WESTERN SPECULATIONS,
FOUNDED ON THE GREEK AND PURÂNIC
TRADITIONS.
Thus
it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the
profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish scientist, tried to prove about two
centuries ago that
Three
quarters of a century have already elapsed since Captain (now Colonel) Wilford
brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the
“
to
those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha) both these
have their place in the horizon. Hence there is (on that land) no elevation of
the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon ; but their
degrees of colatitude (lumbaka) are 90 ; at Meru the degrees of latitude
(aksha) are of the same number.” (43 and 44.)
*
Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Sveta-dwipa (the
white
the
seventh zone or seventh climate,” — rather, on the seventh measure
of heat : which thus locates it between the latitudes of 24 and 28 degrees
north. It is then to be sought on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer,
whereas
Now
here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s
riddle, the wrong solution of which will ever destroy their authority, if not
their persons, in the eyes of every Hindu scholar, even those who are not
initiates. For there is not a statement in the Purânas — on the
conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations — which has
not several meanings, and does not apply to both the physical and the
metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindus divided the face of the globe
geographically into seven zones, climates, dwipas, and into seven hells and
seven heavens, allegorically, that measure of seven did not apply in both cases
to the same localities. It is the north pole, the country of “
Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh
principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the occult calculation, for it
represents the region of Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara
is shown as the seventh zone, or dwipa, which encompasses the
*
Every name in the Purânas has to be examined at least under two aspects ;
geographically, and metaphysically, in its allegorical application ; e.g.,
Nila, the (blue) mountain which is one of the boundaries to the north of
Meru, is again to be sought geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and
again in a mountain quite different from the others (in Western Africa).
Jambu-dwipa is Vishnu’s dominion — the world, limited in the
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 Parasâra. Likewise with Pushkara and all
others.
which
stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand
years, who are free from sickness or failing ; where there is neither virtue
nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “ of the same nature as the
Gods,” (Vishnu Purâna, Book I I. ch. iv.). Wilford is inclined to
see Meru in
Wilford
accuses the modern Brahmans “ of having jumbled them (islands and
countries) all together ” (A.R. I I I. 300) ; but he jumbled them
still more. He believes that as the Brahmanda and Vayu Purânas divide the
old continent into seven dwipas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond
which lie the regions and mountains of Atala (ibid), hence “ most
probably the Greeks divided the nation of Atlantis, which, as it could not be
found after having once been discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed
by some shock of nature.”
Finding
certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even
Homer, had all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala — a nether region
located at the Southern pole — we prefer holding to the statements given
in the secret books. We believe in the seven “ continents,” four of
which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and two are to
appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent
in the modern sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to
Pushkara,* refers to the geographical names given (i.) to the dry lands
covering the face of the whole earth during the period of a Root-Race, in
general ; and (ii.) to what remained of these after a geological (race) Pralaya—
as “ Jambu,” for instance : and (iii.) to those localities which
will enter, after the future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal
“ continents,” peninsulas, or dwipas† — each continent
being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded with
water. Thus, that whatever
*
Jambu, Plaksha, Salmali, Kusa, Krauncha, Sâka, and Pushkara.
†
Such as Sâka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist, but into
which will enter such lands as some portions of
“
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 Purânic “ 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 Sâka-dwipa is (or will be) a
continent, and that Sankha-dwipa, as shown in the Vayu Purâna, is only
“ a minor island,” one of the nine divisions (to which Vayu adds
six more) of Bharata Varsha. Because Sankha-dwipa was peopled by “
Mlechchhas (unclean foreigners), who worshipped Hindu divinities,”
therefore they were connected with India.* This accounts for Sankhasura, a King
of a portion of Sankha-dwipa, who was killed by
“
On the banks of the
It
is not on the banks of the
That
not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large
continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and
islands (called dwipas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole
of the North and
*
They were called demons, Asuras, giants, and monsters, because of their
wicked-ness ; and thus their country was likened to Atala — a hell,
because of that.
†
Not on the river
Asiatic
Researches. ) And his
facts and quotations from the Purânas give direct and conclusive
evidence that the Aryan Hindus 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 is
given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, I I I., pp.
325, et seq. : —
“
In their distress the few nations who survived (in the war between Devatas and
Daityas) raised their hands to Bhagavan, ‘ Let him who can deliver us . .
. be our King’ ; using the word I’T (a magic term not
understood by Wilford, evidently) which re-echoed through the whole
country.”
Then
comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kali are strangely agitated,
“ when there appeared from the waves . . a man, afterwards called
I’T, at the head of a numerous army, saying abhayan, no fear
” . . . and scattered the enemy. “ The King I’T,”
explains Wilford, “ is a subor- dinate incarnation of M’rira
” (Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably ?) who “ re-established peace
and prosperity throughout all Sankha-dwipa, through Barbaradesa,
Hissast’han and Awasthan or
Surely,
if the Hindu 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 Kala pani (the black waters of the
Ocean) in the days of Phœnician navigation — then their
Purânas must be older than those Phœnicians (placed at from 2,000 to
3,000 years B.C.). At any rate those traditions must have been older ; * as
—
“
In the above accounts,” writes an adept, “ the Hindus speak of this
island as existing and in great power ; it must, therefore, have been
more than eleven thousand years ago.”
But
another calculation and proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these
Hindu Aryans who knew of (because they had once dwelt in it) and described the
last surviving
*
Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bharata or
perished
soon after the upheaval of the two
“
We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of
the remaining
Now,
considering this statement from its astronomical aspect, and knowing that
Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God ; and that he is said to
have killed Dev-Sefid, the white giant — a possible personification
of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas — perchance Krishna
may be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun ? Those
inhabitants (the Atlantides) are, we have seen, accused by Diodorus of daily cursing
the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is an astronomical
interpretation of course. But it will now be proved that Sankhasura, and Sancha
dwipa, and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically
Plato’s “ Atlantis ” in Hindu dress.
It
was just remarked that since, in the Purânic accounts, the island is still
existing, then those accounts must be older than the 11,000 years elapsed
since Sancha dwipa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. Is it not
barely possible that Hindus should have known the island still earlier ? Let us
turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if one
assumes, according to the said adept, that “ at the time when the summer
tropical ‘ colure ’ passed through the Pleiades, when cor-Leonis
would be upon the equator ; and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at
sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at
noon.”
This
explains, perhaps, why the Singhalese, the heirs of the
*
†
If Div or Dev-Sefid’s (the Taradaitya’s) abode was on the seventh
stage, it is because he came from Pushkara, the Pâtâla
(antipodes) of
Râkshasas
and Giants of Lanka, and the direct descendants of Singha, or Leo,
became connected with Sancha dwipa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis).
Only, as shown by Mackey’s “ Sphinxiad,” this must
have occurred about 23,000 years ago, astronomically ; at which time the
obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and
consequently Taurus must have passed over “ Atlantis ” or “
Sancha dwipa.” And that it was so is clearly demonstrated.
“
The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bharata to Sancha to meet Rishabha (Taurus)
every Kalpa. But when those of the
Asburj
(or Azburj), whether the
Do
the Greeks, accused of borrowing a Hindu fiction (Atala), and inventing from it
another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions
and the number seven from them ? (Vide in Part I I. the several sections
on the SEPTENATE in nature.)
“
The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did
once,” says Proclus, “ for Marcellus, who wrote a history of
Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great an island once existed, and
this is evidenced by those who composed histories relative to the external sea.
For they relate that in this time there were seven islands in the
Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine ; and besides these, three of immense
magnitude, sacred to Pluto . . . Jupiter . . . and Neptune. And, besides this,
the inhabitants of the last island (Poseidonis) preserved the memory of the
prodigious magnitude of the Atlantic island as related by their ancestors,
and of its governing for many periods all the islands in the Atlantic sea. From
this isle one may pass to other large
*
Neither Atlantis, nor yet Sancha dwipa, was ever called “
islands
beyond, which are not far from the firm land, near which is the true
sea.”
“
These seven dwipas (inaccurately rendered islands) constitute, according to
Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis,” writes Wilford himself. . .
. “ This evidently shows that Atlantis is the old continent. . . .
The Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm (?) : this is well known to
the Purânics, some of whom assert that in consequence of this dreadful
convulsion of nature, six of the dwipas disappeared ” . . . (xi.,
27).
Enough
proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless,
direct proofs based on exact science are also added. Volumes might be written,
however, to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through
the eyes and ears of their respective authorities.
Hence
the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount
in the
“
It is to those unclean spirits chained on
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 I I I. col. 302) : —
“ It is called nehhaschim, because the magicians (practical
Kabalists) work surrounded by the light of the primordial serpent, which
they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars
” . . . which means simply the astral light, so called by the
Martinists, by Eliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists. (Vide
Sections about.)
THE “ CURSE ” FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL
POINT OF VIEW.
The
foregoing teachings of the SECRET DOCTRINE, supplemented by universal
traditions, must now have demonstrated that the Brâhmanas and
Purânas, the Yâthâs 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 from entering, in these two volumes,
into further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which
preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the psychic
and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Aryan)
humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches
grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been
shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional
speculations of more than one philosopher and scientist of the later ages, that
the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are corroborated by inferential as well as
by direct proof in almost every case. That neither the “ legendary
” giants, nor the lost continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding
races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume,
science will find itself more than once unable to reply ; they will, it is
hoped, finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred
number in nature, and our figures in general. (Vide § § on the Septenaries.)
Meanwhile,
one task is left incomplete : that of disposing of that most pernicious of all
the theological dogmas — the CURSE under which mankind is alleged to have
suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of
Creative
powers in man were the gift of divine wisdom, not the result of sin. This is
clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses
Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses
his “ chosen people ” by saying “ Be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the earth ” (Gen. ix. 1). The curse was not brought
on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the
still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way ; hence the
Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological
law. Nor was the curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural
union, as all the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons ; but, for
abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the
life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When
understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and
Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning,
conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had
never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones “ in
sorrow.” Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth
Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the “ Serpent’s
” seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the
seed of woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of
wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into
animal gratification ; hence the law of Karma “ bruised the heel ”
of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally,
physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,*
until, from the healthy King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became
in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the
wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the
most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals ! †
This
is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one
touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse
is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress
hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing
— a gift quickened by the “ Lords of Wisdom,” who have poured
on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The
divine Titan has then suffered in vain ; and one feels inclined to regret his
benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by
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 Agnishwatta and other divine “ Sons of the Flame of Wisdom ”
(personified by the Greeks in Prometheus ‡ ), may well, in
*
How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu
on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in
civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two
millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brahmin
was a grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when,
after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His
very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in accordance with
his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjâb, for instance,
where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European,
licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds
the finest men — so far as stature and physical strength go — on
the whole globe ; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced
in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with
every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened.
†
Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied.
‡
In Mrs. Anna Swanwick’s volumes, “ The Dramas of
Æschylus,” it is said of “ Prometheus Bound ” (Vol. I
the
injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in
our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift : but
to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL
ONES, is too heavy a Karma for “ Him ” “ who dared alone
”— when Zeus “ ardently desired ” to quench the entire
human race — to save “ that mortal race ” from perdition, or,
as the suffering Titan is made to say : —
“ From sinking blasted down to
Hades’ gloom.
For
this by the dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous
to suffer, piteous to behold,
I
who did mortals pity ! . . . .”
The
chorus remarking very pertinently : —
“ Vast boon was this thou gavest
unto mortals . . . .”
Prometheus
answers : —
“ Yea, and besides ‘ twas I
that gave them fire,
CHORUS
: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire ?
PROM.
: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn. . . . .”
But,
with the arts, the fire received has turned into the greatest curse : the
animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed
periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.* It is this which
hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility
of free-will ; the Titanic passions which represent humanity in its darkest
aspect ; “ the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires,
when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of
law.” †
Prometheus
having endowed man, according to Plato’s “ Protagoras,” with
that “ wisdom which ministers to physical well-being,” but the
lower aspect of manas of the animal (
the
champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition . . . . is depicted as weak
and miserable in the extreme. . . . Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate
these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their
stead.” We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the
first product of nature and the sea, in the Stanzas (V, et seq.). . . .
Prometheus represents himself as having frus-trated this design, and as
being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonising
pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus, the Titan,
the symbol of finite reason and free will (of intellectual humanity, or the
higher aspect of Manas), depicted as the sublime philanthropist,
while Zeus, the supreme deity of
*
The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its seasons of
procreation, and the sexes become neutralized during the rest of the year.
Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but once in its life — before
it dies.
†
Introduction to “ Prometheus Bound,” p. 152.
instead
of “ an untainted mind, heaven’s first gift ”
(Æschylus), there was created the eternal vulture of the ever unsatisfied
desire, of regret and despair coupled with “ the dreamlike feebleness
that fetters the blind race of mortals ” ( p. 556), unto the day
when Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed deliverer, Herakles.
Now
Christians — Roman Catholics especially — have tried to
prophetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake
could be made. The true theosophist, the pursuer of divine wisdom and
worshipper of ABSOLUTE perfection — the unknown deity which is neither
Zeus nor Jehovah — will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he
will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse of
physical intelligence — the psychic being guided by the animal, and both
putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, “ All ye who can
read between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas — the
Indian and the Greek ; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on
the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely ‘ Prometheus Bound.’
” The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor 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, meaning “ he
who sees before him ” or futurity, shows* — in the arts he devised
and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least. For as he
complains to the daughters of Oceanos : —
“ Of prophecies the various modes
I fixed,
And among dreams did first discriminate
The truthful vision . . . and mortals
guided
To a
mysterious art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
All
arts to mortals from Prometheus came. . . ”
*
From πρὸ μῆτις, “
forethought.” “ Professor Kuhn,” we are told in the above-
named volumes of “ 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 manthami (used to denote the
process of fire kindling) acquired the secondary sense of snatching away ;
hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying
theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct ;
besides, there is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt in physical nature,
the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so in the
world of thought. And as we are told that the word manthami passed into
the Greek language and became the word manthano, to learn ; that is to
say, to appropriate knowledge ; whence prometheia, fore-knowledge,
forethought ; we may find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “
fire-bringer ” than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica,
the sacred sign and the instrument for kindling sacred fire, may explain
it better. “ Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha
personified,” goes on the author ; “ he finds his prototype in the
Aryan
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’ drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all
cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret
— the mystery of the creative fire. For this sacrilegious attempt
he is struck down by KRONOS * and delivered unto Zeus, the FATHER and creator
of a mankind which he would wish to have blind intellectually, and animal-like
; a personal deity, which will not see MAN “ like one of
us.” Hence Prometheus, “ the fire and light-giver,” is
chained on
“
E’en he the fore-ordained cannot escape. . . ”
—
ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son
|
of Zeus — |
||||||||||||
|
“ Ay, a son
bearing stronger than his sire ” (787) |
||||||||||||
|
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
|||
|
“ One of thine (Io’s) own descendants it
must be. |
. . |
” (791) |
||||||||||
|
— is born. |
This “ Son ” will deliver Prometheus (the suffering |
|||||||||||
Humanity)
from his own fatal gift. His name is, “ He who has to come. . . . ”
On
the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical
sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning ; namely, on the words
pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachos,
persecuted by Zeus — a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic
writers. Says the crucified Titan : —
“
And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By
which full clearly, in no riddling phrase
Wast
hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus
.
. . . . . . . . (v.
853).
. .
. . stroking thee With touch alone of unalarming hand ; Then thou dark
Epaphos shalt bear, whose name Records his sacred gendering . . . . ”
(870)
This
was construed by several fanatics — des Mousseaux and de Mir-
Matarisvan,
a divine . . . . personage, closely associated with the fire god of the Veda,
Agni. . . . .” Mati, in Sanskrit, is “ understanding,” and a
synonym of MAHAT and manas, and must be of some account in the origin of
the name : Promati is the son of Fohat, and has his story also.
*
Kronos is “ time,” and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive. (
See closing pages of this Sub-section. )
ville
amongst others — into a clear prophecy. Io — “ is the mother
of God,” we are told, and “ dark Epaphos ” — Christ.
But, the latter has not dethroned his father, except metaphorically, if one has
to regard Jehovah as that “ Father ” ; nor has the Christian
Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says, in verse
930, that Zeus will be humbled yet ; as for himself : —
“
. . . . such marriage he prepares
Which
from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall
hurl him down ; so shall be all fulfilled
His
father Kronos’ curse . . . .*
. .
. . Then let him sit
Confiding
in his lofty thunder-peals,
And
wielding with both hands the fiery bolt ;
For these
shall not avail, but fall he shall,
A
fall disgraceful, not
to be endured . . . . ” (v. 980).
“
Dark Epaphos ” was the Dionysos-Sabazius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter
in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “ father of the gods,”
assuming the shape of a Serpent, begot on Demeter, Dionysos, or the
solar Bacchus. Io is the moon, and at the same time the EVE of a new race,
and so is Demeter — in the present case. The Promethean myth is a
prophecy indeed ; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have
appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their
transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries
of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the
ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological
procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward
that second phase of its primitive state, when woman knew no man, and
human progeny was created, not begotten.
That
state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall
discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of
sex. It will be like “ the light that never shone on sea or land,” and
has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on
and up to the true spiritual intuition. Then (as expressed once in a
letter to a theosophist), “ the world will have a race of Buddhas and
Christs, for the world will have discovered that individuals have it in
their own powers to procreate Buddha-like children — or demons.”
“ When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the
demons, will die out.”
If
we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of
the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. KRONOS is of course “ time
” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children — the
* See, for explanation of this curse,
the last page of the present sub-section.
personal gods of exoteric dogmas included. He
has swallowed instead of Zeus, his stone idol ; but the symbol has
grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind was cycling down toward
only its physical and intellectual — not spiritual — perfection.
When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Kronos will be no longer
deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the
anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the serpent of wisdom,
represented in the Sabasian mysteries by the anthropomorphised Logos, the unity
of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Kronos) a progeny
— Dionysos-Bacchus or the “ dark Epaphos,” the “ mighty
one ” — the race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born ?
Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth-place in his prophecy to Io. Io
is the moon-goddess of generation — for she is
“
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’
“
Pluto’s gold-abounding flood. . . .” (825) Which is rightly
conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the
* It
is complained by the author of the version on, and translator of, “
Prometheus Bound ” that in this tracing of Io’s wanderings, “
no consistency with our known geography is attainable ” ( p. 191, Vol.
I I. ). There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey and
wandering from place to place of the race from which the “
tenth,” or Kalki Avatar, so called, is to issue. This he calls the
“ Kingly race born in
Ural,
the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “ the recognised inhabitants of this golden
region.” And here comes, between verses 825 and 835, a puzzle to all the
European interpreters. Says the Titan : — “ To these (Arimaspi and
Grypes) approach not ; a far border land Thou next wilt reach, where dwells a
swarthy race Near the Sun’s founts, where is the 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 sons. Now we must see how the
passage is interpreted. As Io is told that she has to travel eastward till she
comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the
“
This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. i.)
mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the Indus
(having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other river except the
Nile . . .), seemed to himself to have discovered the sources of the Nile, as
though the Nile, rising from some place in India, and flowing through much
desert land, and thereby losing its name Indus, next . . . flowed through inhabited
land, being now called the Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards
by the Egyptians. Virgil in the 4th Georgic echoes the absolute error ” (
p. 197, Vol. I I.).
Both
Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their geographical notions
; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not so sinned, in the least — not,
at any rate, in its esoteric spirit. When a certain race is symbolised, and
events pertaining to its history are rendered allegorically, no topographical
accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary traced for its personification.
Yet it so happens, that the river “ Ethiops ” is certainly the
—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.
—have
come from
Then
why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil have used the word
The
race of Io, “ the cow-horned maid ” is then simply the first
pioneer race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the
. .
. “ He to the land, three-cornered, thee shall guide,”
— namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found
— . . . . . “ that far-off colony. . .” (v. 830 et
seq.).
It
is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “ female race
” (873) which, “ fifth in descent ” from dark Epaphos —
“ Fifty in number shall return to
“
. . . A kingly race in
. .
. . . . . .
But
from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
Bow-famous,
who shall free me from these ills.” When this hero shall arise, the Titan
does not reveal ; for as he remarks : — “ This, to set forth at
large needs lengthy speech.”
*
Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with
†
That Io is identical allegorically with
But
“ Argos ” is Arghya Varsha, the land of libation of the old
Hierophants, whence the deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became
ages later that of its neighbour, India — the Arya-varta of old.
That
the subject formed part of the Sabasian mysteries is made known by several
ancient writers : by
The
translators of the drama wonder 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.” (Mrs.
A. Swanwick.) 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 during the mysteries no higher a
principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence — Manas
wedded to
*
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. c. xviii., tom. 1, p. 433 Edition Gronov.) But
Æschylus was initiated.
†
Sabasia was a periodical festival with mysteries enacted in honour of
some gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole evolution of the
races was performed in them.
cyclic
evolution the “ Man-Saviour,” the solar Bacchus or “
Dionysos,”
more
than a man.
Dionysos
is one with Osiris, with
There
is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to
produce final harmony. It is owing to this law of spiritual development
superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become
freed from its false gods, and find itself finally —SELF-REDEEMED.
In
its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus — his proto-and anti-types
being found in every ancient theogony — stands in each of them at the
very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life.
KRONOS is “ Time,” whose first law is that the order of the
successive and harmonious phases in the process of evolution during cyclic
development should be strictly preserved — under the severe penalty of
abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of
natural development that man — higher animal though he may be —
should become at once — intellectually, spiritually, and psychically
— the demi-god he is on earth, while his physical frame remains weaker
and more helpless and ephemeral than that of almost any huge mammal. The
contrast is too grotesque and violent ; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its
indwelling god. The gift of Prometheus thus became a CURSE — though foreknown
and foreseen by the HOST personified in that personage, as his name well
shows.* It is in this that rests, at one and the same time,
* Vide
supra, a foot-note concerning the etymology of προμῆτις
or forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying :
—
its
sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity,
though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive
slavery, intellectual self-conscious pain and even torture — “
while myriad time shall flow ” — to inane, imbecile, instinctual
beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme
of nature, the heavenly host, “ Prometheus,” still sacrificed
itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.* But while saving
man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the
self-consciousness of his responsibility — the result of his free will
— besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This
torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward
blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still unachieved at
that period of formation.
Spiritual
evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its
homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause,
if not the sole origin of Evil.† The allegory which shows KRONOS
cursing Zeus for dethroning him (in the primitive “ golden ” age of
Saturn, when all men were demi-gods), and for creating a physical race of men
weak and helpless in comparison ; and then as delivering to his (Zeus’)
revenge the culprit, who despoiled the gods of their prerogative of creation
and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually
— is highly philosophical. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the
Host of the primeval progenitors, of the PITAR, the “ Fathers ” who
created man senseless
“ Oh ! holy Ether, swiftly-winged
gales . . . .
Behold
what I, a god, from gods endure . . . . . . . . . And yet what say I ? Clearly
I foreknew All that must happen . . . .
