, leading by a winding staircase cut in the rock
>       up into the heads. The eminent French Archæologist and
>       Anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, in his work, justly remarks
>       that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured
>       human figure more colossal than the first of the two.
> 
>   756 _Essays_, xxvi.
> 
>   757 _I Corinth._, x. 4.
> 
>   758 _Pneumatologie_, iii. p. 283.
> 
>   759 Saturn is Chronos—“Time.” His swallowing Jupiter‐lapis may turn out
>       one day a prophecy. “Peter (_cephas_, _lapis_), is the _stone_ on
>       which the Church of Rome is built”—we are assured. But Cronus
>       (Chronos) is as sure to “swallow” _it_ one day, as he has swallowed
>       Jupiter‐lapis and still greater characters.
> 
>   760 _Ibid._, p. 284.
> 
>   761 M. Falconnet, _op. cit._, t. vi, _Mém._, p. 513; quoted by De
>       Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 285.
> 
>   762 The same, of course, as the “small voice” heard by Elijah after the
>       earthquake at the mouth of the cave. (_I Kings_, xix. 12.)
> 
>   763 The rocking, or “logan,” stones bear various names; such as the
>       _clacha‐brath_ of the Celt, the “destiny or judgment‐stone”; the
>       divining‐stone, or “stone of the ordeal,” and the oracle‐stone; the
>       moving or animated stone of the Phœnicians; the rumbling stone of
>       the Irish. Brittany has its “_pierres branlantes_” at Huelgoat. They
>       are found in the Old and the New Worlds; in the British Islands,
>       France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as also in North
>       America. (See Hodson’s _Letters from North America_, vol. ii. p.
>       440.) Pliny speaks of several in Asia (_Hist. Nat._, i. 96); and
>       Apollonius Rhodius expatiates on the rocking stones, and says that
>       they are “stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so sensitive
>       _as to be movable by the mind_” (Ackerman’s _Arth. Index_, p. 34),
>       referring no doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by
>       will‐power from a distance.
> 
>   764 See _Dictionnaire des Religions_, l’Abbé Bertrand, Arts., “Heræscus”
>       and “Bétyles”; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 287, who has “Heraiclus”;
>       but see Bunsen’s _Egypt_, i. 95.
> 
>   765 See among others, _History of Paganism in Caledonia_, by Dr. Th. A.
>       Wise, F.R.A.S., etc.
> 
>   766 _Sépulture des Tartares_, arch. vii. p. 2227.
> 
>   767 _Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes_, i. 230.
> 
>   768 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 290. If Ham was a Titan or Giant then were
>       Shem and Japhet also Titans. They are either all Arkite Titans, as
>       Faber shows—or myths.
> 
>   769 Diodorus Siculus asserts that in the days of Isis, some men were
>       still of a vast stature, and were denominated by the Hellenes
>       Giants. “Οἱ δὲν Αἰγύπτῳ μυθογοῦσι κατὰ τὴν Ἰσιδὸς ἡλικίαν γεγονέναι
>       τίνας πολυσωμάτους.”
> 
>   770 _Antiquités Celtiques_, p. 88.
> 
>   771 Cambry, _ibid._, 90.
> 
>   772 _Op. cit._, p. 473. “It is difficult,” writes Creuzer, “not to
>       suspect in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenæ planetary forces
>       supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous
>       Dactyli.” (_Pelasges et Cyclopes._) To this day Science is in
>       ignorance on the subject of the Cyclopes. They are supposed to have
>       built all the so‐called “Cyclopean” works whose erection would have
>       necessitated several regiments of Giants, and yet they were only
>       seventy‐seven in all, or about one hundred, as Creuzer thinks. They
>       are called Builders, and Occultism calls them the _Initiators_, who
>       by initiating some Pelasgians, thus laid the foundation stone of
>       true _Masonry_. Herodotus associates the Cyclops with Perseus “the
>       son of an Assyrian demon” (I. vi.). Raoul Rochette found that
>       Palæmonius, the Cyclops, to whom a sanctuary was raised, was the
>       “Tyrian Hercules.” In any case, he was the Builder of the sacred
>       columns of Gadir, covered with mysterious characters—of which
>       Apollonius of Tyana was the only one in his age who possessed the
>       key—and with figures which may still be found on the walls of
>       Ellora, the gigantic ruins of the temple of Vishvakarman, “the
>       builder and artificer of the Gods.”
> 
>   773 _Hist. Nat._, t. xxxvi. p. 592; De Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p.
>       289.
> 
>   774 _Dieu et les Dieux_, p. 567.
> 
>   775 De Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 291. Messrs. Richardson and
>       Barth are said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of
>       Sahara the same trilithic and raised stones which they had seen in
>       Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the North of Europe. Mr.
>       Rivett‐Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished Archæologist,
>       shows the same amazement on finding the description, given by Sir J.
>       Simpson, of the cuplike markings on stones and rocks in England,
>       Scotland, and other Western countries; “offering an extraordinary
>       resemblance” to “the marks on the trap boulders which encircle the
>       barrows near Nagpur”—the City of Snakes. The eminent scholar saw in
>       this “another and very extraordinary addition to the mass of
>       evidence ... that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept at an
>       early date over Europe, penetrated into India also.” We say Lemuria,
>       Atlantis and her Giants, and the earliest races of the Fifth Root‐
>       Race had all a hand in these betyli, lithoi, and “magic” stones in
>       general. The cup‐marks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the “holes
>       scooped out on the face” of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Rivett‐
>       Carnac “of different sizes varying from six inches to an inch and a‐
>       half in diameter, and in depth from one to one and a‐half inch ...
>       generally arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many
>       permutations in the number and size and arrangement of the cups”—are
>       simply _written records_ of the oldest races. Whosoever examines
>       with attention the drawings made of such marks in _Archæological
>       Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc._, will
>       find therein the most primitive style of marking or recording.
>       Something of the sort was adopted by the American inventors of the
>       Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of the Ogham
>       writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett‐
>       Carnac describes it, “cut on sandstone.” Sweden, Norway, and
>       Scandinavia are full of such _written_ records, for the Runic
>       characters follow the cup‐marks and long and short strokes. In
>       Johannes Magnus’ Infolio one may see the representation of the demi‐
>       god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of Hroszharsgrani,
>       the Magician), holding under each arm a huge stone covered with
>       Runic characters. This Starkad, according to Scandinavian legend,
>       went to Ireland and performed marvellous deeds in the North and
>       South, East and West. (See _Asgard and the Gods_, pp. 218‐221.)
> 
>   776 _Hist. Nat._, XXXVII. liv.
> 
>   777 _Ibid._, II. xxxviii.
> 
>   778 Charton, _Magasin Pittoresque_ (1853), p. 32. Quoted by De Mirville,
>       _op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 293.
> 
>   779 T. A. Wise, _History of Paganism in Caledonia_, p. 36.
> 
>   780 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 288.
> 
>   781 _Essays on Physiology_, p. 144.
> 
>   782 _Principles of Biology_, Appendix, p. 482.
> 
>   783 We shall treat of the Divine Instructors in Stanza XII.
> 
>   784 Men.
> 
>   785 Of the primitive Divine Stock.
> 
>   786 Race.
> 
>   787 Race.
> 
>   788 _The Great Pyramid._
> 
>   789 _Knowledge_, i. p. 243; quoted by Staniland Wake, _op. cit._, pp.
>       81, 82.
> 
>   790 _Nineteenth Century_, 1882, p. 236; quoted by Staniland Wake,
>       _ibid._, p. 82.
> 
>   791 _Op. cit._, XI. xvii.
> 
>   792 As shown by H. Lizeray in his _Trinité Chrétienne Devoilée_, the
>       Dragon, being placed between the immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed
>       point) and mutable Matter, transmits to the latter the influences he
>       receives from the former, whence his name—the Verbum.
> 
>   793 Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a serpent with a
>       hawk’s head.
> 
>   794 _Revue Archéologique_, 1885.
> 
>   795 Mackey’s _Sphinxiad: or, The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients
>       Demonstrated by Restoring to their Fables and Symbols their Original
>       Meanings_, p. 42.
> 
>   796 _Ibid._, p. 47.
> 
>   797 Also translated as “Blissful Immortals” by Dr. W. Geiger; but the
>       first is more correct.
> 
>   798 These “seven” became the eight, the Ogdoad, of the later
>       _materialized_ religions, the seventh, or the highest “principle,”
>       being no longer the pervading Spirit, the Synthesis, but becoming an
>       anthropomorphic number, or additional unit.
> 
>   799 These elements are: the cosmic, the terrene, the mineral, the
>       vegetable, the animal, the aqueous, and finally the human—in their
>       physical, spiritual, and psychic aspects.
> 
>   800 P. 53.
> 
>   801 _Thalia_, lxxvii.
> 
>   802 Who adds that “the Egyptians had various ways of representing the
>       angle of the poles. In Perry’s _View of the Levant_ there is a
>       figure representing the _south pole_ of the Earth in the
>       constellation of the _Harp_, in which the poles appear like two
>       _straight rods_ surmounted with hawks’ wings, to distinguish the
>       north from the south. But the symbols of the poles ... are,
>       sometimes, in the form of serpents, with the heads of hawks to
>       distinguish the north from the south end.” (_Op. cit._, p. 41.)
> 
>   803 Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make these all the later pagan
>       personifications of “the Noëtic Ark, and ... no other than the
>       patriarch [Noah] and his family”(!), as the former writer puts it in
>       his _Cabiri_ (i. 136); because, we are told, that most probably
>       after the Deluge in commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidæ
>       established a religious festival, which was, later on, corrupted by
>       their _impious_ descendants, who made of “Noah and his family”
>       demons or hero‐gods; “and at length unblushing obscenity usurped the
>       name and garb of religion” (_ibid._, i. p. 10). Now this is indeed
>       putting an extinguisher upon the human reasoning powers, not only of
>       antiquity, but even of our present generations. Reverse the
>       statement, and after the words “Noah and his family” explain that
>       what was meant is simply the Jewish version of a Samothracian
>       mystery, of Saturn, or Cronus‐Cydyk and his Sons, and then we may
>       say _Amen_.
> 
>   804 Who were later on, with the Greeks, limited to Castor and Pollux
>       only. But in the days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the “Egg‐born,” were
>       the Seven Dhyân Chohans (Agnishvâtta‐Kumâra) who incarnated in the
>       Seven Elect of the Third Race.
> 
>   805 _Op. cit._, i. 133.
> 
>   806 Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of
>       Chapters xxv _et seqq._ of _Exodus_. He says that, according to the
>       Mosaic doctrine, the seven Planets help in the generation of
>       terrestrial things. The two Cherubs standing on the two sides of the
>       sacred Tetragrammaton represent Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
> 
>   807 Vyse, _Operations_, etc., ii. 258.
> 
>   808 Palgrave, ii. 264.
> 
>   809 Vyse, _ibid._, ii. 342.
> 
>   810 P. 57.
> 
>   811 The speculation of Mackey, the self‐made adept of Norwich, in his
>       _Mythological Astronomy_, is a curious idea—yet one perhaps not so
>       very far from the truth. He says that the Kabiri named Axieros and
>       Axiokersa (_a_) derived their names from _kab_ or _cab_, a
>       “measure,” and from _urim_, the “heavens”—the Kabirim being thus “a
>       measure of the heavens”; and (_b_) that their distinctive names,
>       implying the _principle of generation_, referred to the sexes. For
>       “the word _sex_ was formerly understood by _ax_; which ... has, in
>       our time, settled into sex. [And he refers to _Encyclopædia
>       Londiniensis_, at the word ‘aspiration.’] Now if we give the
>       aspirated sound to Axieros, it would become _Sax_ or _Sexieros_; and
>       the other pole would be _Sexiokersa_. The two poles would thus
>       become the generators of the other powers of nature—they would be
>       the _Parents_ of the other powers; therefore, the most powerful
>       Gods.” (_Op. cit._, p. 39.)
> 
>   812 ii. 51.
> 
>   813 i. 9‐17.
> 
>   814 Decharme, _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, p. 270.
> 
>   815 The word _guebra_ comes from Kabiri (_Gabiri_), and means the
>       Persian ancient fire‐worshippers, or Parsîs. Kabiri became Gabiri
>       and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in Persia.
>       (See Hyde’s _De Religione Persarum_, c. 29.)
> 
>   816 I. ix. 751.
> 
>   817 See Macrob., _Sat._, I. iii. c. 4, p. 376.
> 
>   818 Pausan., ix. 22; 5.
> 
>   819 Herodotus, iii. 37.
> 
>   820 Quoted in Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_, p. 399.
> 
>   821 Appendix, p. 13; quoted by Faber, _Cabiri_, ii. pp. 289‐291.
> 
>   822 The Amshaspands are six—if Ormazd, their chief and Logos, is
>       excluded. But in the Secret Doctrine he is the seventh and highest,
>       just as Phtah is the seventh Kabir among the Kabiri.
> 
>   823 In the _Purânas_ it is identified with Vishnu’s or Brahma’s Shveta‐
>       dvîpa of Mount Meru.
> 
>   824 Ed. Fleisher, p. 16.
> 
>   825 MS., 47 in Nic. Cat.
> 
>   826 MS., 785, Uri’s Cat.; quoted by Col. Vyse, _Operations at the
>       Pyramids of Gizeh_, ii. 364; see Staniland Wake, _The Great
>       Pyramid_, p. 94.
> 
>   827 De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. 29.
> 
>   828 Staniland Wake, _ibid._, p. 96.
> 
>   829 _Ibid._, p. 97.
> 
>   830 _Égypte_, iv. 441; De Mirville, _op. cit._, iii. 41.
> 
>   831 _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, xxxii. 442; see De Mirville,
>       _Pneumatologie_, iii. 18.
> 
>   832 _Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne_; see De Mirville, _op. cit._,
>       _ibid._, p. 15.
> 
>   833 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 41.
> 
>   834 _Ibid._, pp. 16, 17.
> 
>   835 In the _Vishnu Purâna_, with careful reading, may be found many
>       corroborations of the same (Book II, chaps, iii, iv, _et seqq._).
>       The reigns of Gods, lower Gods, and Men are all enumerated in the
>       descriptions of the seven islands, seven seas, seven mountains,
>       etc., ruled by Kings. Each King is invariably said to have _seven_
>       sons, an allusion to the seven sub‐races. One instance will do. The
>       King of Kushā‐Dvîpa had seven sons ... “after whom the seven
>       portions or Varsha of the island were called.... _There reside
>       mankind, along with Daityas and Dânavas, as well as with spirits of
>       heaven_ [_Gandharvas_, _Yakshas_, _Kimpurushas_, etc.] _and Gods._”
>       (Wilson’s Trans., ii. 195.) There is but one exception in the case
>       of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Svâyambhuva—who had
>       _ten_ sons. But of these, three—Medha, Agnibâhu, and Putra (_ibid._,
>       ii. 101)—became ascetics, and refused their portions. Thus
>       Priyavrata divided the Earth again into _seven_ continents.
> 
>   836 _Égypte_, pp. 450‐455: De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 41, 42.
> 
>   837 As a general rule, _now_ that the very nature of the _inner_ man has
>       become as blind as his physical nature, man on this Globe is as the
>       Amphioxus is in the ocean. Seen by millions of various other fishes
>       and creatures that surround it, the Amphioxus species—having neither
>       brain nor any of the senses possessed by the other classes—sees them
>       not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these Branchiostoma
>       are not the direct ancestors of our Materialists?
> 
>   838 The Occultists have been accused of worshipping Gods or Devils! We
>       deny this. Among the numberless hosts of Spirits—entities that have
>       been or that will be men—there are some immeasurably superior to the
>       human race, higher and holier than the highest saint on Earth, and
>       wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those again
>       who are no better than we are, and some also who are far worse and
>       inferior to the lowest savage. It is these last that command the
>       readiest communication with our Earth, who perceive and sense us, as
>       the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close proximity of our
>       respective abodes and planes of perception are, unfortunately, in
>       favour of such inter‐communication, as they are ever ready to
>       interfere with our affairs for weal or woe. If we are asked how it
>       is that none but sensitive hysterical natures, neuro‐ and psycho‐
>       pathic persons, see—and occasionally talk with—“spirits,” we answer
>       the question by several other queries. We ask: Do you know the
>       nature of hallucination, and can you define its psychic process? How
>       can you tell that all such visions are due merely to physical
>       hallucinations? What makes you feel so sure that mental and nervous
>       diseases, while drawing a veil over our _normal_ senses (so‐called),
>       _do not_ reveal at the same time vistas unknown to the healthy man,
>       by throwing open doors usually closed against your scientific (?)
>       perceptions; or that a psycho‐spiritual faculty _does not_ forthwith
>       replace the loss, or the temporary atrophy, of a purely physical
>       sense? It is disease or the exuberance of nervous fluid which
>       produces mediumship and visions—hallucinations, as you call them.
>       But what _does_ Science know even of mediumship? Truly were the
>       modern Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients
>       from a more psychic standpoint, Science—Physiology especially—might
>       be more benefited than it is now, and truth have a wider field of
>       fact in its knowledge.
> 
>   839 i. 70; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 26.
> 
>   840 These were the early Âryans and the bulk of the Fourth Root‐Race—the
>       former pious and meditative (given to yoga‐contemplation), the
>       latter a fighting race of sorcerers, who were rapidly degenerating
>       owing to their uncontrolled passions.
> 
>   841 The Northern and Southern Divisions of Lemuria‐Atlantis. The
>       Hyperborean and the Equatorial lands of the two Continents.
> 
>   842 De Rougemont, _Peuple Primitif_, iii. 157; De Mirville, _ibid._, p.
>       29. This is Occult and refers to the property of iron which is
>       attracted by some magnetic elements, and repelled by others. Such
>       elements, by an Occult process, can be made as impervious to it as
>       water to a blow.
> 
>   843 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>   844 The First Continent, or Island, if so preferred, “the cap of the
>       North Pole,” has never perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven
>       Races.
> 
>   845 See De Rougemont, _ibid._
> 
>   846 Boulanger, _Règne des Dieux_, Introd.; see De Mirville, _op. cit._,
>       _ibid._, pp. 32, 33.
> 
>   847 The Secret Doctrine explains and expounds what Plato says, for it
>       teaches that those “Inventors” were Gods and Demi‐gods (Devas and
>       Rishis) who had become—some deliberately, some compelled by
>       Karma—incarnated in man.
> 
>   848 The preceding paragraphs are condensed from Plato, _Legg._, l.
>       iv—_id., in Crit., et in Politic._; De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 33,
>       34.
> 
>   849 Argyle, _Unity of Nature_.
> 
>   850 _Book of the Dead_, xcix. 33; and clvi. 4. The reader is referred to
>       Stanza VII, Shloka 1 (i. 240), wherein this verse is explained in
>       another of its meanings, and also to the _Book of the Dead_, cix. 4
>       and 5. This is a direct reference to the Esoteric division of man’s
>       “principles” symbolized by the divine wheat. The legend which
>       inscribes the third Register of the papyrus (_Book of the Dead_,
>       cx.) states: “This is the region of the Manes [disembodied men]
>       _seven_ cubits high—[to wit, those just translated and supposed to
>       be still sevenfold with all their ‘principles,’ even the body being
>       represented _astrally_ in the Kâma Loka or Hades, before their
>       separation]; and there is wheat _three_ cubits high for Mummies in a
>       _state of perfection_ [_i.e._, those already separated, whose
>       _three_ higher principles are in Devachan] who are permitted to
>       glean it.” This region (Devachan) is called “the land of the Re‐
>       birth of Gods,” and is shown to be inhabited by Shoo, Tefnoot, and
>       Seb. The “region for the Manes _seven_ cubits high”—for the yet
>       imperfect Mummies—and the region for those “in a state of
>       perfection” who “glean wheat _three_ cubits high,” is as clear as
>       possible. The Egyptians had the same Esoteric Philosophy which is
>       now taught by the Cis‐Himâlayan Adepts, and the latter, when,
>       buried, have corn and wheat placed over them.
> 
>   851 I. xiv. There are Egyptologists who have quite erroneously tried to
>       identify Osiris with Menes. Bunsen assigns to Menes an antiquity of
>       5,867 years B.C., and is denounced for it by Christians. But “Isis‐
>       Osiris” reigned in Egypt before the Zodiac was painted on the
>       ceiling of the temple of Dendera, and that is over 75,000 years ago!
> 
>   852 In the text, “corked up” or “screwed up.”
> 
>   853 _Zohar_, part i, col. 177; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 88.
> 
>   854 _Genesis_, vi. 4.
> 
>   855 _Prælectiones Theol._, ch. ii; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 84.
> 
>   856 _Réflexions Critiques sur l’Origine des Anciens Peuples._
> 
>   857 Rabbi Parcha.
> 
>   858 i. 6.
> 
>   859 _Book of Ruth and Schadash_, fol. 63, col. 3, Amsterdam edition.
> 
>   860 _Zohar_, part ii, col. 73; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 86.
> 
>   861 _Ibid._, p. 87.
> 
>   862 _More Nevochim_, xxvi. 8.
> 
>   863 _Sagra Scrittura._
> 
>   864 ii. pp. 14, 29.
> 
>   865 Chap. viii; Laurence’s Translation, pp. 7 and 8.
> 
>   866 _Job_, i. 6.
> 
>   867 The Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_.
> 
>   868 _Archæology_, xxv. 220, London.
> 
>   869 _Die Phoinizier_, 70.
> 
>   870 See Sanchuniathon in Eusebius, _Pr. Ev._, 36; _Genesis_, xvi.
> 
>   871 _Society of Antiquaries of London_, xxv. 220.
> 
>   872 _Cartas_, 51; see _Isis Unveiled_, i. 553, _et seqq._
> 
>   873 He is thus named and included in the list of the Dânavas in _Vâyu
>       Purâna_; the Commentator of _Bhâgavata Purâna_ calls him a son of
>       Danu, but the name means also “Spirit of Humanity.”
> 
>   874 Kashyapa is called the son of Brahmâ, and is the “Self‐born” to whom
>       a great part of the work of creation is attributed. He is one of the
>       seven Rishis; exoterically, the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ;
>       while the _Atharva Veda_ says, “The Self‐born Kashyapa sprang from
>       Time,” and _Esoterically_ Time and Space are forms of the One
>       _incognizable_ Deity. As an Âditya, Indra is son of Kashyapa, as
>       also Vaivasvata Manu, our Progenitor. In the instance given in the
>       text, he is Kashyapa‐Âditya, the Sun and the Sun‐god, from whom all
>       the “Cosmic” Demons, Dragons (Nâgas), Serpent or Snake‐gods, and
>       Dânavas or Giants, are born. The meaning of the allegories given
>       above is purely astronomical and cosmical, but will serve to prove
>       the identity of all.
> 
>   875 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., ii. 72.
> 
>   876 All such stories differ in the _exoteric_ texts. In the
>       _Mahâbhârata_, Kârttikeya, “the six‐faced Mars,” is the son of Rudra
>       or Shiva, Self‐born _without a mother_ from the seed of Shiva cast
>       into the fire. But Kârttikeya is generally called Agnibhû, “Fire‐
>       born.”
> 
>   877 Hiranyâksha is ruler or king of the _fifth_ region of Pâtâla, a
>       Snake‐god.
> 
>   878 The Elohim also feared the Knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and
>       therefore are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him
>       _spiritually_.
> 
>   879 The story told is, that Târaka (called also Kâlanâbha), owing to his
>       extraordinary Yoga‐powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of
>       Yoga‐vidyâ and the Occult powers of the Gods, who conspired against
>       him. Here we see the “obedient” Host of Archangels or minor Gods
>       conspiring against the (future) Fallen Angels, whom Enoch accuses of
>       the great crime of disclosing to the world all “the _secret things_
>       done in heaven.” It is Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Suryal and Uriel
>       who denounced to the Lord God those of their Brethren who were said
>       _to have pried into the divine mysteries_ and taught them to men; by
>       this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was
>       commissioned to fight the Dragon, and so was Kârttikeya, and under
>       the same circumstances. Both are “Leaders of the Celestial Host,”
>       both Virgins, both “Leaders of Saints,” “Spear‐holders” (Shakti‐
>       dharas), etc. Kârttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George,
>       as surely as Indra is the prototype of Kârttikeya.
> 
>   880 The “life and the light” of the material _physical_ world, the
>       delight of the senses—not of the soul. Apollo is preëminently the
>       _human_ God, the God of emotional, pomp‐loving and theatrical Church
>       ritualism, with lights and music.
> 
>   881 See _Revelation_ (xii) where we find Apollo’s mother persecuted by
>       the Python, the Red Dragon, who is also Porphyrion, the scarlet or
>       red Titan.
> 
>   882 _Book of God_, p. 88.
> 
>   883 No “God”—whether called Bel or Jehovah—who _curses_ his (supposed)
>       own work, because he has made it imperfect, can be the One Infinite
>       Absolute Wisdom.
> 
>   884 In the Indian allegory of Târakâmaya, the War between the Gods and
>       the Asuras headed by Soma (the Moon, the King of Plants), it is
>       Vishvakarmâ, the artificer of the Gods, who, like Vulcan (Tubal‐
>       Cain), forges their weapons for them.
> 
>   885 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 304. We have said elsewhere that
>       the “woman with child” of _Revelation_ was Aima, the Great Mother,
>       or Binah, the third Sephira, “whose name is Jehovah”; and the
>       “Dragon,” who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is
>       the Dragon of Absolute Wisdom—that Wisdom which, recognizing the
>       non‐separateness of the Universe and everything in it from the
>       Absolute ALL, sees in it no better than the great Illusion,
>       Mahâmâyâ, hence the cause of misery and suffering.
> 
>   886 The “seven Karshvares of the Earth”—the seven Spheres of our
>       Planetary Chain, the seven Worlds, also mentioned in the _Rig Veda_,
>       are fully referred to elsewhere. There are six Râjamsi (Worlds)
>       above Prithivî, the Earth, or “this” (Idâm), as opposed to that
>       which is _yonder_ (the six Globes on the three other planes). (See
>       _Rig Veda_, i. 34; iii. 56; vii. 10411, and v. 60, 6.)
> 
>   887 Darmesteter’s Trans., “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. iv. p. 207.
> 
>   888 _Ibid._, p. 217.
> 
>   889 _Ibid._, p. 208.
> 
>   890 _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 62; Anubis is Horus who melts “in him who
>       is eyeless.”
> 
>   891 See Lenoir’s _Du Dragon de Metz_.
> 
>   892 See also _Egyptian Pantheon_, pp. 20, 23.
> 
>   893 _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 54 and 49.
> 
>   894 These “Evil Spirits” can by no means be identified with Satan or the
>       Great Dragon. They are the Elementals generated or begotten by
>       ignorance—cosmic and human passions—or Chaos.
> 
>   895 _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 403.
> 
>   896 See _Numbers_, xxi. 8, 9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent
>       (Saraph), to _look upon_ which heals those bitten by the Fiery
>       Serpents. The latter were the Seraphim, each one of which, as Isaiah
>       shows (vi. 2), “had six wings”; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and
>       of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or
>       likenesses—seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent _is_
>       Jehovah, the chief of the “Fiery Serpents.” And yet, in _II Kings_
>       (xviii. 4) it is shown that king Hezekiah, who, like as David his
>       father, “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord”—“brake
>       in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made ... and called it
>       Nehushtan,” or piece of brass.
> 
>   897 “And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number
>       Israel” (_I Chronicles_, xxi. 1). “The anger of the Lord [Jehovah]
>       was kindled against Israel, and he moved David ... to say, Go,
>       number Israel” (_II Samuel_, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical.
> 
>   898 ii. 18, 22.
> 
>   899 Dozens of the most erudite writers have sifted thoroughly the
>       various meanings of the name J’hovah (with, and without the
>       Masoretic points), and shown their multifarious bearings. The best
>       of such works is the _Source of Measures: the Hebrew Egyptian
>       Mystery_, by J. Ralston Skinner, so often already referred to.
> 
>   900 In the above‐mentioned work (p. 233), verse 26 of chapter iv of
>       _Genesis_ is correctly translated “then men began to call
>       _themselves_ Jehovah,” but less correctly explained, perhaps, as the
>       last word ought to be written Jah (male) Hovah (female), to show
>       that from that time the race of distinctly separate man and woman
>       began.
> 
>   901 See for explanation the excellent pages of Appendix vii of the same
>       work.
> 
>   902 _Op. cit._, p. 293.
> 
>   903 _Rabba Battra_, 16a.
> 
>   904 In Demonology, Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the
>       monarch of which was Beelzebub. He belongs to the fifth kind or
>       class of Demons (of which there are nine according to mediæval
>       Demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But see
>       elsewhere the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat‐headed Satan, one
>       with Azazel, the scape‐goat of Israel. Nature is the God Pan.
> 
>   905 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 184.
> 
>   906 See _Codex Nazaræus_, iii. 73.
> 
>   907 He is also Vulcan or Vul‐cain, the greatest God with the later
>       Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The God of Time was Chiun in
>       Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chiun is the same as Cain. (_Source
>       of Measures_, p. 278.)
> 
>   908 See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes, xiv. p. 653 _sqq._
>       Callim., _in Del._, 31. Stat., _Silv._, iv. 6, 47, etc.
> 
>   909 _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, p. 271.
> 
>   910 Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this
>       fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth,
>       or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling.
>       Thus, Cain has a Son Enoch, and Seth a Son Enoch (also Enos,
>       Ch’anoch, Hanoch—one may do what one likes with unvowelled Hebrew
>       names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets Irad, Irad Mehujael, the
>       latter Methusael, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch
>       begets Cainan, and this one Mahalaleel (a variation on Mehujael),
>       who gives birth to Jared (or Irad); Jared to Enoch (number 3), who
>       produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the
>       list. (See _Genesis_, iv. v.) Now all these are symbols
>       (kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods
>       and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other Pagan
>       symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.
> 
>   911 See _Analysis of Ancient Mythology_, ii. 760.
> 
>   912 vi. 9.
> 
>   913 See _New Encyclopædia_, by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.
> 
>   914 See _Hebrews_, v. 6; vii. 1, _et seqq._
> 
>   915 The Æolian name of Mars was Areus (Ἄρευς), and the Greek Ares (Ἄρης)
>       is a name over the etymological significance of which, Philologists
>       and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars, have vainly worked to
>       this day. Very strangely, Max Müller connects both the names Mars
>       and Ares with the Sanskrit root _mar_, whence he traces their
>       derivation, and from which, he says, comes the name of the Maruts or
>       Storm‐gods. Welcker, however, offers a more correct etymology. (See
>       _Griech. Götterlehre_, i. 415.) However it may be, etymologies of
>       roots and words alone will never yield the Esoteric meaning fully,
>       though they may help to useful guesses.
> 
>   916 As the same author shows: “The very name Vulcain appears in the
>       reading, for in the first words (_Gen._, iv. 5) is to be found
>       V’elcain, or V’ulcain, agreeably to the deepened _u_ sound of the
>       letter _vau_. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as, ‘_and
>       the god Cain_,’ or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to
>       confirm the Cain‐Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: ‘קין _Cain, the iron
>       point of a lance, a smith_ (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron
>       tools and smith work’ ” (p. 278).
> 
>   917 _Op. cit._, p. 186.
> 
>   918 _Append. de Cabiris ap. Orig. Gent._, pp. 364, 376; and the latter
>       statement on p. 357. See Faber’s _Cabiri_, i. 8.
> 
>   919 Some derive the word from Paras which produced Pars, Pers, Persia;
>       but it may be equally derived from Pitaras or Pitris, the Hindû
>       progenitors of the Fifth Race—the Fathers of Wisdom or the Sons of
>       “Will and Yoga”—who were called Pitaras, as were the divine Pitris
>       of the First Race.
> 
>   920 See for these traditions the _Collection of Persian Legends_, in
>       Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and Persian; Herbelot’s narrative
>       _Légendes Persanes_, “Bibliothèque Orientale,” p. 298, 387, etc.,
>       and Danville’s _Mémoires_. We give in a condensed narrative that
>       which is scattered in hundreds of volumes in European and Asiatic
>       languages, as well as in oral traditions.
> 
>   921 _Genesis_, iv. 16, _et seqq._
> 
>   922 The _main_ Continent perished in the Miocene times, as already
>       stated.
> 
>   923 From Bede downwards all the chronologists of the Church have
>       differed among themselves, and contradicted each other. “The
>       chronology of the Hebrew text has been grossly altered, especially
>       in the interval next after the Deluge”—says Whiston (_Old Test._, p.
>       20).
> 
>   924 ii. 170, 171.
> 
>   925 Hence king Solomon, whose traces are nowhere to be found outside of
>       the _Bible_. The description of his magnificent palace and city
>       dovetail with those of the Persian tales, though they were unknown
>       to all Pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.
> 
>   926 Herbelot, _op. cit._, p. 829.
> 
>   927 _Orient. Trad._, p. 454. See also Bailly’s _Lettres sur
>       l’Atlantide_.
> 
>   928 See _Orient. Collect._, ii. 119.
> 
>   929 _Ibid._ Remember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven
>       successive renewals of the Globe; that each will last 7,000 years,
>       the total duration being thus 49,000 years. (See Rabbi Parcha’s
>       _Wheel_; also Kenealy’s _Book of God_, p. 176.) This refers to seven
>       Rounds, seven Root‐Races, and sub‐races, the truly Occult figures,
>       though sorely confused.
> 
>   930 _Tales of Derbent._
> 
>   931 Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown
>       of Oriental descent.
> 
>   932 Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the
>       Knights of the Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy‐
>       hood, if both heroines did not symbolize the same historical event
>       which passed into a legend?
> 
>   933 Herbelot, p. 593; _Armenian Tales_, p. 35.
> 
>   934 To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as
>       Kap‐kaz, using the consonant _p_ instead of the usual _v_ (Kav‐kaz
>       or Caucasus). But their bards say that it requires seven months for
>       a swift horse to reach the “dry land” beyond Kaf, holding North
>       without ever deviating from one’s way.
> 
>   935 Bailly thought he saw in this Horse a twelve‐oared ship. The Secret
>       Doctrine teaches that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas
>       before it built houses. But the “Horse,” though a much later animal,
>       has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile
>       and the hippopotamus were considered sacred and represented divine
>       symbols, both with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans.
>       Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the Horse, and assumes that form
>       himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects
>       of that “Horse,” which is a Cycle.
> 
>   936 The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the
>       neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.
> 
>   937 Cosmas Indicopleustes in _Collect. Novâ Patrum_, t. ii. p. 188; also
>       see _Journ. des Savants_, Suppl. 1707, p. 20.
> 
>   938 The two Poles are called the “right” and “left ends” of our
>       Globe—the Right being the North Pole—or the head and feet of the
>       Earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the
>       North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much
>       connected with and influence “right” and “left” hand magic.
> 
>   939 The more one approaches the Poles the less rotation is felt; at the
>       Poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Hence the
>       expression that the Sphere is “motionless.”
> 
>   940 It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the
>       North Pole like a skull‐cap, is the only one which prevails during
>       the whole Manvantara of our Round. All the central continents and
>       lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, but this
>       land will never change.
> 
>   941 Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestaic name of Fohat is Apâm‐
>       Napât. In the _Avesta_ he stands between the Fire‐yazatas and the
>       Water‐yazatas. The literal meaning is “Son of the Waters,” but these
>       “Waters” are not the liquid we know, but Æther—the Fiery Waters of
>       Space. Fohat is the “Son of Æther” in its highest aspect, Âkâsha,
>       the Mother‐Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or the Logos.
>       Fohat is the Light of the Logos.
> 
>   942 This “Water” is the blood or fluid of Life which animates the Earth,
>       compared here to a living body.
> 
>   943 Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the
>       existence of a Fountain of Life in the bowels of the Earth and in
>       the North Pole. It is the blood of the Earth, the electro‐magnetic
>       current, which circulates through all the arteries, and which is
>       said to be found stored in the “navel” of the Earth.
> 
>   944 Occultism points to the Himâlayan Chain as that “belt,” and
>       maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the
>       Globe. The “navel” is described as situated towards the setting Sun
>       or to the West of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which
>       mountain is North of the Himâlaya. Meru is _not_ “the fabulous
>       mountain _in_ the navel or centre of the earth,” but its roots and
>       foundations are in that “navel,” while it is in the far North
>       itself. This connects it with the “Central” Land “that never
>       perishes”; the land in which “the day of the mortal lasts six months
>       and his night another six months.” As the _Vishnu Purâna_ has it:
>       “For the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day
>       in _other regions_; for Meru is North of all the Dvipas and Varshas”
>       (islands and countries). (Book ii. chap. viii.) Meru is therefore
>       neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show,
>       “absolutely in the centre of the globe,” only because “relatively
>       with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the
>       East is that quarter where the sun first appears.”
> 
>   945 Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The
>       Globe is likened to the body of a woman, “Mother‐Earth.” From her
>       neck downward, means from the inland sea now beyond the impassable
>       barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parâshara says, “is the mother and
>       nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the
>       _comprehender_ of all the worlds.”
> 
>   946 For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the
>       Commentary as _a place of no latitude_ (Niraksha), the Abode of the
>       Gods. As a scholiast says in the _Sûrya Siddhânta_ (xii. 42‐44):
> 
>       “Above them goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have
>       neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (_akshonnati_).
> 
>       “In both directions from Meru are two pole‐stars (_dhruvatârâ_),
>       fixed in the midst of the sky, to those _who are situated in places
>       of no latitude_ (_niraksha_), both these have their place in the
>       horizon.
> 
>       “Hence there is, in those cities [in that land], no elevation of the
>       poles, the two pole‐stars being situated in their horizon; but their
>       degrees of co‐latitude (_lambaka_) are ninety: at Meru the degrees
>       of latitude (_aksha_) are of the same number.” (See _Vishnu Purâna_,
>       Wilson’s Trans., ii. 208.)
> 
>   947 Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Shveta‐
>       dvîpa, the White Island, the “island in the northern part of
>       Toyambhudi,” with England, and then tries to identify it with Atala.
>       (a nether region) and Atlantis. Now the Shveta‐dvîpa is the abode of
>       Vishnu (exoterically), and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the
>       Euxine or Ikshu (Black) Sea, and then seems to connect it, in
>       another place, with Africa and Atlas.
> 
>   948 _Asiatick Researches_, viii. 280.
> 
>   949 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 201.
> 
>   950 Every name in the _Purânas_ has to be examined at least under two
>       aspects, geographically and metaphysically, in its allegorical
>       application; _e.g._, Nîla, the (blue) mountain which is one of the
>       boundaries to the north of Meru, is again to be sought
>       geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and yet again in a
>       mountain quite different from the others, in Western Africa. Jambu‐
>       dvîpa is Vishnu’s dominion—the World, limited in the _Purânas_ to
>       our Globe, the region which contains Meru _only_, and again it is
>       divided to contain Bharata‐varsha (India), its _best_ division, and
>       the fairest, says Parâshara. Likewise with Pushkara and all others.
> 
>   951 _Ibid._, p. 202.
> 
>   952 _Sûrya Siddhânta_, Whitney’s Trans., v. 5.
> 
>   953 _Asiatick Researches_, iii. 300.
> 
>   954 Jambu, Plaksha, Shâlmali, Kusha, Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara.
> 
>   955 Such as Shâka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist,
>       but into which will enter such lands as some portions of America, of
>       Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi region. Let us bear in mind
>       that Upadvîpas mean “root” islands, or the dry land in general.
> 
>   956 They were called Demons, Asuras, Giants, and monsters, because of
>       their wickedness; and thus their country was likened to Atala—a
>       Hell.
> 
>   957 Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila mountains of the
>       Atlas range.
> 
>   958 _Asiatick Researches_, iii. 225.
> 
>   959 See vols. viii, x, and xi, of _Asiatick Researches_.
> 
>   960 _Op. cit._, iii. 326.
> 
>   961 _Ibid._
> 
>   962 Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bhârata or India,
>       confusing the two accounts and Priyavrata with Medhâtithi: “This
>       division was made by Priyavrata.... He had ten sons, and it was his
>       intention to divide the whole world between them equally.... In the
>       same manner Neptune divided the Atlantis between his ten sons: one
>       of them had ... the extremity of the Atlantis”—which “is probably
>       the old continent, at the extremity of which is Gades.... This
>       Atlantis was overwhelmed with a flood; and it seems that _by the
>       Atlantis, we should understand the antediluvian Earth_, over which
>       ten princes were born to rule, according to the mythology of the
>       West [and of the East, also] but _seven_ of them only sate upon the
>       throne.” (_Op. cit._, viii. 286.) Some also are of opinion that of
>       the seven Dvîpas _six_ were destroyed by a flood. Wilford takes it
>       to be “Gades which included Spain,” but it was Plato’s
>       island—rather.
> 
>   963 America, the “new” world, is thus, though not _much_, older—still it
>       _is_ older—than Europe, the “old” world.
> 
>   964 If Div or Dev‐sefid’s (the Târadaitya’s) abode was on the _seventh
>       stage_, it is because he came from Pushkara, the Pâtâla (antipodes)
>       of India, or from America. The latter touched the walls, so to say,
>       of Atlantis, before the latter finally sank. The word Pâtâla meaning
>       both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, these became
>       synonymous in ideas and attributes as well as in name.
> 
>   965 Neither Atlantis, nor yet Shankha‐dvîpa, was ever called “White
>       Island.” When tradition says that “the White Island became black on
>       account of the sins of the people,” it only means the denizens of
>       the “White Island,” or Siddhapura, or Shveta‐dvîpa, who descended to
>       the Atlantis of the Third and Fourth Races, to “inform the latter;
>       and who, having incarnated, became black with sin” figure of speech.
>       All the Avatâras of Vishnu are said to come originally from the
>       White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the
>       only locality which escapes the general fate of other Dvipas; it can
>       be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for—it is the “Eternal
>       Land.”
> 
>   966 _Asiatick Researches_, xi. 27.
> 
>   967 _Genesis_, ix. 1.
> 
>   968 How wise and grand, how far‐seeing and morally beneficent are the
>       laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence
>       tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have
>       been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from
>       admiring their forethought. The Brâhman was a Grihasta, a family
>       man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son,
>       he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very
>       connubial life was regulated by his Brâhman astrologer in accordance
>       with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjâb, for
>       instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of
>       European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Âryan
>       castes, one still finds the finest men—so far as stature and
>       physical strength go—on the whole Globe; whereas the mighty men of
>       old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in
>       Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century—and
>       almost with every year—dwarfed and weakened.
> 
>   969 Diseases and over‐population are facts that can never be denied.
> 
>   970 In Mrs. Anna Swanwick’s volume, _The Dramas of Æschylus_, it is said
>       of “Prometheus Bound” (“Bohn’s Classical Library,” p. 334), that
>       Prometheus truly appears in it “as the champion and benefactor of
>       mankind, whose condition: ... is depicted as weak and miserable in
>       the extreme.... Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny
>       ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead.”
>       We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the
>       first product of Nature and the Sea, in the Stanzas. “Prometheus
>       _represents_ himself as having frustrated this design, and as being
>       consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most
>       agonizing pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We
>       have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will [of
>       intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas], depicted _as
>       the sublime philanthropist_, while Zeus, the Supreme Deity of
>       Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character
>       peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment.” The reason for it is
>       explained further on. The “Supreme Deity” bears, in every ancient
>       Pantheon—including that of the Jews—a _dual_ character, composed of
>       light and shadow.
> 
>   971 The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its
>       _seasons of procreation_, and the sexes become neutralized during
>       the rest of the year. Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but
>       once in its life—before it dies.
> 
>   972 Introduction to “Prometheus Bound,” p. 340.
> 
>   973 From προ‐μῆτις, “forethought.” “Professor Kuhn,” we are told in the
>       above‐named volumes, _The Dramas of Æschylus_, “considers the name
>       of the Titan to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the
>       instrument used for kindling fire. The root _mand_ or _manth_,
>       implies rotatory motion, and the word _manthâmi_, used to denote the
>       process of fire kindling, acquired the secondary sense of snatching
>       away; hence we find another word of the same stock, _pramatha_,
>       signifying theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not
>       altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it.
>       No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the
>       lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought. And as we
>       are told that the word _manthâmi_ passed into the Greek language and
>       became the word _manthanô_, to learn—that is to say, to appropriate
>       knowledge, whence _prometheia_, fore‐knowledge, fore‐thought—we may
>       find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “fire‐bringer”
>       than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred
>       sign and the instrument for kindling _sacred_ fire, may explain it
>       better. “Prometheus, the fire‐bringer, is the Pramantha
>       personified,” continues the author, “and finds his prototype in the
>       Âryan Mâtarishvan, a divine ... personage, closely associated with
>       Agni, the fire‐god of the Vedas.” Matih, in Sanskrit, is
>       “understanding,” and a synonym of Mahat and Manas, and must be of
>       some account in the origin of the name; Pramatih is the son of
>       Fohat, and has his story also.
> 
>   974 Cronus is “Time,” and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive.
> 
>   975 It is complained by the author of the version and translator of
>       “Prometheus Bound” that in this tracing of Io’s wanderings, “no
>       consistency with our own known geography is attainable” (p. 379).
>       There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey and
>       wandering from place to place of the _Race_ from which the “tenth,”
>       or Kalki Avatâra, so called, is to issue. This he calls the “kingly
>       race born in _Argos_” (888). But Argos has no reference here to
>       Argos in Greece. It comes from _arg_ or _arka_—the female generative
>       power symbolized in the Moon—the navi‐formed Argha of the Mysteries,
>       meaning the Queen of Heaven. Eustathius shows that, in the dialect
>       of the Arg‐ians, Io signified the Moon; while Esotericism explains
>       it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic Ten (10); in Hebrew 10 is
>       the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation
>       cup, the navi‐form or boat‐shaped vessel in which flowers and fruit
>       are offered to the Deities. Arghyanâth is a title of the Mahâ
>       Chohan, meaning the “Lord of Libations”; and Arghyavarsha, the “Land
>       of Libations,” is the mystery name of that region which extends from
>       Kailâsa mountain nearly to the Shamo Desert—from within which the
>       Kalki Avatâra is expected. The Airyâna‐Varsedya of the Zoroastrians,
>       as a locality, is identical with it. It is now said to have been
>       situated between the Sea of Aral, Baltistan, and Little Tibet; but
>       in olden times its area was far larger, as it was the birth‐place of
>       _physical_ humanity, of which Io is the mother and symbol.
> 
>   976 _Op. cit._, p. 385, note.
> 
>   977 i. 569, 570.
> 
>   978 Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with India—for
>       he never entered India proper—could not have failed to hear the
>       Indus, near its very sources, called Nîl and Nîlâ. The mistake—if
>       mistake it is—is thus easily accounted for.
> 
>   979 That Io is identical, allegorically, with Isis and the Moon is shown
>       by her being “cow‐horned.” The allegory undeniably reached Greece
>       from India, where Vâch—the “melodious Cow” of the _Rig Veda_, “from
>       whom mankind was produced” (_Bhâgavata Purâna_) is shown in the
>       _Aitareya Brâhmana_ as pursued by her father Brahmâ, who was moved
>       by an illicit passion, and changed her into a Deer. Hence Io,
>       refusing to yield to Jupiter’s passion, becomes “horned.” The Cow
>       was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of
>       nature, Isis, Vâch, Venus—the mother of the prolific God of Love,
>       Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol, with
>       the Egyptians and the Indians, became the Bull, as testified to by
>       the Apis and the Hindû Bulls in the most ancient temples. In
>       Esoteric Philosophy the Cow is the symbol of Creative Nature, and
>       the Bull (her calf) the Spirit which vivifies her, or the “Holy
>       Spirit,” as Dr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These
>       were sacred also with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of
>       Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.
> 
>   980 _Tuscul. Quæst._, I. ii. 20.
> 
>   981 _Strom._, I. ii, _Oper._, i. 467, Ed. Potter’s.
> 
>   982 Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation
>       was that Æschylus, adopting the Theogony of the Egyptians, made
>       Diana the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See Ælian, _Var.
>       Hist._, I. v. xviii; i. 433, Edition Gronov.) But Æschylus _was_
>       initiated.
> 
>   983 The Sabasia was a periodical festival with Mysteries enacted in
>       honour of some Gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole
>       evolution of the Races was performed in these Mysteries.
> 
>   984 Mrs. A. Swanwick, _op. cit._
> 
>   985 See the foot‐note (p. 431) concerning the etymology of προ‐μῆτις or
>       _forethought_. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying:
> 
>       O holy ether, swiftly‐wingèd gales....
>       Behold what I, a god, from gods endure.
> 
>       And yet what say I? _Clearly I foreknow_
>       All that must happen....
>       ... The Destined it behoves,
>       As best I may, to bear, for well I wot
>       How incontestable the strength of Fate.... (105)
> 
>       “Fate” stands here for Karma, or Nemesis.
> 
>   986 Mankind is obviously divided into God‐informed men and lower human
>       creatures. The intellectual difference between the Âryan and other
>       civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is
>       inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, no
>       generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human
>       specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African
>       tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Âryans, the Semites,
>       and the Turanians so‐called. The “Sacred Spark” is missing in them,
>       and it is they who are the only _inferior_ races on the Globe, now
>       happily—owing to the wise adjustment of Nature which ever works in
>       that direction—fast dying out. Verily mankind is “of one blood,”
>       _but not of the same essence_. We are the hot‐house, artificially
>       quickened plants in Nature, having in us a spark, which in them is
>       latent.
> 
>   987 The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil
>       in the differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of
>       the Unit into Plurality.
> 
>   988 _Sap._, i. 13.
> 
>   989 Gautama Buddha, named Shâkya Thüb‐pa, is the _twenty‐seventh_ of the
>       last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the Divine Dynasties
>       which instructed mankind.
> 
>   990 Of these Buddhas, or the “Enlightened,” the far distant predecessors
>       of Gautama, the Buddha, who represent, we are taught, once living?
>       men, great Adepts and Saints, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had
>       incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatâras of
>       the Celestial Beings—eleven only belong to the Atlantean Race, and
>       twenty‐four to the Fifth Race, from its beginnings. They are
>       identical with the Tirthankaras of the Jainas.
> 
>   991 This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the
>       United States of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this
>       identity that has led some American Archæologists to suggest that
>       Norwegian mariners had _discovered_ America about one thousand years
>       ago. (See Holmboe’s _Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvège_, p. 23.) There
>       is no doubt that America is that “far distant land into which pious
>       men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred doctrine,” as a
>       Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither
>       Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American Archæologists,
>       have guessed the right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact
>       that Norwegians may have re‐discovered the land that their long‐
>       forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general
>       submersion, does not conflict with the other fact that the Secret
>       Doctrine of the land which was the cradle of physical man, and of
>       the Fifth Race, had found its way into the so‐called New World ages
>       and ages before the “Sacred Doctrine” of Buddhism.
> 
>   992 See _Physiological Selection_, by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.
> 
>   993 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
> 
>   994 _Exodus_, xi.
> 
>   995 Wrote the late Brahmachârî Bawa, a Yogî of great renown and
>       holiness: “Extensive works on ‘Ashtar Vidiâ’ and such other sciences
>       were at different times compiled in the languages of the times from
>       the Sanskrit originals. But they, together with the Sanskrit
>       originals, were lost at the time of the partial deluge of our
>       county.” (The _Theosophist_, June, 1880, “Some Things the Âryans
>       Knew.”) For Agnyastra, see Wilson’s _Specimens of the Hindû
>       Theatre_, i. 297.
> 
>   996 Some wonderful, artificially‐made beast, similar in some way to
>       Frankenstein’s creation, which spoke and warned his master of every
>       approaching danger. The master was a “Black Magician,” the
>       mechanical animal was informed by a Djin, an Elemental, according to
>       the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. See
>       Part II, Section XXV, “Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic.”
> 
>   997 The four Karmic Gods, called the Four Mahârâjahs in the Stanzas.
> 
>   998 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 19.
> 
>   999 _Travels in Egypt_, vol. ii.
> 
>  1000 _The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated_ (p. 3), by
>       a strangely intuitional Symbologist and Astronomer, a kind of a
>       self‐made Adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quartet of this
>       century.
> 
>  1001 See Proctor, _Knowledge_, i. pp. 242, 400.
> 
>  1002 Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, ii. 345.
> 
>  1003 _The Great Pyramid_, pp. 36, 37.
> 
>  1004 Staniland Wake, _op. cit._, pp. 6, 7.
> 
>  1005 _Ibid._
> 
>  1006 _The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated_, pp. 4, 5.
> 
>  1007 The term “Atlantean” must not mislead the reader to regard these as
>       one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said
>       “Asiatics.” Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who
>       represented several “humanities,” and almost a countless number of
>       races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the “Europeans,”
>       were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing
>       parts of the world, which, at the rate colonization is proceeding,
>       will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years.
>       There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants
>       and dwarfs, as some African tribes comparatively are, even now.