. .
. . The Destined it behoves, As best I may, to bear, for well I wot How
incontestable the strength of Fate . . . . (105)
“
Fate ” stands here for KARMA, or Nemesis.
*
Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures.
The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and
such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds.
No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could
raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some
African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and
the Turanians so called. The “ sacred spark ”
s
missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the
globe, now happily — owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever
works in that direction — fast dying out. Verily mankind is “ of one
blood,” but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house,
artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is
latent.
†
The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil in the
differen-tiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of the unit into
plurality.
and
without any mind ; while the divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators,
the devas who “ fell ” into generation. The former are
spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the “ Prometheans
” : therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “ The lower Host,
whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus,” was on
this earth in its own sphere and plane of action ; whereas, the superior Host
was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of matter. They
(the inferior “ Host ”) were masters of all the Cosmic and lower
titanic forces ; the higher Titan possessed only the intellectual and spiritual
fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and
despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind : the
lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate
in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case
one sees once more —
“
A god . . . in fetters, anguish fraught ;
The
foe of Zeus, in hatred held by all. . . . ” A god, bereft even of that
supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self-sacrifice —
“
For that to men he bare too fond a mind. . .” as the divine Titan is
moved by altruism, but the mortal man by Selfishness and Egoism in every
instance.
The
modern Prometheus has now become Epi-metheus, “ he who sees only
after the event ” ; because the universal philanthropy of the former has
long ago degenerated into selfishness and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the
free Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has re-established
the broken harmony between the two natures — the terrestrial and the
divine ; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower titanic forces,
invulnerable in his personality, and immortal in his individuality, which
cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When
man understands that “ Deus non fecit mortem ” (Sap.
For
the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in
ADDITIONAL
FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA XI I.
THE
MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group
called “ Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa,” or the Records of the
“ Thirty-five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are exoterically
called. These personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist
religion “ Buddhas,” may just as well be called Rishis, or Avatars,
etc., as they are “ Buddhas who have preceded Sakyamuni ” only for
the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahatmas,
or Buddhas, are a universal and common property : they are historical
sages — at any rate, for all the Occultists who believe in such a
hierarchy of Sages, the existence of which has been proved to them by the
learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some ninety-seven
Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,* mostly imaginary personages,
who are really the personifications of the powers of the first-named.†
These “ baskets ” of the oldest writings on “ palm leaves
” are kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the
history of that sub-race to which the particular “ Buddha-Lha ”
belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow are
extracted, and then rendered into a more comprehensible language, is said to
have been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest
day of the Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the
chief continents of the Atlantean race. The day when much, if not all, of that
which is given here from the archaic records, will be found correct, is not far
distant. Then the modern symbologists will acquire the certitude that even
Odin, or the god Woden, the highest god in the German and Scandinavian
mythology, is one of these thirty-five Buddhas ; one of the earliest, indeed,
for the continent to which he and his race belonged, is also one of the
earliest. So early, in truth, that in the days when tropical nature was to be
found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, one could cross almost by dry
land from Norway viâ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at
present surround Hudson’s
*
Gautama Buddha, named Shakya Thüb-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the
last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the divine dynasties
which instructed mankind.
†
Of these “ Buddhas,” or the “ Enlightened,” the far
distant predecessors of Gautama the Buddha, and who represent, we are taught,
once living men, great adepts and Saints, in whom the “ Sons of Wisdom
” had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatars of
the Celestial Beings — eleven only belong to the Atlantean race, and 24
to the Fifth race, from its beginnings. They are identical with the
Tirtan-karas of the Jainas.
Bay.*
Just, as in the palmy days of the Atlantean giants, the sons of the “
giants from the East,” a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our
days is termed the Sahara desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless
sleep at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Events which were never written outside the human memory, but which were
religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race,
may have been preserved by constant transmission “ within the book volume
of the brain,” and through countless 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 dawns of our lives ? Those lives are
countless, but the soul or spirit that animates us throughout these myriads of
existences is the same ; and though “ the book and volume ” of the physical
brain may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of
collective recollections can never desert the divine soul within us. Its
whispers may be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane
perceived by our physical senses ; yet the shadow of events that were,
just as much as the shadow of the events that are to come, is within its
perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind’s eye.
It
is this soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition more
than in written History, that what is said below is all true, and relates to
pre-historic facts.
This
is what is written in one passage : —
“
THE KINGS OF LIGHT HAVE DEPARTED IN WRATH. THE SINS OF MEN HAVE BECOME SO BLACK
THAT EARTH QUIVERS IN HER GREAT AGONY. . . . THE AZURE SEATS REMAIN EMPTY. WHO
OF THE BROWN, WHO OF THE RED, OR YET AMONG THE BLACK (races), CAN SIT IN
THE SEATS OF THE BLESSED, THE SEATS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MERCY ! WHO CAN ASSUME THE
FLOWER OF POWER, THE PLANT OF THE GOLDEN STEM AND THE AZURE BLOSSOM ? ”
*
This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the U. S. of
America, and the tumuli in
The
“ Kings of Light ” is the name given in all old records to the
Sovereigns of the divine Dynasties. The “ azure seats ” are
translated “ celestial thrones ” in certain documents. The “
flower of power ” is now the Lotus ; what it may have been at that
period, who can tell.
The
writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people.
They had become bereft of their “ azure ” (celestial) kings, and
“ they of the Deva hue,” the moon-like complexion, and
“ they of the refulgent (golden) face ” have gone “ to the
land of bliss, the land of metal and fire ” ; or — agreeably with
the rules of symbolism — to the lands lying North and East, from whence
“ the great waters have been swept away, sucked in by the earth and
dissipated in the air.” The wise races had perceived “ the black
storm-dragons, called down by the dragons of wisdom ” — and “
had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most
They
“ of the yellow hue ” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology
now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations ;
and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There entire new
races were born ; there they lived and died until the separation of the
nations. But this “ separation ” did not take place either in the
localities assigned for it by modern science, nor in the way the Aryans are
shown to have divided and separated by Mr. Max Müller and other Aryanists.
Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period. The
yellow-faced giants of the post-Atlantean day, had ample time, throughout this
forced confinement to one part of the world, and with the same racial blood and
without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, to branch off during a period of
nearly 700,000 years into the most heterogeneous and diversified types. The
same is shown in
Such
are the statements made and facts given in the archaic records. Collating and
comparing them with some modern theories of Evolution, minus natural
selection (Vide “ Physiological Selection ” by G. J.
Romanes, F.R.S.), these statements appear quite reasonable and logical.* Thus,
while the Aryans are the descendants of the yellow
—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, of course under different names, the respective years of the
Patriarchs being turned into periods, the whole being shown symbolical and
allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the
references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations,
showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their arts and
sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, are already spoken of
as having been drowned “ with their high civilizations and gods ”
(“ Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 65), how much more may the same be
said of the Atlanteans !
It
is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge of “
the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabha and Mayasabha,
mentioned in the Mahabhârata, the gift of Mayâsur to the Pandavas.
It is from them that they learnt aëronautics, Viwân Vidya
(the “ knowledge of flying in air-vehicles ”), and, therefore,
their great arts of meteorography and meteorology. It is from them, again, that
the Aryans inherited their most valuable science of the hidden virtues of precious
and other stones, of chemistry, or rather alchemy, of mineralogy, geology,
physics and astronomy.
Several
times the writer has put to herself the question : “ Is the story of
Exodus — in its details at least — as narrated in the Old
Testament, original ? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many
others, simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans ? ”
For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the
great similarity of the fundamental features ? The anger of “ God ”
at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “ chosen ” ones, to
spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their “ jewels of silver and
jewels of gold ” (Exod. xi.) ; and finally the Egyptians and their
Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea (xiv.). For here is a fragment of the earlier
story from the Commentary : —
* Vide
the first pages of Part I I I., SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
. .
. “ 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 (Viwân) 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 Agneyâstra (fire-weapons
worked by magic). But the Lords of the Dark Eye (“ Evil Eye
”) are stronger than they (the Elementals) and they are the
slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Ashtar (Vidya, the highest
magical knowledge).* Come and use yours (i.e., your magic powers, in
order to counteract those of the Sorcerers). Let every lord of the Dazzling
Face (an adept of the White Magic) cause the Viwân of every lord
of the Dark Face to come into his hands (or possession), lest any
(of the Sorcerers) should by its means escape from the waters, avoid
the rod of the Four, (Karmic deities) and save his wicked ’
(followers, or people).
‘
May every yellow face send sleep from himself (mesmerize ?) to every
black face. May even they (the Sorcerers) avoid pain and suffering. May
every man true to the Solar Gods bind (paralyze) every man under the
lunar gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny.
‘
And may every yellow face offer of his life-water (blood) to the
speaking animal of a black face, lest he awaken his master.†
‘
The hour has struck, the black night is ready, etc., etc.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘
Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the great Four.‡
May the Kings of light return.’ ”
*
Wrote the late Brahmâchari Bawa, a Yogi of great renown and holiness :
“ Exten- sive works on Ashtar Vidya and such other sciences were
at different times compiled in the languages of the times. But the Sanskrit
originals were lost at the time of the partial deluge of our country.” .
. . (See Theosophist of June, 1880, “ Some Things the Aryans
Knew.”) For Agneyâstra, see
†
Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way to
Frankenstein’s creation, which spoke and warned his master of every
approaching danger. The master was a “ black magician,” the
mechanical animal was informed by a djin, an Elemental, according to the
accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. Vide Part I
I., xxvii., “ Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic.”
‡
The four Karmic gods, called the Four Maharajahs in the Stanzas.
“
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 Viwâns, 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
Viwâns in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them
gone.”
Then
a passage shows some of the more powerful magicians of the “ Dark Face
” — who awoke earlier than the others — pursuing those who
had “ spoilt them ” and who were in the rear-guard, for —
“ the nations that were led away, were as thick as the stars of
the milky way,” says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit
only.
“
Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of men,
led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and
spreading out, expanded like a running stream of sweet waters.. . .
. . many of the faint-hearted among them perished on their way. But most
were saved.”
Yet
the pursuers, “ whose heads and chests soared high above the
water,” chased them “ for three lunar terms ” until finally
reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking
under their feet and the earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
This
sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in Exodus
was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the
story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the
These
men who “ divined the coming of floods ” were not Egyptians, who
never had any, except the periodical rising of the
p. 19).
After
this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who wrote,
several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould : — “ The
Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and
even Egyptian civilizations are nothing 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 prow 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,
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 a heirloom from the
Atlanteans — had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the
knowledge of the Zodiac.
As
already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that
humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these
with Zodiacal signs. The whole world’s History is recorded in the latter.
In the ancient temples of
As
Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, nor do they
understand those they happen to know (witness Bentley), the reader is advised,
in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon (Travels in
Egypt, Vol. I I.) in which, if understood, the two famous
Egyptian Zodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the
writer has no longer need to trust to what other students — who have
examined and studied both very carefully — have to say of them. As
asserted by the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, who was informed that the
terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, thus was
it found and corroborated by Mackey.* For he states that the Poles are
represented on the Zodiacs in both positions, “ And in that which shows
the Poles (polar axes) at right angles, there are marks which prove that
‘ it was not the last time they were in that position ; but the first ’
— after the Zodiacs had been traced.” “ Capricorn,” he
adds, “ is represented at the North Pole, and Cancer is divided, near its
middle, at the South Pole ; which is a confirmation that originally they had
their winter when the Sun was in Cancer ; but the chief characteristics of its
being a monument commemorating the first time that the Pole had been in
that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.” (See in Part I
Broadly
calculated, it is believed by the Egyptologists that the great Pyramid was
built 3,350 B.C. (See Proctor, Knowledge, Vol. I. pp. 242,
400) ; and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750 years before the Fourth
*
“ The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated ” by a
strangely intuitional symbologist and astronomer, a kind of a self-made adept
of
Dynasty
(supposed to have built the Pyramids) had appeared ( “ The Great
Pyramid,” Staniland Wake). Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age
assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that
“ all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had
already made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age
of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the
Now
on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far
Speaking
of the Circular Zodiac, given also by Denon, he says : — There,
“ the Lion is standing on the Serpent, and his tail forming a
curve downward, from which it is found that though six or seven hundred
thousand years must have passed between the two positions, yet they had
made but little difference between in the constellations of Leo and the Hydra ;
while Virgo is represented very differently in the two. In the circular
Zodiac, the Virgin is nursing her child ; but it seems that they had not
had that idea when the pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic ; for in
this Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the
Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds in her hand an ear of
wheat. It is much to be lamented that there is in this Zodiac a breach of the
figure in the latter part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo which has
taken away one Decan out of each sign.”
Nevertheless,
the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs :
namely, to the last three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth
Root-race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years.
The first of these (the “ Aryan-Asiatics ”) witnessed the doom of
the last of the populations of the “ giant Atlanteans ”* who
perished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) toward
the close of the Miocene Age.† The fourth sub-race witnessed the
destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans — the Aryo-Atlanteans
in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to
understand this the reader
*
The term “ Atlantean ” must not mislead the reader to regard these
as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said “
Asiatics.” Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who
represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races
and nations, more varied indeed than would be the “ Europeans ”
were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the
world ; which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps,
in less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red, yellow, white
and black Atlanteans ; giants and dwarfs (as some African tribes comparatively
are, even now).
†
Says a teacher in “ Esoteric Buddhism,” on p. 64 : “ In the
Eocene age, even in its very first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men
the (Lemuro) Atlanteans had already reached its highest point (of
civilization), and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present
continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking. . . .” And on page 70,
it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To
show how the continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has
but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years
before the beginning of the Tertiary period (see p. 65 of the same work), and
the last of “ Atlantis ” only 11,000 years ago ; thus both
overlapping — one the Atlantean period, and the other the Aryan.
is
asked to glance at the diagram of the genealogical tree of the Fifth Root-Race
— generally, though hardly correctly, called the Aryan race, and the
explanations appended to it.
Let
the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root Races and
the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr.
Sinnett’s “ Esoteric Buddhism.”
1.
There are seven ROUNDS in every manvan-
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 Kar
mic action. Examine the “
genealogical tree ” hereto appended, and you will understand. The
illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader
in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists
between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of
Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures — but only
within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison — the duration of
time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from
another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to
give accurate dates to a few ; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., down to
their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until
it is nearly impossible to separate them.
The
human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an
illustration.
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).
On
each of these limbs are seven BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES (C).
After
this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy “ leaves
” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a
nation or tribe of human beings.
Now
our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence — as a race sui
generis and quite free from its parent stem — about 1,000,000 years ;
therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding Sub-Races has
lived approximately 210,000 years ; thus each Family-Race has an average
existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European “ Family Race ”
has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the
innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “ season ” of
three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative
approximation of duration between the lives of a “ Family-Race ”
and a “ Sidereal year.”
The
knowledge of the foregoing, and the accurately correct division, formed part
and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the disciples,
and where they were transmitted by one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware
that the European astronomers assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the
invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2000 or 2400 B.C. (Proctor)
; and insist that this invention coincides in its date with that of the
erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern astronomer,
must appear quite absurd. The year of the Kaliyuga is said to have begun
between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3102 B.C. Now the Hindus
claim that in the year 20400 before Kaliyugam, the origin of their Zodiac
coincided with the spring equinox — there being at the time a conjunction
of the Sun and Moon — and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful
computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they
had started to establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was very real. That
“ epoch is the year 3102 before our era,” he writes. ( See Part
I II., Book I. “ Hindu Astronomy defended by an Academician”
.) The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of
the black Age — it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear
of Virgo and the star (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
*
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
“
But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments (the
Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs) does not exceed five millions of
years (which is not so)* ; which falls short of the records given us both
by the (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus ; which latter nation has registered a
knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years† ; which I have
seen upon a talisman of porcelain. . . . ”
The
Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura-Maya, as the modern
Hindus still have. As stated in “ Esoteric Buddhism,” the
Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and “ Romans ” some thousand years
ago, were “ remnants of the Atlanto-Aryans,” i.e., the
former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans ; the last-named, the descendants
of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to
Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The human Dynasty of the older
Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the knowledge of the
Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins.
Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records. All this has been
shown long ago.‡ And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75
and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has
correctly pointed out in his “ Ruins of Empires ” (p. 360) that it
is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.§
*
The forefathers of the Aryan Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations and
Zodiac from those born by Kriyasakti power, the “ Sons of Yoga ” ;
the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of Ruta.
†
The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight millions of
years, but the Egyptians could not.
‡
This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five
Years of Theosophy. ( Art. “ Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric
Buddhism,” pp. 325-46 ).
§
Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1447 B.C., it follows
that the first degree of “ Libra ” could not have coincided with
the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1790
since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed
since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.
CONCLUSION.
Space
forbids us to say anything more, and this part of the “ Secret Doctrine
” has to be closed. The forty-nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the
Commentaries just given are all that can be published in these volumes. These,
with some still older records — to which none but the highest Initiates
have access — and a whole library of comments, glossaries, and
explanations, form the synopsis of Man’s genesis.
It
is from the Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the
hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of
esoteric antiquity upon geology, anthropology, and even ethnology. We will
endeavour in the Part which follows, to establish a still closer metaphysical
connection between the earliest races and their Creators, the divine men
from other worlds ; accompanying the statements proffered with the most
important demonstrations of the same in esoteric Astronomy and Symbolism.
In
Volume I I I. of this work (the said volume and the IVth being almost ready) a
brief history of all the great adepts known to the ancients and the moderns in
their chronological order will be given, as also a bird’s eye view of the
Mysteries, their birth, growth, decay, and final death — in Europe. This
could not find room in the present work. Volume IV. will be almost entirely
devoted to Occult teachings.
The
duration of the periods that separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the
Fifth Race — in the historical * or even the legendary beginnings of the
latter — is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any
more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the post-diluvian ages
— marked at certain periodical epochs by the most terrible cataclysms
— too many races and nations were born, and have disappeared almost
without leaving a trace, for any one to offer any description of the slightest
value concerning them. Whether the Masters of Wisdom have a consecutive and
full history of our race from its incipient stage down to the present times ;
whether they possess the uninterrupted record of man since he became the
complete physical being, and became thereby the king of the animals and master
on this earth — is not for the writer to say. Most probably they have,
*
The word “ historical ” is used, because, although historians have
dwarfed almost absurdly the dates that separate certain events from our modern
day, nevertheless, once that they are known and accepted, they belong to
history. Thus the Trojan War is an historical event ; and though even
less than 1,000 years B.C. is the date assigned to it, yet in truth it is
nearer 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C.
and
such is our own personal conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest
Initiates, who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer
can, therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more.
But
even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream,
than as a possible reality.
This
is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the impression
made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and bred in European,
matter-of-fact and presumably civilized countries, she assimilated the
foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs of a certain
character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the long run, to every
earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years such were offered to her,
and now she has the full certitude that our present globe and its human races
must have been born, grown and developed in this, and in no other way.
But
this is the personal view of the writer ; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to
have any more weight than any other “ doxy,” in the eyes of those
to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are
we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these : “ How does one
know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme ? And supposing she
has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, as given in the
Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ancients ? How could they
have preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible antiquity ?
”
The
answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its end
“ is written in the stars,” i.e., is recorded in the Zodiac
and the Universal Symbolism whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates,
will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in
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
and Vidya, are not a whit more doubtful than the so-called ancient history of
the European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a century of
archæological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the
Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. So are our
data based upon the same readings, in addition to an almost inexhaustible
number of Secret works of which Europe knows nothing — plus the
perfect knowledge by the Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded.
Some of these records belong to an immense antiquity. Every 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 a fabric, which is covered with barely a dozen representations of
animals and birds. (See
Writing
was an ars incognita in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to
Grote, and unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C. ; and the Phœnicians
who had invented it, and knew writing as far back as 1500 B.C., at the
earliest,* were living among the Greeks, and elbowing them, all the time ! All
these scientific and contradictory conclusions disappeared, however, into thin
air, when Schliemann discovered (a) the site of ancient Troy, whose
actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable ; and (b),
excavated on that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions in characters
unknown to the palæontologists and the all-denying Sanskritists. Who
will now deny
Madame
Merian — says the author of “ Mythical Monsters,” who
gives this information in the Introduction— was accused of
deliberate falsehood in reference to her description of a bird-eating spider
nearly two hundred years ago. But now-a-days reliable observers have confirmed
it in regard to
* It
is an historical fact that Sanchoniathon compiled and wrote in Phœnician
characters — from annals and State documents in the archives of the
older Phœnician cities — the full record of their religion in
1250 B.C.
†
Prof. Virchow, in Appendix 1 to Schliemann’s Ilios.
‡
Gosse writes of the latter : “ She is set down a thorough heretic, not at
all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of
false facts in science.” (“ Romance of Natural History,”
p. 227.)
§
Dr. Cover writes : “ That famous bird of
boat
beneath the surface ; and their action has been reproduced for centuries
past . . . . by Japanese artists.” (“ Mythical Monsters,”
p. 11 Introd.).
And
if
Thus
let it be. No disbeliever who takes the “ Secret Doctrine ” for a
“ hoax ” is forced or even asked to credit our statements. These
have already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American
journalists before even the work went to press.*
Nor,
is it after all, necessary that any one should believe in the Occult Sciences
and the old teachings, before one knows anything or even
* So
far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MSS. of this work had not yet left
my writing table, and the Secret Doctrine was utterly unknown to the
world, it was already being denounced as a product of my brain and no more.
These are the flattering terms in which the Evening Telegraph (of
believes
in his own soul. No great truth was ever accepted a priori, and
generally a century or two passed before it began to glimmer in the human
consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive
discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of to-day are the
falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versâ. It is only in
the XXth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be
vindicated.
It
is no fact going against our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does
affirm that writing was unknown in the stone age. For it may have been unknown
during that period in the Fifth Aryan race, and have been perfectly known to
the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest civilization.
The cycles of the rise and fall of the nations and races are there to account
for it.
If
told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being palmed
off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with Jacolliot’s
“ Bible in India ” (in which, by the way, there are more truths
among its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and recognized
Orientalists) — the charge and comparison will dismay us very little. We
bide our time. Even the famous “ Ezour-Veda ” of the last century,
considered by Voltaire “ the most precious gift from the East to the
West,” and by Max Müller “ about the silliest book that can be
read,” is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when
the a priori negations of specialists became justified by subsequent
corroborations form but an insignificant percentage of those that were fully
vindicated by subsequent discoveries, and confirmed to the great dismay of the
learned objectors. “ Ezour Veda,” was a very small bone of
contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil de Perron,
and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such facts are
recorded by Professor Max 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 Brahmans, and that the
whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition ” (Science of Language,
p. 168). The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these
Brahmans, and other historical “ liars,” in the opinion of
our modern Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been
too varied and personal, for her not to know at least something of human
nature. “ When you doubt, abstain,” says the wise Zoroaster, whose
prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and
experience. Yet, like
With
this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives
of British scepticism we ought to close the debate, but our theosophical
readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult information.
Enough
was said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything
else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven Races, five of which
have nearly completed their earthly career, and have claimed that every
Root-Race, with its sub-races and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was
entirely distinct from its preceding and succeeding race. This will be objected
to, on the authority of uniform experience in the question of Anthropology, and
Ethnology. Man was — save in colour and type, and perhaps a difference in
facial peculiarities and cranial capacity — ever the same under every
climate and in every part of the world, say the Naturalists : ay, even in
stature. This, while maintaining that man descends from the same unknown
ancestor as the ape, a claim that is logically impossible without an infinite
variation of stature and form, from his first evolution into a biped. The very
logical persons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical
views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general derivation of
myths from “ the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature
” . . . . think it, “ less hard to believe that these wonderful
stories of gods and demi-gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of
all descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be inventions.”
It is only such “ transformations ” in physical nature, as much as
in the memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine
teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of modern Science,
based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries,
with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries ; and brushing away
that tissue of cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period
of hardly a few millenniums back, and which Europeans call their “ History,”
the Old Science says to us : Listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of
Humanity.
The
human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, and die.
Their sub-races and nations follow the same rule. If your all-denying modern
science and so-called philosophy do not contest that the human family is
composed of a variety of well-defined types and races, it is only because the
fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no external difference
between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the
other hand it is formally denied by most naturalists that mixed human races,
i.e., the seeds for entirely new races, are any longer formed in our
days. But this last is maintained on good grounds by de Quatrefages and some
others.
Nevertheless
our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever
forms man has passed through in the long pre-historic Past there are no more
changes for him (save certain variations, as at present) in the future. Hence that
our Sixth and Seventh Root Races are fictions.
To
this it is again answered : How do you know ? Your experience is limited
to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity and to
the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can
you tell what will or will not be ? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the
Secret Books and their no uncertain statements.
Since
the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, yet we find
the last of the Atlanteans, still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years
ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one race over the race which
succeeds it, though in character and external type the elder loses its
characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger race. This is
proved in all the formations of mixed human races. Now, Occult philosophy
teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new Race and Races are
preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will
take place, and has already silently commenced.
Pure
Anglo-Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the
Thus
the Americans have become in only three centuries a “ primary
race,” pro tem., before becoming a race apart, and strongly
separated from all other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of
the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most
decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European
or fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000
years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race ; until, in
consequence of cataclysms — the first series of those which must one day
destroy Europe, and still later the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both
Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of
our continent and isles — the Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on the
stage of our Round. When shall this be ? Who knows save the great Masters of Wisdom,
perchance, and they are as silent upon the subject as the snow-capped peaks
that tower above them. All we know is, that it will silently come into
existence ; so silently, indeed, that for long millenniums shall its pioneers
— the peculiar children who will grow into peculiar men and women —
be regarded as anomalous lusus 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. It
is the present men who will then begin to be regarded as exceptional mongrels,
until these die out in their turn in civilised lands ; surviving only in small
groups on islands — the mountain peaks of to-day — where they will
vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, perhaps millions of years hence, as
the Aztecs have, as the Nyam-Nyam and the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the
Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are the remnants of once mighty races, the
recollection of whose existence has entirely died out of the remembrance of the
modern generations, just as we shall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race
Humanity. The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of
millenniums, changing with it slower than its new successor, still changing in
stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our
Aryan race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This
process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole
sixth and seventh sub-races (vide supra, the diagram of the Genealogical
Tree of the Fifth Race). But the last remnants of the Fifth Continent
will not disappear until some time after the birth of the new Race ;
when another and new dwelling, the sixth continent, will have appeared
above the new waters on the face of the globe, so as to receive the new
stranger. To it also will emigrate and settle all those who shall be fortunate
enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be — as just said
— it is not for the writer to know. Only, as nature no more proceeds by
sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child into a mature
man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller submersions and
destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high
in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more
Americans when the Sixth Race commences ; no more, in fact, than Europeans ;
for they will have now become a new race, and many new nations. Yet
the Fifth will not die, but survive for a while : overlapping the new Race for
many hundred thousands of years to come, it will become transformed with it
— slower than its new successor — still getting entirely altered in
mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again into
giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans ; because while
the evolution of the Fourth race led the latter down to the very bottom of
materiality in its physical development, the present Race is on its ascending
arc ; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and
even of flesh.
Thus
it is the mankind of the New world — one by far the senior of our Old
one, a fact men had also forgotten — of 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 co-operative work with nature. Thus will mankind, race after race,
perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun,
to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only
to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle ; while a series of other
less favoured groups — the failures of nature — will, like some
individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace
behind.
Such
is the course of Nature under the sway of KARMIC LAW : of the ever present and
the ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few
Occultists : — “ THE PRESENT IS THE CHILD OF THE PAST ; THE FUTURE,
THE BEGOTTEN OF THE PRESENT. AND YET, O PRESENT MOMENT ! KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT
THOU HAST NO PARENT, NOR CANST THOU HAVE A CHILD ; THAT THOU ART EVER BEGETTING
BUT THYSELF ? BEFORE THOU HAST EVEN BEGUN TO SAY ‘ I AM THE PROGENY OF
THE DEPARTED MOMENT, THE CHILD OF THE PAST,’ THOU HAST BECOME THAT PAST
ITSELF. BEFORE THOU UTTEREST THE LAST SYLLABLE, BEHOLD ! THOU ART NO MORE THE
PRESENT BUT VERILY THAT FUTURE. THUS, ARE THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE
FUTURE, THE EVER-LIVING TRINITY IN ONE — THE MAHAMAYA OF THE ABSOLUTE
IS.”
BOOK II. , PART II.
THE
ARCHAIC
SYMBOLISM OF THE
WORLD-RELIGIONS.
“
The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only at the
garment — that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine ; more they know
not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak, but what the cloak
covers.”
(The
ZOHAR, iii., 152 ; Franck, 119.)
“
THE MYSTERIES OF THE FAITH (are) NOT TO BE DIVULGED TO ALL . . . . . It is
requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.”
(Clem.
Alex., “ Strom.” 12.)
CONTENTS.
PAGE
§
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY SCRIPTURE … … 449
XV I
XV I
I
XIX.
IS PLEROMA SATAN’S LAIR ? … … … … … …
506
XX.
PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN … … … … … … 519 His
Origin in Ancient
XXI.
ENOÏCHION-HENOCH … … … … … … …
529
XXI
I
XXIV.
THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE … … … 573
XXV.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD … … … … … 590
Saptaparna … … … … … … … … 590
The Tetraktis in relation to the Heptagon … … … 598 The
Septenary Element in the Vedas. It corroborates the Occult Teaching concerning
the Seven Globes and the Seven Races … … … … …
… … 605 The Septenary in the Exoteric Works … … …
… 611 Seven in Astronomy, Science and Magic … … … 618
The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists … … … … 630
BOOK I I. — PART I 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 stand-point must seem absurd, some necessary and additional
explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the Second Part of the
Stanzas are even more difficult to assimilate than those which are embodied in
Vol. I, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to be questioned here, as
Science will be in the Addenda (Part I I I.). Since our doctrines differ
so widely from the current ideas of both Materialism and Theology, the
Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of either or of both.
The
reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant quotations from various
old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old as the world ; and that the
present work is a simple attempt to render, in modern language and in a
phraseology with which the scientific and educated student is familiar, archaic
Genesis and History as taught in certain Asiatic centres of esoteric learning.
They must be accepted or rejected on their own merits, fully or partially ; but
not before they have been carefully compared with the corresponding theological
dogmas and the modern scientific theories and speculations.
One
feels a serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our age is
destined to discover in each western nation even one solitary uninitiated
scholar or philosopher capable of fully comprehending the spirit of archaic
philosophy. Nor can one be expected to do so, before the real meaning of these
terms, the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern esotericism, the words Sat
and Asat, — so freely used in the Rig-Veda, and elsewhere —
is thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to the Aryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony
of the Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the
average Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor
is it the “ not yet existing ” ; for Sat is in itself
neither the “ existent,” nor “ being.” SAT is the
immutable, the ever present, changeless and eternal root, from and through
which all proceeds. But it is far more than the potential force in the seed,
which propels onward the process of development, or what is now called
evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting.* Sat
*
The Hegelian doctrine, which identifies Absolute Being or “
Be-ness ” with non- Being,” and represents the Universe as an eternal
becoming, is identical with the Vedanta philosophy.
is
born from Asat, and ASAT is begotten by Sat : the perpetual
motion in a circle, truly ; yet a circle that can be squared only at the
supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana.
Barth
started a reflection on the Rig-Veda which was meant for a stern
criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original view of this
archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, while criticising, that scholar
revealed a truth, without being himself aware of its full importance. He
premises by saying that “ neither in the language nor in the thought of
the Rig-Veda ” has he “ been able to discover that quality of
primitive natural simplicity, which so many are fain to see in it.”
Barth had Max Müller in his mind’s eye when writing this. For the
famous
So
divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the importance and
intrinsic value of the Rig Veda, that those opinions become entirely biassed
whichever way they incline. Thus Mr. Max Müller declares that : “
Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of
“
The poetry it (the Rig Veda) contains appears to me, on the contrary,”
says Barth “ 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.”
(“ The Religions of India,” p. xiii.)
We
will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the phraseology in
use among the “ initiated,” or whether he belongs himself to such a
group ; for, in the latter case, he would hardly have used such language. But
the above shows the remarkable disagreement between scholars even with regard
to the external character of the Rig Veda. What, then, can any of the
modern Sanskritists know about its internal or esoteric meaning, beyond
the correct inference of Barth, that this Scripture has been compiled by
INITIATES ?
The
whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The ancient
adepts have solved the great problems of science, however unwilling modern
materialism may be to admit the fact. The mysteries of Life and Death were
fathomed by the great master-minds of antiquity ; and if they have preserved
them in secresy and silence, it is because these problems formed part of the
sacred mysteries ; and, secondly, because they must have remained
incomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If such
teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in philosophy, it may
be a consolation to the Theosophists to learn, on good proofs, that the
speculations of modern psychologists — whether serious Idealists, like
Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering pseudo-Idealists — are far more
chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in
Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o’-the-wisps of materialistic
imagination, of the brains that evolved them — and no more. While they
deny, we affirm ; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the sages
of antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good
reasons, we say : Certus sum, scio quod credidi ; to which our
critics reply : Credat 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
§ XV I.
ADAM-ADAMI.
NAMES
such as Adam-Adami, used by Mr. Chwolsohn in his “ Nabathean Agriculture
” * and derided by M. Renan, may prove little to the profane. To the
Occultist, however, once that the term is found in a work of such immense
antiquity as the above cited, it proves a good deal : for instance that Adami
was a manifold symbol, originating with the Aryan people, as the root word
shows, and having been taken from them by the Semites and the Turanians —
as many other things were.
“
Adam-Adami ” is a generic compound name as old as languages are. The
Secret Doctrine teaches that Ad-i was the name given to the first speaking
race of mankind — in this Round — by the Aryans. Hence the Adonim
and Adonai (the ancient plural form of the word Adon), which the
Jews applied to their Jehovah and angels, who were simply the first spiritual
and ethereal sons of the earth ; and the god Adonis, who in his many variations
stood for the “ First Lord.” Adam is the Sanskrit Ada-Nâth,
also meaning first Lord, as Ad-Iswara, or any Ad (the first)
followed by any adjective or substantive. The reason for this is that such
truths were a common inheritance. It was a revelation received by the first
mankind before that time which, in Biblical phraseology, is called “ the
period of one lip and word,” or speech ; knowledge expanded by
man’s own intuition later on, but still later hidden from profanation
under an adequate symbology. The author of the “ Qabbalah, (according
to), the philosophical writings of Ibn Gebirol,” shows the Israelite
using “ Adonai,” (Lord) instead of Eh’yeh (I
am) and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonai is rendered “ Lord ”
in the Bible, “ the lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more
general term Elohim, is translated God.”
(p.
175.)
A
curious work was translated in 1860 or thereabout, by the Orientalist
Chwolsohn, and presented to ever-incredulous and flippant
* Vide infra.
“
Nabatheans ” — as some critics thought — were simply
the Sabeans, or Chaldean star-worshippers. The work is a retranslation from the
Arabic, into which language it was at first translated from the Chaldean.
Masoudi,
the Arabic Historian, speaks of those Nabatheans, and explains their
origin in this wise : “ After the Deluge (?) the nations established
themselves in various countries. Among these were the Nabatheans, who founded
the city of
The
translator, Chwolsohn, finds that the assertions of this historian are in
perfect accord with those of Moses in Genesis ; while more irreverent
critics might express the opinion that for this very reason their truth should
be suspected. It is useless to argue this point, which is of no value in the
present question. The weather-beaten, long-sinceburied problem, and the
difficulty of accounting, on any logical ground, for the phenomenal derivation
of millions of people of various races, of many civilized nations and tribes,
from three couples (Noah’s sons) in 346 years* after the Deluge, may
be left to the Karma of the author of Genesis, whether he is called
Moses or Ezra. That which is interesting in the work noticed is its contents,
the doctrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read esoterically, almost
all of them identical with the Secret Teachings.
Quatremère
suggested that this book might have been simply a copy made under
Nebuchadnezzar I I., from some Hamitic treatise, “ infinitely more
ancient,” while the author maintains, on “ internal and external
evidence,” that its Chaldean original was written out from the oral
discourses and teachings of a wealthy Babylonian landowner, named
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 XI I I. cent. 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, which 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
*
See Genesis and the authorised Chronology. In Chapt. ix. “ Noah
leaveth the
Adami (the “ red-earth ”). These
periods have aroused, as might have been expected, the defenders of the
chronology of the Biblical dead-letter meaning almost to fury. De Rougemont was
the first to make a levée-in-arms against the translator. He
reproaches him* with “ sacrificing Moses to an anonymous
author.” Berosus, he urges, “ however great were his
chronological errors, was at least in perfect accord with the prophet with
regard to the first men, since he speaks of Alorus-Adam, of Xisuthrus-Noah,
and of Belus-Nimrod,” etc. “ Therefore,” he adds,
“ the work must be an APOCRYPHA to be ranged with its
contemporaries — the fourth book of Esdras, that of Enoch,
the Sibylline Oracles, and the Book of Hermes — every one of
these dating no further back than two or three centuries B.C.” Ewald
came down still harder on Chwolsohn, and finally M. Renan. In the “ Revue
Germanique,Ӡ the ex-pupil pulls down the authority of his
master, by asking him to show a reason why his Nabathean Agriculture
should not be the fraudulent work of some Jew of the third or fourth century of
our era ? It can hardly be otherwise — argues the romancer of the “
Life of Jesus.” Since, in this in-folio on astrology and Sorcery
“ we recognise in the personages introduced by Qû-tâmy, all
the patriarchs of the Biblical legends, such as Adam-Adami, Anouka-Noah,
and his Ibrahim-Abraham etc., etc.”
This
is no reason, since Adam and others are generic names. Meanwhile it is humbly
submitted that, all things considered, an apocrypha —if even of
the third century A.D., instead of the thirteenth century B.C., as suggested by
Quatremère — 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 — two centuries older, though we know
it to have sprung, Minerva-like, direct from the brain of the Arabian prophet ;
and we should have to pooh-pooh all the information we can get from the Talmud,
which, in its present form, was also compiled from older materials, and is not
earlier than the IX. century of our era.
The
curious “ Bible ” of the Chaldean adept, and the various criticisms
upon it (as in the Chwolsohn’s translation), are noticed, because it has
an important bearing upon a great portion of the present work.
* Annales de Philosophie, June
1860, p. 415. †
With
the exception of M. Renan, an iconoclast by principle — so pointedly
called by Jules Lemaître “ le Paganini du Néant ”
— the worst fault found with the work is, it would seem, that the “
apocrypha ” pretends to have been communicated as a revelation to
an adept by, and from, the “ idol of the moon,” who received it
from “ Saturn.” Hence, very naturally, it is “ a fairy tale
all round.” To this there is but one answer : it is no more a fairy tale
than the Bible, and if one falls, the other must follow it. Even the mode of
divination through “ the idol of the moon ” is the same as
practised by David, Saul, and the High Priests of the Jewish Tabernacle by
means of the Teraphim. In Volume I I I., Part I I. of this present work, the
practical methods of such ancient divination will be found.
The
“ Nabathean Agriculture ” is a compilation indeed ; it is no
apocrypha, but the repetition of the tenets of the Secret Doctrine under the
exoteric Chaldean form of national symbols, for the purpose of “ cloaking
” the tenets, just as the Books of Hermes and the Purânas are Egyptian
and Hindu attempts at the same. The work was as well known in antiquity as it
was during the Middle Ages. Maimonides speaks of it, and refers more than once
to this Chaldeo-Arabic MS., calling the Nabatheans by their co-religionary
name, i.e., “ star-worshippers,” or Sabeans, but yet failing
to see in this disfigured word “ Nabatheans ” the mystic name of
the caste devoted to Nebo (god of secret wisdom), which shows on
its face that the Nabatheans were an occult Brotherhood.* The Nabatheans
who, according to the Persian Yezidi, originally came to Syria from Busrah,
were the degenerate members of that fraternity ; still their religion, even at
that late day, was purely Kabalistic.† Nebo is the deity of the planet
Mercury, and Mercury is the god of Wisdom or Hermes, and Budha, which
the Jews called “ the Lord on high, the aspiring,” . . . and
the
Greeks Nabo, 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 Abarbinel
*
“ I will mention to thee the writings . . . respecting the belief of
the Sabeans,” he says. “ The most famous is the Book ‘
The Agriculture of the Nabatheans,’ which has been translated by Ibn
Wahohijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness. . . . It speaks of
preparations of TALISMANS, the drawing down of the powers of the SPIRITS,
MAGIC, DEMONS, and ghouls, which make their abode in the desert.”
(Maimonides, quoted by Dr. D. Chwolsohn, “ Die Ssabier und der
Ssabismus,” I I., p. 458.) The Nabatheans of Mount Lebanon believed in
the Seven Archangels, as their forefathers had believed in the Seven Great Stars,
the abodes and bodies of these Archangels, believed in to this day by the Roman
Catholics, as is shown elsewhere.
†
See “
praises
it in unmeasured terms. Spencer, quoting the latter, speaks of it as that
“ most excellent Oriental work,” adding (vol. 1., p. 354) that by
Nabatheans, the Sabeans, the Chaldeans, and the Egyptians, in short all those
nations against whom the laws of Moses were most severely enacted, have
to be understood.
Nebo,
the oldest God of Wisdom of Babylonia and
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
If,
therefore, Renan persists in regarding the Chaldean Scriptures — or what
remains of them — as apocryphal, it is quite immaterial to truth and
fact. There are other Orientalists who may be of a different opinion ; and even
were they not, it would still really matter very little. These doctrines
contain the teachings of Esoteric philosophy, and this must suffice. To those
who understand nothing of symbology it may appear astrolatry, pure and simple,
or to him who would conceal the esoteric truth, even “ heathenish
foolishness.” Maimonides, however, while expressing scorn for the
esotericism in the religion of other nations, confessed esotericism and
symbology in his own, preached silence and secresy upon the true meaning of
Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of Qû-tâmy,
the Chaldean, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the religion of the
earliest nations of the Fifth Race.
Why
then should M. Renan treat the name “ Adam-Adami ” with such
academical contempt ? The author of the “ Origins of Christianity ”
evidently knows nothing of the “ origins of pagan symbolism
” or of Esotericism either, otherwise he would have known that the name
was a form of universal symbol, referring, even with the Jews, not to
one man, but to four distinct humanities or mankinds. This is very easily
proven.
The
Kabalists teach the existence of four distinct
p.
418, et seq. He gives only four
It
is just at this point that the modern Kabalists — led into error by the
long generations of Christian mystics who have tampered with the Kabalistic
records wherever they could — diverge from the Occultists in their
interpretations, and take the later thought for the earlier idea. The original
Kabala was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with animal, or
terrestrial sexes ; the later Kabala has suffocated the divine ideal under the
heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say : — “ God made man male
and female.” “ Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued
creation and existence is called the Balance,” says the author of Qabbalah
; and being without this “ Balance,” connected with Ma-qom
(mysterious place),* even the First Race is not,
* Simply, the womb, the “ Holy of
Holies ” with the Semites.
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 Brahmâcharya. 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
This
will be demonstrated in the following Section.
Meanwhile,
it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates from the
Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in “ whose image he is made
” ; the third, from this second — an Androgyne. The latter is
symbolized in the 6th and 7th pairs of the male-female Æons, —
Amphian -Essumene, and Vannanin -Lamer (Father and Mother ; vide
Valentinian Table, in Epiphanius) — while the fourth Adam, or Race, is
represented by a Priapean monster. The latter — a post-Christian fancy
— is the degraded copy of the ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the
“ Good One,” or “ He, who created before anything existed,”
the Celestial Priapus — truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that
God returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the
post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with
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, 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
!
§ XV I I.
THE “ HOLY OF HOLIES.”
ITS DEGRADATION.
THE Sanctum
Sanctorum of the Ancients, i.e., that recess on the Western side of
the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only
aperture or door hung over with a curtain — also called the Adytum—
was common to all ancient nations.
Nevertheless,
a great difference is found between the secret meanings of this symbolical
place, in the esotericism of the Pagans and that of later Jews ; though the
symbology of it was originally identical throughout the ancient Races and
Nations. The Gentiles, by placing in the Adytum a sarcophagus, or
a tomb ( taphos ), and the solar-god to whom the temple was consecrated,
held it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration. They regarded it — in
its esoteric meaning — as the symbol of resurrection, cosmic,
solar (or diurnal), and human. It embraced the wide range of periodical and (in
time) punctual, Manvantaras, or the re-awakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to
new existences ; the sun being the most poetical and also the most grandiose
symbol of the same in heaven, and man — in his re-incarnations — on
Earth. The Jews — whose realism, if judged by the dead letter, was as
practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now* — in the course of
their estrangement from the gods of their pagan neighbours, consummated a
national and levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of
Holies as the most solemn sign of their Monotheism — exoterically ; while
seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol — esoterically. While the
Kabalists knew but Ain-Soph and the “ gods ” of the Mysteries, the
Levites had no tomb, no god in their adytum but the “ Sacred ” Ark
of the Covenant — their “ Holy of Holies.”
When
the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, however, the profane will be
better able to understand why David danced “ uncovered ” before the
ark of the Covenant, and was so anxious to appear vile for the
sake of his “ Lord,” and base in his own sight. (See 2
Samuel vi. 16-22.)
The
ark is the navi-form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has
*
But it was not so, in reality, witness their prophets. It is the later Rabbis
and the Talmudic scheme that killed out all spirituality from the body of their
symbols ; leaving only their Scriptures — a dead shell, from which the
Soul has departed.
a
long dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a
word about it in the Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus : — “ ᾽Αρχὴ
in this application answers to the Hebrew rasit or wisdom . . . . a word
which had the meaning of the emblem of the female generative power, the Arg or Arca,
in which the germ of all nature was supposed to float or brood on the great
abyss during the interval which took place after every mundane cycle.”