> 
>  1008 Says a teacher in _Esoteric Buddhism_ (p. 64): “In the Eocene age,
>       even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men,
>       the [Lemuro‐] Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point [of
>       civilization], and the great Continent, the father of nearly all the
>       present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking.” And on
>       page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the
>       Miocene period. To show how the continents, races, nations and
>       cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last
>       of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of
>       the Tertiary period (p. 65), and the last of “Atlantis” only 11,000
>       years ago; thus both overlapping—one the Atlantean period, and the
>       other the Âryan.
> 
>  1009 See _Traité de l’Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, part iii.
> 
>  1010 Ceylon.
> 
>  1011 This is not so. The forefathers of the Âryan Brâhmans had their
>       Zodiac and Zodiacal calculations from those born by Kriyâshakti
>       power, the “Sons of Yoga”; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of
>       Ruta.
> 
>  1012 The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight
>       millions of years, but the Egyptians _could not_.
> 
>  1013 _Op. cit._, p. 6.
> 
>  1014 This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and
>       answered. See _Five Years of Theosophy_, Art., “Mr. Sinnett’s
>       _Esoteric Buddhism_,” pp. 325‐346.
> 
>  1015 _Ruins of Empires_, p. 360. Volney says that, as Aries was in its
>       15th degree 1,447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of Libra
>       could not have coincided with the Vernal Equinox more lately than
>       15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1,790 since Christ, when
>       Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since
>       the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.
> 
>  1016 The word “historical” is used, because, although historians have
>       almost absurdly dwarfed the dates that separate certain events from
>       our modern day, nevertheless, once that they are known and accepted,
>       they belong to history. Thus, the Trojan War _is_ a historical
>       event, which, though even less than 1,000 years B.C. are assigned to
>       it, really took place more nearly 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C.
> 
>  1017 It is a historical fact that Sanchuniathon compiled the full record
>       of the Phœnician religion from annals and state documents in the
>       archives of the _older_ Phœnician cities, and wrote it in Phœnician
>       characters in 1,250 B.C.
> 
>  1018 Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I, to Schliemann’s _Ilios_. Murray, 1880.
> 
>  1019 Gosse writes of the latter: “She is set down a thorough heretic, not
>       at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an
>       inventor of false facts in science.” (_Romance of Natural History_,
>       2nd Series, p. 227.)
> 
>  1020 Pp. 9, 10.
> 
>  1021 _Popular Science Monthly_, No. 60, April, 1877.
> 
>  1022 Dr. Cover writes: “That famous bird of Washington was a myth; either
>       Audubon was mistaken, or else, as some do not hesitate to affirm, he
>       _lied_ about it.”
> 
>  1023 _Ibid._, pp. 10, 11.
> 
>  1024 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 13, note.
> 
>  1025 So far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MS. of this work had
>       not yet left my writing table, and _The Secret Doctrine_ was utterly
>       unknown to the world, it was already being denounced as a product of
>       my brain and no more. These are the flattering terms in which the
>       _Evening Telegraph_ (of America) referred to this still unpublished
>       work in its issue of June 30, 1888: “_Among the fascinating books
>       for July reading_ is Mme. Blavatsky’s new book on Theosophy ... (!)
>       _The Secret Doctrine_.... But because she can soar back into the
>       Brahmin ignorance ... (!?) _is no proof that everything she says is
>       true_.” And once the prejudiced verdict has been given on the
>       mistaken notion that my book was out, and that the reviewer had read
>       it—neither of which was or could be the case—now that it is really
>       out, the critic will have to support his first statement, whether
>       correct or otherwise, and will get out of it, probably by a more
>       slashing criticism than ever.
> 
>  1026 _Science of Language_, p. 168.
> 
>  1027 _The Human Species_, p. 274.
> 
>  1028 See above, the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Race.
> 
>  1029 The Hegelian doctrine, which identifies Absolute Being or “Be‐ness”
>       with “Non‐Being,” and represents the Universe as an Eternal
>       Becoming, is identical with the Vedânta Philosophy.
> 
>  1030 _The Religions of India_, p. xiii.
> 
>  1031 Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 175.
> 
>  1032 See De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. pp. 218 _et seqq._
> 
>  1033 _Op. cit._, _ibid._
> 
>  1034 See _Genesis_ and the authorized chronology. In chapter viii, “Noah
>       leaveth the ark”—2,348 B.C. In chapter x, “Nimrod the first
>       monarch,” stands over 1,998 B.C.
> 
>  1035 _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, June, 1860, p. 415.
> 
>  1036 April 30, 1860.
> 
>  1037 “I will mention to thee the writings ... respecting the belief and
>       institutions of the Sabæans,” he says. “The most famous is the Book,
>       _The Agriculture of the Nabatheans_, which has been translated by
>       Ibn Wahohijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness.... It
>       speaks of preparations of Talismans, the drawing down of the powers
>       of the Spirits, Magic, Demons, and Ghouls, which make their abode in
>       the desert.” (Maimonides, quoted by Dr. D. Chwolsohn; _Die Ssabier
>       und der Ssabismus_, ii. 458.) The Nabatheans of Mount Lebanon
>       believed in the seven Archangels, as their forefathers had believed
>       in the seven Great Stars, the abodes and bodies of these Archangels,
>       which are believed in to this day by the Roman Catholics, as is
>       shown elsewhere.
> 
>  1038 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 197.
> 
>  1039 i. 354.
> 
>  1040 Sayce; _cf._, p. 115, 2nd ed.
> 
>  1041 _Op. cit._, pp. 418, 419.
> 
>  1042 _Ibid._, p. 118.
> 
>  1043 Simply, the womb, the “Holy of Holies” with the Semites.
> 
>  1044 See the Valentinian Table in Epiphanius, _Adv. Hær._, I. xxxi. 2.
> 
>  1045 But it was not so in reality, as witness their prophets. It is the
>       later Rabbis and the Talmudic scheme that killed out all
>       spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving only their
>       Scriptures—a dead shell, from which the soul has departed.
> 
>  1046 See _II Samuel_, vi. 16‐22.
> 
>  1047 _Psalms_, xxiv. 3.
> 
>  1048 _II Kings_, xxiii. 7; see Dunlap, _Sôd; The Mysteries of Adoni_, p.
>       41.
> 
>  1049 _Judges_, xxi. 21, 23 _et passim_.
> 
>  1050 _I Kings_, xviii. 26.
> 
>  1051 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 49.
> 
>  1052 _Ibid._, ii. 444.
> 
>  1053 The author of the _Qabbalah_ makes several attempts to prove
>       conclusively the antiquity of the _Zohar_. Thus he shows that Moses
>       de Leon could not be the author or the forger of the Zoharic works
>       in the thirteenth century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn
>       Gebirol gave out the same philosophical teaching 225 years before
>       the day of Moses de Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny
>       the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines upon
>       the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the Chaldæan _Book of
>       Numbers_, as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no
>       doubt, as those used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference
>       between the two ways of treating the same Esoteric subjects,
>       which—while proving the enormous antiquity of the Esoteric
>       System—points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and even Christian
>       sectarianism in the compilation and glossaries of the Zoharic system
>       by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol _never quoted_ from the Scriptures to
>       enforce the teachings (Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 7). Whereas Moses de
>       Leon has made of the _Zohar_ that which it has remained to this day,
>       “a running commentary on the Five Books, or Pentateuch” (_ibid._),
>       with a few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the
>       Archaic Esoteric Philosophy; the other, only that portion which was
>       adapted to the _lost_ Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while
>       the system, or the trunk on which the primitive original _Zohar_ was
>       engrafted, is of an immense antiquity, many of the (later) Zoharic
>       offshoots are strongly coloured by the peculiar views held by
>       Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldæan), the friends and co‐workers
>       of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their
>       interpretations.
> 
>  1054 See Franck’s _Kabbala_, Preface.
> 
>  1055 i. 14.
> 
>  1056 See Schwartze, _op. cit._, _pagg._ 359, 361, _et seqq._
> 
>  1057 Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, p. 374.
> 
>  1058 Timæus, the Locrian, speaking of “Arka” [Arche], calls her “the
>       principle of best things” (Ἀρχὰ τῶν ἁρίστων). The word _arcane_,
>       “hidden,” or secret, is derived from this. “To no one is the
>       _Arcane_ shown except to the ... Most High” (_Codex
>       Nazaræus_)—alluding to Nature the female, and Spirit, the male
>       Power. Æsculapius, as a Sun‐God was called _Archagetas_, “born from
>       the Archa,” the divine Virgin‐Mother of the Heavens. (See Kenealy,
>       _Book of God_, p. 10.)
> 
>  1059 Kenealy, _op. cit._, _ibid._
> 
>  1060 This is composed of ten dots arranged triangularly in four rows. It
>       is the Tetragrammaton of the Western Kabalists.
> 
>  1061 From an MS.
> 
>  1062 See G. Maspéro, _Guide au Musée Boulaq_, 1884, p. 168, No. 1981.
> 
>  1063 _Ibid._, p. 169, No. 1998.
> 
>  1064 _Ibid._, p. 172, No. 2068.
> 
>  1065 The student must be aware that Jethro is not called the “father‐in‐
>       law” of Moses because Moses was really married to one of his seven
>       daughters. Moses was an Initiate, if he ever existed, and as such an
>       Ascetic, a Nazar, and could never have been married. It is an
>       allegory like everything else. Zipporah (the “shining”) is one of
>       the personified Occult Sciences given by Reuel‐Jethro, the Midian
>       priest Initiator, to Moses, his Egyptian pupil. The “well” by which
>       Moses sat down in his flight from the Pharaoh symbolizes the “Well
>       of Knowledge.”
> 
>  1066 i. pp. 106‐108 and elsewhere.
> 
>  1067 In Hebrew the phallic symbol Lingam and Yoni.
> 
>  1068 See Vol. I, Stanza IV, Shloka 3.
> 
>  1069 It is at that Step that one arrives on the plane of the level or
>       floor and open entrance to the King’s Chamber, the Egyptian “Holy of
>       Holies.”
> 
>  1070 The Candidate for Initiation always personified the God of the
>       Temple he belonged to, as the High Priest personified the God at all
>       times; just as the Pope now personates Peter and even Jesus Christ
>       upon entering the inner sanctuary—the Christian “Holy of Holies.”
> 
>  1071 _Genesis_, i. 27.
> 
>  1072 Jehovah says to Moses: “the summation of my name is _sacr_, the
>       carrier of the germ”—phallus. “It is ... the vehicle of enunciation,
>       and truly enough, as the _sacr_, or carrier of the germ, its use
>       passed down through ages to the _sacr‐factum_ of the Roman priest,
>       and the _sacr‐fice_, and _sacr‐ment_ of the English speaking race.”
>       (_Source of Measures_, p. 236.) Hence marriage is a _sacrament_ in
>       the Greek and Roman Churches.
> 
>  1073 4to, London, 1684, vol. i. pp. 120, 121.
> 
>  1074 _Op. cit._, p. 67.
> 
>  1075 _Source of Measures_, 159.
> 
>  1076 _Op. cit._, p. 187.
> 
>  1077 _Op. cit._, p. 271.
> 
>  1078 From the same author. See also the Section on “The Symbolism of the
>       Mystery Names Iao and Jehovah.”
> 
>  1079 In _Genesis_ (iv. 26), it is mis‐translated. “And he called his name
>       Enos [man]: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord”—which
>       has no sense in it, since Adam and the others must have done the
>       same.
> 
>  1080 Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Âryan race, born in
>       India, and belonging to the Caucasian division. No one who is
>       familiar with the Armenians and the Parsîs can fail to recognize in
>       the three the same Âryan, Caucasian type. From the seven primitive
>       types of the Fifth Race there now remain on Earth but three. As
>       Prof. W. H. Flower aptly said in 1885: “I cannot resist the
>       conclusion so often arrived at by various anthropologists—that the
>       primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the course of ages
>       diverged into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of
>       Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that
>       all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around these
>       types.” (The President’s Address at the Anthropological Institute of
>       Great Britain, etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its fifth
>       sub‐race, how can it be otherwise?
> 
>  1081 Whenever such analogies between the Gentiles and the Jews, and later
>       the Christians, have been pointed out, it has been the invariable
>       custom of the latter to say that it was the work of the Devil who
>       forced the Pagans to imitate the Jews for the purpose of throwing a
>       slur on the religion of the _one, true living_ God. To this Faber
>       says very justly: “Some have imagined that the Gentiles were servile
>       copyists of the Israelites, and that each point of similitude was
>       borrowed from the Mosaical Institutes. But this theory will by no
>       means solve the problem. Both because we find the very same
>       resemblance in the ceremonies of nations far distant from Palestine,
>       as we do in the rites of those who are in its immediate vicinity,
>       and because it seems incredible that all should have borrowed from
>       one which was universally disliked and despised.” (_Pagan Idolatry_,
>       i. 104.)
> 
>  1082 _Luke_, i. 28.
> 
>  1083 Their consecrated Pillars (unhewn stones) erected by Abraham and
>       Jacob were _Lingams_.
> 
>  1084 _Op. cit._, p. 67.
> 
>  1085 See _Introduction to the Old Testament_, and also Bishop Colenso’s
>       _Elohistic and Jehovistic Writers_.
> 
>  1086 King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 327, 2nd ed.
> 
>  1087 _Ibid._, p. 326.
> 
>  1088 Such a Pseudo‐Kabalist was the Marquis de Mirville in France, who
>       studied the _Zohar_ and other old remnants of Jewish Wisdom under
>       the “Chevalier” Drach, an ancient Rabbi Kabalist converted to the
>       Romish Church, and with his help wrote half a dozen volumes full of
>       slander and calumnies against every prominent Spiritualist and
>       Kabalist. From 1848 up to 1860 he persecuted unrelentingly the old
>       Count d’Ourches, one of the earliest Eastern Occultists in France, a
>       man the scope of whose Occult knowledge will never be appreciated
>       correctly by his survivors, because he screened his real beliefs and
>       knowledge under the mask of Spiritism.
> 
>  1089 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, pp. 101‐115.
> 
>  1090 _Exodus_, xxii. 28.
> 
>  1091 _Deut._, iv. 19.
> 
>  1092 _Jude_, 8, 9.
> 
>  1093 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 487, _et seqq._
> 
>  1094 Treat, _Kiddusheem_, 81. But see Myer’s _Qabbalah_, pp. 92, 94.
> 
>  1095 Marangone, in his _Delle Grandezze del Archangelo Sancti Mikaele_,
>       exclaims: “O grandest Star, who followest the Sun who is Christ!...
>       O living image of Divinity! O great thaumaturgist of the Old
>       Testament! O invisible Vicar of Christ in his Church!...” The work
>       is held in great honour in the Latin Church.
> 
>  1096 _Pneumatologie_, v. 516.
> 
>  1097 _Ibid._, p. 515.
> 
>  1098 _Ibid._, p. 514.
> 
>  1099 _Isaiah_, lxiii. 8, 9.
> 
>  1100 Metator and ἡγεμών.
> 
>  1101 _Pneumatologie_, p. 515. “La Face et le Représentant du Verbe.”
> 
>  1102 That which is called in the _Vendidâd_ Fravarshi, the immortal part
>       of an individual; that which outlives man—the Higher Ego, say the
>       Occultists, or the Divine Double.
> 
>  1103 Darmesteter’s Trans., p. 208.
> 
>  1104 _Orm. Ahr._, §§ 112, 113; quoted by Darmesteter, “Sacred Books of
>       the East,” vol. iv. introd., p. lxxiv.
> 
>  1105 _De Idol._, ii. 373.
> 
>  1106 See De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 515.
> 
>  1107 _Ibid._ See also plates in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_.
> 
>  1108 P. 518.
> 
>  1109 _The Book of Enoch the Prophet_, p. xlviii. Ed. 1883.
> 
>  1110 _Op. cit._, pp. xxxiv, xxxv.
> 
>  1111 Saith Uriel in the _Book of Enoch_ (xxvi. 3): “Those who have
>       received mercy shall for ever bless God ... the _Everlasting
>       King_”—who will reign over them.
> 
>  1112 _Vishnu Purâna_, III. ii; Wilson’s Trans., iii. 31.
> 
>  1113 _Matthew_, xxiv. 27.
> 
>  1114 _Luke_, x. 18.
> 
>  1115 The Protestant _Bible_ defines Behemoth _innocently_—“The _elephant_
>       as some think”; see marginal note (_Job_, xl. 15) in the Authorized
>       Version.
> 
>  1116 _Job_, xl. 19.
> 
>  1117 Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have _disappeared_,
>       unless it be simply from visibility; but never from existence since
>       the science of Astronomy became known. Temporary stars are only
>       _variable_ stars, and it is believed that even the _new_ stars of
>       Kepler and Tycho Brahé may still be seen.
> 
>  1118 This refers to the “Kings of Edom.”
> 
>  1119 Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew
>       of more than _seven_ planets is to be found in the _Vishnu Purâna_
>       (II. xii) where, describing the chariots attached to Dhruva (the
>       Pole Star), Parâshara speaks of “the chariots of the _nine_
>       planets,” which are attached by aërial cords.
> 
>  1120 Justin, _Cum Tryphone_, p. 284.
> 
>  1121 A division indicative of time.
> 
>  1122 Sanchuniathon calls Time the oldest Æon, Protogonos, the “First‐
>       born.”
> 
>  1123 Philo Judæus, _Cain and his Birth_, p. xvii.
> 
>  1124 _Principles of Psychology_, 474.
> 
>  1125 It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so
>       conspicuous in our day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won
>       its rights of citizenship in Science as taught by Darwin and Hæckel,
>       yet both the Eternity of the Universe and the Preëxistence of a
>       Universal Consciousness, are rejected by modern Psychologists.
>       “Should the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a
>       dream,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer.
> 
>  1126 _Zohar_, 9b.
> 
>  1127 Verse 6.
> 
>  1128 Mercure Trismegiste, _Pimandre_, chap. i, sec. 16: “Oh, ma pensée,
>       que s’ensuit‐il? car je désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre diet,
>       ceci est un mystère celé, jusques à ce jour d’hui. Car nature, soit
>       mestant avec l’hôme, a produit le miracle très merveilleux, aîant
>       celluy qui ie t’av diet, la nature de l’harmonie des sept du père,
>       et de l’esprit. _Nature ne s’arresta pas là_, mais incontinent a
>       produict _sept hômes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs_ en
>       puissance des deux sexes et esleuez.... La génération de ces _sept_
>       s’est donnée en ceste manière....”
> 
>       And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially
>       by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the
>       Bishop, says: “Nature produced in him [man] seven men” (seven
>       principles).
> 
>  1129 xxviii. 2‐8.
> 
>  1130 _Ibid._
> 
>  1131 _Ibid._, 17.
> 
>  1132 _Ibid._, 13‐16.
> 
>  1133 _Ibid._, 18.
> 
>  1134 _Ibid._, 19.
> 
>  1135 xxxi. 16, 17. The only Pharaoh whom the _Bible_ shows going down
>       into the Red Sea was the king who pursued the Israelites, and who
>       remained unnamed, for very good reasons perhaps. The story was
>       surely made up from the Atlantean legend.
> 
>  1136 xxviii. 13, 14.
> 
>  1137 xxxi. 3‐9.
> 
>  1138 _Vishnu Purâna._ I. xv.
> 
>  1139 This is pure allegory. The Waters are a symbol of Wisdom and of
>       Occult Learning. Hermes represented the Sacred Science under the
>       symbol of Fire; the Northern Initiates, under that of Water. The
>       latter is the production of Nara, the “Spirit of God,” or rather
>       Paramâtman, the “Supreme Soul,” says Kullûka Bhatta; Nârâyana,
>       meaning “he who abides in the deep” or is plunged in the Waters of
>       Wisdom—“water being the body of Nara” (_Vâyu Purâna_). Hence arises
>       the statement that for 10,000 years they remained in austerity “in
>       the vast ocean”; and are shown emerging from it. Ea, the God of
>       Wisdom, is the “Sublime Fish,” and Dagon or Oannes is the Chaldæan
>       Man‐Fish, who emerges from the Waters to teach Wisdom.
> 
>  1140 Chap. v; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. viii. p. 257.
> 
>  1141 This is explained by the able translator of _Anugîtâ_ in a foot‐note
>       (p. 258) in these words: “The sense appears to be this: The course
>       of worldly life is due to the operations of the life‐winds which are
>       attached to the Self, and lead to its manifestations as individual
>       souls.”
> 
>  1142 Vaishvânara is a word often used to denote the Self—explains
>       Nîlakantha.
> 
>  1143 _Ibid._, p. 259. Translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A.,
>       Bombay.
> 
>  1144 _Matthew_, iii. 10.
> 
>  1145 _Isaiah_, x. 19.
> 
>  1146 _Op. cit._, i. 133.
> 
>  1147 1845, p. 41.
> 
>  1148 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_ for further information on
>       above.
> 
>  1149 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, art., “The Elixir of Life.”
> 
>  1150 The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body,
>       and yet away from it in his Spiritual Form. Freed from the former,
>       he soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming
>       virtually “as one of the Gods,” and yet preserving in his physical
>       brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma
>       is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous
>       Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah‐ve, “lest man should become as one of
>       us.”
> 
>  1151 We see the same in the modern exoteric religions.
> 
>  1152 _Historical View of the Hindû Astronomy._ Quoting from the work in
>       reference to “Argabhatta” [? Âryabhatta] who is said to give a near
>       approach to the true relation among the various values for the
>       computations of the value of π, the author of _The Source of
>       Measures_ reproduces a curious statement. “Mr. Bentley,” it is said,
>       “was greatly familiar with the Hindû astronomical and mathematical
>       knowledge.... This statement of his may then be taken as authentic.
>       The same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient
>       nations, of _sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of
>       knowledge, is a marked one_ among the Hindûs. 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 Hindû _exoteric_
>       astronomy and sciences] was derived _from a system exact beyond the
>       European one_, in which Mr. Bentley himself, of course, trusted, as
>       far in advance of the Hindû knowledge, at any time, in any
>       generation” (pp. 86, 87).
> 
>       This is Mr. Bentley’s misfortune, and does not take away from the
>       glory of the ancient Hindû Astronomers, who were all Initiates.
> 
>  1153 The Secret Doctrine teaches that every event of universal
>       importance, such as geological cataclysms at the end of one Race and
>       the beginning of a new one, involving a great change each time in
>       mankind, spiritual, moral and physical—is precogitated and
>       preconcerted, so to say, in the sidereal regions of our planetary
>       system. Astrology is built wholly upon this mystic and intimate
>       connection between the heavenly bodies and mankind; and it is one of
>       the great secrets of Initiation and Occult Mysteries.
> 
>  1154 See Darmesteter’s _Vendidâd_, Introd., p. lviii.
> 
>  1155 See _Isaiah_, xiv. 12.
> 
>  1156 _Genesis_, vi.
> 
>  1157 The Nâgas are described by the Orientalists as a mysterious people
>       whose landmarks are found abundantly in India to this day, and who
>       lived in Nâga‐dvîpa, one of the _seven_ continents or divisions of
>       Bhâratavarsha (old India); the town of Nagpur being one of the most
>       ancient cities in the country.
> 
>  1158 xxviii. 3, 4.
> 
>  1159 Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Shiva, the
>       great Yogî, the forefather of all the Adepts—in Esotericism one of
>       the greatest Kings of the Divine Dynasties. Called the “earliest”
>       and the “last,” he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and the Fifth
>       Root‐Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig‐
>       ambara, “clothed with the elements,” Tri‐lochana, the “three‐eyed,”
>       Pancha‐ânana, the “five‐faced,” an allusion to the past Four and the
>       present Fifth Race, for, though five‐faced, he is only “four‐armed,”
>       as the Fifth Race is still alive. He is the “God of Time,” Saturn‐
>       Cronus, as his “drum” Damaru, in the shape of an hour‐glass, shows;
>       and if he is accused of having cut off Brahma’s fifth head, and left
>       him with only four, it is again an allusion to a certain degree in
>       Initiation, and also to the Races.
> 
>  1160 Gustav Seiffarth’s idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient
>       times only ten is erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane; the
>       Initiates, however, knew them all, _from the time of the separation
>       of mankind into sexes_, whence arose the separation of Virgo‐Scorpio
>       into two. This separation, owing to the addition of a secret sign
>       and the Libra invented by the Greeks, instead of the secret name
>       which was not given, made twelve. (See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 456.)
> 
>  1161 The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalaï Lama’s symbolical name—the
>       “Ocean” Lama, meaning the Wisdom‐Ocean. Abbé Huc speaks of this.
> 
>  1162 _Zohar_, iii. 9b, 10a, Brody Ed. Cremona Ed. iii. fol. 4a, col. 14.
>       Myer’s _Qabbalah_, pp. 416, 417.
> 
>  1163 Such was the name given in ancient Judea to the Initiates, called
>       also the “Innocents” and the “Infants,” _i.e._, once more “reborn.”
>       This _key_ opens a vista into one of the _New Testament_ mysteries;
>       the slaughter by Herod of the 40,000 “Innocents.” There is a legend
>       to this effect, and the event, which took place almost a century
>       B.C., shows the origin of the tradition blended at the same time
>       with that of Krishna and his uncle Kansa. In the case of the _New
>       Testament_, Herod stands for Alexander Jannæus (of Lyda), whose
>       persecution and murder of hundreds and thousands of Initiates led to
>       the adoption of the _Bible_ story.
> 
>  1164 _Zohar_, ii. 34.
> 
>  1165 i. § 16.
> 
>  1166 _Op. cit._, lxxiv. 13.
> 
>  1167 _Ibid._, § 33.
> 
>  1168 P. 16.
> 
>  1169 “Biographical and Critical Essay,” p. xxxviii.
> 
>  1170 _Histoire de la Magic_, pp. 16, 17.
> 
>  1171 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1172 What _devil_ could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty
>       than the Whitechapel murderer, “Jack the Ripper” of 1888, whose
>       unparalleled, blood‐thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter
>       and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and _otherwise_
>       innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in
>       those wife‐ and child‐beating, drunken brutes (husbands and
>       fathers!), a _small_ percentage of whom is daily brought before the
>       courts, the complete personifications of the devils of the Christian
>       Hell!
> 
>  1173 _Psalm_, lxxxii.
> 
>  1174 _Genesis_, xvii. 7.
> 
>  1175 _Op. cit._, p. 209.
> 
>  1176 _Ibid._, pp. 144, 145.
> 
>  1177 _Ibid._, p. 146.