Quite so ; and the Jewish ark of the Covenant had precisely the same
significance ; with the supplementary addition that, instead of a beautiful
and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the matrix of Nature and
resurrection) as in the Sanctum sanctorum of the pagans, they had the
ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two cherubs set
up on the coffer or ark of the covenant, facing each other, with their wings
spread in such a manner as to form a perfect yoni (as now seen in
India). Besides which, this generative symbol had its significance enforced by
the four mystic letters of Jehovah’s name, namely, ; or meaning Jod
(membrum Virile, see Kabala) ; (Hé, the womb) ; (Vau, a
crook or a hook, a nail), and again, meaning also “ an opening ) ; the
whole forming the perfect bisexual emblem or symbol or Y (e) H (o) V (a)
H, the male and female symbol.
Perhaps
also, when people realise the true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh
Kadeshim, “ the holy ones,” or “ the consecrated to the temple
of the Lord,” — the “ Holy of Holies ” of the
latter may assume an aspect far from edifying.
Iacchus
again is Iao or Jehovah ; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god.
“ Who shall ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord ? ”
asks the holy king David, “ who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu
” (Psalms xxiv. 3). Kadesh may mean in one sense to devote,
hallow, sanctify, and even to initiate or to set apart ; but it also means
the ministry of lascivious rites (the Venus-worship) and the true
interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy
xxiii. 17 ; Hosea iv. 14 ; and Genesis xxxvii. from verses 15 to
22. The “ holy ” Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical, as
to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu
pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or galli, lived “ by the house of
the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove,” or the bust of
Venus-Astarte, says verse the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings.
The
dance performed by David round the ark was the “ circle-dance,”
said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the
dance of the daughters of
“
The
p.
444.) Mistaken is he who accepts the Kabalistic works of to-day, and the
interpretations of the Zohar by the Rabbis, for the genuine Kabalistic lore of
old !* For no more to-day than in the day of Frederick von Schelling does the
Kabala accessible to Europe and America, contain much more than “ ruins
and fragments, much distorted remnants still of that primitive system which
is the key to all religious systems ” (See Kabbala, by Prof. Franck, Preface).
The oldest system and the
*
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 XI I Ith
century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn Gebirol gave out the same philosophical
teaching 225 years before the day of Moses de Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar
will ever deny the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines
upon the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the “ Chaldean Book of
Numbers,” as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no doubt,
as those used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference between the two
ways of treating the same esoteric subjects, which, while proving the enormous
antiquity of the esoteric system, points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and
even Christian sectarianism in the compilation and glossaries of the Zoharic
system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol never quoted from the Scriptures to
enforce the teachings (vide I. Myer’s Qabbalah, p. 7).
Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained to this day,
“ a running commentary on the . . . Books of the Penta-teuch ” (ibid.),
with a few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the archaic
esoteric philosophy ; the other, only that portion which was adapted to the lost
Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while the system, or the trunk on
which the primitive original Zohar was engrafted, is of an immense antiquity
many of the (later) Zoharic offshoots are strongly coloured by the peculiar views
held by Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldean), the friends and co-workers of
Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their interpretations.
Chaldean Kabala were identical. The latest
renderings of the Zohar are those of the Synagogue in the early
centuries — i.e., the Thorah, dogmatic and uncompromising.
The
“ King’s Chamber ” in Cheops’ Pyramid is
thus an Egyptian “ Holy of Holies.” On the days of the Mysteries of
Initiation, the candidate, representing the solar god, had to descend into the
Sarcophagus, and represent the energizing ray, entering into the fecund womb of
Nature. Emerging from it on the following morning, he typified the resurrection
of life after the change called Death. In the great MYSTERIES his figurative
death lasted two days, when with the Sun he arose on third morning, after a
last night of the most cruel trials. While the postulant represented the Sun
— the all-vivifying Orb that “ resurrects ” every morning but
to impart life to all — the Sarcophagus was symbolic of the female
principle. This, in
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 ΙΙΙΣΤΙΣ
ΣΟΦΙΑ, the seven great gods, divided into two triads
and the highest God (the Sun) are : the lower 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 ; (vide § § 359 and 361 et seq).
This
requires no proof. Astoreth was in one sense an impersonal symbol of nature,
the ship of Life carrying throughout the boundless
Now
Eustathius declares that (ΙΩ) IO means the moon, in the
dialect of the Argians ; and it was one of the names of the same in
This
is how a scholar explains it : —
* Timæus,
the Locrian, speaking of Arka, calls her “ the Principle of best
things.” The word arcane, “ hidden,” or secret, is
derived from Arka. “ To no one is the Arcane shown except
to the most High ” (Codex Nazareus), alluding to nature the
female, and Spirit, the male Power. All the Sun-Gods were called Archagetos
“ born from the Arka,” the divine Virgin-Mother of the
Heavens.
†
Because composed of ten dots arranged triangularly in four rows. It is the Tetragrammaton
of the Western Kabalists.
“
I find, on the Rosetta stone of Uhlemann, the word mouth, also in
Seiffarth, viz., the name of the Moon used as a cycle of Time, hence the
lunar
month from the
hieroglyph
with
and
as
determina
tives
given, as the Coptic I O H, or I O H. The Hebrew may also be used as I O H, for
the letter yau, or , was used for o and for u,
and for v or w. This, before the Massora, of which the . was used as =o, =u,
and
= v or w. Now I had worked it out by original search that the great distinctive
function of the god-name Jehovah was designative of the influence of the moon
as the causative of generation, and as of its exact value as a
lunar year in the natural measure of days, as you will fully see, . . .
. And here comes this linguistic same word from a source far more ancient ;
viz., the Coptic, or rather from the old Egyptian in time of the Coptic.”
. . . . (From a MS.)
This
is the more remarkable when Egyptology compares this with the little which it
knows about the Theban triad — composed of Ammon, Mouth,
(or Mout) and their son Khonsoo. This triad was, when united,
contained in the moon as their common symbol ; and when separated, it was Khonsoo
who was the god, LUNUS, being thus con- founded with Thot and Phtah. His mother
Mout( h )— the name signifying Mother, by the bye, not the moon,
which was only her Symbol — is called the “ Queen of Heaven ”
; the “ Virgin,” etc., etc., as she is an aspect of Isis, Hathor,
and other mother goddesses. She was less the wife than the mother of Ammon,
whose distinct title is “ the husband of his Mother.” In a statuette
at Boulaq, Cairo, this triad is represented (Number 1981 Serapeum,
Greek Period) as a mummy-god holding in his hand three different
sceptres, and bearing the lunar disc on his head, the characteristic tress of
hair showing the design of representing it as that of an infant god, or
“ the Sun,” in the triad. He was the god of Destinies in Thebes,
and appears under two aspects (1) as “ Khonsoo, the Lunar god, and Lord
of Thebes, Nofir-hotpoo — ‘ he who is in absolute repose
’ ; and (2) as Khonsoo Iri-sokhroo, or ‘ Khonsoo, who
executes Destiny ’ : the former preparing the events and conceiving them
for those born under his generative influence ; the latter putting them into
action.” (See Maspero’s Definitions). Under theogonic
permutations Ammon becomes Horus, HOR-AMMON, and Mout(h)-Isis is seen suckling
him in a statuette of the Saitic period. (
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 any
one who reads “ The Source of Measures,” or “ Hebrew
Egyptian Mystery,” and understands the undeniable, clear, and
mathematical proofs that the esoteric foundations, or the system used in
the building of the Great Pyramid, and the architectural measurements in the
Temple of Solomon (whether the latter be mythical or real), Noah’s ark,
and the ark of the Covenant, are the same. If anything in the world can settle
the dispute that the old, as much as the later, Jews (post-Babylonian), and
especially the former, built their theogony and religion on the very same
foundation as all Pagans did, it is the work in question.
And
now it may be as well to remind the reader of that which was said of I A O, in
our work, “
“
No other deity affords such a variety of etymologies as Jaho, nor is there any
name which can be so variously pronounced. It is only by associating it with
the Masoretic points that the later Rabbins succeeded in making Jehovah read
‘ Adonai ’ — or Lord, as Philo Byblus spells it in Greek
letters ΙΕΥΩ— IEVO. Theodoret says that the
Samaritans pronounced it Jahé (yahra), and the Jews Yaho ; which would
make it as we have shown, I — Ah — O. Diodorus states that ‘
among the Jews they relate that Moses called the god Iao.’ It is on the
authority of the Bible itself, therefore, that we maintain that before
his initiation by Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses had never known the word
Jaho.”*
The above
receives corroboration in a private letter from a very learned Kabalist. In
STANZA IV. and elsewhere it is stated that exoterically Brahma (neuter), so
flippantly and so often confused by the Orientalists with Brahmâ —
the male, is sometimes called Kala-hansa (Swan in the eternity), and the
esoteric meaning of A-ham-sa, is given. (I —am— he, so
ham being equal to sah “ he,” and aham “ I
” — a mystic anagram and permutation). It is also the “
four-faced ” Brahmâ, the Chatur mukha (the perfect cube) forming
itself within, and from the infinite circle ; and again the use
of the 1, 3, 5, and 77 = 14, as the esoteric hierarchy
of the Dhyan Chohans is explained. On this, the said correspondent comments in
this way : —
“
Of the 1, 3, 5, and twice 7, intending and very especially 13,514, which on a
circle may be read as 31415 (or π value), I think there cannot be a
possibility of doubting ; and especially when considered with symbol marks on sacr,†
‘ Chakra,’ or Circle of Vishnu.
“
But let me carry your description a step further : — You say ‘ The
One from
*
The student must be aware that Jethro is called the “ father-in-law
” of Moses ; not because Moses was really married to one of his seven
daughters. Moses was an Initiate, if he ever existed, and as such an ascetic, a
nazar, and could never be married, It is an allegory like everything else.
Zipporah (the shining) is one of the personified Occult Sciences given by
Revel-Jethro, the Midian priest Initiator, to Moses, his Egyptian pupil. The
“ well ” by which Moses sat down in his flight from the Pharaoh
symbolizes the “ well of Knowledge.”
†
In Hebrew the phallic symbol lingham and Yoni.
the
Egg, the six, and the five (See Stanza I V., Book I.)
give the numbers 1065, the value of the first born ’ . . . . . . If it be
so, then in 1065 we have the famous Jehovah’s name, the Jve or Jave,
or Jupiter, and by change of to or h to n, then or the Latin Jun
or Juno, the base of the Chinese riddle, the key measuring numbers of Sni
(Sinai) and Jehovah coming down on that mount, which numbers (1,065) are but
the use of our ratio of 113 to 355 because 1,065 = 355 � 3 which is circumference to a diameter
of 113 �
3 = 339. Thus the first born of Brahmâ Prajâpati (or any Demiurgos)
indicates a measuring use of a circular relation taken from the Chakra
(or Vishnu) and, as stated above, the Divine manifestation takes the form of
life and the first born.”
“
It is a most singular thing : At the entrance passage to the King’s
chamber the measurement from the surface of the Great Step* and the
Grand Gallery to
the
top of the said gallery, is by the very careful measures of Piazzi Smyth 339
inches. Take A as a centre and with this radius describe a circle ; the
diameter of that circle will be 339 � 2 = 678, and these numbers are those of the expression and
a the raven, in the ‘ Dove and raven ’
scenes or pictures of the Flood of Noah ; (the radius is taken to show division
into two parts, which are 1,065 each) for 113 (man) � 6 = 678 ; and the diameter to a
circumference of 1,065 � 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
133 5. 65 � 10,
stooping,
he becomes =56.5 or or Jehovah. That is, he per
2
sonifies† him as entering the Holy of Holies. But by Hebrew Esotericism
the chief function of Jehovah was child giving, etc., and that
because, by the numbers of his name, he was the measure of the lunar year,
which cycle of time, because by its factor of 7 (seven) it ran so co-ordinately
with the periods of the quickening, viability, and gestation, was taken as the causative
of the generative action and therefore was worshipped and besought.”
This
discovery connects Jehovah still more with all the other creative and
generative gods, solar and lunar, and especially with “ King ” Soma,
the Hindu Deus Lunus, the moon, because of the esoteric influence
attributed to this planet in Occultism. There are other corroborations of it,
however, in Hebrew tradition itself. Adam is spoken of in
339
* It
is on that step that one arrives on the plane of the level or floor and open
entrance to the King’s chamber, the Egyptian “ Holy of
Holies.”
†
The candidate for initiation always personified the god of the temple he
belonged to, as the High Priest personified the god at all times ; just as the
Pope now personates Peter and even Jesus Christ upon entering the inner altar
— the Christian “ Holy of Holies.”
Maimonides (More Nevochim, “ The
Guide of the Perplexed ” — truly ! ) in two aspects ; as a man,
like all others born of a man and a woman, and — as the prophet of the
Moon ; the reason of which is now made apparent, and has to be explained.
Adam,
as the supposed great “ Progenitor of the human race,” is, as Adam
Kadmon, made in the image of God — a priapic image, therefore. The
Hebrew words sacr and n’cabvah are, literally
translated, lingham (phallus) and yoni, notwithstanding their
translation in the Bible (Genesis i. v. 27.) “ male and
female.” As said there “ God creates ‘ Man in his own
image ’ . . . . . in the image of God created he him, male and
female created he them,” the androgyne Adam-Kadmon. Now this
Kabalistic name is not that of a living man, nor even of a human or divine
Being, but of the two sexes or organs of procreation, called in Hebrew with
that usual sincerity of language pre-eminently Biblical, sacr and n’cabvah*
; these two being, therefore, the image under which the “ Lord God
” appeared usually to his chosen people. That this is so, is now
undeniably proven by almost all the symbologists and Hebrew scholars as well as
by the Kabala. Therefore Adam is in one sense Jehovah. This makes plain another
general tradition in the East mentioned in Gregorie’s
“ Notes and Observations upon several passages in Scripture ”
(1684. Vol. 1 pp. 120-21) and quoted by Hargrave Jennings in his Phallicism
: “ That Adam was commanded by God that his dead body should be kept
above ground till committed to the middle of the earth by a priest of
the most High God.” Therefore, “ Noah daily prayed in the ark
before the BODY OF ADAM,” or before the Phallus in the ark, or
Holy of Holies, again. He who is a Kabalist and accustomed to the incessant
permutation of Biblical names, once they are interpreted numerically and
symbolically, will understand what is meant. Jehovah, from the two words of
which his name is composed, “ makes up the original idea of male-female
as birth-originator, for the was the membrum virile and Houah was
Eve.” So . . . “ the perfect one, as originator of
measures, takes also the form of birth origin, as hermaphrodite one ;
hence the phallic use of form.” (“ Source of Measures,”
159). Besides the same author shows and demonstrates numerically and
geometrically that (a) Arets, earth, Adam, man, and
H’Adam are cognate with each other, and are personified
in the Bible under one form, as the Egyptian and Hebrew Mars, god of the
generation ; and (b) that Jehovah, or “ Jah, is
*
Jehovah says to Moses “ the Summation of my name is Sacr, the
carrier of the germ ” — phallus. “ It is the vehicle
of the annunciation, and the sacr has passed down through ages to the sacr-factum
of the Roman priest, and the sacr-fice, and sacrament of the
English speaking race.” (Source of Measures, p. 236) Thence
marriage is a sacrament in the Greek and
Noah,
or Jehovah is Noah in Hebrew would be , or literally in English, Inch.”
The
above affords, then, a key to the said traditions. Noah, a divine permutation,
the supposed Saviour of Humanity, who carries in his ark or argha (the
moon), the germs of all living things, worships before the “ body of
Adam,” which body is the image of, and a Creator itself. Hence
Adam is called the “ Prophet of the Moon,” the Argha or
“ Holy of Holies ” of the (Yodh). This also shows the origin of the
Jewish popular belief that the face of Moses is in the moon—i.e.,
the spots in the Moon. For Moses and Jehovah are once more permutations, as has
been shown Kabalistically. Says the author of the “ Source of Measures
”
(p.
271) : “ There is one fact in regard to Moses and his works too important
to be omitted. When he is instructed by the Lord as to his mission, the power
name assumed by the Deity is, I am that I am, the Hebrew words being :
—
a
variety reading of . Now, Moses is , and equals 345. Add the values of the new
form of the name Jehovah, 21 + 501 + 21 = 543, or, by a reverse reading,
345 ; thus showing Moses to be a form of Jehovah in this combination. 21
÷ 2=10.5, or, reversed, 501, so that the asher
or the that in I am that I am is simply a guide to a use of 21 or
7 � 3 ; 5012=251 +, a very
valuable pyramid number, etc., etc. For a clearer explanation for the benefit
of non-Kabalists we put it thus : “ I am that I am ” is in Hebrew :
—
Âhiyé Asher
Âhiyé.
�
5,
10, 5, 1 200, 300, 1 5, 10, 5, 1 Add the numbers of these separate words and
you have : —
�
21
501 21 (which relates to the process of descending in fire on the mount to make
man, etc., etc.), and which is explained to be but a check and use of
the numbers of the mountains ; for : — on one side we have 10 +
5 + 6 =21, down the middle 501, and on the other side 6 +
5 + 10 = 21.” (From the same author.) (Vide §
XXII., “ The Symbolism of the Mystery Name IAO.”)
The
“ Holy of Holies,” both Kabalistic and Rabbinical, are thus shown
as an international symbol, and common property. Neither has originated with
the Hebrews ; but owing to the too realistic handling of the half-initiated
Levites, the symbol has with them acquired a significance which it hardly has
with any other people to this day, and which it was originally never meant to
have by the true Kabalist. The Lingham and Yoni of the modern
average Hindu is, on the face of it, of course, no better than the Rabbinical
“ Holy of Holies,” — but it is no worse ; and this is
a point gained on the Christian traducers of the Asiatic religious philoso
phies. For, in such religious myths, in the hidden symbolism of a creed and
philosophy, the spirit of the tenets propounded ought to decide their
relative value. And who will say, that, examined either way, this so-called
“ Wisdom,” applied solely to the uses and benefit of one little
nation, has ever developed in it anything like national ethics. The Prophets
are there, to show the walk in life, before, during, and after the days of
Moses, of the chosen but “ stiff-necked ” people. That they have
had at one time the Wisdom-Religion and use of the universal language and its
symbols at their disposal and in their posse ssion, is proved by the same
esotericism existing to this day in
With
the ancient Aryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime, and poetical,
however much the external appearance of their symbol may now militate
against the claim. The ceremony of passing through
* In
the fourth chapter of Genesis, v. 26, it is mis-translated, “ . . . And
he called his name Enos (man) ; then began men to call upon the name of
the Lord.” — which has no sense in it, since Adam and the others
must have done the same.
the
Holy of Holies (now symbolized by the cow), in the beginning through the temple
Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg) — in itself a symbol of
Universal, abstract nature — meant spiritual conception and birth, or
rather the re-birth of the individual and his regeneration : the stooping
man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass through the
matrix of mother nature, or the physical creature ready to re-become the
original spiritual Being, pre-natal MAN. With the Semite, that stooping
man meant the fall of Spirit into matter, and that fall and degradation
were apotheosized by him with the result of dragging Deity down to the level of
man. For the Aryan, the symbol represented the divorce of Spirit from matter,
its merging into and return to its primal Source ; for the Semite, the wedlock
of spiritual man with material female nature, the physiological being taking
pre-eminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Aryan views
of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world ; the Semite
interpretations emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe,
thus marking its national features and the idiosyncratic defects that
characterize many of the Jews to this day — gross realism, selfishness,
and sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father Jacob, with their
tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a covenant that his
“ seed shall be as the dust of the earth ” ; and that deity could
have no better image henceforth than that of the symbol of generation, and, as
representation, a number and numbers.
Carlyle
has wise words for both these nations. With the Hindu Aryan — the most
metaphysical and spiritual people on earth — religion has ever been, in
his words, “ an everlasting lode-star, that beams the brighter in the
heavens the darker here on earth grows the night around him.” The
religion of the Hindu detaches him from this earth ; therefore, even now, the
cow-symbol is one of the grandest and most philosophical among all others in
its inner meaning. To the “ MASTERS ” and “ Lords ” of
European potencies — the Israelites — certain words of Carlyle
apply still more admirably ; for them “ religion is a wise prudential
feeling grounded on mere calculation ” — and it was so from
its beginnings. Having burdened themselves with it, Christian nations feel
bound to defend and poetise it, at the expense of all other religions.
But
it was not so with the ancient nations. For them the passage entrance and the
sarcophagus in the King’s chamber meant regeneration — not
generation. It was the most solemn symbol, a Holy of Holies, indeed,
wherein were created immortal Hierophants and “ Sons of God ”
— never mortal men and Sons of lust and flesh — as now in the
hidden sense of the Semite Kabalist. The reason for the difference in the views
of the two races is easy to account for. The Aryan Hindu belongs to the oldest
races now on earth ; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. One is nearly one million
years old ; the other is a small sub-race some 8,000 years old and no more.*
But
Phallic worship has developed only with the gradual loss of the keys to the
inner meaning of religious symbols ; and there was a day when the Israelites
had beliefs as pure as the Aryans have. But now Judaism, built solely on
Phallic worship, has become one of the latest creeds in
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 Hindu Lingham is identical with “
Jacob’s Pillar ”
—most
undeniably. But the difference, as said, seems to consist in that the esoteric
significance of the Lingham was too truly sacred and metaphysical to be
revealed to the profane and the vulgar ; hence its superficial appearance was
left to the speculations of the mob. Nor would the Aryan Hierophant and
Brahmin, in their proud exclusiveness and the satisfaction of their knowledge,
go to the trouble of concealing its primeval nakedness under cunningly
devised fables ; whereas the Rabbi, having interpreted the symbol to suit his
own tendencies, had to veil the crude significance ; and this served a double
purpose — that of keeping his secret to himself and of exalting himself
*
Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Aryan race, born in
in
his supposed monotheism over the heathen, whom his Law commanded
him to hate.* A commandment now gladly accepted by the Christian too, in spite
of another and later commandment — “ love each other.” Both
Thus
it is maintained, that with regard to the contents of the Bible, one of two
hypotheses has to be admitted. Either behind the symbolic substitute —
Jehovah — there was the unknown, incognizable Diety, the Kabalistic
Ain-Soph ; or, the Jews have been from the beginning, no better than the
dead-letter Lingham-† worshippers of the
*
Whenever such analogies between the Gentiles and the Jews, and later the
Christians, were pointed out, it was the invariable custom of the latter to say
that it was the work of the Devil who forced the Pagans to imitate the
Jews for the purpose of throwing a slur on the religion of the one, true
living God. To this Faber says very justly “ Some have imagined that
the Gentiles were servile copyists of the Israelites, and that each point of
similitude was borrowed from the Mosaical Institutes. But this theory will by
no means solve the problem : both because we find the very same resemblance in
the ceremonies of nations far different from
†
Their consecrated pillars (unhewn stones) erected by Abraham and Jacob were
LINGHI.
most
refined as the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living
proof with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the LAW. For how
could those who invented the stupendous scheme now known as the Bible, or their
successors who knew, as all Kabalists do, that it was so invented for a popular
blind— how could they, we ask, feel reverence for such a phallic
symbol and a NUMBER, as Jehovah is shown most undeniably to be in the
Kabalistic works ? How could anyone worthy of the name of a philosopher, and
knowing the real secret meaning of their “ pillar of Jacob,”
their Bethel, oil-anointed phalli, and their “ Brazen Serpent,”
worship such a gross symbol, and minister unto it, seeing in it their “
Covenant ” — the Lord Himself ! Let the reader turn to Gemara
Sanhedrin and judge. As various writers have shown, and as brutally stated
in Hargrave Jennings’ Phallicism (p. 67) “ We know from
the Jewish records that the
The
Biblical Jews of to-day do not date from Moses but from David — even
admitting the identity of the old genuine with the later and remodelled Mosaic
scrolls. Before that time their nationality is lost in the mists of prehistoric
darkness, the veil from which is now withdrawn as much as we have space to do
so. It is only to the days of the Babylonian captivity that the Old Testament
may be referred by the most lenient criticism, as the approximately correct
views that were current about the days of Moses. Even such fanatical Christians
and worshippers of Jehovah as the Rev. Mr. Horne, have to admit the numerous
changes and alterations made by the later compilers of the “ Book of
God,” since it was found by Hilkiah ( See “ Introduction
to the Old Testament,” and also Bishop Colenso’s
“ Elohistic and Jehovistic writers ” ) ; and that “ the
Pentateuch arose out of the primitive or older documents, by means of a
SUPPLEMENTARY One.” The Elohistic texts were re-written 500 years
after the date of Moses ; the Jehovistic 800, on the authority of the Bible
chronology itself. Hence, it is maintained that the deity, represented as the
organ of generation in his pillar form, and as a symbol of the double-sexed
organ in the numeral value of the letters of his name, or the Yodh
(phallus), and He (the opening, or the Womb) according to Kabalistic
authority — is of a far later date than the Elohim symbols and is
borrowed from the Pagan exoteric rites ; and Jehovah is thus on a par
with the Lingham and Yoni found on every road-side in India.