> 
>  1178 _Op. cit._, p. 9. After the Polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics
>       came the Exoteric Dualism of Manes, who was accused of personifying
>       Evil and making of the Devil a God—the rival of God himself. We do
>       not see that the Christian Church has so much improved on that
>       exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her King of
>       Light, and Satan the King of Darkness, to this day.
> 
>  1179 To quote in this relation Mr. S. Laing, in his admirable work
>       _Modern Science and Modern Thought_ (p. 222): “From this dilemma
>       [the existence of evil in the world] there is no escape, unless we
>       give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt
>       frankly the scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past
>       finding out; and of a universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose
>       real essence we know nothing, and can only suspect or faintly
>       discern a fundamental law which may make the polarity of good and
>       evil a necessary condition of existence.” Were Science to know “the
>       real essence,” instead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion
>       would turn into the certitude of the existence of such a law, and
>       the knowledge that this law is connected with Karma.
> 
>  1180 _Histoire de la Magie_, pp. 196, 197.
> 
>  1181 Âkâsha is _not_ the Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate
>       it.
> 
>  1182 Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest
>       Astrologer and Kabalist of his day: “The art of divine magic
>       consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things in the
>       Light of Nature [Astral Light], and by using the soul‐powers of the
>       spirit to produce material things from the unseen universe, and in
>       such operations the Above and the Below must be brought together and
>       made to act harmoniously. The Spirit of Nature [Astral Light] is a
>       unity, creating and forming everything, and by acting through the
>       instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such
>       processes take place according to law. You will learn the law by
>       which these things are accomplished, if you learn to know yourself.
>       You will know it by the power of the spirit that is in yourself, and
>       accomplish it by mixing your spirit with the essence that comes out
>       of yourself. If you wish to succeed in such a work you must know how
>       to separate spirit and life in Nature, and, moreover, to separate
>       the astral soul in yourself and to make it tangible, and then the
>       substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly, rendered
>       objective by the power of the spirit.” (Quoted in Dr. Franz
>       Hartmann’s _Paracelsus_, pp. 164, 165.)
> 
>  1183 The real original text of _I Corinthians_, xv. 44, rendered
>       kabalistically and Esoterically would read: “It is sown a _soul_
>       body [not ‘natural’ body], it is raised a _spirit_ body.” St. Paul
>       was an Initiate, and his words have quite a different meaning when
>       read Esoterically. The body “is sown in _weakness_ [passivity]; it
>       is raised in power” (v. 43)—or in spirituality and intellect.
> 
>  1184 “The War in Heaven” (_Theosophist_, iii. 24, 36, 67), by Godolphin
>       Mitford, later in life Murad Ali Beg. Born in India, the son of a
>       missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan
>       in 1884. He was a most extraordinary Mystic, of great learning and
>       remarkable intelligence. But he left the Right Path and forthwith
>       fell under Karmic retribution. As well shown by the author of the
>       article quoted, “The followers of the defeated ‘Elohim’ first
>       massacred by the victorious Jews [the Jehovites], and then persuaded
>       by the victorious Christians and Mohamedans, continued
>       [nevertheless].... Some [of these scattered sects] ... have lost
>       even the tradition of the true rationale of their belief—to worship
>       in secrecy and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty.
>       Why do the Sabean Bedouins (avowedly Monotheists when dwelling in
>       the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert night yet invoke
>       the starry ‘Host of Heaven’? Why do the Yezidis, the ‘Devil
>       Worshippers,’ worship the ‘Muluk‐Taoos’—the ‘Lord Peacock’—the
>       emblem of _Pride_ and of Hundred‐eyed Intelligence [and of
>       Initiation also], which was expelled from Heaven with Satan,
>       according to an old Oriental tradition? Why do the Gholaites and
>       their kindred Mesopotamo‐Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe in the
>       ‘Noor Illahee’—the ‘Light of the Elohim’—transmitted in _anastasis_
>       through a hundred Prophet‐Leaders? It is because they have continued
>       in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the ‘Light
>       Deities’ whom Jahveh overthrew!” (p. 69)—is _said_ to have
>       overthrown rather; for by overthrowing _them_ he would have
>       overthrown himself. The Muluk‐Taoos is Maluk, “Ruler,” as is shown
>       in the foot‐note. It is only a new form of Moloch, Melek, Molech,
>       Malayak, and Malachim—Messengers, Angels, etc.
> 
>  1185 So does every Yogi and even Christian, for one must take the Kingdom
>       of Heaven _by violence_—we are taught. Why then should such a desire
>       make of any one a Devil?
> 
>  1186 _Acad. des Inscrip._, xxxix. 690.
> 
>  1187 Fargard, xix. 47; Darmesteter’s Trans., p. 218.
> 
>  1188 _Vendidad_, Far. xx. 12; _op. cit._, p. 222.
> 
>  1189 _Ibid._, Far. xix. 43; _op. cit._, p. 218.
> 
>  1190 From the _Vendidad Sadah_, quoted by Darmesteter, _op. cit._, p.
>       223.
> 
>  1191 See the Gâtha in Yasna xliv.
> 
>  1192 _Op. cit._, p. 441.
> 
>  1193 _Apollodorus_, I. 7, 1.
> 
>  1194 Ovid., _Metam._, I. 81. _Etym. M._, v. Προμηθεύς.
> 
>  1195 Pausanias, X. 4, 4.
> 
>  1196 _Op. cit._, p. 264.
> 
>  1197 Pausanias, II. 19, 5; _cf._ 20, 3.
> 
>  1198 _Timæus_, p. 22.
> 
>  1199 _Strom._, I. p. 380.
> 
>  1200 Decharme, _ibid._, p. 265.
> 
>  1201 _Opera et Dies_, 142‐145. According to the Occult Teaching, three
>       Yugas passed away during the time of the Third Root‐Race, _i.e._,
>       the Satya, the Tretà, and the Dvâpara Yuga—answering to the Golden
>       Age in its early innocence; to the Silver, when it reached its
>       maturity; and to the Bronze Age, when, separating into sexes, it
>       became the mighty Demi‐gods of old.
> 
>  1202 _Asgard and the Gods_, pp. 11, 13.
> 
>  1203 _Op. cit._, p. 266.
> 
>  1204 _Ibid._, p. 258.
> 
>  1205 _Ibid._, p. 257.
> 
>  1206 _Ibid._, p. 258.
> 
>  1207 _Op. cit._, p. 145.
> 
>  1208 _Transactions of the Royal Society_, London, 1868.
> 
>  1209 _The Age and Origin of Man._
> 
>  1210 The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars,
>       they would have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!) to
>       explain the real meaning of the ideas of Æschylus—which, as being an
>       ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well himself—is
>       absurdly ludicrous!
> 
>  1211 _Revue Germanique_, 1861, pp. 356, _et seqq._ See also _Mémoires de
>       la Société de la Linguistique_, i. pp. 337. _et seqq._
> 
>  1212 Quoted by Decharme, _op. cit._, pp. 258, 259. There is the _upper_
>       and _nether_ piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by
>       attrition at sacrifices, and it is the Aranì which contains the
>       socket. This is proven by an allegory in the _Vâyu_ and other
>       _Purânas_, which tell us that Nimi, the son of Ikshvàku, had left no
>       successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the Earth without a
>       ruler, introduced the king’s body into the socket of an Arani—like
>       an upper Aranì—and produced from it a prince named Janaka. “It was
>       by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered that he was
>       called Janaka.” See also Goldstücker’s _Sanskrit Dictionary_, _sub
>       voce_. (_Vishnu Purána_, Wilson’s Trans., iii. 330.) Devaki,
>       Krishna’s mother, in a prayer addressed to her, is called “the Aranî
>       whose attrition engenders fire.”
> 
>  1213 The Monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute
>       knows nothing of this; it lives an animal life of sensation just as
>       the first human would have lived, on attaining physical development
>       in the Third Race, had it not been for the Agnishvâtta and the
>       Mânasa Pitris.
> 
>  1214 _Op. cit._, p. 259.
> 
>  1215 Ἰαπετιονίδης. _Theog._, p. 528.
> 
>  1216 _Theog._, 565.
> 
>  1217 The Fallen Angels, therefore; the Asuras of the Indian Pantheon.
> 
>  1218 Decharme, _op. cit._, pp. 259, 260.
> 
>  1219 _Ibid._, p. 263.
> 
>  1220 _Ibid._, p. 261.
> 
>  1221 _Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks_ (Berlin, 1859).
> 
>  1222 The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to laws
>       in our day.
> 
>  1223 Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 262.
> 
>  1224 _Philosoph. Placit._, iii. 3.
> 
>  1225 Baudry, _Revue Germanique_, 14 avril, 1861, p. 368.
> 
>  1226 _Op. cit._, pp. 264, 265.
> 
>  1227 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., v. 96, note.
> 
>  1228 xiii. 55, 56.
> 
>  1229 “Womb of Light,” “Holy Vessel,” are the epithets of the Virgin.
> 
>  1230 The Virgin is often addressed as the “Morning Star” and the “Star of
>       Salvation.”
> 
>  1231 Wilson translates: “Thou art kingly policy, the parent of order.”
> 
>  1232 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., iv. pp. 264, 265.
> 
>  1233 iii. 290.
> 
>  1234 See _Joshua_, xv, 15.
> 
>  1235 Surât xix.
> 
>  1236 See Mackenzie’s _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_, _sub voce_ “Enoch.”
> 
>  1237 Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch Esoterically means the “Initiator” and
>       “Teacher,” as well as Enos, the “Son of Man.” (See _Genesis_, iv.
>       26.)
> 
>  1238 De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. 70.
> 
>  1239 Mackenzie, _op. cit._, _sub voc._
> 
>  1240 _Hebrews_, xi. 5.
> 
>  1241 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 71.
> 
>  1242 Compare the “thieves and robbers” incident, p. 506, _supra_.
> 
>  1243 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 73.
> 
>  1244 _Ibid._, p. 76.
> 
>  1245 _Antiquities_, ix. 2.
> 
>  1246 Cap. viii.
> 
>  1247 Says the _Zohar_, “Hanokh had a book which was one with the Book of
>       the Generations of Adam; this is the Mystery of Wisdom.”
> 
>  1248 Noah is heir to the Wisdom of Enoch; in other words, the Fifth is
>       heir to the Fourth Race.
> 
>  1249 See _Isis Unveiled_, i. 575, _et seqq._
> 
>  1250 See the illustration in _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 452.
> 
>  1251 See Danielo’s criticisms upon De Sacy, in the _Annales de
>       Philosophie_, p. 393, deuxième article.
> 
>  1252 De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 77, 78.
> 
>  1253 Ch. lxxix, Laurence’s Trans.
> 
>  1254 _Ibid._, ch. lxiv.
> 
>  1255 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._, v. 6.
> 
>  1256 Bailly, _Astronomie Ancienne_, i. 203, and ii. 216; De Mirville,
>       _ibid._, p. 79.
> 
>  1257 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 80.
> 
>  1258 _City of God_, XV. xxiii.
> 
>  1259 _Op. cit._, xxxii. 8, 9.
> 
>  1260 Of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to the
>       version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald.
> 
>  1261 With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of
>       the Seven (see _Book of the Dead_). Their names are given by Origen,
>       as Adonai (of the Sun), Iao (of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao
>       (Mars), Orai (Venus), Astaphai (Mercury), and, finally, Ildabaoth
>       (Saturn). See King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 344.
> 
>  1262 See Origen’s Copy of the Chart or Diagramma of the Ophites, in his
>       _Contra Celsum_.
> 
>  1263 See Part III of this Volume, Section IV, B, “On Chains of Planets
>       and their Plurality.”
> 
>  1264 _Exodus_, xxxiii. 18, 19; see Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 226.
> 
>  1265 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1266 _Supra_, p. 481.
> 
>  1267 See _Revelation_, xxii. 16.
> 
>  1268 _Op. cit._, ii. 301.
> 
>  1269 _Gnostics and their Remains._
> 
>  1270 _II Samuel._
> 
>  1271 By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were
>       always considered as subordinate Gods to the Most High Deity.
> 
>  1272 _Op. cit._, ii. 296, 297. Fürst gives citations from Lydus and
>       Cedrenus in support of his statements.
> 
>  1273 See plate 77 in vol. i of Montfaucon’s _Antiquities_. The disciples
>       of Hermes, after their death, go to his planet, Mercury—their
>       Kingdom of Heaven.
> 
>  1274 Cornutus.
> 
>  1275 Lydus, _De Mensibus_, iv.
> 
>  1276 _Preparat. Evang._, I. iii. 2.
> 
>  1277 But see p. 480, _supra_, concerning the Gnostic Priapus.
> 
>  1278 _Op. cit._, p. 52.
> 
>  1279 _Ibid._, pp. 3, 4.
> 
>  1280 Let the reader refer to the _Zohar_ and the two _Qabbalahs_ of Isaac
>       Myer and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, with interpretations, if he would
>       satisfy himself of this.
> 
>  1281 _Ibid._, p. 5.
> 
>  1282 _Ibid._, p. 12.
> 
>  1283 See _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 45‐47.
> 
>  1284 _Op. cit._, i. 421, 422.
> 
>  1285 _De la Croix Ansée_, _Mem. de l’Académie des Sciences_, pl. 2, Nos.
>       8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320; quoted in _Natural Genesis_, p. 423.
> 
>  1286 Vol. xviii. p. 393, pl. 4; Inman, fig. 38; Gerald Massey, _op.
>       cit._, _ibid._, p. 422.
> 
>  1287 Certainly not; for very often there are symbols _made to symbolize
>       other symbols_, and these are in turn used in ideographs.
> 
>  1288 The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza
>       alphabet) is also the Latin P.
> 
>  1289 _Ibid._, p. 423.
> 
>  1290 See Moor’s _Hindû Pantheon_, plate xiii.
> 
>  1291 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_, _sub voc._ “Rudra.”
> 
>  1292 Described in the _Mission des Juifs_, by the Marquis St. Yves
>       d’Alveydre, the hierophant and leader of a large party of French
>       Kabalists, as the Golden Age!
> 
>  1293 V. xxiii.
> 
>  1294 Translated from Burnouf’s French Translation, quoted by Fitzedward
>       Hall, in Wilson’s _Vishnu Purâna_, ii. 307.
> 
>  1295 The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurâsura and the
>       Titan Târaka. Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and
>       Kârttikeya are often made identical.
> 
>  1296 _Ibid._, iv. 235.
> 
>  1297 _Op. cit._, XII. ii. 26‐32; quoted in _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s
>       Trans., iv. 230. Nanda is the first Buddhist sovereign,
>       Chandragupta, against whom all the Brâhmans were so arrayed, he of
>       the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Ashoka. This is one of
>       those passages that do not exist in the earlier Paurânic MSS. They
>       were added by the Vaishnavas, who, out of sectarian spite, were
>       almost as great interpolators as the Christian Fathers.
> 
>  1298 _Historical View of the Hindû Astronomy_, p. 65, as quoted by
>       Wilson, _op. cit._, p. 233.
> 
>  1299 See _Ezekiel_, i.
> 
>  1300 _In Quint. Lib. Euclid._
> 
>  1301 The Goddess Basht, or Pasht, was represented with the head of a cat.
>       This animal was held sacred in Egypt for several reasons. It was a
>       symbol of the Moon, the “Eye of Osiris” or the “Sun,” during night.
>       The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was
>       because of its body being rolled up in a circle when asleep. The
>       posture is prescribed for occult and magnetic purposes, in order to
>       regulate, in a certain way, the circulation of the vital fluid, with
>       which the cat is preëminently endowed. “The nine lives of a cat” is
>       a popular saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr.
>       Gerald Massey gives also an astronomical reason for it which may be
>       found in vol. i. pp. 322, 323, of the present work. “The cat saw the
>       sun, had it in its eye by night [was the eye of night], when it was
>       otherwise unseen by men [for as the Moon reflects the light of the
>       Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on account of its
>       phosphorescent eyes]. _We_ might say the moon _mirrored_ the solar
>       light, because we have _looking glasses_. With them the cat’s eye
>       _was_ the mirror.” (_Luniolatry Ancient and Modern_, p. 2.)
> 
>  1302 _Ezekiel_, i. 4, 15, 16, 20.
> 
>  1303 _Eccles._, i. 6.
> 
>  1304 Fol. 87, col. 346.
> 
>  1305 Vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.
> 
>  1306 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, i. 124. Also in _T’sang‐t‐ung‐
>       ky_, by Wei‐Pa‐Yang.
> 
>  1307 Cocker’s _Christianity and Greek Philosophy_, xi. p. 377.
> 
>  1308 The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier, in his _Mystères
>       de la Vie Humaine_ (p. 117), is a warrant that the Cause of
>       “excellence and goodness,” supposed by Plato to pervade the Universe
>       is neither _his_ Deity, nor _our_ World. “Au spectacle de tant de
>       grandeur opposé à celui de tant de misère, l’esprit qui se met à
>       observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande
>       divinité, _qu’ une divinité, plus grande et plus pressante_ encore,
>       aurait comme brisée et mise en pièces en dispersant les débris dans
>       tout l’Univers.” The “still greater and still more exacting
>       divinity” than the God of this world, supposed to be so “good”—is
>       Karma. And this true Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our
>       _inner_ God (personal for the time being), has no power to arrest
>       the mighty hand of this greater Deity—the Cause awakened by our
>       actions generating smaller causes—which is called the Law of
>       Retribution.
> 
>  1309 See _Isis Unveiled_, i. xii and xviii.
> 
>  1310 Stobæus, _Ecl._, i. 862.
> 
>  1311 The Svastika is certainty one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient
>       Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (_Royal Masonic
>       Cyclopædia_), the Svastika “has survived in the form of the mallet”
>       in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many “meanings,” given by the
>       author, we do not find the most important, Masons evidently being
>       ignorant of it.
> 
>  1312 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 508.
> 
>  1313 _Ibid._, p. 506.
> 
>  1314 _Ibid._, p. 572.
> 
>  1315 _Ezekiel_, ix. 4.
> 
>  1316 _Exodus_, xii. 22.
> 
>  1317 viii. 29.
> 
>  1318 _Op. cit._, p. 204.
> 
>  1319 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_.
> 
>  1320 _The Source of Measures_, p. 204.
> 
>  1321 _Ibid._, p. 205.
> 
>  1322 See Moor’s _Hindû Pantheon_, where Vittoba’s left foot, in the
>       figure of his idol, bears the mark of the nails.
> 
>  1323 See Dr. Lundy’s _Monumental Christianity_, fig. 72.
> 
>  1324 _Source of Measures_, p. 52.
> 
>  1325 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, ii. 88.
> 
>  1326 The “Heavens” are identical with “Angels,” as already stated.
> 
>  1327 _Philosophumena_, vi. 48; quoted by King, _op. cit._, p. 200.
> 
>  1328 _Op. cit._, x. 3, 4.
> 
>  1329 _Pistis Sophia_, _pag._ 378; King, _ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1330 See the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans,” p. 69, _supra_.
> 
>  1331 As confessed by C. W. King, the great authority on Gnostic
>       antiquities, these “Gnostic” gems are not the work of the Gnostics,
>       but belong to Pre‐Christian periods, and are the work of “magicians”
>       (_op. cit._, p. 241).
> 
>  1332 King, _ibid._, p. 218.
> 
>  1333 The lack of intuition in Orientalists and Antiquarians past and
>       present, is remarkable. Thus, Wilson, the translator of _Vishnu
>       Purâna_, declares in his Preface that in the _Garuda Purâna_ he
>       found “no account of the birth of Garuda.” Considering that an
>       account of “Creation” in general is given therein, and that Garuda
>       is coëternal with Vishnu, the Mahâ Kalpa, or Great Life‐Cycle,
>       beginning with and ending with the _manifesting_ Vishnu, what other
>       account of Garuda’s birth could be expected!
> 
>  1334 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1335 See _Revelation_, xvii. 2 and 10; and _Leviticus_, xxiii. 15 to 18;
>       the first passage speaking of the “seven Kings,” of whom _five_ have
>       gone; and the second about the “seven Sabbaths,” etc.
> 
>  1336 _Op. cit._, x. 5‐7.
> 
>  1337 _Pistis Sophia_ is an extremely important document, a genuine
>       Evangel of the Gnostics, ascribed, at random to Valectinus, but much
>       more probably a Pre‐Christian work as to its original. A Coptic MS.
>       of this work was brought back by Bruce from Abyssinia and discovered
>       by Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite accidentally, and
>       translated by him into Latin. The text and Schwartze’s version were
>       published by Petermann in the year 1853. In the text itself the
>       authorship of this Book is ascribed to Philip the Apostle, whom
>       Jesus bids sit down and write the revelation. It is genuine and
>       ought to be as canonical as any other Gospel. Unfortunately it
>       remains to this day untranslated into English.
> 
>  1338 King, _op. cit._, p. 200.
> 
>  1339 In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, Water represented
>       the first and lower steps toward purification, while trials
>       connected with Fire came last. Water could regenerate the Body of
>       Matter; Fire alone, that of the Inner Spiritual Man.
> 
>  1340 Chap. ix.
> 
>  1341 See the Introduction by Káshináth Trimbak Telang, M.A.
> 
>  1342 “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. viii. p. 276.
> 
>  1343 _Ibid._
> 
>  1344 _Ibid._
> 
>  1345 Pp. 258, 259.
> 
>  1346 _Ibid._, p. 257.
> 
>  1347 _Ibid._, p. 259.
> 
>  1348 In the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaishvânara is Agni, son of
>       the Sun, or Vishvânara, but in the psycho‐metaphysical symbolism it
>       is the Self, in the sense of non‐separateness, _i.e._, both divine
>       and human.
> 
>  1349 Here the speaker personifies the said divine Self.
> 
>  1350 _Ibid._
> 
>  1351 Compare with these “pairs of opposites,” in the _Anugîtâ_, the
>       “pairs” of Æons, in the elaborate system of Valentinus, the most
>       learned and profound Master of the Gnosis. As the “pairs of
>       opposites,” male and female, are all derived from Âkâsha
>       (undeveloped and developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or
>       Self or Prajâpati), so are the Valentinian “pairs” of male and
>       female Æons shown to emanate from Bythos, the preëxisting eternal
>       Depth, and in their secondary emanation from Ampsiu‐Ouraan, or
>       sempiternal Depth and Silence, the second Logos. In the Esoteric
>       emanation there are seven chief “pairs of opposites”; and so also in
>       the Valentinian system there were fourteen, or twice seven.
>       Epiphanius “copied one pair twice over,” Mr. C. W. King thinks, “and
>       thus adds one pair to the proper fifteen.” (_The Gnostics and their
>       Remains_, pp. 263, 264.) Here King falls into the opposite error;
>       the pairs of Æons are not 15 (a “blind”) but 14, as the _first_ Æon
>       is That from which others emanate, Depth and Silence being the first
>       and only emanation from Bythos. As Hippolytus shows: “The Æons of
>       Valentinus are confessedly the _six_ Radicals of Simon (Magus),”
>       with the _seventh_, Fire, at their head. And these are: Mind,
>       Intelligence, Voice, Name, Reason and Thought, subordinate to Fire,
>       the Higher Self, or precisely the “Seven Winds” or the “Seven
>       Priests” of _Anugîtâ_.
> 
>  1352 Not necessarily at death only, but during Samâdhi or mystic trance.
> 
>  1353 All the words and sentences between parenthetical marks are the
>       writer’s. This is translated directly from the Latin translation.
>       King’s translation conforms too much to Gnosticism as explained by
>       the Church Fathers.
> 
>  1354 Barbelo is one of the three “Invisible Gods,” and, as C. W. King
>       believes, includes the “Divine Mother of the Saviour,” or rather
>       Sophia Achamoth (_cf._ _Pistis Sophia_, pag. 359).
> 
>  1355 _Pagg._ 378, 379.
> 
>  1356 In other _Purânas_ Jatâyu is the son of Aruna, Garuda’s brother,
>       both the sons of Kashyapa. But all this is external allegory.
> 
>  1357 IX. viii. 12, 13.
> 
>  1358 From Burnouf’s Translation; see Wilson’s _Vishnu Purâna_, iii. 300.
> 
>  1359 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 302, note.
> 
>  1360 See _Vâyu Purâna_, which places him in the list of the forty
>       renowned sons of Kashyapa.
> 
>  1361 _The Ordinances of Manu_, i. 16; Burnell’s Translation, p. 3, note.
> 
>  1362 _Ibid._, 27; p. 5.
> 
>  1363 Vol. i. pp. 355, _et seqq._
> 
>  1364 _Orthodoxie Maçonnique Suivie de la Maçonnerie Occulte et de
>       l’Initiation Hermétique_, J. M. Ragon, p. 430; see also the whole of
>       Chapter XXVII, “Puissance des Nombres d’après Pythagore” for what
>       follows.
> 
>  1365 The reason for it is simple, and was given in _Isis Unveiled_. In
>       geometry, one straight line fails to represent a perfect figure, nor
>       can two straight lines constitute a perfect figure. The triangle is
>       the first perfect figure.
> 
>  1366 Ragon, _ibid._, p. 428, note.
> 
>  1367 _Ibid._, p. 431.
> 
>  1368 _Op. cit._, p. 113.
> 
>  1369 Now what is the meaning and the reason of this figure? The reason is
>       that Manas is the _fifth_ principle, and that the Pentagon is the
>       symbol of Man—not only of the five‐limbed, but rather of the
>       _thinking, conscious_ Man.
> 
>  1370 The reason for it becomes apparent when Egyptian symbology is
>       studied. See further on.
> 
>  1371 _Ibid._, p. 114.
> 
>  1372 _Ibid._, pp. 114, 115.
> 
>  1373 _Book of the Dead_, lxxxviii. 2.
> 
>  1374 _Philosophumena_, v. 14.
> 
>  1375 See _Philosophumena_, v. 14.
> 
>  1376 So is Brahma’s _fifth_ head, said to be lost, burnt to ashes by
>       Shiva’s “central eye”; Shiva being also Panchânana “five‐faced.”
>       Thus the number is preserved and secrecy maintained on the true
>       Esoteric meaning.
> 
>  1377 “When the Sun passes away behind the 30th degree of Makara and will
>       reach no more the sign of the Mînam (Pisces) then the Night of
>       Brahmâ has come.”
> 
>  1378 Death of every physical thing truly; but Mâra is also the
>       unconscious quickener of the birth of the Spiritual.
> 
>  1379 Osiris is called in the _Book of the Dead_ (cxlii. B. 17) “Osiris,
>       the double crocodile.” “He is the good and the bad Principle; the
>       Day and the Night Sun, the God and the mortal man.” Thus far the
>       Macrocosm and the Microcosm.