Just
as the IAO of the mysteries was distinct from Jehovah, so was the later Iao and
Abraxas of some Gnostic sects identical with the god of the Hebrews, who was
the same with the Egyptian Horus. This is undeniably proven on “ heathen
” as on the Gnostic “ Christian ” gems. In Matter’s
collection of such gems there is a “ Horus ” seated on the lotus,
inscribed ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞΙΑΩ (Abraxas
Iao) — an address exactly parallel to the so frequent ΕΙΣ
ΖΕΤΣ ΣΑΡΑΠΙ (Eis zets
sarapi) on the contemporary Heathen gems ; and therefore only to be
translated by “ Abraxas is the One Jehovah ” (King’s Gnostics,
p. 327). But who was Abraxas ? As the same author shows — “ the
numerical or Kabalistic value of the name Abraxas directly refer to the Persian
title of the god ‘ Mithra,’ Ruler of the year, worshipped from the
earliest times under the appellation of Iao.” Thus, the Sun, in one
aspect, the moon or the Lunar genius, in another, that generative deity whom
the Gnostics saluted as “ Thou that presidest over the Mysteries of the Father
and the Son, who shinest in the night-time, holding the second rank, the
first Lord of Death.”
It
is only in his capacity of the genius of the moon, the latter being credited in
the old cosmogony with being the parent of our Earth, that Jehovah could ever
be regarded as the creator of our globe and its Heaven, namely,
the Firmament.
The
knowledge of all this will be no proof, however, to the average bigot.
Missionaries will go on with the most virulent attacks on the religions of
India, and Christians read with the same benighted smile of satisfaction as
ever these preposterously unjust words of Coleridge, “ It is highly
worthy of observation that the inspired writings received by Christians are
distinguishable from all other books PRETENDING TO INSPIRATION, from the
Scriptures of the Brahmins, and even from the Koran, in their strong and
frequent recommendation of TRUTH (!!). . . .”
§ XVI I I.
ON THE MYTH OF THE “ FALLEN
ANGEL,” IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS.
A.
THE EVIL SPIRIT : WHO, AND WHAT ?
OUR
present quarrel is exclusively with theology. The Church enforces belief in a
personal god and a personal devil, while Occultism shows the fallacy of such a
belief. And though for the Pantheists and Occultists, as much as for the
Pessimists, Nature is no better than “ a comely mother, but stone cold
” — this is true only so far as regards external physical
nature. They both agree that, to the superficial observer, she is no better
than an immense slaughter-house wherein butchers become victims, and victims
executioners in their turn. It is quite natural that the pessimistically
inclined profane, once convinced of Nature’s numerous shortcomings and
failures, and especially of her autophagous propensities, should imagine this
to be the best evidence that there is no deity in abscondito within
Nature, nor anything divine in her. Nor is it less natural that the materialist
and the physicist should imagine that everything is due to blind force and
chance, and to the survival of the strongest, even more often than of
the fittest. But the Occultists, who regard physical nature as a bundle
of most varied illusions on the plane of deceptive perceptions ; who recognise
in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs of incessant procreation :
a series of stages toward an ever-growing perfectibility, which is visible in
the silent influence of never-erring Karma, or abstract nature —
the Occultists, we say, view the great Mother otherwise. Woe to those who live
without suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates
without a change. And how can there be any change for the better without
proportionate suffering during the preceding stage ? Is it not those only who
have learnt the deceptive value of earthly hopes and the illusive allurements
of external nature who are destined to solve the great problems of life, pain,
and death ?
If
our modern philosophers — preceded by the 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
Now
even the Materialists are quite harmless, and may be regarded as the friends of
Theosophy, when compared to some fanatical “ Christian ” (as they
call themselves, “ Sectarian ” as we call them) Kabalists, on the
Continent. These read the Zohar, not to find in it ancient Wisdom, but
to discover in its verses, by mangling the texts and meaning, Christian dogmas,
where none could ever have been meant ; and, having fished them out with the
collective help of Jesuitical casuistry and learning, the supposed “
Kabalists ” proceed to write books and to mislead less far-sighted
students of the Kabala.*
*
Such a pseudo-Kabalist was the Marquis de Mirville in France, who,
having studied the Zohar and other old remnants of Jewish Wisdom under
the “ Chevalier ” Drach, an ancient Rabbi Kabalist converted to the
Romish Church — wrote with his help half a dozen volumes full of slander
and calumnies against every prominent Spiritualist and Kabalist. From 1848 up
to 1860 he persecuted unrelentingly the old Count d’Ourches, one of the
earliest Eastern Occultists in France, a man the scope of whose occult
knowledge will never be appreciated correctly by his survivors, because he
screened his real beliefs and knowledge under the mask of Spiritism.
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
The
primitive origin of this personification rests upon the Akkadian conception of
the cosmic powers — the Heavens and the Earth — in eternal feud and
struggle with Chaos. Their Silik-Muludag, “ the God amongst all the
Gods,” the “ merciful guardian of men on Earth,” was the Son
of Hea (or Ea) the great God of Wisdom, called by the Babylonians Nebu. With
both peoples — as in the case of the Hindu gods — their deities
were both beneficent and maleficent. As Evil and punishment are the agents of
Karma, in an absolutely just retributive sense, so Evil was the servant of the
good (Hibbert Lect. 1887, pp. 101-115). The reading of the Chaldeo-Assyrian
tiles has now demonstrated it beyond a shadow of doubt. We find the same idea
in the Zohar. Satan was a Son, and an Angel of God. With all the Semitic
nations, the Spirit of the Earth was as much the Creator in his own realm as
the Spirit of the Heavens. They were twin brothers and interchangeable in their
functions, when not two in one. Nothing of that which we find in Genesis is
absent from the Chaldeo-Assyrian religious beliefs, even in the little that has
hitherto been deciphered. The great “ Face of the Deep ” of Genesis
is traced in the Tohu-bohu, “ Deep,” “ Primeval
Space,” or Chaos of the Babylonians. Wisdom (the Great Unseen God)
— called in Genesis chap. i. the “ Spirit of God ”
— lived, for the older Babylonians as for the Akkadians, in the
Whence
the Christian idea that God cursed the Devil ? The God of the Jews, whomsoever
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, as also the gods of the gentiles. “ Thou shalt not revile the
gods,” quoth the god of Moses (Exodus xxii. 28), for it is God who
“ hath divided (them) unto all nations ” (Deut. iv. 19) ; and those
who speak evil of “ Dignities ” (gods) are called “ filthy
dreamers ” by Jude (8). For even Michael the Archangel durst not bring
against him (the devil) a railing accusation, but said : “ The Lord
rebuke thee ” (ibid 9). Finally the same is repeated in the
Talmud.* “ Satan appeared one day to a man who used to curse him daily,
and said to him : ‘ Why dost thou this ? ’ Consider that God
himself would not curse me, but merely said : ‘ The Lord rebuke thee,
Satan.’ ” †
This
bit of Talmudic information shows plainly two things : ( a ) that St.
Michael is called “ God ” in the Talmud, and somebody else “
the Lord ” ; and ( b) that Satan is a God, of whom even the
“ Lord ” is in fear. All we read in the Zohar and other Kabalistic
works on Satan shows plainly that this “ personage ” is simply the
personification of the abstract evil, which is the weapon of Karmic law and
KARMA. It is our human nature and man himself, as it is said that “ Satan
is always near and inextricably interwoven with man.” It is only a
question of that Power being latent or active in us.
It
is a well-known fact — to learned Symbologists at all events — that
in every great religion of antiquity, it is the Logos Demiurge (the second
logos), or the first emanation from the mind (Mahat), who is made to strike, so
to say, the key-note of that which may be called the correlation of
individuality and personality in the subsequent scheme of evolution. The Logos
it is, who is shown in the mystic symbolism of cosmogony, theogony, and
anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of Creation and Being, i.e.,
that of the purely human personality and the divine impersonality of the
so-called Avatars, or divine incarnations, and of the universal Spirit, called
Christos by the Gnostics, and the Farvarshi (or Ferouer) of Ahura Mazda
in the Mazdean philosophy. On the lower rungs of theogony the celestial Beings
of lower Hierarchies had each a Farvarshi, or a celestial “
Double.” It is the same, only a still more mystic, reassertion of the
Kabalistic axiom, “ Deus est Demon inversus ” ; the word
“ demon,” however, as in the case of Socrates, and in the spirit of
the meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, standing for the guardian
Spirit, an “ Angel,” not a devil of Satanic descent, as theology will
have it. The Roman Catholic Church shows its usual logic and consistency by
accepting, as the ferouer of Christ, St. Michael, who was “ his
Angel Guardian,” as proved by St. Thomas,‡ while he calls
the prototypes of Michael and his synonyms, such as Mercury, for example, devils.
* Vide
†
Treat. Kiddusheem, 81. But see the Qabbala by Mr. I. Myer, pp. 92, 94,
and the Zohar, quoted in his Volume.
‡
In the work of Marangone “ Delle grandezze
The
Church accepts positively the tenet that Christ has his Ferouer as any
other god or mortal has. Writes de Mirville : “ Here we have the two
heroes of the Old Testament, the Verbum (?), or the second
Jehovah, and his face (‘ Presence,’ as the Protestants
translate) forming both but one, and yet being two, a mystery which seemed to
us unsolvable before we had studied the doctrine of the Mazdean ferouers,
and learnt that the ferouer was the spiritual potency, at once image,
face, and the guardian of the Soul which finally assimilates the ferouer.”
(Mémoires à l’Académie, Vol. v., p.
516.) This is almost correct.
Among
other absurdities, the Kabalists maintain that the word metatron being
divided into μετά θρόνον,
means near the throne. It means quite the reverse, as meta means
“ beyond ” and not “ near.” This is of great importance
in our argument. St. Michael, then, the quis ut Deus, is the translator,
so to speak, of the invisible world into the visible and the objective.
They
maintain, furthermore, along with the Roman Catholic Church, that in the
Biblical and Christian theology there does not exist a “ higher celestial
personality, after the Trinity, than that of the
Thus
the same titles and the same names are given in turn to God and the
O
living image of Divinity ! O great thaumaturgist of the old Testament ! O
invisible Vicar of Christ within his Church ! . . .” etc., etc. The work
is in great honour in the Latin Church.
speaking
of the Saviour to the Israelites, Isaiah (?) tells them ” that
“ the angel of his presence saved them in their affliction ”
— “ so he was their Saviour.”* Elsewhere he (Michael) is
called very plainly “ the Prince of the Faces of the Lord, the glory
of the Lord.” Both (Jehovah and Michael) are “ the guides of
The
whole of the above is given on the authority of various works by Roman
Catholics, and must, therefore, be orthodox. Some expressions are translated to
show what subtle theologians and casuists mean by the term Ferouer,§ a
word borrowed by some French writers from the Zend Avesta, as said, and
utilized in Roman Catholicism for a purpose Zoroaster was very far from
anticipating. In Fargard XIX. of the Vendidad it is said (verse 14),
“ Invoke, O Zarathustra ! my Farvarshi, who am Ahura Mazda, the greatest,
the best, the fairest of all beings, the most solid, the most intelligent, . .
. . and whose soul is the Holy Word ” (Mâthra Spenta). The French
Orientalists translate Farvarshi by “ Ferouer.”
Now
what is a Ferouer, or Farvarshi ? In some Mazdean works (e.g., Ormazd
Ahriman, § § 112, 113), it is plainly implied that Farvarshi is the inner,
immortal man (or that Ego which reincarnates) ; that it existed before
its physical body and survives all such it happens to be clothed in. “
Not only man was endowed with the Farvarshi, but gods too, and the sky,
fire, waters, and plants.” (Introduction to the Vendi-dad, by J.
Darmesteter). This shows as plainly as can be shown that the ferouer is
the “ spiritual counterpart ” of whether god, animal, plant, or
even element, i.e., the refined and the purer part of the grosser
creation, the soul of the body, whatever the body may happen to be. Therefore
does Ahura Mazda recommend Zarathustra to invoke his Farvarshi and not
himself (Ahura-Mazda) ; that is to say, the impersonal and true Essence
of Deity, one with Zoroaster’s own Atman (or Christos), not
the false and personal appearance. This is quite clear.
Now
it is on this divine and ethereal prototype that the Roman Catholics seized so
as to build up the supposed difference between their god and angels, and the
deity and its aspects, or the gods of the old religions. Thus, while calling
Mercury, Venus, Jupiter (whether as gods or planets) DEVILS, they yet make of
the same Mercury the ferouer of their Christ. This fact is undeniable.
Vossius (De Idol., I
*
Isaiah, lxiii. 8-9.
†
Metator and ἡγεμών.
‡
“ La Face et le Représentant du Verbe,” p. 18, de Mirville.
§
That which is called in the Vendidad “ Farvarshi,” the
immortal part of an indi- vidual, that which outlives man— the
Higher Ego, say the Occultists, or the divine Double.
proves
that Michael is the Mercury of the pagans, and Maury and other French
writers corroborate him, and add that “ according to great theologians Mercury
and the Sun are one,” (?) and no wonder, they think, since “
Mercury being so near the Wisdom of the Verbum (the Sun), must be absorbed
by and confounded with him.”
This
“ pagan ” view was accepted from the first century of our era, as
shown in the ORIGINAL Acts of the Apostles (the English translation
being worthless). So much is Michael the Mercury of the Greeks and other
nations, that when the inhabitants of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for
Mercury and Jupiter — “ the gods have come down to us in the
likeness of men,” — verse 12 (xiv.) adds : “ And they called
Barnabas Zeus, and Paul, Hermes (or Mercury), because he was the leader of
the WORD ( Verbum ),” and not “ the chief
speaker,” as erroneously translated in the authorised, and repeated even
in the revised, English Bible. Michael is the angel in the Vision, the Son of
God, “ who was like unto a Son of Man.” It is the Hermes-Christos
of the Gnostics, the Anubis-Syrius of the Egyptians, the Counsellor of Osiris
in Amenti, the Michael leontoid ὀφιομορφος
of the Ophites, who wears on certain Gnostic jewels a lion head, like
his father Ildabaoth. (See King’s Gnostics.)
Now
to all this the Roman Catholic Church consents tacitly, many of her writers
avowing it publicly. And, unable to deny the flagrant “ borrowing ”
of their Church, who “ spoilt ” the symbols of her seniors, as the
Jews had “ spoilt ” the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and
gold, they explain the fact quite coolly and as seriously. Thus the writers who
were hitherto timid enough to see, in this repetition by Christian
dogmas of old Pagan ideas, “ a legendary plagiarism perpetrated by
man,” are gravely assured that, far from such a simple solution of the
almost perfect resemblance, it has to be attributed to quite another cause :
“ to a prehistorical plagiarism, of a superhuman
origin.”
If
the reader would know how, he must kindly turn to the same fifth volume of de
Mirville’s work. Please note that this author was the official and
recognised defender of the Roman Church, and was helped by the learning of
all the Jesuits. On page 518 we read : —
“
We have pointed out several demi-gods, and also very historical heroes of the
pagans, who were predestined from the moment of their birth, to ape while
dishonouring it, the nativity of the hero, who was quite God, before
whom the whole earth had to bow ; we traced them being born as he was,
from an immaculate mother ; we saw them strangling serpents in their cradles,
fighting against demons, performing miracles, dying as martyrs, descending to
the nether world and rising again from the dead. And we have bitterly deplored
that timid and shy Christians should feel compelled to explain all such
identities on the ground of coincidence of myth and symbol. They forgot
apparently these words of the Saviour : ‘ ALL THAT CAME BEFORE ME ARE
THIEVES AND ROBBERS,’ a word which explains all without any absurd
negation and which I commented in these words ‘ The Evangel is a sublime
drama, parodied and played before its appointed time by ruffians.’
”
The
“ ruffians ” (les 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
“
In revising the proof-sheets of the Book of Enoch . . . . . the parable of the
sheep, rescued by the good Shepherd from hireling guardians and ferocious
wolves, is obviously borrowed by the fourth Evangelist from Enoch,
lxxxix., in which the author depicts the shepherds as killing . . . the sheep
before the advent of their Lord, and thus discloses the true meaning of that
hitherto mysterious passage in the Johannine parable — ‘ All that
ever came before me are thieves and robbers ’ — language in which
we now detect an obvious reference to the allegorical shepherds of
Enoch.”
It
is too late in the day to claim that it is Enoch who borrowed from the New
Testament, instead of vice versâ. Jude (14-15) quotes verbatim from
Enoch a long passage about the coming of the Lord with his 10,000 saints, and
naming specifically the prophet, acknowledges the source. This “
parallelism between prophet and apostle, have placed beyond controversy that, in
the eyes of the author of an Epistle accepted as divine revelation, the
Book of Enoch was the inspired production of an antediluvian patriarch . .
. ” and further “ . . . the cumulative coincidence of language and
ideas in Enoch and the authors of N.T. Scripture, . . . clearly indicates that
the work of the Semitic Milton was the inexhaustible source from which
Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names, borrowed their
conceptions of the resurrection, judgment, immortality, perdition, and of the
universal reign of righteousness under the eternal dominion of the Son of Man.
This Evangelical plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which
adapts the visions of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we
miss the sublime simplicity of the great Master of apocalyptic prediction, who
prophesied in the name of the antediluvian Patriarch.” (INT. xxxv.)
“
Antediluvian,” truly ; but if the phraseology of the text dates hardly a
few centuries or even millenniums before the historical era, then it is no more
the original prediction of the events to come, but, in its turn, a copy
of some scripture of a prehistoric religion. . . . .” “ In the
Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other (inspired sages). . .
imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the Tretá age he
restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal monarch (the Chakravartin or
the ‘ Everlasting King ’ of Enoch *) and protects the three worlds
(or races). In the Dwâpara age, in the person of Veda-Vyâsa, he divides
the one Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of
branches.” Truly so ; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it
was written, went forth into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed
the first seeds of all the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the
never dying tree of wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on
Judæo-Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu,
or the “ Everlasting King ” will appear as Kalki, and re-establish
righteousness upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be
awakened, and become as pellucid as crystal. “ The men who are thus
changed by virtue of that peculiar time (the sixth race) shall be as the
seeds of other human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall
follow the laws of the Krita age of purity ” ; i.e., it shall be
the seventh race, the race of “ Buddhas,” the “ Sons of
God,” born of immaculate parents.
B.
THE GODS OF LIGHT PROCEED FROM THE GODS
OF DARKNESS.
Thus
it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in Space and
the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of the same antediluvian and
sorely misunderstood Wisdom. The history begins by the descent on Earth of the
“ Gods ” who incarnate in mankind, and this is the FALL. Whether
Brahmâ hurled down on Earth in the allegory by Bhagavant, or Jupiter by
Kronos, all are the symbols of the human races. Once landed on, and having
touched this planet of dense matter, no snow-white wings of the highest angel
can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or incarnation) be perfect, as
every such Avatar is
*
Saith Uriel (chap. xxvi. v. 3), in the “ Book of Enoch,” “
all those who have received mercy shall for ever bless God the everlasting
King,” who will reign over them.
the
fall of a God into generation. Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear,
when explained esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of
those who instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade,
than in the Upanishads, the esoteric glossaries of the Vedas. The
Rig-Veda, as Guignault characterized it, “ is the most sublime conception
of the great highways of Humanity.” The Vedas are, and will remain for
ever, in the esotericism of the Vedanta and the Upanishads, “ the mirror
of the eternal Wisdom.”
For
over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have
screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet
the metaphorical FALL, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led
Western Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it
to believe in the dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all
good, whereas the former lives in all matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally
it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition ; it spread a
thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine verities ; and, most
pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the fact that there
were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man’s own
appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the people were
led to accept, as the problematical consolation for this world’s sorrows,
the thought of original sin.
The
philosophy of that law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in every
beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and
self-guidance, pertains to psychology and cannot be touched on now. To show the
feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyse and give a natural reason for it,
would necessitate, moreover, an endless philosophical explanation for which
there is no room here. Perhaps, the best synthesis of this feeling is found in
three lines of
“
Here we may reign secure ; and in my choice,
To
reign is worth ambition, though in hell !
Better
to reign in hell than serve in heaven . . . .”
Better
be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus operatum,
than be lost among the will-less spiritual Hosts in Heaven.
We
have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few
verses in Revelation ; these verses being now shown a plagiarism from
Enoch by some scholars. These grew into endless theories and speculations,
which gradually acquired the importance of dogma and inspired tradition. Every
one wanted to explain the verse about the seven-headed dragon with his ten
horns and seven crowns, whose tail “ drew the third part of the stars of
heaven, and did cast them to the earth,” and whose place, with that of
his angels, “ was found no more in heaven.” What the seven heads of
the Dragon (cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be learned
in the Addenda which close Part I I I. of this Volume.
From
Bossuet
ought to have known, however, that the events described in Revelation
were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and pagan traditions.