> 
>  1380 _Op. cit._, p. 117.
> 
>  1381 King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 297.
> 
>  1382 Reflecting on the cross, the author of _The Source of Measures_
>       shows that this candlestick in the Temple “was so composed that,
>       counting on either side, there were _four_ candle‐sockets; while, at
>       the apex, there being _one in common_ to both sides, there were in
>       fact 3 to be counted on the one side and 4 on the other, making in
>       all the number 7, upon the self‐same idea of one in common with the
>       cross display. Take a line of one unit in breadth by 3 units long,
>       and place it on an incline; take another of 4 units long, and lean
>       it upon this one, from an opposite incline, making the top unit of
>       the 4 in length the corner or apex of a triangle. This is the
>       display of the candlestick. Now, take away the line of 3 units in
>       length, and _cross_ it on the one of 4 units in length, and the
>       cross form results. The same idea is conveyed in the six days of the
>       week in Genesis, crowned by the seventh, which was used by itself as
>       a base of circular measure” (p. 51).
> 
>  1383 From a MS. supposed to be by “St. Germain,” embodied by Ragon, _op.
>       cit._, p. 434.
> 
>  1384 It had no such meaning in the beginnings, nor during the earlier
>       dynasties.
> 
>  1385 From an unpublished MS.
> 
>  1386 From St. Germain’s MS.
> 
>  1387 Yet this sense, if once mastered, will turn out to be the secure
>       casket which holds the keys to the Secret Wisdom. True, a casket so
>       profusely ornamented that its fancy‐work hides and conceals entirely
>       any spring for opening it, and thus makes the unintuitional believe
>       it has not, and cannot have, any opening at all. Still the keys are
>       there, deeply buried, yet ever present to him who searches for them.
> 
>  1388 _Vishnu Purúna_, I. xv; Wilson’s Trans., ii. 29.
> 
>  1389 Quoted in Gerald Massey’s _The Natural Genesis_, i. 427.
> 
>  1390 With the Christians, most undeniably. With the Pre‐Christian
>       Symbologists it was, as said, the Bed or Couch of Torture during the
>       Initiation Mystery, the “Crucifix” being placed horizontally, on the
>       ground, and not erect, as at the time when it became the Roman
>       gallows.
> 
>  1391 So it was, and could not be otherwise. Julian, the Emperor, was an
>       Initiate, and as such knew well the “mystery‐meaning” both
>       metaphysical and physical.
> 
>  1392 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 433.
> 
>  1393 _Book of the Dead._ xxxix. Apophis or Apap is the Serpent of Evil,
>       the symbol of human passions. The Sun (Osiris‐Horus) destroys him,
>       and Apap is thrown down, bound and chained. The God Aker, the “Chief
>       of the Gate of the Abyss” of Aker, the Realm of the Sun (xv. 39),
>       binds him. Apophis is the enemy of Ra (Light), but the “great Apap
>       has fallen!” exclaims the Defunct. “The Scorpion has hurt thy
>       mouth,” he says to the conquered enemy (xxxix. 7). The Scorpion is
>       the “worm that never dies” of the Christians. Apophis is bound on
>       the Tau or Tat, the “emblem of stability.” (See the erection of Tat
>       in Tatoo, xviii.)
> 
>  1394 So have the crypts in Cis‐Himâlayan regions where Initiates live,
>       and where their ashes are placed for seven lunar years.
> 
>  1395 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 432.
> 
>  1396 The Cross and the Tree are identical and synonymous in symbolism.
> 
>  1397 lvii. 3.
> 
>  1398 _Ibid._, 5.
> 
>  1399 Sermon clx.
> 
>  1400 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., iii. 174, note by Fitzedward Hall.
> 
>  1401 Hence the Initiates in Greece called the Tau Γαιήιος, “son of Gaia,”
>       “sprung from Earth,” like Tityos in the _Odyssey_ (vii. 324).
> 
>  1402 Ragon, _Orthodoxie Maçonnique_, etc., pp. 432, 433.
> 
>  1403 _Ibid._, p. 433, note.
> 
>  1404 See the _Mahâbhârata_, _e.g._, III. 189, 3, where Vishnu says, “I
>       called the name of water Nârâ in ancient times, and am hence called
>       Nârâyana, for that was always the abode I moved in (Ayana).” It is
>       into the Water, or Chaos, the “Moist Principle” of the Greeks and
>       Hermes, that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. “The ‘Spirit
>       of God’ moves on the dark waters of Space”; hence Thales makes of it
>       the primordial element and prior to Fire, which was yet latent in
>       that Spirit.
> 
>  1405 See the bronze statue of Tripurântaka Shiva, “Mahâdeva destroying
>       Tripurâsura,” at the Museum of the India House.
> 
>  1406 Ragon, _ibid._, p. 433, note.
> 
>  1407 There are learned Brâhmans who have protested against our septenary
>       division. They are right from their own standpoint, as we are right
>       from ours. Leaving the three _aspects_, or _adjunct principles_ out
>       of calculation, they accept only four Upâdhis, or Bases, including
>       the Ego—the reflected image of the Logos in the Kârana Sharîra—and
>       even “strictly speaking ... only three Upâdhis.” For purely
>       theoretical metaphysical philosophy, or purposes of meditation,
>       these three may be sufficient, as shown by the Târaka Yoga system;
>       but for _practical occult teaching_ our septenary division is the
>       best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of school and choice.
> 
>  1408 _Commentary_, Book ix. F. 19.
> 
>  1409 Protista are not animals. The reader is asked to bear in mind that
>       when we speak of “animals,” the mammalians alone are meant.
>       Crustacea, fishes, and reptiles are contemporary with, and most have
>       preceded, _physical_ man in this Round. All were bisexual, however,
>       before the age of mammalia in the closing portion of the Secondary
>       or Mesozoic ages, _yet nearer to the Palæozoic than the Cænozoic
>       ages_. Smaller marsupial mammalia are contemporary with the huge
>       reptilian monsters of the Secondary.
> 
>  1410 _Æneid_, vi. 725‐729. “First [Divine] Spirit within sustains the
>       heavens, the earth and watery plains, the moon’s orb and shining
>       stars and the [Eternal] Mind diffused through all the parts [of
>       Nature], actuates the whole stupendous frame and mingles with the
>       vast body [of the Universe]. Thence proceed _the race of men and
>       beasts_, the _vital principles_ of the flying kind and the monsters
>       which the Ocean breeds under its smooth crystal plane.” “All
>       proceeds from Ether and from its seven natures”—said the Alchemists.
>       Science knows these only in their superficial effects.
> 
>  1411 Compare _Descent of Man_, p. 164.
> 
>  1412 Bartlett’s _Land and Water_.
> 
>  1413 _Source of Measures_, p. 65. The author explains: “_Note_ that in
>       Hebrew, _Jared_, the father of Enoch, is construed to be ‘_the mount
>       of descent_,’ and it is said to be the same with _Ararat_, on which
>       the cubical structure of _Noah_, or _foundation measure_, rested.
>       _Jared_, in Hebrew, is י־רד. The root derivations are the same with
>       those of _Ararat_, of _acre_, of _earth_. The Hebrew י־רד is
>       _literally, in British_, Y R D; hence, in _Jared_, is to be found
>       _literally_, our English word _yard_ (and also י־רד, for _Jah_, or
>       _Jehovah, is rod_). It is noteworthy that the son of _Jared_, viz.,
>       _Enoch_, lived 365 years; and it is said of him, by rabbinical
>       commentators, that the year period of 365 days was discovered by
>       him, thus bringing, again, _time_ and _distance_ values together,
>       _i.e._, _year time_ descended, by coördination, through the _yard_,
>       or _Jared_, who _thus was its father_, in or through _Enoch_; and
>       truly enough, 1296 = _yard_ (or _Jared_) × 4 = 5184, the
>       characteristic value of the solar day, in _thirds_, which, as
>       stated, may be styled the _parent, numerically_, of the solar year”
>       (_ibid._). This, however, by the astronomical and numerical
>       kabalistic methods. Esoterically, Jared is the Third Race and Enoch
>       the Fourth—but as he is taken away alive he symbolizes also the
>       Elect saved in the Fourth, while Noah is the Fifth from the
>       beginning—the family saved from the Waters, eternally and
>       _physically_.
> 
>  1414 vii. 2, 3.
> 
>  1415 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 202, 203.
> 
>  1416 _Ibid._, p. 200.
> 
>  1417 Oliver’s _Pythagorean Triangle_, p. 104.
> 
>  1418 _De Anim. Procr._, 1027.
> 
>  1419 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 112.
> 
>  1420 Reuchlin è Cabala, l. ii; Oliver, _ibid._, p. 104.
> 
>  1421 In _The Source of Measures_, the author shows (pp. 50, 51) that the
>       figure of the cube unfolded in connection with the circle “becomes
>       ... a _cross proper_, or of the _tau_ form, and the attachment of
>       the circle to this last gives the _ansated cross_ of the
>       Egyptians.... While there are but 6 faces to a cube, the
>       representation of the cross as the cube unfolded, as to the cross‐
>       bars, displays one face of the cube _as common to two bars_, counted
>       as belonging to either [_i.e._, once counted horizontally, and once
>       vertically]; ... 4 for the upright, and 3 for the cross‐bar, making
>       _seven_ in all. Here we have the famous 4 and 3 and 7.” Esoteric
>       Philosophy explains that _four_ is the symbol of the Universe in its
>       potential state, or Chaotic Matter, and that it requires Spirit to
>       permeate it actively; _i.e._, the primordial _abstract_ Triangle has
>       to quit its one‐dimensional quality and spread across that Matter,
>       thus forming a _manifested_ basis on the three‐dimensional space, in
>       order that the Universe should manifest intelligibly. This is
>       achieved by the cube unfolded. Hence the _ansated_ cross as the
>       symbol of man, generation and life. In Egypt Ank signified “soul,”
>       “life” and “blood.” It is the _ensouled, living_ man, the septenary.
> 
>  1422 _Supra_, p. 626.
> 
>  1423 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 114.
> 
>  1424 _Pythag._, p. 61.
> 
>  1425 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 172.
> 
>  1426 _De Plac. Phil._, p. 878.
> 
>  1427 See Oliver, _ibid._, p. 106.
> 
>  1428 _Ibid._, p. 108.
> 
>  1429 Reuchlin, _ut supra_, p. 689; Oliver, _ibid._, pp. 112, 113.
> 
>  1430 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 118.
> 
>  1431 _Bucolica_, Ecl. viii. 75.
> 
>  1432 Philo, _De Mund. Opif._; Oliver, _ibid._, p. 172.
> 
>  1433 The seven Planets are not limited to this number because the
>       Ancients knew of no others, but simply because they were the
>       primitive or primordial “Houses” of the seven Logoi. There may be
>       nine and ninety‐nine other planets discovered—this does not alter
>       the fact of these seven alone being sacred.
> 
>  1434 Oliver, _ibid._, pp. 173, 174.
> 
>  1435 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1436 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 545.
> 
>  1437 _Ibid._
> 
>  1438 In _Timæus_, iii.; _ibid._
> 
>  1439 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 175.
> 
>  1440 See Section F., _infra_, “The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists.”
> 
>  1441 The Seven Centres of Energy evolved, or rendered objective by the
>       action of Fohat upon the One Element; or, in fact, the “Seventh
>       Principle” of the Seven Elements which exist throughout manifested
>       Kosmos. We may here point out that they are in truth the Sephiroth
>       of the Kabalists; the “Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost” in the
>       Christian system; and in a mystical sense, the seven children or
>       sons of Devakî killed before the birth of Krishna by Kansa. Our
>       seven principles symbolize all of these. We have to part or separate
>       from them before we reach the Krishna or Christ‐state, that of a
>       Jîvanmukta, and centre ourselves entirely in the highest, the
>       Seventh or the One.
> 
>  1442 Μοῖρα, is destiny, not “Fate,” in this case, as it is an
>       appellation, not a proper noun. (See Wolf’s transl., _Odyssey_,
>       xxii. 413.) But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a deity who, like
>       Αἶσα, _gives to all their portion of good and evil_ (Liddell and
>       Scott’s Lexicon), and is therefore Karma. By this abbreviation,
>       however, _the subject_ to Destiny or Karma is meant, the Self or
>       Ego, and that which is reborn. Nor is Ἀντιμῖμον Πνεύματος our
>       conscience, but our Buddhî; nor is it again the “counterfeit” of
>       Spirit but “modelled after,” or a “counterpart” (Aristoph.,
>       _Thesmophor._, 27) of the Spirit—which Buddhî is, as the vehicle of
>       Âtmâ.
> 
>  1443 _The Gnostics and their Remains_, pp. 37, 38.
> 
>  1444 _Rig Veda_, iii. 54. 16; ii. 29. 3, 4.
> 
>  1445 Prof. Roth (in Peter’s Lexicon) defines the Angirasas as an
>       intermediate race of higher Beings between Gods and Men; while Prof.
>       Weber, according to his invariable custom of modernizing and
>       anthropomorphizing the divine, sees in them the original priests of
>       the religion which was common to the Âryan Hindûs and Persians. Roth
>       is right. “Angirasas” was one of the names of the Dhyânîs, or Deva‐
>       Instructors (Guru‐Devas), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of
>       the Fifth Race Initiates.
> 
>  1446 _Ibid._, x. 62. 1, 4.
> 
>  1447 _Ibid._, x. 90. 1.
> 
>  1448 _Ibid._, x. 90. 5.
> 
>  1449 _Rig Veda_, x. 113. 5.
> 
>  1450 _Ibid._, i. 35. 8.
> 
>  1451 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1452 _Ibid._, ix. 86. 29.
> 
>  1453 Only three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, Continents—for the
>       first Continent of the First Race exists to this day and will
>       prevail to the last—are described in the Occult Doctrine, the
>       Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting a name now known in Science),
>       and the Atlantean. Most of Asia issued from under the waters after
>       the destruction of Atlantis; Africa came still later, while Europe
>       is the fifth and the latest continent—portions of the two Americas
>       being far older. But of these, more anon. The Initiates who recorded
>       the _Vedas_—or the Rishis of our Fifth Race—wrote at a time when
>       Atlantis had already gone down. Atlantis is the _fourth_ Continent
>       that _appeared_, but the _third_ that _disappeared_.
> 
>  1454 Compare Vishvakarman.
> 
>  1455 _Ibid._, x. 20. 1, 16.
> 
>  1456 Nor is this Archaic Teaching so very _unscientific_, since one of
>       the greatest Naturalists of the age—the late Professor
>       Agassiz—admitted the multiplicity of the geographical origins of
>       man, and supported it to the end of his life. The unity of the human
>       species was accepted by the illustrious Professor of Cambridge
>       (U.S.A.) in the same way as it is by the Occultists—namely, in the
>       sense of their essential and original homogeneity and their origin
>       from one and the same source, _e.g._, Negroes, Âryans, Mongols,
>       etc., have all originated in the same way and from the same
>       ancestors. These latter were all of one essence, though
>       differentiated, since they belonged to seven planes which differed
>       in degree though not in kind. That original physical difference was
>       only a little more accentuated by that of geographical and climatic
>       conditions, later on. This is not the theory of Agassiz, of course,
>       but the Esoteric version. It is fully discussed in the Addenda, Part
>       III.
> 
>  1457 See the enumeration of the seven Spheres—not the “Karshvare of the
>       earth,” as generally believed—in Fargard xix. 30, _et seqq._
> 
>  1458 The seven Worlds are, as has been said, the seven Spheres of the
>       Chain, each presided over by one of the seven “Great Gods” of every
>       religion. When the religions became degraded and anthropomorphized,
>       and the metaphysical ideas nearly forgotten, the synthesis or the
>       highest, the seventh, was separated from the rest, and that
>       personification became the _eighth_ God, whom Monotheism tried to
>       unify but—failed. In no exoteric religion is God really one, if
>       analyzed metaphysically.
> 
>  1459 The six invisible Globes of our Chain are both “Worlds” and “Earths”
>       as is our own, although invisible. But where could be the _six_
>       invisible Earths on _this_ Globe?
> 
>  1460 _Vendîdâd_, S. B. E., vol. iv. pp. lix. lx., and note.
> 
>  1461 See _Rig Veda_, i. 34; iii. 56; vii. 10. 411, and v. 60. 6.
> 
>  1462 _Vendîdâd_, _op. cit._, p. 13.
> 
>  1463 Death came only after man had become a _physical_ creature. The men
>       of the First Race, and also of the Second, dissolved and disappeared
>       in their progeny.
> 
>  1464 _Op. cit._, p. 12.
> 
>  1465 I. xxiv. 1.
> 
>  1466 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., i. lxxx.
> 
>  1467 As Parâshara says: “These are the seven persons by whom in the
>       several Manvantaras created beings have been protected. Because the
>       whole world has been pervaded by the energy of the deity, he is
>       entitled Vishnu, from the root Vish, ‘to enter,’ or ‘’pervade’; for
>       all the gods, the Manus, the seven Rishis, the sons of the Manus,
>       the Indras, the sovereigns of the gods, all are but the impersonated
>       might [Vibhûtayah, potencies] of Vishnu.” (_Ibid._, iii. 18, 19.)
>       Vishnu is the Universe; and the Universe itself is divided in the
>       _Rig Veda_ into _seven_ regions—which ought to be sufficient
>       authority, for the Brâhmans at all events.
> 
>  1468 _Ibid._, iii. 15.
> 
>  1469 Hymn xix. 53.
> 
>  1470 Vishnu is _all_—the worlds, the stars, the seas, etc. Vishnu “is all
>       that is, all that is not.... [But] he is not a substance
>       (Vastubhûta).” (_Vishnu Purâna_, Book II, Ch. xii; Wilson’s Trans.,
>       ii. 309.) “That which people call the highest God is not a substance
>       but the _cause_ of it; not one that is here, there, or elsewhere,
>       _not what we see_, but that in which all is—Space.”
> 
>  1471 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., ii. 306.
> 
>  1472 Therefore it is said in the _Purânas_ that the sight at night of
>       Dhruva, the polar star, and of the celestial Porpoise (Shishumâra, a
>       constellation) “expiates whatever sin has been committed during the
>       day.” (_Ibid._, p. 306.) The fact is that the rays of the four stars
>       in the “circle of perpetual apparition”—the Agni, Mahendra,
>       Kashyapa, and Dhruva, placed in the tail of Ursa Minor
>       (Shishumâra)—focussed in a certain way and on a certain object,
>       produce extraordinary results. The Astro‐magians of India will
>       understand what is meant.
> 
>  1473 _Ibid._, iii. 15.
> 
>  1474 Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_, _sub voc._ “Shiva,” p. 298.
> 
>  1475 _Vishnu Purâna_, _op. cit._, ii. 78.
> 
>  1476 In the _Râmâyana_ it is Bâla‐Râma, Krishna’s elder brother, who does
>       this.
> 
>  1477 With regard to the origin of Rudra, it is stated in several
>       _Purânas_ that his (spiritual) progeny, _created in him by Brahmâ_,
>       is not confined to either the _seven_ Kumâras or the _eleven_
>       Rudras, etc., but “comprehends infinite numbers of beings _in person
>       and equipments like their_ (virgin) father. Alarmed at their
>       fierceness, numbers, and _immortality_, Brahmâ desires his son Rudra
>       to form creatures of a different and mortal nature.” Rudra _refusing
>       to create_, desists, etc., hence Rudra is the first _rebel_.
>       (_Linga_, _Vâyu_, _Matsya_, and other _Purânas_.)
> 
>  1478 Diti is shown to have been thus frustrated in the Dvâpara Yuga,
>       during that period when the Fourth Race was flourishing.
> 
>  1479 Notwithstanding the terrible, and evidently _purposed_, confusion of
>       Manus, Rishis, and their progeny in the _Purânas_, one thing is made
>       clear: there have been and there will be seven Rishis in every Root‐
>       Race, called also Manvantara in the sacred books, just as there are
>       fourteen Manus in every Round, the presiding Gods, the Rishis and
>       sons of the Manus, being identical. (See _Vishnu Purâna_, III. i;
>       Wilson’s Trans., iii. 19.) Six Manvantaras are given, the seventh
>       being our own, in the _Vishnu Purâna_. The _Vâyu Purâna_ furnishes
>       the nomenclature of the sons of the fourteen Manus in every
>       Manvantara, and the sons of the seven Sages or Rishis. The latter
>       are the progeny of the Progenitors of mankind. All the _Purânas_
>       speak of the seven Prajâpatis of this period or Round.
> 
>  1480 “Châkshusha was the Manu of the sixth period [Third Round and Third
>       Race], in which Indra was Manojava”—Mantradruma in the _Bhâgavata
>       Purâna_. (_Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson’s Trans., iii. 12.) As there is a
>       perfect analogy between the Great Round (Mahâkalpa), each of the
>       seven Rounds, and each of the seven great Races in every one of the
>       Rounds—therefore, Indra of the sixth period, or Third Round,
>       corresponds to the close of the Third Race, at the time of the Fall
>       or the separation of sexes. Rudra, as the father of the Maruts, has
>       many points of contact with Indra, the Marutvân, or “Lord of the
>       Maruts.” Rudra is said to have received his name because of his
>       weeping. Hence Brahmâ called him Rudra; but _he wept yet seven times
>       more and so obtained seven other names_—of which he uses one during
>       _each_ “period.”
> 
>  1481 _Ibid._, ii. 231.
> 
>  1482 In _Vishnu Puranâ_, Book II. Chap. iv. (Wilson, ii. 205), it is
>       stated that the “Earth,” “with its continents, mountains, oceans,
>       and exterior shell, is _fifty crores_ [five hundred millions] of
>       Yojanas in extent”; to which the translator remarks: “_This
>       comprises the planetary spheres_; for the diameter of the seven
>       zones and oceans—each ocean being of the same diameter as the
>       continent it encloses, and each successive continent being twice the
>       diameter of that which precedes it—amounts to but two crores or
>       fifty‐four lakhs.... ‘Whenever any contradictions in different
>       Purânas are observed, they are to be ascribed ... to differences of
>       Kalpas and _the like_.’ ” “The like” ought to read “occult meaning,”
>       an explanation which is withheld by the commentator, who wrote for
>       exoteric, _sectarian_ purposes, and was misunderstood by the
>       translator for various other reasons, the least of which
>       is—ignorance of the Esoteric Philosophy.
> 
>  1483 The Phœnix, although generally connected with the Solar Cycle of 600
>       years—the Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations—is a generic
>       symbol for several kinds of cycles, ciphers being taken out or more
>       added according to which cycle is meant.
> 
>  1484 See _Book of Ali_, Russian transl.
> 
>  1485 The tense is past, because the book is allegorical, and has to veil
>       the truths it contains.
> 
>  1486 _Oriental Collections_, ii. 119; quoted by Kenealy, _op. cit._, pp.
>       175, 176.
> 
>  1487 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1488 _Op. cit._, xvii. 9, 10.
> 
>  1489 Section VI; _Leviticus_, xxiii. 15, _et seqq._
> 
>  1490 _Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus‐Christ_, Introduction; quoted by De
>       Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iv. 50.
> 
>  1491 See Suidas, _sub voc._ Ἥλιος.
> 
>  1492 Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 56.
> 
>  1493 “Menses in quinos dies descripserunt dies” (lviii. 9).
> 
>  1494 Lib. i. c. 26.
> 
>  1495 _Hist. Nat._, vii. 48, and _Life of Numa_, 16.
> 
>  1496 _Mèm. Acad. Ins._, xvi. c. 48; iii. 183.
> 
>  1497 _Voyage en Sibérie_, iii. 19.
> 
>  1498 The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma
>       are (1) the Super‐spiritual or Noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the
>       Psychic; (4) the Astro‐ethereal; (5) the Sub‐astral; (6) the Vital;
>       and (7) the purely Physical Spheres.
> 
>  1499 Adbhutam, see _Atharva Veda_, x. 105.
> 
>  1500 In Hindûism, as understood by the Orientalists from the _Atharva
>       Veda_, the three Rajamsi refer to the three “strides” of Vishnu; his
>       ascending higher step being taken in the highest world (_A. V._,
>       vii. 99, 1; _cf._ i. 155, 5). It is the Divo Rajah, or the “sky,” as
>       they think it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The
>       sentence, _pâreshu gûhyeshu vrateshu_ (_cf._, i. 155, 3, and ix. 75,
>       2, or again, x. 114), in _Atharva Veda_, has yet to be explained.
> 
>  1501 _Medical Review_, July, 1844.
> 
>  1502 H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his _Approaching End of the Age_,
>       p. 258.
> 
>  1503 _Lancet_, 1842, 1843.
> 
>  1504 Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the
>       doctor adds: “The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts,
>       _and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of
>       every kind_. FROM THE LARVA OR OVUM OF A MINUTE INSECT UP TO MAN,
>       _at definite periods_, from a mere _chance or coincidence_.... Upon
>       the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general
>       conclusion than this, that, _in animals, changes occur every three
>       and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty‐one, or twenty‐eight days, or at
>       some definite number of weeks_”—or septenary cycles. Again, the same
>       Dr. Laycock states that: “Whatever type the fever may exhibit,
>       _there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day.... fourteenth will be
>       remarkable as a day of amendment_ ... [either cure or death taking
>       place]. If the fourth [paroxysm] be severe, and the fifth less so,
>       the disease will end at the _seventh_ paroxysm, and ... the change
>       for the better ... will be seen on the fourteenth day ... namely,
>       about three or four o’clock a.m., when the system is most languid.”
>       (_Approaching End of the Age_, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269,
>       wherein this is quoted).
> 
>       This is pure “soothsaying” by cyclic calculations, and it is
>       connected with Chaldæan Astrolatry and Astrology. Thus Materialistic
>       Science—in its medicine, _the most materialistic of all_—applies our
>       Occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help,
>       recognizes its presence as a fact in Nature, and yet must needs
>       pooh‐pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists.