There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic times, nor yet far later
in
This
was only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from
destruction the lucubrations of Christian theologians ?
The princeps
aeris hujus, the “ prince of the air ” of
The
“ Dragon ” is simply the symbol of the cycle and of the “
Sons of Manvantaric Eternity,” who had descended on earth during a
certain epoch of its formative period. The “ clouds of smoke ” are
a geological phenomenon. The “ third part of the stars of heaven ”
cast down to the earth — refers to the divine Monads, (the Spirits of the
Stars in Astrology) that circumambulate our globe ; i.e., the human
Egos destined to perform the whole cycle of incarnations. This sentence, qui
circumambulat terram, however, is again referred to the DEVIL in theology,
the mythical father of Evil being said to “ fall like lightning.”
Unfortunately for this interpretation, the “ Son of Man,” or
Christ, is expected, on the personal testimony of Jesus, to descend on earth
likewise, “ As the lightning cometh out of the East,”* just in the
same shape and under the same symbol as Satan, who is seen “ as lightning
to fall from heaven.Ӡ All these metaphors and figures of speech,
pre-eminently Oriental in their character, must have their origin searched for
in the East. In all the ancient cosmogonies light comes from darkness.
In
* Matthew xxiv. 27. † Luke x. 18.
principle
of all things.” Hence Pymander, the “ Thought divine,”
issues as light from DARKNESS. Behemoth* is the principle of
Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him
that “ Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of God ” (xl.
19) — “ Principium viarum Domini Behemoth ! ”
Consistency
does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of divine Revelation,
so-called — not as interpreted by theologians, at any rate.
The
Egyptians and the Chaldeans referred the birth of their divine Dynasties
to that period when creative Earth was in her last final throes, in giving
birth to her prehistoric mountain ranges, which have since disappeared, her
seas and her continents. Her face was covered with “ deep Darkness and in
that (Secondary) Chaos was the principle of all things ” that developed
on the globe later on. And our geologists have ascertained that there was such
a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological periods, several hundred
millions of years ago.† As to the tradition itself, every country and
nation had it, each under its respective national form.
It
is not alone
And
in the “ Y-King,” one reads : “ The flying Dragon, superb and
rebellious, suffers now, and his pride is punished ; he thought he would reign
in heaven, he reigns only on the earth.”
Again,
the Tchoon-Tsieoo says allegorically : “ one night the stars
ceased shining in darkness, and deserted it, falling down like rain upon the
earth, where they are now hidden.” These stars are the Monads.
Chinese
cosmogonies have their “ Lord of the Flame ” and their “
Celestial Virgin,” with little “ Spirits to help and minister to
her ; and big Spirits to fight those who are the enemies of other gods.”
But all this does not prove that the said allegories are presentments or
prophetic writings which all refer to Christian theology.
The
best proof one can offer to Christian Theologians that the
*
The Protestant Bible defines Behemoth innocently — “ The elephant
as some think ” (See marginal note in Job xl. 19) in the authorised
versions.
†
Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have disappeared unless
from visibility, never from existence, since the Science of Astronomy became
known. Temporary stars are only variable stars, and it is believed even
that the new stars of Kepler and Tycho Brahé may still be seen.
esoteric
meaning in the Bible — in both Testaments — was the assertion of
the same idea as in our Archaic teachings — to wit, that the “ Fall
of the Angels ” referred simply to the incarnation of angels “ who
had broken through the Seven Circles ” — is found in the Zohar. Now
the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai is the soul and essence of its allegory, as the
later Christian Kabala is the “ dark cloaked ” Mosaic
Pentateuch. And it says (in the Agrippa MSS.) :
“
The wisdom of the Kabala rests in the science of the equilibrium and
Harmony.” “ Forces that manifest without having been first
equilibrized perish in space ” (“ equilibrized ” meaning
differentiated).
“
Thus perished the first Kings (the Divine Dynasties) of the ancient world, the self-produced
Princes of giants. They fell like rootless trees, and were seen no more : for they
were the Shadow of the Shadow ” ; to wit, the chhaya of the
Shadowy Pitris. (Vide about the “ Kings of
“
But those that came after them, who shooting down like falling stars were
enshrined in the shadows — prevailed and to this day ” : Dhyanis,
who by incarnating in those “ empty shadows,” inaugurated the era
of mankind.
Every
sentence in the ancient cosmogonies, unfolds to him who can read between the
lines the identity of the ideas, though under different garbs.
The
first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognizable Cause does
not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only
exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite
Minds. Now the collective Mind — the Universal
—composed
of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in
manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with the unborn and undecaying
Space in its supreme essential aspect. That which is finite cannot be perfect.
Therefore there are inferior Beings among those Hosts, but there never were any
devils or “ disobedient Angels,” for the simple reason that
they are all governed by Law. The Asuras who incarnated (call them by
any other name), followed in this a law as implacable as any other. They had
manifested prior to the Pitris, and as time (in Space) proceeds in Cycles,
their turn had come — hence the numerous allegories ( Vide “
Demon est Deus inversus,” Part I
The
Hebrew Elohim, called in the translations “ God,” and who create
“ light,” are identical with the Aryan 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 co-eternal with Good or Light, and
they give the same interpretation. Ahriman is the manifested shadow of
AHURA-MAZDA (Asura-mazda), himself issued from Zeruana Akerne “
boundless (circle of) Time ” or the Unknown Cause. “ Its
glory,” they say of the latter, “ is too exalted, its light too
resplendent for either human intellect or mortal eye to grasp and see.”
Its primal emanation is eternal light, which, from having been
previously concealed in DARKNESS was called to manifest itself and thus
was formed Ormazd, the “ King of Life.” He is the
“ first-born ” in BOUNDLESS TIME, but, like his own antitype (pre-
existing Spiritual idea), has lived within darkness from all eternity. The
six Amshaspends (seven with himself, chief of all), the primitive Spiritual
Angels and Men are collectively his Logos. The Zoroastrian
Amshaspends create the world in six days or periods also, and rest on the
Seventh ; whereas that Seventh is the first period or “
day,” in esoteric philosophy, (Primary creation in the Aryan
cosmogony). It is that intermediate 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 Alahim are shown to “ create ” — that is to
say, to build or to produce the two or “ double heaven ” (not
Heaven and Earth) ; which means, in so many words, that they separated the
upper manifested (angelic) heaven, or plane of consciousness, from the lower or
terrestrial plane ; the (to us) eternal and immutable 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 (Zeruana Akerne) produced through its WORD, or first
aspect,” the other, operating THOUGHT, which being the god
of Spirit and Fire, constructed seven Regents enclosing within their
circle the world of Senses, named “ fatal destiny.” The latter
refers to Karma ; the “ seven circles ” are the seven planets and
planes, as also the seven invisible Spirits, in the angelic spheres, whose
visible symbols are the seven planets,* the
*
Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew of more than
seven planets is to be found in the Vishnu Purâna, Book I I., ch.
xii., where, describing
seven
Rishis of the great Bear and other glyphs. As said of the Adityas by
Roth : “ they are neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the
eternal sustainers of this luminous life which exists as it were behind all
these phenomena.”
It
is they — the “ Seven Hosts ” — who, having “ considered
in their Father (divine Thought) the plan of the operator,” as
says Pymander, desired to operate (or build the world with its
creatures) likewise ; for, having been born “ within the sphere of
operation ” — the manifesting Universe — such is the Manvantaric
LAW. And now comes the second portion of the passage, or rather of two passages
merged into one to conceal the full meaning. Those who were born within the
sphere of operation were “ the brothers who loved him well.” The
latter — the “ him ” — were the primordial angels : the
Asuras, the Ahriman, the Elohim — or “ Sons of God,” of whom Satan
was one — all those spiritual beings who were called the “ Angels
of Darkness,” because that darkness is absolute light, a fact now
neglected if not entirely forgotten in theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality
of those much abused “ Sons of Light ” which is Darkness, must be
evidently as great in comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the
ethereality of the latter would be, when contrasted with the density of the
human body. The former are the “ First-born ” ; therefore so near
to the confines of pure quiescent Spirit as to be merely the “ PRIVATIONS
” — in the Aristotelian sense — the ferouers or the ideal
types of those who followed, They could not create material, corporeal
things ; and, therefore, were said in process of time to have refused to
create, as commanded by “ God ” — otherwise, TO
HAVE REBELLED.
Perchance,
this is justified on that principle of the Scientific theory which
teaches us about light and sound and the effect of two waves of equal length
meeting. “ If the two sounds be of the same intensity, their coincidence
produces a sound four times the intensity of either, while their interference
produces absolute silence.”
Explaining
some of the “ heresies ” of his day, Justin Martyr shows the
identity of all the world religions at their starting points. The first beginning
opens invariably with the unknown and PASSIVE deity, from which emanates
a certain active power or virtue, the Mystery that is sometimes called WISDOM,
sometimes the SON, very often God, Angel, Lord, and LOGOS.* The latter is
sometimes applied to the very first emanation, but in several systems it
proceeds from the first androgyne or double ray produced at the beginning by
the unseen. Philo depicts this wisdom as male and female. But though its first
manifestation
the
chariots attached to Dhruva (the pole star), Parasâra speaks of “
the chariots of the NINE planets,” which are attached by aërial
cords.
*
Justin : “ Cum. Trypho,” p. 284.
had
a beginning, for it proceeded from Oulom* (Aiôn, time), the
highest of the Æons when emitted from the Father, it had remained with
him before all creations, for it is part of him.† Therefore, Philo
Judæus calls Adam Kadmon “ mind ” (the Ennoia of Bythos
in the Gnostic system). “ The mind, let it be named Adam.” ‡
As
the old Magian books explain it, the whole event becomes clear. A thing
can only exist through its opposite — Hegel teaches us, and only a little
philosophy and spirituality are needed to comprehend the origin of the later
dogma, which is so truly satanic and infernal in its cold and cruel wickedness.
The Magians accounted for the origin of evil in their exoteric teachings in
this way. “ Light can produce nothing but light, and can never be the
origin of evil ” ; how then was the evil produced, since there was
nothing co-equal or like the Light in its production ? Light, say they,
produced several Beings, all of them spiritual, luminous, and powerful. But a
GREAT ONE (the “ Great Asura,” Ahriman, Lucifer, etc., etc.) had an
evil thought, contrary to the Light. He doubted, and by that doubt he
became dark.
This
is a little nearer to the truth, but still wide of the mark. There was no
“ EVIL thought ” that originated the opposing Power, but simply
THOUGHT per se ; something which, being cogitative, and containing
design and purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus find itself naturally in
opposition to pure quiescence, the as natural state of absolute Spirituality
and Perfection. It was simply the law of Evolution that asserted itself ; the
progress of mental unfolding, differentiated from spirit, involved and
entangled already with matter, into which it is irresistibly drawn. Ideas, in
their very nature and essence, as conceptions bearing relation to objects,
whether true or imaginary, are opposed to absolute THOUGHT, that unknowable ALL
of whose mysterious operations Mr. Spencer predicates that nothing can be said,
but that “ it has no kinship of nature with Evolution ” (Principles
of Psychology, § 474) — which it certainly has not.
The Zohar
gives it very suggestively. When the “ Holy One ” (the Logos)
desired to create man, he called the highest host of Angels and said to
them what he wanted, but they doubted the wisdom of this desire and
answered : “ Man will not continue one night in his glory ” —
for
* A
division indicative of time.
†
Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest Æon, Protogonos, the “ first-born.”
‡
Philo Judæus : “ Cain and his Birth,” p. xvii.
§
It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so conspicuous in our
day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won its rights of citizenship in
science as taught by Darwin and Hæckel, yet both the eternity of the
Universe and the pre-existence of a universal consciousness, are
rejected by the modern psychologists. “ Should the Idealist be right, the
doctrine of evolution is a dream,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer. (See foot
note, pp. 1 and 2, Book I I.)
which
they were burnt (annihilated ?), by the “ Holy ” Lord. Then he
called another, lower Host, and said the same. And they contradicted the
“ Holy One ” : “ What is the good of Man ? ” they
argued. Still Elohim created man, and when man sinned there came the hosts
of Uzza and Azael, and twitted God : “ Here is the Son of Man that thou
hast made,” they said. “ Behold, he sinned ! ” Then the Holy
One replied : “ If you had been among them (men) you would have been
worse than they.” And he threw them from their exalted position in Heaven
even down on the Earth ; and “ they were changed (into men) and sinned
after the women of the earth ; ” (Zohar, 9, b.). This is quite
plain. No mention is made in Genesis of these “ Sons of God
” (chap. vi.) having been punished for it. The only reference to
it in the Bible is in Jude (6). “ And the angels which kept not their
first estate but left their habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting
chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” And this
means simply that the “ Angels,” doomed to incarnation, are in
the chains of flesh and matter, under the darkness of ignorance,
till the “ Great Day,” which will come as always after the seventh
round, after the expiration of the “ Week,” on the SEVENTH SABBATH,
or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana.
How
truly esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is “ PYMANDER the
Thought Divine ” of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and
primitive translations in Latin and Greek only. On the other hand how
disfigured it has been later on by Christians in
“
Seven men (principles) were generated in
*
“ SECTION 16 (chap. i.), Mercure Trismegiste — PIMANDRE . . . .
” “ Oh, ma pensée, que s’ensuit il ? car je
désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre dict, ceci est un mystère
celé, jusques à ce jour d’hui. Car nature, soit mestant
avec l’hôme, a produit le miracle très merveilleux, aiant
celluy qui ie t’ay dict, 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).
produced
seven men in accordance with the seven natures of the Seven Spirits ”
“ having in them, potentially, the two sexes.”
Metaphysically,
the Father and the Son are the “ Universal Mind ” and the “
periodical Universe ” ; the “ Angel ” and the “
C.
THE MANY MEANINGS OF THE “ WAR IN
HEAVEN.”
The
Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, collectively
and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the
breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation ; and
(b)
of the countless “ breaths ” proceeding from that One BREATH in its
secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its many mankinds proceeds
downwards toward the planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The
primary Breath informs the higher Hierarchies ; the secondary — the
lower, on the constantly descending planes.
Now
there are many passages in the Bible which prove on their face, exoterically,
that this belief was at one time Universal ; and the most convincing are
the two chapters Ezekiel xxviii. and Isaiah xiv. Christian theologians are
welcome to interpret both as referring to the great War before Creation, the
Epos of Satan’s rebellion, etc., if they so choose, but the absurdity of
the idea is too apparent. Ezekiel addresses his lamentations and reproofs to
the King of Tyre ; Isaiah — to King Ahaz, who indulged in the worship of
idols, as did the rest of the nation, with the exception of a few Initiates
(the Prophets, so called), who tried to arrest it on its way to
exotericism, or idolatry, which is the same thing. Let the student judge.
In Ezekiel
xxviii. it is said, “ Son of Man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, thus
saith the Lord God (as we understand it, the “ god ” KARMA) :
Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said I am a God .
. . . and yet thou art a man . . . . behold I shall bring strangers upon
thee . . . . and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom
. . . . and they shall bring thee down to the pit . . . .” or Earth-life.
The
origin of the “ prince of Tyrus ” is to be traced to, and sought in
the “ divine Dynasties ” of the iniquitous Atlanteans, the Great
Sorcerers (See last Comments, on
What
can be the meaning of this last sentence if it is not a narrative of the fate
of the Atlanteans ? Verse 17 saying, “ thine heart was lifted up because
of thy beauty,” may refer to the “ Heavenly Man ” in
Pymander, or to the Fallen Angels, who are accused of having fallen through
pride on account of the great beauty and wisdom which became their lot. There
is no metaphor here, except in the preconceived ideas of our theologians, perhaps.
These verses relate to the Past and belong more to the Knowledge acquired at
the mysteries of Initiation than to retrospective clairvoyance ! Says the
voice, again : —
“
Thou hast been in
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.
Truly,
“ thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more
” ; as the very name of the race and its fate is now annihilated from
man’s memory. Bear in mind, that almost every ancient King and priest was
an initiate ; that from toward the close of the Fourth Race there had been a
feud between the Initiates of the Right and those of the Left
Path ; finally, that the garden of Eden is referred to by other personages than
the Jews of the Adamic race, since even Pharaoh is compared to the
fairest tree of Eden by this same Ezekiel, who shows “ all the trees of
Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, . . . comforted in the nether parts of
the earth . . . ,” for “ they also went down into hell with him
” (Pharaoh)* unto the nether parts, which are in fact the bottom of the ocean,
whose floor gaped wide to devour the lands of the Atlanteans and themselves. If
one bears all this in mind and compares the various accounts, then one will
find out that the whole of chapters
xxviii.
and xxxi. of Ezekiel relate neither to Babylon, Assyria, nor yet Egypt, since
none of these have been so destroyed, but simply fell into ruins on the surface,
not beneath the earth — but indeed to Atlantis and most of its
nations. And he will see that the “ garden of Eden ” of the
Initiates was no myth, but a locality now submerged. Light will dawn upon him,
and he will appreciate such sentences as these at their true esoteric value :
“ Thou hast been in
Throughout
all
*
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.
left
hand. When Vishnu Purâna narrates that “ the world was overrun with
trees,” while the Prachetasas — who “ passed 10,000 years of
austerity in the vast ocean ” — were absorbed in their devotions,
the allegory relates to the Atlanteans and the adepts of the early Fifth Race
— the Aryans. Other “ trees (adept Sorcerers) spread, and
overshadowed the unprotected earth ; and the people perished . . . unable to
labour for ten thousand years.” Then the sages, the Rishis of the Aryan
race, called Prachetasas, are shown “ coming forth from the deep,”*
and destroying by the wind and flame issuing from their mouths, the iniquitous
“ trees ” and the whole vegetable kingdom ; until Soma (the moon),
the sovereign of the vegetable world, pacifies them by making alliance with the
adepts of the Right Path, to whom he offers as bride Marishâ,
“ the offspring of the trees.”† This means that which is
given in the Stanzas and Commentaries, and what is also given in Part I
The
whole History of that period is allegorized in the Ramayana, which is
the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Rama — the
first king of the divine dynasty of the early Aryans — and Ravana,
the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lanka) race. The former were the
incarnations of the Solar Gods ; the latter, of the lunar Devas. This was the
great battle between Good and Evil, between white and black magic, for the
supremacy of the divine forces, or of the lower terrestrial or cosmic powers.
If the student would understand better the last statement, let him turn to the Anugîtâ
episode of the Mahabhârata, chapter v., 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.” The moon is
the deity of the mind (Manas) but only on the lower plane. “ Manas is
dual — lunar in the lower, solar in its upper
portion,” says a commentary. That is to say, it is attracted in its
higher aspect towards Buddhi, and in its
*
Vishnu Purâna,
†
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 Nârâ,
the “ Spirit of God,” or rather Paramâtmân, the
“ Supreme Soul,” says Kullûka Bhatta, Nârâyana,
meaning “ he who abides in the deep ” or plunged in the Waters of
Wisdom — “ water being the body of Nârâ ” (Vayu).
Hence arises the statement that for 10,000 years they remained in austerity
“ in the vast Ocean ” ; and are shown emerging from it. Ea, the God
of Wisdom, is the “ Sublime Fish,” and Dagon or Oannes is the
Chaldean man-fish, who emerges from the waters to teach wisdom.
lower
descends into, and listens to the voice of its animal soul full of
selfish and sensual desires ; and herein is contained the mystery of an
adept’s as of a profane man’s life, as also that of the post-mortem
separation of the divine from the animal man. The Ramayana — every line
of which has to be read esoterically — discloses in magnificent symbolism
and allegory the tribulations of both man and soul. “ Within the body, in
the midst of all these life-winds (? principles), which move about in the body,
and swallow up one another,* blazes the Vaishvâna fire† sevenfold,
of which ‘ I ’ am the goal,” says the Brâhmana.‡
But
the chief “ Soul ” is Manas or mind ; hence, Soma, the moon,
is shown as making an alliance with the solar portion in it, personified as the
Prachetasas. But of the seven keys that open the seven aspects of the Ramayana,
as of every other Scripture, this is only one — the metaphysical.
The
symbol of the “ Tree ” standing for various Initiates was almost
universal. Jesus is called “ the tree of Life,” as also all the
adepts of the good Law, while those of the left Path are referred to as
the “ withering trees.” John the Baptist speaks of “ the axe
” which “ is laid to the root of the trees ” (Matth. iii. 10)
; and the King of Assyria’s armies are called trees (Isaiah x.
19).
The
true meaning of the Garden of Eden was sufficiently given in “
The
writer has more than once heard surprise expressed that
p.
133, when speaking of the Book of Job. For what can be plainer than this :
“ In the original text, instead of ‘ dead things,’ it is
written dead Rephaim, giants, or mighty primitive men, from whom ‘
Evolution ’ may one day trace our present race.” It is
invited to do so now, now that this hint is explained quite openly ; but
Evolutionists are as sure to
*
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 opera-tions of the life-winds which are attached to
the SELF, and lead to its manifestations as individual souls.
†
“ Vaisvanara (or Vaishvanara) is a word often used to denote the Self
” — explains Nîlakantha.
‡
Translated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.,
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
In
an old number of the Revue Archéologique for the year 1845 (p.
41), a French writer, M. Maury, remarks : — “ This universal strife
between good and bad spirits seems to be only the reproduction of another
more ancient and more terrible strife, that, according to an ancient myth,
took place before the creation of the universe, between the faithful and the
rebellious legions.”
Once
more, it is a simple question of priority. Had John’s Revelation been
written during the Vedic period, and were not one sure now of its being simply
another version of the Book of Enoch and the Dragon legends of pagan
antiquity — the grandeur and the beauty of the imagery might have biased
the critics’ opinion in favour of the Christian interpretation of that
first war, whose battle field was starry Heaven, and the first slaughterers
— the Angels. As the matter stands now, however, one has to trace
Revelation, event by event, to other and far older visions. For the better
comprehension of the Apocalyptic allegories and of the esoteric epos we
ask the reader to turn to Revelation, and to read chapter xii., from
verse 1 to verse 7.
This
has several meanings, most of which have been found out with regard to the
astronomical and numerical keys of this universal myth. That which may be given
now, is a fragment, a few hints as to its secret meaning, as embodying the
record of a real war, the struggle between the Initiates of the two schools.
Many and various are the still existing allegories built on that same
foundation stone. The true narrative, that which gives the full esoteric
meaning, is in the Secret books, but the writer has had no access to these.
In
the exoteric works, however, the episode of the Taraka war, and some esoteric
commentaries, may offer a clue perhaps. In every Purâna the event is
described with more or less variations, which show its allegorical character.
In
the Mythology of the earliest Vedic Aryans as in the later Purânic narratives,
mention is made of Budha, the “ Wise ” ; one “ learned in the
Secret Wisdom,” and who is the planet Mercury in his
euhemerization. The Hindu Classical Dictionary credits Budha with being
the author of a hymn in the Rig Veda. Therefore, he can by no means be “
a later fiction of the Brahmins,” but is a very old personation indeed.