>       For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in Nature, _and it is
>       one_, as proven; if it is found controlling both evolution and
>       _involution_ (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and
>       ornithology, as in the kingdom of the animal mammalia and man—why
>       cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its
>       natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and _mental_
>       development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient
>       Adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under
>       all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological
>       and pathological fact, that “in health the human pulse is more
>       frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of
>       seven; and that on the _seventh_ day it is slower.” (_Edinburgh
>       Medical and Surgical Journal_, Jan. 1843; _ibid., loc. cit._) Why,
>       then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and
>       terrestrial life in the pulse of the Planet and Races? Dr. Laycock
>       divides life by _three_ great _septenary_ periods; the first and
>       last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime
>       of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven. He subdivides the
>       first into _seven_ distinct stages, and the other two into _three_
>       minor periods, and says that: “The fundamental unit of the greater
>       periods is _one week of seven days_, _each day being twelve hours_,
>       and that single and compound _multiples_ of this unit, determine the
>       length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit
>       of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. _This law binds all
>       periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in
>       the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest
>       of the vertebrata._” (_Ibid._, p. 267.) If Science does this, why
>       should she scorn the Occult information, that—to use Dr. Laycock’s
>       language—_one_ Week of the Manvantaric (Lunar) Fortnight, of
>       fourteen Days (or seven Manus), that Fortnight of twelve Hours in a
>       Day representing seven Periods or seven Races—is now passed? This
>       language of Science fits our Doctrine admirably. Mankind _has_ lived
>       over “_a week of seven days_, each day being _twelve hours_,” since
>       three and a half Races are now gone for ever, the Fourth is
>       submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.
> 
>  1505 _Op. cit._, p. 269.
> 
>  1506 See for the length of such cycles or Yugas in _Vriddha Garga_ and
>       other ancient astronomical sections (Jyotisha). They vary from the
>       cycle of five years—which Colebrooke calls “the cycle of the Vedas,”
>       specified in the institutes of Parâshara, “and the basis of
>       calculation for larger cycles” (_Miscell. Essays_, i. 106 and
>       108)—up to the Mahâ Yuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
> 
>  1507 The Hebrew word for “week” is _seven_; and any length of time
>       divided by _seven_ would have been a “week” with them—even
>       49,000,000 years, as it is seven times seven millions. But their
>       calculation is throughout septiform.
> 
>  1508 Brahmâ creates in the first Kalpa, or on the first Day, various
>       “sacrificial animals” (Pashavah), or the celestial bodies and the
>       Zodiacal signs, and “plants,” _which_ he uses in _sacrifices_ at the
>       opening of Tretâ Yuga. The Esoteric meaning shows him proceeding
>       cyclically and creating astral Prototypes on the _descending_
>       spiritual arc and then on the _ascending_ physical arc. The latter
>       is the subdivision of a _two‐fold_ creation, sub‐divided again into
>       seven descending and seven ascending degrees of Spirit falling, and
>       of Matter ascending; the inverse of what takes place—as in a mirror
>       which reflects the right on the left side—in this Manvantara of
>       ours. It is the same Esoterically in the Elohistic _Genesis_ (chap.
>       i), and in the Jehovistic copy, as in Hindû cosmogony.
> 
>  1509 _Op. cit._, vv. 70, 71, 80; _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, S. L. MacGregor
>       Mathers, pp. 120, 121.
> 
>  1510 “The Greater Holy Assembly,” v. 1,160.
> 
>  1511 See _Vishnu Purâna_, I. v.
> 
>  1512 It is very surprising to see theologians and Oriental scholars
>       expressing indignation at the “depraved taste” of the Hindû mystics,
>       who, not content with having “invented” the Mind‐born Sons of
>       Brahmâ, make the Rishis, Manus, and Prajâpatis of every kind spring
>       from _various parts of the body_ of their primal Progenitor, Brahmâ.
>       (See Wilson’s footnote in his _Vishnu Purâna_, i. 102.) Because the
>       average public is unacquainted with the Kabalah, the key to, and
>       glossary of, the much veiled Mosaic Books, therefore, the clergy
>       imagines the truth will never out. Let any one turn to the English,
>       Hebrew, or Latin texts of the _Kabalah_, now so ably translated by
>       several scholars, and he will find that the Tetragrammaton, which is
>       the Hebrew IHVH, is also both the “Sephirothal Tree”—_i.e._, it
>       contains all the Sephiroth except Kether, the crown—and the united
>       Body of the Heavenly Man (Adam Kadmon) from whose Limbs emanate the
>       Universe and everything in it. Furthermore, he will find that the
>       idea in the Kabalistic Books, the chief of which in the _Zohar_ are
>       the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” and of the “Greater” and the
>       “Lesser Holy Assembly,” is entirely phallic and far more crudely
>       expressed than is the four‐fold Brahmâ in any of the _Purânas_. (See
>       _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, chapter xxii.
>       of “The Lesser Holy Assembly,” concerning the remaining members of
>       Microprosopus.) For, this “Tree of Life” is also the “Tree of
>       Knowledge of Good and Evil,” whose chief mystery is that of human
>       procreation. It is a mistake to regard the _Kabalah_ as _explaining_
>       the mysteries of Kosmos or Nature; it explains and unveils only a
>       few allegories in the _Bible_, and _is more esoteric_ than is the
>       latter.
> 
>  1513 Simplified in the English _Bible_ to: “Is the Lord [!!] among us, or
>       not?”
> 
>  1514 Verse 83; _op. cit._, p. 121.
> 
>  1515 Translators often render the word “Companion” (Angel, also Adept) by
>       “Rabbi,” just as the Rishis are called Gurus. The _Zohar_ is, if
>       possible, more occult than the _Book of Moses_; to read the “Book of
>       Concealed Mystery” one requires the keys furnished by the genuine
>       Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, which is not extant.
> 
>  1516 Verses 1152, 1158, 1159; _op. cit._, p. 254.
> 
>  1517 _I Peter_, ii. 2‐5.
> 
>  1518 “The Greater Holy Assembly,” vv. 1160, 1161; _op. cit._, p. 255.
> 
>  1519 See pp. 445, 446, _supra_.
> 
>  1520 _Op. cit._, i. 297, 2nd ed.
> 
>  1521 It is. But Âgneyâstra are fiery “missile weapons,” not “edged”
>       weapons, as there is some difference between Shastra and Astra in
>       Sanskrit.
> 
>  1522 Yet there are some, who may know something of these, even outside
>       the author’s lines, wide as they undeniably are.
> 
>  1523 This connecting link, like others, was pointed out by the present
>       writer nine years before the appearance of the work from which the
>       above is quoted, namely in _Isis Unveiled_, a work full of such
>       guiding links between ancient, mediæval, and modern thought, but,
>       unfortunately, too loosely edited.
> 
>  1524 Ay; but how can the learned writer prove that these “beginnings”
>       were precisely in Egypt, and nowhere else; and only 50,000 years
>       ago?
> 
>  1525 Precisely; and this is just what the Theosophists do. They have
>       never claimed “original inspiration,” not even as mediums claim it,
>       but have always pointed, and do now point, to the “primary
>       signification” of the symbols, which they trace to other countries,
>       older even than Egypt; significations, moreover, which emanate from
>       a Hierarchy (or Hierarchies, if preferred) of _living_ Wise
>       Men—mortals notwithstanding that Wisdom—who reject every approach to
>       _supernaturalism_.
> 
>  1526 But where is the proof that the Ancients did not mean precisely that
>       which the Theosophists claim? Records exist for what they say, just
>       as other records exist for what Mr. Gerald Massey says. His
>       interpretations are very correct, but are also very one‐sided.
>       Surely Nature has more than one _physical aspect_; for Astronomy,
>       Astrology, and so on, are all on the physical, not the spiritual,
>       plane.
> 
>  1527 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 318. It is to be feared that Mr. Massey
>       has not succeeded. We have our followers as he has his followers,
>       and Materialistic Science steps in and takes little account of both
>       his and our speculations!
> 
>  1528 The fact that this learned Egyptologist does not recognize in the
>       doctrine of the “Seven Souls,” as he terms our “principles,” or
>       “metaphysical ‘_concepts_,’ ” anything but “the primitive biology or
>       physiology of the soul,” does not invalidate our argument. The
>       lecturer touches on only two keys, those that unlock the
>       astronomical and the physiological mysteries of Esotericism, and
>       leaves out the other five. Otherwise he would have promptly
>       understood that what he calls the physiological divisions of the
>       living Soul of man, are regarded by Theosophists as also
>       psychological and spiritual.
> 
>  1529 _Op. cit._, p. 2.
> 
>  1530 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1531 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1532 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
> 
>  1533 _Ibid._, p. 4.
> 
>  1534 This is a great mistake made in the Esoteric enumeration. Manas is
>       the fifth, not the fourth; and Manas corresponds precisely with Seb,
>       the Egyptian fifth principle, for that portion of Manas which
>       follows the two higher principles, is the ancestral soul, indeed,
>       the bright, immortal thread of the higher Ego, to which clings the
>       spiritual aroma of all the lives or births.
> 
>  1535 _Ibid._, p. 2.
> 
>  1536 _Ibid._, pp. 2, 3.
> 
>  1537 _Signatura Rerum_, xiv. pars. 10, 14, 15; _The Natural Genesis_, i.
>       317.
> 
>  1538 _Aurora_, xxiv. 27.
> 
>  1539 This is indeed news! It makes us fear that the lecturer had never
>       read _Esoteric Buddhism_ before criticizing it. There are too many
>       such misconceptions in his notices of it.
> 
>  1540 “The Seven Souls of Man,” pp. 26, 27.
> 
>  1541 _Ibid._, p. 26.
> 
>  1542 _The Theosophist_, 1887 (Madras), pp. 705, 706.
> 
>  1543 According to _Shvetâshvatara‐Upanishad_ (357) the Siddhas are those
>       who are possessed from birth of “superhuman” powers, as also of
>       “knowledge and indifference to the world.” According to the Occult
>       teachings, however, the Siddhas are Nirmânakâyas or the “spirits”—in
>       the sense of an individual, or _conscious_ spirit—of great Sages
>       from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily
>       incarnate in mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its
>       upward progress. Hence their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers.
> 
>  1544 “The Sacred Books of the East,” viii. 284, _et seqq._
> 
>  1545 I propose to follow here the text and not the editor’s commentaries,
>       who accepts Arjuna Mishra and Nilakantha’s _dead‐letter_
>       explanations. Our Orientalists never trouble to think that if a
>       native commentator is a non‐initiate, he could not explain
>       correctly, and if an Initiate, would not.
> 
>  1546 See _Chhândogya_, p. 219, and Shankara’s commentary thereupon.
> 
>  1547 The editor explains here, saying, “I presume devoted to the
>       Brahman.” We venture to assert that the “Fire” or Self is the real
>       Higher SELF “connected with,” that is to say _one_ with Brahma, the
>       One Deity. The “Self” separates itself no longer from the Universal
>       Spirit.
> 
>  1548 The “Supreme Self,” says Krishna, in the _Bhagavad Gitâ_, pp. 102,
>       _et seqq._
> 
>  1549 As Mahat, or Universal Intelligence, is first born, or manifests, as
>       Vishnu, and then, when it falls into Matter and develops self‐
>       consciousness, becomes egoism, selfishness, so Manas is of a dual
>       nature. It is respectively under the Sun and Moon, for as
>       Shankarâchârya says: “The moon is the mind, and the sun the
>       understanding.” The Sun and Moon are the deities of our planetary
>       Macrocosmos, and therefore Shankara adds that: “The mind and the
>       understanding are the respective deities of the [human] organs.”
>       (See _Brihadâranyaka_, pp. 521, _et seqq._) This is perhaps why
>       Arjuna Mishra says that the Moon and the Fire (the Self, the Sun)
>       constitute the universe.
> 
>  1550 “The body in the soul,” as Arjuna Mishra is credited with saying, or
>       rather “the soul in the spirit”, and on a still higher plane of
>       development, the Self or Âtman in the Universal Self.
> 
>  1551 _Op. cit._, p. 179.
> 
>  1552 _Prov._, ix. 1.
> 
>  1553 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 111. The respective
>       developments of the human and simian brains are referred to. “In the
>       ape the temporo‐sphenoidal convolutions, which form the middle lobe,
>       make their appearance and are completed before the anterior
>       convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, on the contrary,
>       the frontal convolutions are the first to appear, and those of the
>       middle lobe are formed later.” (_Ibid._)
> 
>  1554 _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 290.
> 
>  1555 Series II, Vol. VI, p. 769 (Ed. 1886). To this an editorial remark
>       adds that an “F.J.B.,” in the _Athenæum_ (No. 3069, Aug. 21, 1886,
>       pp. 242‐3), points out that Naturalists have long recognized that
>       there are “morphological” and “physiological” species. The former
>       have their origin in men’s minds, the latter in a series of changes
>       sufficient to affect the internal as well as the external organs of
>       a group of allied individuals. The “physiological selection” of
>       morphological species is a confusion of ideas; that of physiological
>       species a redundancy of terms.
> 
>  1556 _Op. cit._, p. 79.
> 
>  1557 _Ibid._, p. 48.
> 
>  1558 Nägeli’s “principle of perfectibility”; von de Baer’s “striving
>       towards the purpose”; Braun’s “divine breath as the inward impulse
>       in the evolutionary history of Nature”; Professor Owen’s “tendency
>       to perfectibility,” etc., are all expressive of the veiled
>       manifestations of the universal guiding Fohat, rich with the Divine
>       and Dhyân‐Chohanic thought.
> 
>  1559 Hæckel on “Cell‐Souls and Soul‐Cells,” _Pedigree of Man_, Aveling’s
>       Trans., see pp. 136, 150.
> 
>  1560 See _infra_, M. de Quatrefages’ _exposé_ of Hæckel, in Section II,
>       “The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science.”
> 
>  1561 Strictly speaking, du Bois‐Reymond is an Agnostic, and not a
>       Materialist. He has protested most vehemently against the
>       materialistic doctrine, which affirms mental phenomena to be merely
>       the product of molecular motion. The most accurate _physiological_
>       knowledge of the structure of the brain leaves us “nothing but
>       matter in motion,” he asserts; “_we must go further_, and admit the
>       utterly incomprehensible nature of the psychical principle, which it
>       is _impossible to regard_ as a mere outcome of material causes.”
> 
>  1562 See Hæckel’s “Present Position of Evolution,” _op. cit._, pp. 23,
>       24, 296, 297, notes.
> 
>  1563 _Op. cit._, pp. 34, 35, 36.
> 
>  1564 _Measure for Measure_, Act ii, Scene 2.
> 
>  1565 _Knowledge_, January, 1882.
> 
>  1566 T. Huxley, _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 57.
> 
>  1567 _Op. cit._, “The Proofs of Evolution,” p. 273.
> 
>  1568 Author of _Modern Science and Modern Thought_.
> 
>  1569 _Op. cit._, pp. 102, 103.
> 
>  1570 _Op. cit._, ii. 12, Wilson’s Transl.
> 
>  1571 _Op. cit._, p. 104. In this, as has been shown in Part I, Modern
>       Science has again been anticipated, far beyond its own speculations,
>       by Archaic Science.
> 
>  1572 _Ibid._, pp. 104‐106.
> 
>  1573 _Anthrop._, 3rd edition, p. 11.
> 
>  1574 Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching,
>       cyclic Pralayas so‐called are but “Obscurations,” during which
>       periods Nature, _i.e._, everything visible and invisible on a
>       resting Planet—remains _in statu quo_. Nature rests and slumbers, no
>       work of destruction going on upon the Globe even if no active work
>       be done. All forms, as well as their astral types, remain as they
>       were at the last moment of its activity. The “Night” of a Planet has
>       hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught like a huge mammoth
>       by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the next
>       dawn of its new Day—a very short one indeed in comparison to the Day
>       of Brahmâ.
> 
>  1575 This will be pooh‐poohed, because it will not be understood by our
>       modern men of Science; but every Occultist and Theosophist will
>       easily realize the process. There _can be no objective_ form on
>       Earth, nor in the Universe either, without its astral prototype
>       being first formed in Space. From Phidias down to the humblest
>       workman in the ceramic art, a sculptor has had to create first of
>       all a model in his mind, then sketch it in dimensional lines, and
>       then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or objective
>       figure. And if the human mind is a living demonstration of such
>       successive stages in the process of Evolution, how can it be
>       otherwise when Nature’s Mind and creative powers are concerned?
> 
>  1576 See _A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 103.
> 
>  1577 “Darwinian Theory” in _Pedigree of Man_, p. 22.
> 
>  1578 _The Age and Origin of Man._
> 
>  1579 _Man before Metals_, p. 320, “International Scientific Series.”
> 
>  1580 _Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language_, 1873.
> 
>  1581 _Cf._ his _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 304.
> 
>  1582 _A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 136.
> 
>  1583 It thus appears that in its anxiety to prove our noble descent from
>       the catarrhine “baboon,” Hæckel’s school has pushed back the times
>       of pre‐historic man millions of years. (See _Pedigree of Man_, p.
>       273.) Occultists, render thanks to Science for such corroboration of
>       our claims!
> 
>  1584 This seems a poor compliment to pay Geology, which is not a
>       speculative but as exact a Science as Astronomy—save, perhaps, its
>       too risky chronological speculations. It is mainly a “descriptive”
>       as opposed to an “abstract” Science.
> 
>  1585 Such newly‐coined words as “perigenesis of plastids,” “plastidule
>       souls” (!), and others less comely, invented by Hæckel, may be very
>       learned and correct in so far as they may express very graphically
>       the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As _facts_, however, they remain
>       for his less imaginative colleagues painfully cænogenetic—to use his
>       own terminology; _i.e._, for true Science they are spurious
>       speculations, so long as they are derived from “empirical sources.”
>       Therefore, when he seeks to prove that “the origin of man from other
>       mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine apes, is a deductive
>       law, that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory
>       of descent” (_Anthropogeny_, p. 392, quoted in _Pedigree of Man_, p.
>       295.)—his no less learned foes (du Bois‐Reymond—for one) have a
>       right to see in this sentence a mere jugglery of words; a
>       “_testimonium paupertatis_ of Natural Science”—as he himself
>       complains, speaking, in return, of du Bois‐Reymond’s “astonishing
>       ignorance.” (See _Pedigree of Man_, notes on pp. 295, 296.)
> 
>  1586 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 273.
> 
>  1587 _Anthropogeny_, p. 392. Quoted in _Pedigree of Man_, p. 295.
> 
>  1588 The _mental_ barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as
>       an “enormous gap, a distance practically immeasurable” (! !) is,
>       indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a standing
>       puzzle to the Materialist, who relies on the frail reed of “natural
>       selection.” The physiological differences between Man and the Apes
>       are in reality—despite a curious community of certain
>       features—equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most
>       cautious and experienced of Naturalists:
> 
>       “In modern times there are no animals in creation that have
>       attracted a larger amount of attention from the scientific student
>       of nature than these great quadrumana [the anthropoids], which are
>       stamped with such a singular resemblance to the human form as to
>       have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic.... But all
>       investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a
>       confession of its insufficiency; and nowhere is caution more to be
>       advocated, nowhere is premature judgment more to be deprecated than
>       in the attempt to bridge over the mysterious chasm which separates
>       man and beast.” (_Heart of Africa_, i., 520. Ed., 1873.)
> 
>  1589 _The Descent of Man_, p. 160. Ed. 1888. A ridiculous instance of
>       evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt (_Doctrine of
>       Descent and Darwinism_, p. 292). He says: “Man’s kinship with the
>       apes is ... not impugned by the bestial strength of the teeth of a
>       male orang or gorilla.” Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, endows this
>       fabulous being with teeth used as weapons!
> 
>  1590 According even to a fellow‐thinker, Professor Schmidt, Darwin has
>       evolved “a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points not
>       correct, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in the phase of
>       dawning humanity.” (_Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 284.)
> 
>  1591 _The Human Species_, pp. 106‐108.
> 
>  1592 _Op. cit._, p. 77.
> 
>  1593 Pp. 109, 110.
> 
>  1594 _Op. cit._, p. 110.
> 
>  1595 Of course the Esoteric system of Fourth Round Evolution is much more
>       complex than the paragraph and quotations referred to categorically
>       assert. It is practically a _reversal_—both in embryological
>       inference and succession in time of species—of the current Western
>       conception.
> 
>  1596 According to Hæckel, there are also “cell‐souls” and “atom‐cells”;
>       an “inorganic molecular soul” without, and a “plastidular soul”
>       with, or possessing, memory. What are our Esoteric teachings to
>       this? The _divine and human_ soul of the seven principles in man
>       must, of course, pale and give way before such a stupendous
>       revelation!
> 
>  1597 _The Pedigree of Man_, p. 296.
> 
>  1598 A valuable confession, this. Only it makes the attempt to trace the
>       _descent_ of consciousness in man, as well as of his physical body,
>       from Bathybius Hæckelii, still more humorous and _empirical_ in the
>       sense of Webster’s second definition.
> 
>  1599 _Ibid._
> 
>  1600 Those who take the opposite view and look upon the existence of the
>       human Soul—“as a supernatural, a spiritual phenomenon, conditioned
>       by forces altogether different from ordinary physical forces,” mock,
>       he thinks, “in consequence, all explanation that is simply
>       scientific.” They have no right it seems, to assert that “psychology
>       is, in part, or in whole, a spiritual science, not a physical one.”
>       The new discovery by Hæckel—one taught for thousands of years in all
>       the Eastern religions, however—that animals have souls, will, and
>       sensation, hence, soul‐functions, leads him to make of Psychology
>       the science of the Zoologists. The archaic teaching that the “soul”
>       (the animal and human souls, or Kâma and Manas) “has its
>       developmental history”—is claimed by Hæckel as his own discovery and
>       innovation on an “untrodden [?] path”! He, Hæckel, will work out the
>       comparative evolution of the soul in man and in other animals. The
>       comparative morphology of the soul‐organs, and the comparative
>       physiology of the soul‐functions, both founded on Evolution, thus
>       become the psychological [really materialistic] problem of the
>       scientific man. (“Cell‐souls and Soul‐cells,” pp. 135, 136, 137,
>       _Pedigree of Man_.)
> 
>  1601 _The Pedigree of Man_, note 20, p. 296.
> 
>  1602 P. 119.
> 
>  1603 See “Transmigration of Life‐Atoms,” in _Five Years of Theosophy_,
>       pp. 533‐539. The collective aggregation of these atoms forms thus
>       the Anima Mundi of our Solar System, the Soul of our little
>       Universe, each atom of which is of course a Soul, a Monad, a little
>       universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory. (Vol. I,
>       Part III, “Gods, Monads, and Atoms.”)
> 
>  1604 _Op. cit._, p. 119.
> 
>  1605 In “The Transmigration of Life‐Atoms” (_Five Years of Theosophy_, p.
>       535), we say of the Jîva, or Life‐Principle, in order to better
>       explain a position which is but too often misunderstood: “It is
>       omnipresent ... though [on this plane of manifestation often] ... in
>       a dormant state [as in stone].... The definition which states that
>       when this indestructible force is ‘disconnected with one set of
>       atoms [_molecules_ ought to have been said] it becomes immediately
>       attracted by others,’ does not imply that it abandons entirely the
>       first set [because the atoms themselves would then disappear], but
>       only that it transfers its _vis viva_, or living power—the energy of
>       motion, to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next
>       set as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the
>       first set is deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it, as
>       potential energy or life latent.” Now what can Hæckel mean by his
>       “not identical atoms, but their peculiar motion and mode of
>       aggregation,” if it is not the same kinetic energy we have been
>       explaining? Before evolving such theories, he must have read
>       Paracelsus and studied _Five Years of Theosophy_ without properly
>       digesting the teachings.
> 
>  1606 _Op. cit._, note 21, p. 296.
> 
>  1607 _Ibid._, note 19.
> 
>  1608 _Ibid._, note 23.
> 
>  1609 _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 159.
> 
>  1610 _Op cit._, p. 157.
> 
>  1611 _Ibid._, p. 161.
> 
>  1612 This the way _primitive man_ must have acted? We are not aware of
>       men, not even of savages, in our age, who are known to have imitated
>       the apes which lived side by side with them in the forests of
>       America and the islands. But we do know of large apes who, tamed and
>       living in houses, will mimic men to the length of donning hats and
>       coats. The writer once had a chimpanzee who, without being taught,
>       opened a newspaper and pretended to read it. It is the descending
>       generations, the children, who mimic their parents—not the reverse.
> 
>  1613 _Ibid._, p. 151.
> 
>  1614 It is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific
>       truth and fact contained in the above sentence if it were to read:
>       “the ape is simply an instance of the biped type specialized for
>       going on all fours generally, and with a smaller brain.”
>       Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth, and not the reverse.
> 
>  1615 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, pp. 151, 152.
> 
>  1616 We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like Huxley
>       point to “the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and
>       the highest man in intellectual power,” the “enormous gulf ...
>       between them,” the “immeasurable and practically infinite divergence
>       of the human from the simian stirps” (_Man’s Place in Nature_, p.
>       102 and note); when even the physical basis of mind—the brain—so
>       _vastly_ exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes; when men
>       like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extra‐terrestrial
>       intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature as the
>       pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Hæckel, to the level
>       of the large‐brained and _moral_ man of to‐day—when all this is the
>       case, it is idle to dismiss evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the
>       _structural_ evidence is so unconvincing and, taken as a whole, so
>       hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the “how” of the
>       evolution of the human _mind_ by natural selection are tenfold
>       greater.
> 
>  1617 A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch of the
>       same stock whence the Canary Island Guanches sprung—offshoots of the
>       Atlanteans, in short.
> 
>  1618 _Ibid._, pp. 180‐182.
> 
>  1619 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 73.
> 
>  1620 Professor Owen believes that these muscles—the attollens, retrahens,
>       and attrahens aurem—were actively functioning in men of the Stone
>       age. This may or may not be the case. The question falls under the
>       ordinary “occult” explanation, and involves no postulate of an
>       “animal progenitor” to solve it.
> 
>  1621 _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 104. To cite another good authority: “We
>       find one of the most man‐like apes (gibbon) in the Tertiary period,
>       and this species is _still in the same low grade_, and _side by
>       side_ with it at the end of the Ice period, man is found in the same
>       high grade as to‐day, the ape not having approximated more nearly to
>       the man, and modern man not having become further removed from the
>       ape than the first (fossil) man ... these facts contradict a theory
>       of constant progressive development.” (Pfaff.) When, according to
>       Vogt, the average Australian brain = 99·35 cub. inches; that of the
>       gorilla 30·51, and that of the chimpanzee only 25·45, the _giant
>       gap_ to be bridged by the advocate of “Natural” Selection becomes
>       apparent.
> 
>  1622 Geo. T. Curtis, _Creation or Evolution?_ p. 76.
> 
>  1623 “At this period,” writes Darwin, “the arteries run in arch‐like
>       branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiæ which are not present
>       in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the side of the neck
>       still remain, marking their former [?] position.”
> 
>       It is noteworthy that, though gill‐clefts are absolutely useless to
>       all but amphibia and fishes, etc., their appearance is regularly
>       noted in the fœtal development of vertebrates. Even children are
>       occasionally born with an opening in the neck corresponding to one
>       of the clefts.