It
is by inquiring into his genealogy, or theogony, rather, that the following
facts are disclosed. As a myth, he is the son of Târâ, the wife of
Brihaspati the “ gold coloured,” and of “ Soma ” the
(male) Moon, who, Paris-like, carries this new Helen of the Hindu sidereal
Kingdom away from her husband, which causes a great strife and war in
Swarga (Heaven). The episode brings on a battle between the gods and the Asuras
: King Soma, finds allies in Usanas (Venus), the leader of the Danavas ; and
the gods are led by Indra and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati. The latter is
helped by Sankara (Siva), who, having had for his guru Brihaspati’s
father, Angiras, befriends his son. Indra is here the Indian prototype of
Michael, the Archistrategus and the slayer of the “ Dragon’s
” angels — since one of his names is Jishnu “ leader
of the (celestial) Host.” Both fight, as some Titans did against other
Titans in defence of revengeful gods, one — of Jupiter tonans (in
Let
us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning.
The
presiding genius, or “ regent ” of the planet Jupiter is
Brihaspati, the wronged husband. He is the instructor or spiritual guru of the
gods, who are the representatives of the procreative powers. In the Rig Veda,
he is called Brahmanaspati, a name meaning “ the deity in whom the
action of the worshipped upon the gods is personified.” Hence
Brahmanaspati represents the materialization of the divine grace, so to
say, by means of ritual and ceremonies, or the exoteric worship.
“
TÂRÂ ”* — his wife — is on the other hand the
personification of the powers of one initiated into Gupta Vidya (secret
knowledge), as will be shown.
SOMA
is the moon astronomically ; but in mystical phraseology, it is also the name
of the sacred beverage drunk by the Brahmins and the Initiates during their
mysteries and sacrificial rites. The “ Soma ” plant is the asclepias
acida, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage,
* See Dowson’s Classical
Dictionary.
the Soma
drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihôtri
(the fire priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers. But the real
property of the true Soma was (and is) to make a new man
of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he begins to live
in his astral body (See “ The Elixir of Life ”*) ; for, his
spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part
even from that etherealized form.†
Soma
was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman — the simple Grihasta,
or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati — “ guru of the
gods ” though he was — still represented the dead-letter form of
worship. It is 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 in the allegory to carry her away. The result of this
is the birth of Budha — esoteric Wisdom —(Mercury, or Hermes
in
—claims
the “ new-born ” as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and
meaningless forms.‡ Such is, in brief, one of the meanings
of the allegory.
War
in Heaven refers to
several events of that kind on various and different planes of being. The first
is a purely astronomical and cosmical fact pertaining to cosmogony. Mr. John
Bentley thought that with the Hindus war in Heaven is only a figure
referring to their calculations of time periods (see Bentley’s Hindu
Astronomy).*
*
See “ Five Years of Theosophy.”
†
The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and
yet away from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars
for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually “
as one of the gods,” and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory
of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the
Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve,
“ lest Man should become as one of us.”
‡
We see the same in the modern exoteric religions.
*
“ Historical Views of Hindu Astronomy.” Quoting from the
work in reference to Aryachatta, who is said to give a near approach to the
true relation among the various values for the computations of the value of
π, the author of the “ Source of Measures ” reproduces a
curious statement. Mr. Bentley, it is said, “ was greatly familiar with
the Hindu astronomical and mathematical knowledge . . . this statement of his
then may be taken as authentic : the same remarkable trait, among so many
Eastern and ancient nations of sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind
of knowledge, is a marked one among the Hindus. That which was given
out to be popularly taught and to be exposed to public inspection, was but
the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge. And this very
formulation of Mr. Bentley will strangely exemplify the assertion ; and
explained, will show that it (the Hindu exoteric astronomy and sciences)
was derived from a system exact beyond the European one, in which Mr.
Bentley himself, of
This
served as a prototype, he thinks, for the Western nations to build their war
of the Titans upon. The author is not quite wrong, but neither is he quite
right. If the sidereal prototype refers indeed to a pre-manvantaric
period, and rests entirely on the Knowledge claimed by the Aryan Initiates of
the whole programme and progress of cosmogony,* the war of the Titans is
but a legendary and deified copy of the real war that took place in the
Himalayan Kailasa (heaven) instead of in the depths of Cosmic
interplanetary Space. It is the record of the terrible strife between the
“ Sons of God ” and the “ Sons of the Shadow ” of the
Fourth and the Fifth Races. It is on these two events, blended together by
legends borrowed from the exoteric account of the war waged by the Asuras
against the gods, that every subsequent national tradition on the subject has
been built.
Esoterically,
the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil Spirits and lower gods,
who are eternally at war with the great deities — are the gods of
the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the
spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being used for the
Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians. (See
Darmesteter’s VENDIDAD). There was a time when the gods Indra, Agni, and
Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.
In
the Aitarêya 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
course,
trusted as far in advance of the Hindu Knowledge, at any time, in any
generation.”
Which
is Mr. Bentley’s misfortune, and does not take away from the glory of the
ancient Hindu astronomers, who were all Initiates.
*
The Secret Doctrine teaches that every event of universal importance, such as
geological cataclysms at the end of one race and the beginning of a new one,
involving a great change each time in mankind, spiritual, moral and physical
— is pre-cogitated and preconcerted, so to say, in the sidereal regions
of our planetary system. Astrology is built wholly upon this mystic and
intimate connection between the heavenly bodies and mankind ; and it is one of
the great secrets of Initiation and Occult mysteries.
worship).
Evidently they have been degraded in Space and Time into opposing powers or
demons by the ceremonialists, on account of their rebellion against hypocrisy,
sham-worship, and the dead-letter form.
Now
what is the real character of all those who fought along with them ? They are
(1) the Usanas, or the “ host ” of the planet Venus, become
now in Roman Catholicism — Lucifer, the genius of the “
morning star ” (see Isaiah xiv., 12), the tsaba, or army of
“ Satan.” (2) The Daityas and Danavas are the Titans,
the demons and giants whom we find in the Bible (Gen. vi.) — the
progeny of the “ Sons of God ” and the “ Daughters of
Men.” Their generic name shows their alleged character, and discloses at
the same time the secret animus of the Brahmins : for they are the Kratidwishas
—the “ enemies of the sacrifices ” or exoteric shams. These
are the “ hosts ” that fought against Brihaspati, the
representative of exoteric popular and national religions ; and Indra
— the god of the visible heaven, the firmament, who, in the early Veda,
is the highest god of Cosmic heaven, the fit habitation for an extra-Cosmic
and personal God, higher than whom no exoteric worship can ever soar.
(3)
Then come the Nagas,* the Sarpa (serpents or Seraphs). These, again,
show their character by the hidden meaning of their glyph. In Mythology they
are semi-divine beings with a human face and the tail of a Dragon. They
are therefore, undeniably, the Jewish seraphim (from Serapis and Sarpa,
Serpent) ; the plural being saraph, “ burning, fiery ” (See
Isaiah, vi. 23). Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes between the
Seraphim and the Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order ;
esoterically, and Kabalistically, they are identical ; the cherubim
being simply the name for the images or likenesses of any of the divisions of
the celestial hosts. Now, as said before, the Dragons and Nagas were the
names given to the Initiates-hermits, on account of their great Wisdom and
Spirituality and their living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel applies the
adjective of Cherub to the King of Tyre, and tells him that by his wisdom
and his understanding there is no secret that can be hidden from
him (v. 3, 4, xxviii.), he shows to an Occultist that it is a “
prophet,” perhaps, still a follower of exoteric worship, who
fulminates against an Initiate of another school and not against an
imaginary Lucifer, a fallen cherub from the stars, and then from the garden of
Eden. Thus the so-called “ war ” is, in one of its many meanings,
also an allegorical record of the strife between the two classes of adepts
— of the right and of the left path. There were three classes of Rishis
in
*
The Nagas are described by the Orientalists as a mysterious people whose
land-marks are found abundantly in India to this day, and who lived in Naga
dwipa one of the Seven continents or divisions of Bharatavarsha
(old India), the town of Nagpur being one of the most ancient cities in the
country.
the
earliest adepts known ; the royal, or Rajarshis, kings and princes, who adopted
the ascetic life ; the Devarshis, divine, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga ; and
Brahmarshis, descendants of those Rishis who were the founders of gotras
of Brahmans, or caste-races. Now, leaving the mythical and astronomical keys
for one moment aside, the secret teachings show many Atlanteans who belonged to
these divisions ; and there were strifes and wars between them, de facto
and de jure. Narada, one of the greatest Rishis, was a Devarishi ;
and he is shown in constant and everlasting feud with Brahmâ, Daksha, and
other gods and sages. Therefore we may safely maintain that whatever the astronomical
meaning of this universally accepted legend, its human phase is based on real
and historical events, disfigured into a theological dogma only to suit
ecclesiastical purposes. As above so below. Sidereal phenomena, and the
behaviour of the celestial bodies in the heavens, were taken as a model, and
the plan was carried out below, on earth. Thus, space, in its abstract sense,
was called “ the realm of divine knowledge,” and by the Chaldees
or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or Father, i.e., the source) of
knowledge, because it is in space that dwell the intelligent Powers which invisibly
rule the Universe.*
In
the same manner and on the plan of the Zodiac in the upper Ocean or the
heavens, a certain realm on Earth, an inland sea, was consecrated and called
“ the Abyss of Learning ” ; twelve centres on it in the shape of
twelve small islands representing the Zodiacal signs — two of which
remained for ages the “ mystery signs ”† and were the abodes
of twelve Hierophants and masters of wisdom. This “ sea of knowledge
” or learning‡ remained for ages there, where now stretches the
Shamo or Gobi desert. It existed until the last great glacial period, when a
*
Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Siva, the great Yogi,
the forefather of all the Adepts — in Esotericism one of the greatest
Kings of the Divine Dynasties. Called “ the Earliest ” and the
“ Last,” he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and the Fifth
Root-Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig-ambara,
“ clothed with the Elements,” Trilochana, “ the three-eyed
” ; Pancha-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-Kronos, as his damaru (drum), in the
shape of an hour-glass, shows ; and if he is accused of having cut off
Brahmâ’s fifth head, and left him with only four, it is again an
allusion to a certain degree in initiation, and also to the Races.
†
G. Seiffarth’s idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient times
only ten is erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane ; the initiates,
however, knew them all, from the time of the separation of mankind into
sexes, whence arose the separation of Virgo-Scorpio into two ; which, owing
to a secret sign added and the Libra invented by the Greeks, instead of
the secret name which was not given, made 12. (Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol.
I I., p. 456.)
‡
The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalaï-lama’s symbolical name
— the “ Ocean ” lama, meaning the Wisdom Ocean. Abbé
Huc speaks of it.
local
cataclysm, which swept the waters south and west and so formed the present
great desolate desert, left only a certain oasis, with a lake and one island in
the midst of it, as a relic of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ages the
watery abyss — which, with the nations that preceded the later
Babylonians, was the abode of the “ great mother ” (the terrestrial
post-type of the “ great mother chaos ” in heaven), the parent of
Ea (Wisdom), himself the early prototype of Oannes, the man-Fish of the
Babylonians — for ages, then, the “ Abyss ” or Chaos
was the abode of wisdom and not of evil. The struggle of Bel and then of
Merodach, the Sun-god, with Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon, a “
war ” which ended in the defeat of the latter, has a purely cosmic and
geological meaning, as well as an historical one. It is a page torn out of the
History of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth and DEATH
—for the profane masses. It relates (a) to the systematic
and gradual drying up of immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain
pre-historic period ; one of the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual
transformation of once fertile lands abundantly watered into the sandy deserts
which they are now ; and (b) to the as systematic persecution of the
Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, having inaugurated
the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the world
into all these exoteric religions, invented to satisfy the depraved tastes of
the “ hoi polloi ” and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and
the materialization of the ever-immaterial and Unknowable Principle.
This
was a certain improvement on the Atlantean sorcery, the memory of which lingers
in the remembrances of all the literary and Sanskrit-speaking portion of India,
as well as in the popular legends. Still it was a parody on, and the
desecration of the Sacred Mysteries and their science. The rapid progress of
anthropomorphism and idolatry led the early Fifth, as it had already led the
Fourth Race, into sorcery once more, though on a smaller scale. Finally, even the
four “ Adams ” (symbolizing under other names the four
preceding races) were forgotten ; and passing from one generation into another,
each loaded with some additional myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of
popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the
oldest Jewish traditions, as the Tzelem, “ the Shadow-Adam ”
(the Chhayas of our doctrine) ; the “ model ” Adam, the copy
of the first, and the “ male and female ” of the exoteric genesis
(chap. i.) ; the third, the “ earthly Adam ” before the Fall, an
androgyne ; and the Fourth — the Adam after his fall, i.e.,
separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden of Eden, or
the forefather of our race — the fifth — is an ingenious compound
of the above four. As stated in Zohar (iii., fol. 4, col. 14, Cremona
Ed.) Adam, the FIRST man, is not found now on earth, he “ is not
found in all, below.” Because, “ where does the lower earth come
from ? From the chain of the Earth, and heaven above,” i.e.,
from the superior globes, those which precede and are above our Earth. “
And there came out from it (the chain) creatures of all kinds. Some of them in
(solid) skins, some in shells (Klippoth) . . . some in red shells, some
in black, some in white, and some of other colours . . . ” (See Qabbalah).
As
in the Chaldean Cosmogony of Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some treatises
on the Kabala speak of creatures with two faces, some with four, and some with
one face : for “ the highest Adam did not come down in all the countries,
or produce progeny and have many wives,” but is a Mystery.
So
is the Dragon a mystery. Truly, says Rabbi Simeon Ben-Iochai, that to
understand the meaning of the Dragon is not given to the “ Companions
” (students, or chelas ), but only to “ the little
ones,” i.e., the perfect Initiates.* “ The work of
the beginning the companions understand ; but it is only the little ones who
understand the parable on the work in the Principium by the mystery
of the serpent of the Great Sea.Ӡ And those Christians, who
may happen to read this, will also understand by the light of the above
sentence who their “ Christ ” was. For Jesus states repeatedly that
he who “ shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child,
he shall not enter therein ” ; and if some of his sayings have been meant
to apply to children without any metaphor, most of what relates to the “
little ones ” in the Gospels, related to the Initiates, of whom
Jesus was one. Paul (Saul) is referred to in the Talmud as “ the
little one.”
That
“ Mystery of the Serpent ” was this : Our Earth, or rather terrestrial
life, is often referred to in the Secret Teachings as the great Sea,
“ the sea of life ” having remained to this day a favourite
metaphor. The Siphrah Dzeniouta speaks of primeval chaos and the
evolution of the Universe after a destruction ( pralaya ), comparing it
to an uncoiling serpent : — “ Extending hither and thither, its
tail in its mouth, the head twisting on its neck, it is enraged and angry. . .
It watches and conceals itself. Every thousand Days it is
manifested.” (I., § 16).
*
Such was the name given in ancient Judea to the Initiates, called also the
“ Innocents ” and the “ Infants,” i.e., once
more reborn. This key opens a vista into one of the New Testament
mysteries ; the slaughter by Herod of the 40,000 “ Innocents.”
There is a legend to this effect, and the event which took place almost a
century B.C., shows the origin of the tradition blended at the same time with
that of Krishna and his uncle Kansa. In the case of the N. T., Herod stands for
Alexander Janneus (of Lyda), whose persecution and murder of hundreds and
thousands o Initiates led to the adoption of the Bible story.
†
Zohar ii., 34.
A
commentary on the Purânas says : “ Ananta-Sesha is a form of
Vishnu, the Holy Spirit of Preservation, and a symbol of the Universe, on which
it is supposed to sleep during the intervals of the Days of Brahmâ.
The seven heads of Sesha support the Universe. . . . ”
So
the Spirit of God “ sleeps,” is “ breathing ”
(mé racha’ pheth’) over the Chaos of undifferentiated
matter, before each new “ Creation.” (Siphrah Dzeniouta).
Now one “ Day ” of Brahmâ is composed, as already explained,
of one thousand Mahayugas ; and as each “ Night ” or period
of rest is equal in duration to this “ day,” it is easy to see to
what this sentence in Siphrah Dzeniouta refers, viz. : — that the
serpent manifests “ once in a thousand days.” Nor is it more
difficult to see whither the initiated writer of the Siphrah is leading
us, when he says : —“ Its head is broken in the waters of the great
sea, as it is written : ‘ Thou dividest the sea by thy strength, thou
brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters ’ ”
(lxxiv.
13). It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical life, the
“ sea of sorrow,” if read with one key ; it hints at the successive
destruction of the seven spheres of a chain of worlds in the great sea of
space, when read with another key : for every sidereal globe or sphere, every
world, star, or group of stars, is called in symbolism “ the
Dragon’s head.” But however it may read, the Dragon was never
regarded as Evil, nor was the Serpent either — in antiquity. In the
metaphors, whether astronomical, cosmical, theogonical or simply physiological,
i.e., phallic — the Serpent was always regarded as a divine
symbol. When it is said “ The (Cosmic) Serpent which runs with 370 leaps
” (Siphrah Dzeniouta, § 33) it means the cyclic periods of
the great Tropical year (25,868 years), divided in the esoteric calculation
into 370 periods or cycles, as one solar year is divided into 365 days. And if
Michael was regarded by the Christians as the Conqueror of Satan, the Dragon, it
is because in the Talmud this fighting personage is represented as the Prince
of Waters, who had seven subordinate Spirits under him — a good reason
why the Latin Church made him the patron Saint of every promontory in Europe.
In the Kabala (Siph. Dzen.) the creative Force “ makes sketches
and spiral lines of his creation in the shape of a Serpent.” It
“ holds its tail in its mouth,” because it is the symbol of endless
eternity and of cyclic periods. Its meanings, however, would require a volume,
and we must end.
Thus
the reader may now see for himself what are the several meanings of the “
War in Heaven,” and of the “ great dragon.” The most solemn
and dreaded of church dogmas, the alpha and omega of Christian faith, and the
pillar of its FALL and ATONEMENT, dwindles down to a pagan symbol, in the many
allegories about those prehistoric struggles.
§ XIX.
IS PLEROMA SATAN’S LAIR ?
THE
subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects.
Whether
Milton’s grandiose description of the three Days’ Battle of the
Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must
have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition — it is impossible to
say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it must
have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret works of the
Vatican. Among these there is a tradition of the “ Beni Shamash ”
— the “ children of the Sun ” — concerning the Eastern
allegory, with far more minute details in its triple version, than one
can get either from the Book of Enoch, or the far more recent Revelation
of St. John about the “ Old Dragon ” and his various Slayers, as
just shown.
It
seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to Mystical
Societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the “
alleged ” antiquity of the “ Book of Enoch.” Thus, while the
author of the “ Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quichés
” is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (! !)
(vide p. 16), the English compiler of Eliphas 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.” ( Biograph. and Critical Essay, p. xxxviii. ). Modern
scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but
yesterday that the greatest literary critics in Europe denied the very
authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even the Book
of Hermes or Thot, until whole verses from the latter were
discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The
opinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The
“ Old Dragon ” and Satan, now become singly and collectively the
symbol of, and the theological term for, the “ Fallen Angel,” is
not so described either in the original Kabala (the Chaldean “
Book of Numbers ”) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the
greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas 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 reign in darkness amidst agony,
and to have built himself a throne on his inextinguishable pyre. It is the
Satan of the Republican and heretical Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy,
served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (! !) . . . .” (Histoire de la
Magie, 16-17) This description — one which reconciles so cunningly
theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a
political compliment in its phraseology — is, when read in the right
spirit, quite correct.
Yes,
indeed ; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever-living symbol — nay
apotheosis — of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of
humanity ; this ever active Energy protesting against Static Inertia —
the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light
of Knowledge odious. It is — as Eliphas says with unparalleled
justice and irony — “ this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities,
who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws,
which would fit far better his implacable tormentor — it is he who has
been finally transformed into a serpent — the red Dragon.” But
Eliphas 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.*
In
this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of
Paganism, was only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate
itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn
every pagan deity into a devil. Every bright sun-god of antiquity
—a
glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary by night, named the
Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day
— has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has become
Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma.
After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon
Gods, were cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were
both anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost sight of the human
capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially
forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe,
especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal
deity above all others to the hegemony
*
What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than
the “ Whitechapel murderer, ” “ Jack the Ripper ” of
1888, whose unparalleled blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter
and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otherwise innocent
women ! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife and
child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers !), a small
percentage of whom is daily brought before the courts, the complete
personifications of the devils of Christian Hell !
of
the gods ; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God,
and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the
“ chosen ” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one
particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious
or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. Jehovah has ever
been in antiquity only “ a god among other Gods,”
(lxxxii.
Psalm). The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, “ I
am the Almighty God,” yet adds, “ I will establish my covenant
to be a God unto thee ” (Abraham), and unto his seed after him
(Gen. xvii. 7) — not unto Aryan Europeans.
But
then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set
off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast ; and a
darker one the Church could hardly invent. Lacking the Old Testament
symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of Jehovah — the
rabbinical secret substitute for the ineffable and unpronounceable name —
the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, the
anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the
ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of
duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil — created, as taught by
her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by
the “ Jehovah-Frankenstein,” — his father’s curse and a
thorn in the divine side — a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein
could have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.
The
author of “ New Aspects of Life ” describes the Jewish God very
correctly from the Kabalistic stand-point as “ the Spirit of the Earth,
which had revealed itself to the Jew as Jehovah ” ( p. 209).
“ It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jesus, assumed his
form and personated him as the risen Christ ” — the doctrine of
Cerinthius and several Gnostic sects with slight variation, as one can see. But
the author’s explanations and deductions are remarkable : “ None
knew . . . better than Moses . . . and so well as he how great was the power of
those (gods of Egypt) with whose priests he had contended,” he says . . .
“ the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God ” (by the Jews
only). “ What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad,
is claimed to be the God . . . by overcoming them ? ” the author asks ;
to which our Occultism answers : “ those whom the Church now calls the Fallen
Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon, overcome, if we
have to accept her dictum, by Michael and the Host, that Michael being
simply Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best.”
Therefore, the author is again right in saying : “ The Greeks believed in
the existence of . . . daimons. But . . . they were anticipated by the
Hebrews, who held that there was a class of personating spirits which
they designated demions, ‘ personators.’ Admitting with
Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which were
personators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of
personating spirits, which had acquired and exercised greater powers ? And is
not personation the Key to the mystery of the Spirit state ? But once
granting this position, how are we to know that Jehovah was not a
personating Spirit, a Spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, and
thus became, the personator of the one unknown and unknowable God ? Nay, how do
we know that the Spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his
attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who
is in reality as nameless as incognizable ? ” (pp. 144-145.)