> 
>  1624 Those who with Hæckel regard the gill‐clefts with their attendant
>       phenomena as illustrative of an active function in our amphibian and
>       piscine ancestors (see his twelfth and thirteenth stages), ought to
>       explain why the “vegetable with leaflets” (Prof. André Lefèvre)
>       represented in fœtal growth, does not appear in his twenty‐two
>       stages through which the Monera have passed in their ascent to Man.
>       Hæckel does _not_ postulate a _vegetable_ ancestor. The
>       embryological argument is thus a two‐edged sword and here cuts its
>       possessor.
> 
>  1625 Lefèvre, _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, pt. ii. p. 480,
>       “Library of Contemporary Science.”
> 
>  1626 We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E.
>       Clodd’s positive statement in _Knowledge_. Speaking of the men of
>       Neolithic times, “concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given ... a
>       vivid and accurate sketch,” and who are “the direct ancestors of
>       peoples of whom remnants yet lurk in out‐of‐the‐way corners of
>       Europe, where they have been squeezed or stranded,” he adds, “but
>       the men of Palæolithic times can be identified with no existing
>       races; they were savages of a more degraded type than any extant;
>       tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with
>       prognathous, that is, projecting ape‐like jaws, and small brains.
>       Whence they come we cannot tell, and their ‘grave knoweth no man to
>       this day.’ ”
> 
>       Besides the possibility that there may be men who _know_ whence they
>       came and how they perished—it is not true to say that the
>       Palæolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with “small
>       brains.” The oldest skull of all those hitherto found, the
>       “Neanderthal skull,” is of average capacity, and Mr. Huxley was
>       compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to
>       that of the “missing link.” There are aboriginal tribes in India
>       whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that of the ape than any
>       hitherto found among the skulls of Palæolithic man.
> 
>  1627 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 246.
> 
>  1628 The actual time required for such a theoretical transformation is
>       necessarily enormous. “If,” says Professor Pfaff, “in the hundreds
>       of thousands of years which you [the Evolutionists] accept between
>       the rise of palæolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of
>       man from the brute is not demonstrable [_the most ancient man was
>       just as far removed from the brute as the now living man_], what
>       reasonable ground can be advanced for believing that man has been
>       developed from the brute, and has receded further from it by
>       infinitely small gradations.... _The longer the interval of time
>       placed between our times and the so‐called palæolithic men, the more
>       ominous and destructive for the theory of the gradual development of
>       man from the animal kingdom is the result stated._” Huxley writes
>       (_Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 159) that the _most liberal_ estimates
>       for the antiquity of man _must be still further_ extended.
> 
>  1629 _Fortnightly Review_, 1882. The baselessness of this assertion, as
>       well as that of many other exaggerations of the imaginative Mr.
>       Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent Anatomist, Professor R.
>       Owen, in _Longman’s Magazine_, No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover,
>       that the Cro‐Magnon Palæolithic type is superior to that of a very
>       large number of existing races?
> 
>  1630 It thus stands to reason that Science would never dream of a Pre‐
>       Tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages’ Secondary man makes every
>       Academician and F.R.S. faint with horror because, to preserve the
>       ape‐theory, Science must make man Post‐Secondary. This is just what
>       de Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the
>       whole there were more scientific reasons for tracing the ape from
>       man than man from the anthropoid. With this exception Science has
>       not one single valid argument to offer against the antiquity of man.
>       But in this case modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen
>       million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for two very simple
>       but good reasons: (_a_) no anthropoid ape has been found before the
>       Miocene period; (_b_) man’s flint relics have been traced to the
>       Pliocene and their presence _suspected_, if not accepted by all, in
>       the Miocene strata. Again, where is the “missing link” in such case?
>       And how could even a Palæolithic savage, a “man of Canstadt,” evolve
>       into a _thinking_ man from the brute dryopithecus of the Miocene _in
>       so short a time_? One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected the
>       theory that only 60,000,000 years had elapsed since the Cambrian
>       period. “He judges from the small amount of organic change since the
>       commencement of the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140
>       million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the
>       development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed
>       toward the close of the Cambrian period.” (Ch. Gould, _Mythical
>       Monsters_, p. 84.)
> 
>  1631 It may here be remarked that those Darwinians who, with Mr. Grant
>       Allen, place our “hairy arboreal” ancestors so far back as the
>       Eocene age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil
>       anthropoid ape—much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to
>       man and the pithecoid—appears in Eocene strata. The first
>       presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
> 
>  1632 Ed. Lartet, “Nouvelles Recherches sur la Coëxistence de l’Homme et
>       des Grands Mammifères Fossils de la Dernière Période Géologique.”
>       _Annales des Soc. Nat._, xv. 256.
> 
>  1633 See the Hibbert Lectures for 1887, p. 33.
> 
>  1634 From a Report of the Hibbert Lectures, 1887. _Lectures on the Origin
>       and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated by the Religion of the
>       Ancient Babylonians._ By A. H. Sayce.
> 
>  1635 See _supra_ “Chronology of the Brâhmans.”
> 
>  1636 _Nat. Philos._, by Thomson and Tait, App. D. Trans. Royal Soc.,
>       Edin., xxiii. pt. 1.
> 
>  1637 _Popular Astronomy_, p. 509.
> 
>  1638 _Climate and Time_, p. 335.
> 
>  1639 Address, Liverpool Geological Society, 1876.
> 
>  1640 _World‐Life_, pp. 179, 180.
> 
>  1641 _Ibid._, pp. 367, 368.
> 
>  1642 _Climate and Time._
> 
>  1643 Quoted in Mr. Ch. Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_, p. 84.
> 
>  1644 According to Bischof, 1,004,177 years, according to Chevandier’s
>       calculations 672,788 years, were required for the so‐called Coal
>       formation. “The time required for the development of the strata of
>       the Tertiary period, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 feet in thickness,
>       must have been at least 350,000 years.” (See _Force and Matter_,
>       Büchner, p. 159, Ed. 1884.)
> 
>  1645 _Op. cit._, p. 379.
> 
>  1646 But see “The Ice‐Age Climate and Time,” _Popular Science Review_,
>       xiv. 242.
> 
>  1647 Review of Kölliker’s Criticisms.
> 
>  1648 _Fallacies of Darwinism_, p. 160.
> 
>  1649 _The Genesis of Species_, Chap. VI, pp. 160‐162, Ed. 1871.
> 
>  1650 _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 102, note.
> 
>  1651 Vol. x. art. “Geology,” p. 227. “100,000,000 of years is probably
>       amply sufficient for all the requirements of Geology,” says the
>       text. In France, some _savants_ do not find it nearly “sufficient.”
>       Le Couturier claims 350 million years; Buffon was satisfied with 34
>       millions—but there are those in the more modern schools who will not
>       be content with less than 500 million years.
> 
>  1652 We are taught that the highest Dhyân Chohans, or Planetary Spirits
>       (beyond the cognizance of the law of analogy), are in ignorance of
>       what lies beyond the visible Planetary Systems, since their essence
>       cannot assimilate itself to that of worlds beyond our Solar System.
>       When they reach a higher stage of evolution these other universes
>       will be open to them; meanwhile they have complete knowledge of all
>       the worlds within the limits of our Solar System.
> 
>  1653 Since no single atom in the entire Kosmos is without life and
>       consciousness, how much more then must its mighty globes be filled
>       with both—though they remain sealed books to us men who can hardly
>       enter even into the consciousness of the forms of life nearest us?
> 
>       We do not know _ourselves_, then how can we, if we have never been
>       trained and initiated, fancy that we can penetrate the consciousness
>       of the smallest of the animals around us?
> 
>  1654 _Pluralité des Mondes_, p. 439.
> 
>  1655 _Op. cit._, i. 4, 9.
> 
>  1656 _Hebrews_, i. 2. This relates to the Logos of every Cosmogony. The
>       _unknown_ Light—with which he is said to be coëternal and coëval—is
>       reflected in the First‐Born, the Protogonos; and the Demiurgos or
>       the Universal Mind directs his Divine Thought into the Chaos that
>       under the fashioning of minor Gods will be divided into the Seven
>       Oceans—Sapta Samudras. It is Purusha, Ahura Mazda, Osiris, etc., and
>       finally the Gnostic Christos, who is in the _Kabalah_, Chokmah, or
>       Wisdom, the “Word.”
> 
>  1657 The _form_ of Tikkun or the Protogonos, “First‐Born,” _i.e._, the
>       Universal Form and Idea, had not yet been mirrored in Chaos.
> 
>  1658 _Zohar_, iii. 292c. The “Heavenly Man” is Adam Kadmon—the synthesis
>       of the Sephiroth, as “Manu Svâyambhuva” is the synthesis of the
>       Prajâpatis.
> 
>  1659 _Bereshith Rabba_, Parsha IX.
> 
>  1660 This refers to the three Rounds that preceded our Fourth Round.
> 
>  1661 “Idra Suta,” _Zohar_, iii. 136c. “A sinking down from their
>       status”—is plain; from active Worlds they have fallen into a
>       temporary obscuration—they rest, and hence are entirely changed.
> 
>  1662 _Gen._, xxxvi. 43.
> 
>  1663 In that learned and witty work, _God and his Book_, by the
>       redoubtable “Saladin” of Agnostic repute, the amusing calculation
>       that, if Christ had ascended with the rapidity of a cannon ball, he
>       would not yet have reached even Sirius, reminds one vividly of the
>       past. It raises, perhaps, a not ill‐founded suspicion that even our
>       age of scientific enlightenment may be as grossly absurd in its
>       materialistic negations as the men of the Middle Ages were absurd
>       and materialistic in their religious affirmations.
> 
>  1664 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, p. 481.
> 
>  1665 Probably in excess.
> 
>  1666 _Knowledge_, Art. “The Antiquity of Man in Western Europe,” March
>       31st, 1882.
> 
>  1667 Who, in another work, _La Préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme_, some
>       twenty years ago, generously allowed only 230,000 years to our
>       mankind! Since we learn now that he places man in the Mid‐Miocene
>       period, we must say that the much respected Professor of Prehistoric
>       Anthropology in Paris is somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, if
>       not _naïf_ in his views.
> 
>  1668 The root and basic idea of the origin and transformation of
>       species—the _heredity_ of acquired faculties—seems to have found
>       lately very serious opponents in Germany. Du Bois‐Reymond and Dr.
>       Pflüger, the Physiologists, besides other men of Science as eminent
>       as any, find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in
>       the doctrine.
> 
>  1669 _History of Creation_, p. 20.
> 
>  1670 The same names are retained as those given by Science, to make the
>       parallels clearer. Our terms are quite different.
> 
>  1671 Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are
>       seven degrees of Devas or “Progenitors,” or seven Classes, from the
>       most perfect to the less exalted.
> 
>  1672 It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this
>       table a Primary‐age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological
>       periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of the First and
>       Second are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being
>       available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible
>       race in the Carboniferous age, it is needless to renew the debate.
> 
>  1673 During the _interim_ between one Round and another, the Globe and
>       everything on it remains _in statu quo_. Remember, vegetation began
>       in its ethereal form before what is called the Primordial, running
>       through the Primary, and condensing in it, and reaching its full
>       physical life in the Secondary.
> 
>  1674 Geologists tell us that “in the Secondary epoch, the only mammals
>       which have been [hitherto] discovered in Europe are the fossil
>       remains of a small marsupial or pouch‐bearer.” (_Knowledge_, March
>       31st, 1882, p. 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only
>       surviving animal of the family of those which were on Earth during
>       the presence on it of androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that
>       was then on Earth? Its presence speaks loudly for that of other
>       (though unknown) mammals, besides the monotremes and marsupials, and
>       thus shows the appellation of “mammalian age” given only to the
>       Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous, as it allows one to
>       infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds, amphibians,
>       and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times—the Secondary.
> 
>  1675 Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric
>       Ethnology, which pre‐supposes the existence of Men in the Secondary
>       age, will do well to note the fact that one of the most
>       distinguished Anthropologists of the day, M. de Quatrefages,
>       seriously argues in that direction. He writes: “There is then
>       nothing impossible in the idea that he [man] ... should have
>       appeared upon the globe with the first representatives of the type
>       to which he belongs by his organization.” (_The Human Species_, p.
>       153.) This statement approximates most closely to our fundamental
>       assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
> 
>       Professor Lefèvre admits that the “labours of Boucher de Perthes,
>       Lartet, Christy, Bourgeois, Desnoyers, Broca, De Mortillet, Hamy,
>       Gaudry, Capellini, and a hundred others, have overcome all doubts,
>       and clearly established the progressive development of the human
>       organism and industries from the miocene epoch of the tertiary age.”
>       (_Philosophy Historical and Critical_, Pt. II, p. 499, Chapter II,
>       On Organic Evolution. “Library of Contemporary Science.”) Why does
>       he reject the possibility of a Secondary‐age man? Simply because he
>       is involved in the meshes of the Darwinian Anthropology. “The origin
>       of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals”; he appeared
>       “only with the _last_ types of his class”! This is not argument, but
>       dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact. Must everything give
>       place to the mere working hypotheses of Western Evolutionists?
>       Surely not!
> 
>  1676 These placentalia of the third sub‐class are divided, it appears,
>       into villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered
>       tufts), the zonoplacentalia (girdle‐shaped placenta), and the
>       discoplacentalia (or discoid). Hæckel sees in the marsupialia
>       didelphia, one of the connecting links _genealogically_ between man
>       and the moneron!!
> 
>  1677 This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily
>       only a provisional working hypothesis—the actual chronology of the
>       First, Second, and early Third Races being closely veiled by the
>       Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the First Root‐
>       Race may have been Pre‐Secondary, as is, indeed, taught.
> 
>  1678 The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll’s earlier
>       calculations are adopted, namely, of 15,000,000 years since the
>       beginning of the Eocene period (see Charles Gould’s _Mythical
>       Monsters_, p. 84), not those in his _Climate and Time_, which allow
>       only two‐and‐a‐half million years, or at the utmost three million
>       years’ duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the
>       whole duration of the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000
>       years, according to Professor Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric
>       Doctrine, sedimentation began in _this_ Round approximately over
>       320,000,000 years ago. Yet his calculations do not clash much with
>       ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the Tertiary
>       age, which is called in our Esoteric books the “Age of the Pigmies.”
>       With regard to the 320,000,000 of years assigned to sedimentation,
>       it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the
>       preparation of this Globe for the Fourth Round _previous to
>       stratification_.
> 
>  1679 Though we apply the term “truly human,” only to the Fourth Atlantean
>       Root‐Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion,
>       since it is during its fifth sub‐race that mankind separated
>       sexually, and that the _first man was born_ according to the now
>       normal process. This “first man” answers, in the _Bible_, to Enos or
>       Henoch, son of Seth (_Genesis_, iv.).
> 
>  1680 Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, and
>       sheets of marine sediment uniformly present everywhere testify to
>       it; but it is not even the epoch referred to in the allegory of
>       Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva‐Man (or Manu) saving in an Ark
>       (the female principle) the germs of humanity, and also the seven
>       Rishis—who stand here as the symbols for the seven human
>       principles—of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The
>       “Universal Deluge” is the Watery Abyss of the Primordial Principle
>       of Berosus. (See Stanzas ii to viii, in Part I.) How, if 15 million
>       years are allowed by Croll to have elapsed since the Eocene period
>       (which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould),
>       only 60 millions are assigned by him “since the beginning of the
>       Cambrian period, in the Primordial age”—passes comprehension. The
>       Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and
>       Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length
>       of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both
>       the Primary and the Primordial? No wonder Darwin rejected the
>       calculation.
> 
>  1681 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 53‐55, Fourth Ed.
> 
>  1682 We hope that we have furnished all the scientific data for it
>       elsewhere.
> 
>  1683 It is conceded by Geology to be “beyond doubt that a considerable
>       period must have supervened after the departure of Palæolithic man
>       and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor.” (See James
>       Geikie’s _Prehistoric Europe_, and Ch. Gould’s _Mythical Monsters_,
>       p. 98.)
> 
>  1684 Resembling in a manner the pile‐villages of Northern Borneo.
> 
>  1685 “The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed
>       very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint, and stone
>       and bone were the materials to be engraved”! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins’
>       _Cave‐Hunting_, p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to
>       further insist on Huxley’s, Schmidt’s, Laing’s, and others’
>       statements to the effect that Palæolithic man cannot be considered
>       to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race; thus they
>       demolish the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic
>       of artistic merit here _reäppearing_ in the Chipped‐Stone‐age men,
>       is traceable to their _Atlantean_ ancestry. Neolithic man was a
>       fore‐runner of the great Âryan invasion, and immigrated from quite
>       another quarter—Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. The tribes
>       peopling the latter towards the North‐West, were certainly of an
>       Atlantean origin—dating back hundreds of thousands of years before
>       the Neolithic Period in Europe—but they had so diverged from the
>       parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic
>       peculiar to it. As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palæolithic
>       man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt points out, _the
>       former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era was
>       not_. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time,
>       then? Not in this instance at any rate.
> 
>  1686 _Op. cit._, p. 97.
> 
>  1687 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 181.
> 
>  1688 _Ibid._, p. 112.
> 
>  1689 On the data furnished by Modern Science, Physiology, and Natural
>       Selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two
>       human negro specimens of the lowest intelligence—say idiots born
>       dumb—might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would
>       start a new modified race, and thus produce, in the course of
>       geological time, the regular anthropoid ape.
> 
>  1690 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 64.
> 
>  1691 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 98.
> 
>  1692 _Anfänge zu einer Physiologischen Schöpfungs‐geschichte der
>       Pflanzen‐ und Thierwelt, 1885._
> 
>  1693 _Op. cit._, p. 212.
> 
>  1694 _Ibid._, p. 11.
> 
>  1695 _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 159.
> 
>  1696 Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., _Origin of the World_, p. 39.
> 
>  1697 _Prehistoric Antiquity of Man_, 1883.
> 
>  1698 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 25.
> 
>  1699 _India, What can it Teach Us?_ A course of Lectures delivered before
>       the University of Cambridge in 1882. Lecture III., p. 110, Ed. 1892.
> 
>  1700 _Antiquity of Man Historically Considered._ “Present Day Tracts,”
>       Vol. II, Essay IX, p. 25.
> 
>  1701 _Op. cit._, pp. 10, 11.
> 
>  1702 _Op. cit._, i. 4.
> 
>  1703 Palæolithic man must have been endowed in his day with thrice
>       Herculean force and magic invulnerability, or else the lion was as
>       weak as a lamb at that period, for both to share the same dwelling.
>       We may as well be asked to believe that it is that lion or hyæna
>       which engraved the deer on the antler, as be told that this piece of
>       workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
> 
>  1704 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 164.
> 
>  1705 _Ibid._, p. 199.
> 
>  1706 More than twenty specimens of fossil monkeys have been found in one
>       locality alone, in Miocene strata (Pikermi, near Athens). If man was
>       not then, the period is too short for him to have been
>       _transformed_—stretch it as one may. And if he was, and if no monkey
>       is found earlier, what follows?
> 
>  1707 Dr. C. Carter Blake, Art., “The Genesis of Man.”
> 
>  1708 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 530.
> 
>  1709 New Series, i. 115, Art., “Evidences of the Age of Ice.”
> 
>  1710 _Fallacies of Darwinism._
> 
>  1711 _Op. cit._, p. 501, Ed. 1863.
> 
>  1712 _Op. cit._, iv. 162.
> 
>  1713 See on this question Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, ii. 54; _Origin of
>       the World_, pp. 393, 394.
> 
>  1714 And how much more “enormous” if we reverse the subjects, and say
>       during the monkey’s development from the Third Race Man.
> 
>  1715 _Op. cit._, pp. 160, 161.
> 
>  1716 _Principles of Biology_, i. 345.
> 
>  1717 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 94.
> 
>  1718 _Ibid._
> 
>  1719 The Darwinian theory has been so strained, that even Huxley was
>       forced at one time to deprecate its occasional degeneration into
>       “fanaticism.” Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of a thinker
>       who unconsciously exaggerates the worth of a hypothesis. He admits
>       (_The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 158), that “natural
>       selection ... is in some cases ... inadequate, ... in others ... not
>       requisite, as the solution of the formation of species is found in
>       other natural conditions.” He also asserts the “intermediate grades
>       are ... wanting, which would entitle us to infer with certainty the
>       direct transition from implacental to placental mammals” (p. 271);
>       that “we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the
>       origin of the mammals” (p. 268); and he speaks of the repeated
>       failures of the framers of “hypothetical pedigrees,” more especially
>       of Hæckel, while regarding their attempts as valuable (p. 250).
>       Nevertheless he asserts (p. 194) that “what we have gained by the
>       doctrine of descent based on the theory of selection ... is the
>       knowledge of the connection of organisms as consanguineous beings.”
>       Knowledge, in the face of the above‐cited concessions, is, then, the
>       synonym for conjecture and theory only?
> 
>  1720 _The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 268.
> 
>  1721 _Ibid._, pp. 273‐275.
> 
>  1722 Bear in mind, please, that though the animals—mammalians
>       included—have all been evolved after and partially _from_ man’s
>       cast‐off tissues, still, as a far lower being, the mammalian animal
>       became placental and separated far earlier than man.
> 
>  1723 Scientists now admit that Europe enjoyed in the Miocene times a
>       warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a temperate climate.
>       Littré’s contention as to the balmy spring of the Quaternary—to
>       which deposits M. de Perthes’ discoveries of flint implements are
>       traceable (since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores
>       of feet)—must be accepted with much reservation. The Somme‐Valley
>       relics are _post‐glacial_, and possibly point to the immigration of
>       savages during one of the more temperate periods intervening between
>       _minor_ ages of Ice.
> 
>  1724 “Whence they [the old cave‐men] came, we cannot tell” (Grant Allen).
>       “The palæolithic hunters of the Somme Valley did not originate in
>       that inhospitable climate, but moved into Europe from some more
>       genial region” (Dr. Southall, _Epoch of the Mammoth_, p. 315).
> 
>  1725 The _pure_ Atlantean stocks—of which the tall Quaternary cave‐men
>       were, in part, the direct descendants—immigrated into Europe long
>       prior to the Glacial period; in fact as far back as the Pliocene and
>       Miocene times in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene flints of Thenay,
>       and the traces of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in
>       Italy, are witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of
>       the once glorious Race, whose cycle from the Eocene onwards had been
>       running down the scale.
> 
>  1726 The artistic skill displayed by the old cave‐men renders the
>       hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the
>       pithecanthropus alalus—that very mythical Hæeckelian monster—an
>       absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in
>       their skill in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically
>       reäppearing. It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern
>       European civilization as a _renaissance_ of the Atlantean.
>       (_Atlantis_, pp. 237‐264.)
> 
>  1727 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, Pt. II. p. 504, chap., “On
>       Organic Evolution.”
> 
>  1728 _Lettres sur l’Atlantide_, p. 12.
> 
>  1729 _Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne_, pp. 25, _et seqq._
> 
>  1730 _Lettres sur l’Atlantide_, p. 15. This conjecture is but a half‐
>       guess. There were such “deluges of barbarians” in the Fifth Race.
>       With regard to the Fourth, it was a _bonâ fide_ deluge of water
>       which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew
>       anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East.
> 
>  1731 For a full discussion of the relations between the _old_ Greeks and
>       Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, see _Five Years of Theosophy_,
>       pp. 308‐346.
> 
>  1732 _Timæus_, translated by H. Davis, pp. 326‐328.
> 
>  1733 The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told,
>       as all know, by Plato in his _Timæus and Critias_. Plato, when a
>       child, had it from his grand‐sire Critias, aged ninety, who in his
>       youth had been told of it by Solon, his father Dropides’
>       friend—Solon, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. No more reliable
>       source could be found, we should think.
> 
>  1734 See Dr. Carter Blake’s paper “On the Naulette Jaw,” _Anthropological
>       Review_, Sept., 1867.
> 
>  1735 See de Quatrefages and Hamy, _Crânes des Races Humaines_.
> 
>  1736 Hæckel’s “man‐ape” of the Miocene period is the dream of a
>       monomaniac, which de Quatrefages (_Human Species_, pp. 105‐113) has
>       cleverly disposed of. It is not clear why the world should accept
>       the lucubrations of a psychophobic Materialist—to accept whose
>       theory necessitates the acceptance _on faith_ of various animals
>       unknown to Science or Nature, like the Sozura, for instance, that
>       amphibian which has never existed anywhere outside Hæckel’s
>       imagination—rather than the traditions of antiquity.
> 
>  1737 But see the mass of evidence collected by Donnelly to prove the
>       Peruvian colony an offshoot of the Atlanteans.
> 
>  1738 _Cavernes de Périgord_, p. 35.
> 
>  1739 The ingenious author of _Atlantis, the Ante‐diluvian World_, in
>       discussing the origin of various Grecian and Roman institutions,
>       expresses his conviction that “the roots of the institutions of to‐
>       day reach back to the Miocene age.” Ay, and further yet, as already
>       stated.
> 
>  1740 _The Human Species_, p. 152.
> 
>  1741 As we know them, however. For not only does Geology prove that the
>       British Islands have been _four times submerged and reëlevated_, but
>       that the straits between them and Europe were dry land at a former
>       remote epoch.
> 
>  1742 See, in _Isis Unveiled_ (i. 627), what Kullûka Bhatta says.
> 
>  1743 _Les Origines de la Terre et de l’Homme_, p. 454. To this, Professor
>       N. Joly, of Toulouse, who thus quotes the Abbé in his _Man before
>       Metals_, expresses the hope that M. Fabre will permit him “to differ
>       from him on this last point” (p. 186). So do the Occultists; for
>       though they claim a vast difference in the physiology and outward
>       appearance of the five Races so far evolved, still they maintain
>       that the present human species has descended from one and the same
>       primitive stock, evolved from the Divine Men—our common ancestors
>       and progenitors.
> 
>  1744 _Loc. cit._, 15, 18.
> 
>  1745 _Ibid._, 16.
> 
>  1746 _Op. cit._, 8‐10.
> 
>  1747 “The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human
>       hands.” (G. de Mortillet, _Promenades au Musèe de St. Germain_, p.
>       76.)
> 
>  1748 Albert Gaudry, _Les Enchainements du Monde Animal dans les Temps
>       Géologiques_, p. 240.
> 
>  1749 Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Périgord, Joly says that they
>       “were of great height, athletic, with a strongly built skeleton.”
>       (_Man before Metals_, p. 353.)
> 
>  1750 “On the shores of the lake of Beauce,” says the Abbé Bourgeois, “man
>       lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared
>       (aceratherium, tapir, mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of
>       Orléannais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopitliecus
>       antiquus); therefore, later than man.” See _Comptes Rendus_ of the
>       “Prehistoric Congress” of 1867 at Paris.
> 
>  1751 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 312.
> 
>  1752 “In making soundings in the slimy soil of the Nile Valley, two baked
>       bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 24
>       yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by
>       the river at 8 inches a century [more careful calculations have
>       shown no more than from three to five per century], we must assign
>       to the first of these bricks an age of 12,000 years, and to the
>       second that of 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations,
>       Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first
>       appearance of man upon the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to
>       the European man who witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity
>       of more than 250,000 years.” (_Man before Metals_, p. 183.) Egyptian
>       Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! Note well also
>       that Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
> 
>  1753 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 66, Fifth Edition.
> 
>  1754 Or on what are now the British Isles, which were not yet detached
>       from the main continent in those days. “The ancient inhabitant of
>       Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel.
>       The British Isles were united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since
>       been submerged.” (_Man before Metals_, p. 184.)
> 
>  1755 He witnessed and remembered it too, as “the final disappearance of
>       the largest continent [of Atlantis] was an event coïncident with the
>       elevation of the Alps,” a Master writes (see _Esoteric Buddhism_ p.
>       70). _Pari passu_, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere
>       disappeared, some land of the new continent emerged from the seas.
>       It is on this colossal cataclysm, which lasted during a period of
>       150,000 years, that traditions of all the “deluges” are built, the
>       Jews constructing their version on an event which took place later,
>       on Poseidonis.
> 
>  1756 “The Antiquity of the Human Race,” in _Man before Metals_, by M.
>       Joly, p. 184.
> 
>  1757 The scientific “jury” disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de
>       Mortillet, Worsaæ, Engelhardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, Hamy,
>       and Cartailhac, saw upon the flints the traces of human handiwork,
>       Steenstrup, Virchow and Desor refused to do so. Still the majority,
>       if we except some English Scientists, are for Bourgeois.
> 
>  1758 We take the following description from a scientific work. “The first
>       of these animals [the alligator] designed with considerable skill,
>       is no less than 250 ft. long.... The interior is formed of a heap of
>       stones, over which the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The
>       great serpent is represented with open mouth, in the act of
>       swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100 ft. in the thickest
>       part; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves and the
>       tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is
>       1,100 ft. This work is unique ... and there is nothing on the old
>       continent which offers any analogy to it.” Except, however, its
>       symbolism of the Serpent (the Cycle of Time) swallowing the Egg
>       (Kosmos).
> 
>  1759 It might be better, perhaps, for _fact_ had we more “specialists” in
>       Science and fewer “authorities” on universal questions. We have
>       never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final decisions in
>       the matter of polypi, or on the nature of an excrescence.
> 
>  1760 57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of
>       the human skeleton, found buried beneath four ancient forests at New
>       Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi river.
> 
>  1761 Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marvelled at
>       the prowess of the Atlanteans. “Their physical strength was
>       extraordinary [witness indeed their cyclopean buildings], the earth
>       shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did, was done
>       speedily.... They were wise and communicated their wisdom to men”
>       (_Mythology_, p. 4).
> 
>  1762 Art. by Dr. C. Carter Blake, 1871.
> 
>  1763 But the Magi of Persia were never Persians—not even Chaldæans. They
>       came from a far‐off land, the Orientalists being of opinion that the
>       said land was Media. This may be so, but from what part of Media? To
>       this we receive no answer.
> 
>  1764 _Op. cit._, p. 160.
> 
>  1765 _Op. cit._, pp. 3‐13.
> 
>  1766 _Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times_, pp. 130,
>       131.
> 
>  1767 Bûmî haptâita, _Yasna_, xxxii. 3.
> 
>  1768 _Cf._, for instance, vol. i. p. 4, of the Pahlavi Translation;
>       _Bdh._ xxi. 2, 3.
> 
>  1769 Footnote by Dârâb Dastur Peshotan Sanjânâ, B.A., the translator of
>       Dr. Wilhelm Geiger’s work on the _Civilization of the Eastern
>       Iranians_.
> 
>  1770 _Op. cit._, pp. 130, 131.
> 
>  1771 Dr. Kenealy, in his _Book of God_, quotes Vallancey, who says: “I
>       had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, ... where I
>       had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries ...
>       when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her, ‘Feach an
>       Maddin Nag’ (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus,
>       the Maddina Nag of the Chaldæan” (pp. 162, 163).
> 
>  1772 _Lib._ iv.
> 
>  1773 There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had
>       one religion, and when they were of “one lip.” “All the religions of
>       the earth were at first one and emanated from one centre,” says
>       Faber very truly.
> 
>  1774 _Critias_, translated by Davis, p. 415.
> 
>  1775 Plato’s veracity has been so unwarrantably impeached by even such
>       friendly critics as Professor Jowett, when the story of Atlantis has
>       been discussed, that it seems well to cite the testimony of a
>       specialist on the subject. It is sufficient to place mere literary
>       cavillers in a very ridiculous position:
> 
>       “If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt
>       appear that in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord
>       with the people of America, they were both in accord with the people
>       of Atlantis.... It will be seen that in every case where Plato gives
>       us any information in this respect as to Atlantis, we find this
>       agreement to exist. It existed in architecture, sculpture,
>       navigation, engraving, writing, an established priesthood, the mode
>       of worship, agriculture, and the construction of roads and canals;
>       and it is reasonable to suppose that the same correspondence
>       extended down to all the minor details.” (Donnelly, _Atlantis_, p.
>       164. Twenty‐fourth Ed.)
> 
>  1776 Christians ought not to object to this doctrine of the periodical
>       destruction of continents by fire and water; for St. Peter speaks of
>       the Earth “standing out of the water, and in the water, whereby the
>       world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished, but [is
>       now] reserved unto fire” (II. iii. 5‐7. See also the _Lives of
>       Alchemystical Philosophers_, p. 4, London, 1815).
> 
>  1777 See Hesiod’s _Theogony_, 507‐509, and _Odyssey_, i. 51‐53.
> 
>  1778 _Mèmoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions_, p. 176.
> 
>  1779 Æschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus_, 351, 429, etc.
> 
>  1780 iv. 184.
> 
>  1781 _Pyth._, i. 20; Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 315.
> 
>  1782 This does not mean that Atlas is the locality where it fell, for
>       this took place in Northern and Central Asia; but that Atlas formed
>       part of the Continent.
> 
>  1783 Had not Diocletian burned the Esoteric works of the Egyptians in
>       A.D. 296, together with their books on Alchemy, “περὶ χυμείας
>       ἀργύρου καὶ χρυσοῦ”; Cæsar 700,000 rolls at Alexandria; Leo Isaurus
>       300,000 at Constantinople (eighth cent.); and the Mahommedans all
>       they could lay their sacrilegious hands on—the world might know to‐
>       day more of Atlantis than it does. For Alchemy had its birthplace in
>       Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its _renaissance_ in
>       Egypt.
> 
>  1784 Professor Max Müller’s Lectures—_On the Philosophy of Mythology_—are
>       before us. We read his citations of Heracleitus (460 B.C.),
>       declaring that Homer deserved “to be ejected from public assemblies
>       and flogged”; and of Xenophanes “holding Homer and Hesiod
>       responsible for the popular superstitions of Greece,” and for
>       ascribing “to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among
>       men ... unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud.” Finally
>       the Oxford Professor quotes from Professor Jowett’s translation of
>       Plato, where the latter tells Adaimantus (_Republic_) that “the
>       young man [in the state] should not be told that in committing the
>       worst of crimes, he is far from doing anything outrageous, and that
>       he may chastise his father [as Zeus did with Cronus] ... in any
>       manner that he likes, and in this will only be following the example
>       of the first and greatest of the gods.... In my opinion, these
>       stories are _not fit to be repeated_.” To this Prof. Max Müller
>       observes that: “the Greek religion was clearly a national and
>       _traditional_ religion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages
>       and disadvantages _of this form of religious belief_”; while the
>       Christian religion is “an _historical_ and, to a great extent, an
>       individual religion, and it possesses the advantage of an authorized
>       codex and of a settled system of faith” (p. 349). So much the worse
>       if it is “historical,” for surely Lot’s incident with his daughters
>       would only gain, were it “allegorical.”
> 
>  1785 ἁοιδῶν οἶδε δυστῆνοι λόγοι, _Hercules Furens_, 1346, Dindorf’s
>       Edition.
> 
>  1786 _Critias_, 421.
> 
>  1787 Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindû Idas‐pati, identical with Nârâyana
>       (the Mover on the Waters) or Vishnu, and like this Hindû God he is
>       shown crossing the whole horizon in _three steps_. Idas‐pati means
>       also the “Master of the Waters.”
> 
>  1788 Bailly’s assertion that the 9,000 years mentioned by the Egyptian
>       priests do not represent “solar years” is groundless. Bailly knew
>       nothing of Geology and its calculations; otherwise he would have
>       spoken differently.
> 
>  1789 See _Matsya Purâna_, which places him among the seven Prajâpatis of
>       the period.
> 
>  1790 _Iliad_, xxiv. 79.
> 
>  1791 _Op. cit._, p. 126.
> 
>  1792 The equivalent of this name is given in the original.
> 
>  1793 Deucalion is said to have brought the worship of Adonis and Osiris
>       into Phœnicia. Now this worship is that of the Sun, lost and found
>       again in its astronomical significance. It is only at the Pole that
>       the Sun dies out for such a length of time as six months, for in
>       latitude 68° it remains _dead_ only for forty days, as in the
>       festival of Osiris. The two worships were born in the north of
>       Lemuria, or on that Continent of which Asia was a kind of broken
>       prolongation, and which stretched up to the polar regions. This is
>       well shown by de Gebelin’s _Allegories d’Orient_, p. 246, and by
>       Bailly; though neither Hercules nor Osiris are _solar myths_, save
>       in one of their seven aspects.
> 
>  1794 The Hyperboreans, now regarded as mythical, are described (Herod.,
>       iv. 33‐35; Pausanius, i. 31, 32; v. 7, 8; x. 5, 7, 8) as the beloved
>       priests and servants of the Gods, and of Apollo chiefly.
> 
>  1795 The Cyclopes are not the only “one‐eyed” representatives in
>       tradition. The Arimaspes were a Scythian people, and were also
>       credited with but one eye. (_Géographie Ancienne_, ii. 321.) It is
>       they whom Apollo destroyed with his shafts.
> 
>  1796 Ulysses was wrecked on the isle of Ææa, where Circe changed all his
>       companions into pigs _for their voluptuousness_; and after that he
>       was thrown into Ogygia, the island of Calypso, where for some seven
>       years he lived with the nymph in illicit connection. Now Calypso was
>       a daughter of Atlas (_Odys._, xii.), and all the traditional ancient
>       versions, when speaking of the Isle of Ogygia, say that it was very
>       distant from Greece, and right in the middle of the Ocean; thus
>       identifying it with Atlantis.
> 
>  1797 Hygin., _Astron. Poétique_, ii. 15.
> 
>  1798 _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1887.
> 
>  1799 Diod. Sic., ii. 307.
> 
>  1800 To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient
>       writers referred to the latter as the Northern or Hyperborean
>       Atlantis, and to the former as the Southern. Thus Apollodorus says
>       (_Mythology_, Book ii): “The golden apples carried away by Hercules
>       are not, as some think, in Lybia; they are in the Hyperborean
>       Atlantis.” The Greeks naturalized all the Gods they borrowed and
>       made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. Thus also the
>       Mythologists have tried to make of Eridanus the river Po, in Italy.
>       In the myth of Phaeton it is said that at his death his sisters
>       dropped hot tears which fell into Eridanus and were changed into
>       amber! Now amber is found only in the northern seas, in the Baltic.
>       Phaeton, meeting with his death while carrying heat to the frozen
>       stars of the boreal regions, awakening at the Pole the Dragon made
>       rigid by cold, and being hurled down into the Eridanus, is an
>       allegory referring directly to the changes of climate in those
>       distant times when, from a frigid zone, the polar lands had become a
>       country with a moderate and warm climate. The usurper of the
>       functions of the Sun, Phaeton, being hurled into the Eridanus by
>       Jupiter’s thunderbolt, is an allusion to the second change that took
>       place in those regions when, once more, the land where “the magnolia
>       blossomed” became the desolate forbidding land of the farthest north
>       and eternal ice. This allegory covers then the events of two
>       Pralayas; and if well understood, ought to be a demonstration of the
>       enormous antiquity of the human races.
> 
>  1801 _Iliad_, xvii. 431‐453.
> 
>  1802 _Ibid._, 322‐336.
> 
>  1803 See Apollodorus for this number.
> 
>  1804 See “The Sons of God and the Sacred Island.”
> 
>  1805 So occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is
>       made to reappear even in _Revelation_ (xii), as the woman clothed
>       with the Sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being
>       with child “cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.”
>       A great red Dragon stands before the woman ready to devour the
>       child. She brings forth the man‐child who was to rule all nations
>       with a rod of iron, and who was caught unto the throne of God—the
>       Sun. The woman fled to the wilderness still pursued by the Dragon,
>       who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a flood, when
>       the Earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood; and the Dragon
>       went to make war with the remnant of her seed who kept the
>       commandments of God. (See xii. 1, 17.) Anyone who reads the allegory
>       of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognize the
>       identity of the two versions. Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to
>       persecute and destroy Latona and devour her babe. The latter is
>       Apollo, the Sun, for the man‐child of _Revelation_, “who was to rule
>       all nations with a rod of iron” is surely not the meek “Son of God,”
>       Jesus, but the physical Sun, “who rules all nations”; the Dragon
>       being the North Pole, gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the
>       lands which became more and more Hyperborean and unfit to be
>       inhabited by those who were fast developing into physical men, for
>       they now had to deal with the climatic variations. The Dragon will
>       not allow Latona “to bring forth”—the Sun to appear. “She is driven
>       from heaven, and finds no place where she can bring forth,” until
>       Neptune, the Ocean, in pity, makes immovable the floating isle of
>       Delos—the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from Jupiter under the
>       waves of the Ocean—on which Latona finds refuge, and where the
>       bright God Delius is born, the God, who no sooner appears than he
>       kills Python, the cold and frost of the Arctic region, in whose
>       deadly coils all life becomes extinct. In other words, Latona‐
>       Lemuria is transformed into Niobe‐Atlantis, over which her son
>       Apollo, or the Sun, reigns—with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus
>       makes the Atlantes _curse_ his too great heat. This allegory is
>       reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another of the seven keys)
>       in the just cited chapter of _Revelation_. Latona became a powerful
>       Goddess indeed, and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in
>       almost every fane of antiquity. In his Occult aspect Apollo is
>       patron of number Seven. He is born on the seventh of the month, and
>       the swans of Myorica swim seven times round Delos singing that
>       event; he is given seven chords to his Lyre—the seven rays of the
>       Sun and the seven forces of Nature. But this is only in the
>       astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.
> 
>  1806 See Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, vi.
> 
>  1807 _Lettres sur l’Atlantide_, p. 137.
> 
>  1808 Hesiod, _Opera et Dies_, 143.
> 
>  1809 _Hist. Nat._, iv. 12.
> 
>  1810 _Marius._
> 
>  1811 _Op. cit._, c. 16.
> 
>  1812 Isaac Myer’s _Qabbalah_, p. 139.
> 
>  1813 Diod., ii. 225.
> 
>  1814 _Op. cit._, xxxvii. 2.
> 
>  1815 Vol. i. pp. 462‐464.
> 
>  1816 These islands were “found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep,
>       oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths,
>       rhinoceroses,” etc. If there was no man on Earth at that period “how
>       came horses and sheep to be found in company with the huge
>       antediluvians?”—asks a Master in a letter. (_Esoteric Buddhism_, p.
>       67.) The reply is given above in the text.
> 
>  1817 _Op. cit._, iv. 239‐262.
> 
>  1818 A good proof that all the Gods, and religious beliefs, and myths
>       have come from the North, which was also the cradle of _physical_
>       man, lies in several suggestive words which have originated and
>       remain to this day among the northern tribes in their primeval
>       significance; but, although there was a time when all the nations
>       were of “one lip,” these words have received a different meaning
>       with the Greeks and Latins. One such word is _mann_, _man_, a living
>       being, and _manes_, dead men. The Laplanders call their corpses to
>       this day _manee_ (_Voyage de Rénard en Laponie_, i. 184). _Mannus_
>       is the ancestor of the German race; the Hindû _Manu_, the thinking
>       being, from _man_; the Egyptian _Menes_; and _Minos_, the King of
>       Crete, judge of the infernal regions after his death—all proceed
>       from the same word or root.
> 
>  1819 Thus, for instance, Gyges is a hundred‐armed and fifty‐headed
>       monster, a Demi‐god in one case, and a Lydian, the successor of
>       Candaules, king of the country, in another version. The same is
>       found in the Indian Pantheon, where Rishis and the Sons of Brahmâ
>       are reborn as mortals.
> 
>  1820 _Op. cit._, viii. 13.
> 
>  1821 The continents perish in turn by fire and water; either through
>       earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great
>       displacement of waters. Our continents have to perish by the former
>       cataclysmal process. The incessant earthquakes of the past years may
>       be a warning.
> 
>  1822 See Decharme’s _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_.
> 
>  1823 Denis, the Geographer, tells us that the great sea north of Asia was
>       called glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35). Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny
>       (iv. 16) corroborate the statement by showing that it was its giant
>       inhabitants who gave it the name. And the Secret Doctrine explains
>       both assertions by telling us that all the continents were formed
>       from North to South; and that as the sudden change of climate
>       dwarfed the race that had been born on it, arresting its growth, so,
>       several degrees southward, various conditions had always produced
>       the tallest men in every new humanity, or race. We see it to this
>       day. The tallest men now found are those in Northern countries,
>       while the smallest are Southern Asiatics, Hindûs, Chinamen,
>       Japanese, etc. Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans,
>       Norwegians, Russians, Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and English, with
>       the inhabitants of Central India and the average European on the
>       continent. Thus also the Giants of Atlantis, and hence the Titans of
>       Hesiod, are all Northerners.
> 
>  1824 Having already given several instances of the vagaries of Science,
>       it is delightful to find such agreement in this particular case.
>       Read in connection with the scientific admission (cited elsewhere)
>       of the Geologists’ ignorance of even the approximate duration of
>       periods, the following passage is highly instructive: “We are not
>       yet able to assign an approximate date for the most recent epoch at
>       which our northern hemisphere was covered with glaciers. According
>       to Mr. Wallace, this epoch may have occurred no more than seventy
>       thousand years ago, while others would assign to it an antiquity of
>       at least two hundred thousand years, and there are yet others who
>       urge strong arguments on behalf of the opinion that a million of
>       years is barely enough to have produced the changes which have taken
>       place since that event.” (Fiske, _Cosmic Philosophy_, i. 304, Ed.
>       1874.) Prof. Lefèvre, again, gives us as _his_ estimate one hundred
>       thousand years. Clearly, then, if Modern Science is unable to
>       estimate the date of so comparatively recent an era as the Glacial
>       Epoch, it can hardly impeach the Esoteric Chronology of Race‐Periods
>       and Geological Ages.
> 
>  1825 Cited in Schmidt’s _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 300,
>       301.
> 
>  1826 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, p. 508.
> 
>  1827 _Human Species_, pp. 428, _et seqq._
> 
>  1828 Art., “The First Volume of the Publications of the ’Challenger,’” p.
>       2, Nov. 4th, 1880.
> 
>  1829 _Op. cit._, Art., “Australia and Europe formerly one Continent” (v.
>       19, 25). Undoubtedly a fact, and a confirmation of the Esoteric
>       conception of Lemuria, which originally not only embraced great
>       areas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but projected round South
>       Africa into the North Atlantic. Its Atlantic portion subsequently
>       became the geological basis of the future home of the Fourth Race
>       Atlanteans.
> 
>  1830 _Ibid._, i. 143.
> 
>  1831 _Cf._, the published reports of the “Challenger” expedition; also
>       Donnelly’s _Atlantis_, p. 468 and pp. 46‐56, Chap., “The Testimony
>       of the Sea.”
> 
>  1832 Even the cautious Lefèvre speaks of the existence of Tertiary men on
>       “upheaved lands, islands and continents then flourishing, but since
>       submerged beneath the waters,” and elsewhere introduces a “possible
>       Atlantis” to explain ethnological facts. _Cf._, his _Philosophy
>       Historical and Critical_, pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with
>       rare intuition that “modern civilization is Atlantean ... the
>       inventive faculty of the present age is taking up the great
>       delegated work of creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years
>       ago” (_Atlantis_, p. 177. Twenty‐fourth Ed.). He also refers the
>       origin of culture to the Miocene times. It is, however, to be sought
>       for in the teachings given to the Third Race men by their Divine
>       Rulers—at a vastly earlier period.
> 
>  1833 An equally “curious” similarity may be traced between some of the
>       West Indian and West African fauna.
> 
>  1834 The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by
>       Dr. Carter Blake, the Anthropologist, “Pacificus.”
> 
>  1835 “Subsidence and Elevation,” _Geological Magazine_, pp. 241, 245,
>       June, 1881.
> 
>  1836 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 492.
> 
>  1837 When Howard read, before the Royal Society of London, a paper on the
>       first serious researches that were made on the aerolites, the Geneva
>       Naturalist Pictet, who was present, communicated, on his return to
>       Paris, the facts reported to the French Academy of Sciences. But he
>       was forthwith interrupted by Laplace, the great Astronomer, who
>       cried: “Stop! we have had enough of such _fables_, and know all
>       about them,” thus making Pictet feel very small. Globular‐shaped
>       lightnings or thunder‐bolts have been admitted by Science only since
>       Arago demonstrated their existence. Says de Rochat (_Forces Non‐
>       definies_, p. 4): “Every one remembers Dr. Bouilland’s misadventure
>       at the Academy of Medicine when he had declared Edison’s phonograph
>       ‘_a trick of ventriloquism_’!”
> 
>  1838 _Principles of Geology_, i. 9, 10.
> 
>  1839 _Ibid._
> 
>  1840 The Cyclic Law of Race‐Evolution is most unwelcome to Scientists. It
>       is sufficient to mention the fact of “primeval civilization” to
>       excite the frenzy of Darwinians; it being obvious that the further
>       culture and science is pushed back, the more precarious becomes the
>       basis of the ape‐ancestor theory. But as Jacolliot says: “Whatever
>       there may be in these traditions [submerged continents, etc.], and
>       whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient
>       than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India, was developed,
>       it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
>       important for science to recover its traces, however feeble and
>       fugitive they be.” (_Histoire des Vièrges; les Peuples et les
>       Continents Disparus_, p. 15.) Donnelly has proved the fact from the
>       clearest premises, but the Evolutionists will not listen. A Miocene
>       civilization upsets the “universal Stone age” theory, and that of a
>       _continuous_ ascent of man from animalism. And yet Egypt, at least,
>       runs counter to current hypotheses. There is no Stone age visible
>       there, but a more glorious culture is apparent the further back we
>       are enabled to carry our retrospect.
> 
>  1841 _Myths and Myth‐Makers_, p. 21.
> 
>  1842 Violent minor cataclysms and colossal earthquakes are recorded in
>       the annals of most nations—if not of all. Elevation and subsidence
>       of continents is always in progress. The whole coast of South
>       America has been raised up 10 to 15 feet and settled down again in
>       an hour. Huxley has shown that the British Islands have been four
>       times depressed beneath the ocean and subsequently raised again and
>       peopled. The Alps, Himâlayas and Cordilleras were all the result of
>       depositions drifted on to sea‐bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces
>       to their present elevation. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene
>       sea. Within the last five or six thousand years the shores of
>       Sweden, Denmark and Norway, have risen from 200 to 600 feet; in
>       Scotland there are raised beaches with outlying stacks and skerries
>       surmounting the shore now eroded by the hungry wave. The North of
>       Europe is still rising from the sea, and South America presents the
>       phenomenon of raised beaches of over 1,000 miles in length, now at a
>       height varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above the sea‐level. On the
>       other hand, the coast of Greenland is sinking fast, so much so that
>       the Greenlander will not build by the shore. All these phenomena are
>       certain. Why then may not a gradual change have given place to a
>       violent cataclysm in remote epochs—such cataclysms occurring on a
>       minor scale even now, _e.g._, the case of Sunda Island with the
>       destruction of 80,000 Malays?
> 
>  1843 For the opinions of Jacolliot, after long travels through the
>       Polynesian Islands, and his proofs of a former great geological
>       cataclysm in the Pacific Ocean, see his _Histoire des Vièrges; les
>       Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, p. 308.
> 
>  1844 August, 1880.
> 
>  1845 _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 236, 237. _Cf._ also his
>       lengthy arguments on the subject, pp. 231‐235.
> 
>  1846 _Op. cit._, i. 22, 23, Ed. 1869.
> 
>  1847 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 73.
> 
>  1848 Cited in Schmidt’s _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 238.
> 
>  1849 For further facts as to the isolation of the Basques in Europe and
>       their ethnological relations, see Joly, _Man before Metals_, p. 316.
>       B. Davis is disposed to concede, from an examination of the skulls
>       of the Guanches of the Canary Islands and modern Basques, that both
>       belong to a race proper to those _ancient_ islands, of which the
>       Canaries are the _remains_! This is a step in advance indeed. De
>       Quatrefages and Hamy also both assign the Cro‐Magnon men of South
>       France and the Guanches to _one_ type—a proposition which involves a
>       certain corollary which both these writers may not care to father.
> 
>  1850 _Families of Speech._
> 
>  1851 _Cf._, Benjamin, _The Atlantic Islands_, p. 130.
> 
>  1852 _Westminster Review_, Jan., 1872.
> 
>  1853 Schmidt, _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 223.
> 
>  1854 Professor Retzius, _Smithsonian Report_, 1859, p. 266.
> 
>  1855 See the investigations of United States ship “Dolphin” and others.
> 
>  1856 _Scientific American_, July 28th, 1877.
> 
>  1857 See his chart, _Atlantis_, p. 46, though he deals with only a
>       fragment of the _real_ Continent.
> 
>  1858 Donnelly, _Atlantis_, p. 480.
> 
>  1859 _Maçonnerie Occulte_, p. 44.
> 
>  1860 _Vide_ Sir William Thompson and Mr. Huxley.
>
> — *The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4 (Public Domain (Project Gutenberg))*