Then
the author shows “ that the Spirit Jehovah i s a personator
” on its own admission. It acknowledged to Moses “ that it had
appeared to the patriarchs as the God Shaddai ” . . . . and
“ the god Helion ” . . . . With the same breath it
assumed the name of Jehovah ; and it is on the faith of the assertion of this
personator that the names El, Eloah, Elohim, and Shaddai,
have been read and interpreted in juxtaposition with Jehovah as “ the
Lord God Almighty.” Then when the name Jehovah became ineffable . . . .
the designation Adonai, “ Lord ” was substituted for it, and
“. . . . it was owing to this substitution that the ‘ Lord ’
passed from the Jewish to the Christian ‘ Word ’ and ‘ World
’ as a designation of God ” ( p. 146). And how are we to
know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits personating even
that seemingly one — Jod or Jod-He ?
But
if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma,
it was because, as shown in Isis, the Devil — the powerful enemy
of God ( ? ! ! ) had to become the corner stone of the pillar of the
Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his “ Satan
ou le Diable ” (p. 9) : “ Il fallait 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.”* 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,
*
After the polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics came the esoteric dualism
of Manes, who was accused of personifying Evil and creating of the Devil
a God — rival of God himself, We do not see that the Christian Church has
so much improved on that exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her
King of Light, and Satan, the King of Darkness, to this day.
Jehovah
— the Elohim ; for they are all One Host, whose units
differ only in name in the esoteric teachings. Between the “ Obedient
” and the “ Fallen ” Angels there is no difference whatever,
except in their respective functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the
activity of others among those “ Dhyan Chohans ” or Elohim
who were “ commissioned to create,” i.e., to
fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The
Kabbalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah placed upside
down, for “ Satan is not a black god but the negation of the white
deity,” or the light of Truth. God is light and Satan is the
necessary darkness or shadow to set it off, without which pure light
would be invisible and incomprehensible.* “ For the initiates,” says
Eliphas Lévi, “ the devil is not a person but a creative Force,
for Good as for Evil.” They (the Initiates) represented this Force, which
presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of God Pan
— or Nature : whence the horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic
figure, as also the Christian “ goat of the Witches’
Sabbath.” With regard to this too, Christians have imprudently forgotten
that the goat was also the victim selected for the atonement of all the sins of
Israel, that the scape-goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, the
symbol of the greatest mystery on earth — the Fall into
generation. Only the Jews have long forgotten the real meaning of their (to the
non-initiated) ridiculous hero, selected from the drama of life in the great mysteries
enacted by them in the desert ; and the Christians never knew it.
Eliphas
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
* To
quote in this relation Mr. Laing in his admirable work “ Modern Science and
Modern Thought ” (p. 222, 3rd Ed.) : “ From this
dilemma (existence of evil in the world) there is no escape, unless we give up
altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt frankly the
Scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past finding out ; and of a
universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real essence we know nothing, and
can only suspect, or faintly discern a fundamental law which may make
the polarity of good and evil a necessary condition of existence.”
Were Science to know “ the real essence,” instead of knowing
nothing of it, the faint suspicion would turn into the certitude of the
existence of such a law, and the knowledge that this law is connected
with Karma.
which
differs from that given by Eliphas 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 — astral light, by the mediæval Kabalists and
Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the
Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Akâsa —is
that which the Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have
succeeded in transforming the universal soul and Pleroma, the vehicle of
Light and the receptacle of all the forms, a force spread throughout the
whole Universe, with its direct and indirect effects, into Satan and his works,
is no news to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the
above-mentioned profane even the secrets hinted at by Eliphas 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, a beginner, gather from the
following highly poetical sentences of Eliphas Lévi, as apocalyptic as
the writings of any of the Alchemists ?
“
Lucifer, the Astral Light . . . . is an intermediate force existing in
all creation, it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall of Adam was an
erotic intoxication which has rendered his generation a slave to this fatal
light . . . every sexual passion that overpowers our senses is a whirlwind of
that light which seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death, Folly.
Hallucinations, visions, ecstasies are all forms of a very dangerous excitation
due to this interior phosphorus (?). Thus light, finally, is of the
nature of fire, the intelligent use of which warms and vivifies, and the excess
of which, on the contrary, dissolves and annihilates. Thus man is called upon
to assume a sovereign empire over that (astral) light and conquer thereby his
immortality, and is threatened at the same time with being intoxicated,
absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it. This light, therefore, inasmuch as it
is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the
serpent of the legend ; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and
the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the phantom of life
that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult their agony, all this would be
the devil or Satan indeed.” (Histoire de la Magie, p. 197).
There
is no wrong statement in all this ; nothing save a superabundance of
ill-applied metaphors, as in the application of Adam — a myth—
to the illustration of the astral effects. Akâsa — 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
* Akâsa is not the
Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate it.
fills
all the infinite Space ; is Space itself, in one sense, or both its Sixth
and Seventh principles.* But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards
manifestation, this light must have its shadowy side — as already
remarked. And as the infinite can never be manifested, hence the finite world
has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which its actions draw upon
humanity and which men attract and force to activity. Hence, while it is
the universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity, the Astral
light becomes, with regard to Mankind, simply the effects of the causes
produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens —
whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness — that produce Good
or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction
in the great magic agent. It is mankind which has become the “ Serpent of
Genesis,” and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and sin of the
“ Celestial Virgin ” — which thus becomes the Mother of gods
and devils at one and the same time ; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent
deity to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of attracting to
themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas 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 (§
361) it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy names of the
Three 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 —
*
Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest astrologer and
Kabalist of his day : — “ The art of divine magic consists in the
ability to perceive the essence of things in the light of nature (astral
light), and by using the soul-powers of the spirit to produce material things
from the unseen universe, and in such operations the Above and the Below must
be brought together and made to act harmoniously. The spirit of Nature (astral
light) is a unity, creating and forming everything, and acting through the
instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such 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 your-self and to make it tangible, and then the
substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly rendered objective by
the power of the spirit.” — (Quoted in Dr. Hartman’s “
Paracelsus.”)
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 Sutrâtma,
the luminous thread of immortal impersonal monadship, on which our
earthly lives or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads —
according to the beautiful expression of Vedantic philosophy.
And
now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “
Lord of Phosphorus ” (brimstone was a theological improvement), and Lucifer,
or “ Light-Bearer,” is in us : it is our Mind — our
tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure
animalism. Without this principle — the emanation of the very essence of
the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct
from the Divine mind— we would be surely no better than animals.
The first man Adam was made only a living soul (nephesh), the last Adam
was made a quickening Spirit * : — says Paul, his words referring
to the building or Creation of man. Without this quickening
spirit, or human Mind or soul, there would be no difference between man
and beast ; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their
actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure
and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible. Each follows its
instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey
eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the
significance given to it by theology ; if that
*
The real original text of 1 Corinthians, rendered Kabalistically and
esoterically would read (in Chap. xv., verses 44 and 45) :
“ It is sown a soul body (not ‘ natural ’ body), it is
raised a spirit body.” St. Paul was an Initiate, and his words
have quite a different meaning when read esoterically. The body “ is sown
in weakness (passivity) ; it is raised in power ” (43) — or
in spirituality and intellect.
fall
occurred as a result of an act never intended by nature, — a sin,
how about the animals ? If we are told that they procreate their species in
consequence of that same “ original sin,” for which God cursed the
earth — hence everything living on it — we will put another
question. We are told by theology, as by Science, that the animal was on earth
far earlier than man ? We ask the former : How did it procreate its species,
before the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of the Good and the Evil, had been
plucked off ? As said : “ The Christians — far less clear-sighted
than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose
doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied, and whose memory they have
blackened by their deeds —took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and of
course strove vainly to reconcile the Gospel of Light and Liberty with the
Deity of Darkness and Submission.” (“ War in Heaven.”)
*
But,
it is sufficiently proven now that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who
are credited with having made war on the gods, are identical as personalities ;
moreover, that all the ancient religions taught the same tenet save the final
conclusion, which latter differs from the Christian. The seven primeval gods
had all a dual state, one essential, the other accidental. In their essential
state they were all the “ Builders ” or Fashioners, the
Preservers and the rulers of this world, and in the accidental state, clothing
themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on the earth and reigned on
it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more
upon it as men.
* By
Godolphin Mitford, later in life, Murad Ali Bey. Born in India, the son of a
Missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan in 1884. He
was a most extraordinary Mystic, of a great learning and remarkable
intelligence. But he left the Right Path and forthwith fell under Karmic
retribution. As well shown by the author of the article quoted “ The
followers of the defeated Elohim, first massacred by the victorious Jews (the
Jehovites), and then persuaded by the victorious Christians and Mohamedans,
continued nevertheless. . . Some of these scattered sects have lost even the
tradition of the true rationale of their belief — to worship in secrecy
and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty. Why do the Sabean
Bedouins (avowedly Monotheists when dwelling in the Mohamedan cities) in the
solitude of the desert night yet invoke the starry ‘ Host of Heaven
’ ? Why do the Yezidis, the ‘ Devil Worshippers,’ worship the
‘ Muluk-Taoos ’ — The ‘ Lord Peacock ’ —
the emblem of pride and of hundred-eyed intelligence (and of Initiation also),
which was expelled from heaven with Satan, according to an old Oriental
tradition ? Why do the Gholaites and their kindred Mesopotamo-Iranian Mohamedan
Sects believe in the ‘ Noor Illahee ’ — the Light of the
Elohim — transmitted in anastasis through a hundred Prophet
Leaders ? It is because they have continued in ignorant superstition the
traditional religion of the ‘ Light Deities whom Jahveh overthrew ’
(is said to have overthrown rather) ; for by overthrowing them he
would have overthrown himself. The ‘ Muluk-Taoos ’ — is Maluk—
‘ Ruler ’ as is shown in the foot-note. It is only a new form of
Moloch, Melek, Molech, Malayak, and Malachim ” — Messengers,
Angels, etc.
Thus,
esoteric philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its
aspects — good and evil, but theology cannot admit this philosophical
truth. Teaching the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and
having made of Satan the corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption
— to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious angels distinct
from God and the Logos in their personalities, the admission that the
downfall of the disobedient Spirits meant simply their fall into
generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were
identical. For since the LOGOS (or God) is the aggregate of that once divine
Host accused of having fallen, it would follow that the Logos and Satan are
one.
Yet
such was the real philosophical view of the now disfigured tenet in antiquity.
The Verbum, or the “ Son,” was shown in a dual aspect by the
Pagan Gnostics — in fact, he was a duality in full unity. Hence,
the endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of
Chronos, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Aryans
had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Siva into the Abyss of
Darkness, etc., etc. But the fall of all these Logoi and Demiurgi from their
primitive exalted position, had in all cases one and the same esoteric
signification in it ; the curse —in its philosophical meaning
— of being incarnated on this earth ; an unavoidable rung on the ladder
of cosmic evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic law, without
which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed
mystery to the understanding of true philosophy. To say, as the author of the Esprits
Tombés des Paiens (p. 347) does, that since “ Christianity is
made to rest on two pillars, that of evil (πονηρο͂υ),
and of good (ἀγαθοῦ) ; on two forces, in short,
ἀγαθαὶ καὶ
κακαὶ δυναμεῖς
: hence, if we suppress the punishment of the evil forces, the
protecting mission of the good Powers will have neither value nor sense ”
— is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and
explains Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the primitive
wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true esoteric
meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the present
false colouring in their interpretation. The verbum and Lucifer
are one in their dual aspect ; and the “ Prince of the Air ” (
princeps aeris hujus) is not the “ God of that period,”
but an everlasting principle. If the latter was said to be ever circling
around the world — qui circumambulat terram —the great
Apostle referred simply to the never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in
which evil will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the
true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It
is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and longforgotten
languages, and palm them off as truths and revealed facts on the
ignorant masses. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that
strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the
fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to
mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang-Ty, the great
Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired active wisdom, falling into
the valley of Pain. Their leader, the FLYING DRAGON, having drunk of the
forbidden ambrosia, fell to the Earth with his Host (Kings). In the Zend
Avesta, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with fire (the “
Flames ” — vide supra) seeks to conquer the Heavens,* when
Ahura Mazda, descending from the solid Heaven he inhabits, to the help
of the Heavens that revolve (in time and space, the manifested
worlds of cycles including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspends,
“ the seven bright Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight
Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth along with him. (Acad.
des Inscrip., Vol. xxxix., p. 690 ; see Vendidad, Farg. xix., iii.)
In the Vendidad the Daêvas are called “ evil-doing,” and
shown to rush away “ into the depths of the world of hell,” or
matter. (47.) This is an allegory showing the Devas compelled to incarnate,
once that they have separated themselves from their parent essence, or, in
other words, after the unit had become a multiple, after differentiation and
manifestation.
Typhon
the Egyptian, Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the
same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not “ demons
commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but
fashioners (the “ architects ”) of the worlds, and the progenitors
of man. They are the Fallen angels, metaphorically — “ the
true mirrors of the Eternal Wisdom.”
What
is the absolute and complete truth as well as the esoteric meaning about this
universal myth ? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth
to ear. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the recording Angel,
unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost
depths of his divine intuitions. It is the great SEVENTH MYSTERY of
Creation, the first and the last ; and those who read St. John’s
Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal. . . . It
can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal
riddle of the Sphinx. If the latter threw herself into the sea and perished, it
is not because Œdipus had unriddled the secret of the ages, but
because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and the subjective, he had
* So
does every Yogi and even Christian : one must take the Kingdom of heaven by
violence —we are taught. Why should such a desire make of any one a
devil ?
dishonoured
the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical
and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively — for the
last four keys of the seven that throw wide open the portals to the mysteries
of Nature are in the hands of the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to
the masses at large — not in this, our century, at any rate.
The
dead letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion, was
born from exoteric interpretation. The holy “ Airyaman,” “
the bestower of weal,” invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyô,
is the divine aspect of Ahriman, “ the deadly, the Daê of the
Daêvas ” (Farg. xx., 43), and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect
of the former. “ Keep us from the Hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta
” (Vendidad Sâdah), has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical
meaning with “ Lead us not into temptation,” and is addressed by
man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. For (Ahura) Mazda
is the spiritual, divine, and purified man, and Armaita Spenta, the Spirit of
the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The
whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature — or what remains of it —
is magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical — even its “
mystery of the law ” (see the Gâtha in Yasna XLIV.). Now the Mobed
and the Parsi keep their eye on the Baresma during the sacrifice, the
divine twig off Ormazd’s “ tree ” having been transformed
into a bunch of metallic rods ; and wonder why neither the Amesha-Spentas, nor
“ the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their Vohu-Mano
(good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help them
much. Let them meditate on the “ tree of Wisdom,” and study,
assimilating one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the tree of eternal
life, the white Hôma, 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 before he can
heal others.
This
proves once more that the so-called “ myths,” in order to be at
least approximately dealt with in any degree of justice, have to be closely
examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven Keys
has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others, if we would
unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-killing
materialism, the ancient priest Initiates have become, in the opinion of our
learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of
superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of men. This is
an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one
believed more in Gods — or, we may call them, the Spiritual and now invisible
Powers, or Spirits, the noumena of the phenomena— than they
did ; and they believed just because they knew. If, initiated into the
Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the
profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less
dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught
only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know,
have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel
Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of
damnation. As well they may, for his mysteries can at best be only
hinted at in polite ears, never described. Turn to King’s Gnostics,
“ Description of the Plates ” (Plate H), and see for yourself what
was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says :
“ There is a Rabbinical tradition that the cherubin placed over it were
represented as male and female, in the act of copulation, in order to express
the grand doctrine of the Essence of Form and Matter, the two
principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the sanctuary and
beheld this most astounding emblem, they naturally enough exclaimed, ‘ Is
this your God, of whom you boast that He is such a lover of purity ?’
” (p. 441.)
King
thinks that this tradition “ savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy
to demand any credit,” to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings
of the two cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the Ark, these
wings meeting over the “ Holy of Holies,” are an emblem
quite eloquent in itself, besides the “ holy ” Jod within
the ark ! The Mystery of Agathadæmon, 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.
§ XX.
PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN.
HIS ORIGIN IN ANCIENT INDIA.
IN
our modern day there does not exist the slightest doubt in the minds of the
best European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest and
most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of
Deukalion, whom the 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 ” (Apollodorus, I., 7, 1). After the Flood of
Deukalion, Zeus, it was taught, had commanded Prometheus and Athena to call
forth a new race of men from the mire left by the waters of the deluge (Ovid,
Metam. 1, 81. Etym. M. v.
Προμηθεύς) ; and in the day of
Pausanias the slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in
Phocea (Paus. x, 4, 4). “ On several archaic monuments one still
sees Prometheus modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena’s
help ” (Myth. Grèce Ant. 246).
The
same authors remind the world of another equally mysterious personage, though
one less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable
analogies with that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and generator
is Phoroneus, the hero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer
extant — the Phoronidæ. His legend was localized in Argolis,
where a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder that he was
the bringer of fire upon earth (Pausanias, 11, 19, 5 ; Cf. 20,
3.) A benefactor of men as Prometheus was, he had made them participators of
every bliss on earth. Plato (Timæus, p. 22), and Clemens
Alexandrinus (Strom. 1, p. 380) say that Phoroneus was the first
man, or “ the father of mortals.” His genealogy, which assigns to
him as his father Inachos, the river, reminds one of that of Prometheus, which
makes that Titan the son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus
was the nymph Melia ; a significant descent which distinguishes him from
Prometheus.
Melia,
Decharme thinks, is the personification of the ash-tree, whence,
according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze* (Opera et Dies,
142-145) ; and which with the Greeks is the celestial tree common to
every Aryan mythology. This ash is the Yggdrasil of the Norse antiquity,
which the Norns sprinkle daily with the waters from the fountain of Urd, that
it may not wither. It remains verdant till the last days of the Golden Age.
Then the Norns — the three sisters who gaze respectively into the Past,
the Present, and the Future — make known the decree of Fate (Karma,
Orlog), but men are conscious only of the Present. But when Gultweig
comes (the golden ore) “ the bewitching enchantress who, thrice cast into
the fire, arises each time more beautiful, and fills the souls of gods and men
with unapproachable longing, then the Norns . . . enter into being, and the
blessed peace of childhood’s dreams passes away, and Sin comes into
existence with all its evil consequences . . . ” and KARMA (See “
Asgard and the Gods,”
p. 10-12). The thrice purified Gold is
— Manas, the Conscious Soul.
With
the Greeks, the “ ash-tree ” represented the same idea. Its
luxuriant boughs are the sidereal heaven, golden by day and studded with stars
by night — the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting
shadow humanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without any fear.
. . . “ That tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, which was
lightning,” Decharme guesses.
And
here steps in the killing materialism of the age ; that peculiar twist in the
modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way, and freezes
every intuition, allowing it no hand in the physical speculations of the day.
After having seen in Prometheus no better than fire by friction, the
learned author of the “ Mythologie de la 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 boughs of the celestial ash-tree, stole that bough (or the fruit)
and carried it down on the earth in its bill. Now the Greek word Φ
ορώνευς 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 pramântha (of the
old Aryan Hindus) into the Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the
*
According to the Occult teaching, three yugas passed away during the time of the
Third Root-Race, i.e., the Satya, the Treta, and the Dvâpara yuga,
answering to the golden age of its early innocence : to the silver — when
it reached its maturity : and to the Bronze age, when, separating into sexes,
they became the mighty demi-gods of old.
(personified)
bird, that brings the heavenly lightning to the Earth. Traditions relating to
the birth and origin of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus
the father of the Argians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt (or lightning),
as in the legends of Hephaestus or Prometheus, was the origin of the human race
” (266).
This
still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and the
allegory. It is now supposed that the name of Prometheus has been unriddled, and
the modern mythologists and Orientalists see in it no longer what their fathers
saw on the authority of the whole of classical antiquity. They only find
therein something far more appropriate to the spirit of the age, namely, a
phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus, as well as that of Prometheus,
bears not one, nor even two, but a series of esoteric meanings. Both relate to
the seven celestial fires ; to Agni 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 Hindu Aryan 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 Prometheus as the old Greeks did. The latter, it seems,
“ basing themselves on the false analogy of
προμηθεύς with the verb
προμανθάνειν, saw
in him the type of the ‘ foreseeing ’ man, to whom, for the sake of
symmetry, a brother was added — Epimetheus, or ‘ he who takes
counsel after the event.’ ” But now the Orientalists have
decided otherwise. They know the real meaning of the two names better than
those who invented them.
The
legend is based upon an event of universal importance. It was built “ to
commemorate a great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the
imagination of the first witnesses to it, and its remembrance has never since
faded out from popular memory.” What is it ? Laying aside every poetical fiction,
all those dreams of the golden age, let us imagine — argue the modern
scholars — in all its gross realism, the first miserable state of
humanity, the striking picture of which was traced for us after Æschylus
by Lucretius, and the exact truth of which is now confirmed by science ; and
then one may understand better that a new life really began for man, on that
day when he saw the first spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood,
or from the veins of a flint. How could man help feeling gratitude to that
mysterious and marvellous being which they were henceforth enabled to create at
their will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and expanded, developing
with singular power. “ This terrestrial flame, was it not analogous in
nature to that one which they received from above, or that other which frightened
them in the thunderbolt ? ”
“
Was it not derived from the same source ? And if its origin was in heaven, it
must have been brought down some day on earth. If so, who was the powerful
being, the beneficent being, god or man, who had conquered it ? Such are the
questions which the curiosity of the Aryans offered in the early days of their
existence, and which found their answer in the myth of Prometheus ” ; (Mythologie
de la Grèce Antique, p. 258).
The
philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above reflections,
and points them out. The miserable state of Humanity described by
Æschylus and Prometheus was no more wretched then, in the early days of
the Aryans, than it is now. That “ state ” was limited to the
savage tribes ; and the now-existing savages are not a whit more happy or
unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago.
It
is an accepted fact in Science that “ rude implements, exactly resembling
those in use among existing savages,” are found in river-gravels
and caves geologically “ implying an enormous antiquity.” So great
is that resemblance that, as the author of “ The Modern Zoroastrian
” tells us : “ If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of
stone celts and arrow-heads used now by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed
side by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from
Kent’s Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could
distinguish between them ” (p. 145). And if there are Bushmen
existing now, in our age of the highest civilization, who are no higher
intellectually than the race of men which inhabited Devonshire and Southern
France during the 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, worked out in 1868 (Trans. of the Royal Society of London),
with regard to the internal capacity of the skull — its volume being
taken as the standard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities
— Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the
highest rank of mankind) is 88.4 cubic inches, being thus “
perceptibly smaller than that of the Polynesians generally, which, even among
many Papuans and Alfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7
cubic inches ” ; which shows that it is the quality and not the quantity
of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity. The average index of
skulls among various races having been now recognized to be “ one of the
most characteristic marks of difference between different races,” the
following comparison is suggestive : “ The index of breadth among the
Scandinavians (is) at 75 : among the English at 76 ; among Holsteiners at 77 ;
in Bresgau at 80 ; Schiller’s skull shows an index of breadth even of 82
. . . the Madurese also 82 ! ” Finally, the same comparison between the
oldest skulls known and the European, brings to light the startling fact
“ that most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period,
are above rather than below the average of the brain of the now living man
in volume.” Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and
length in inches from the average measurements of several skulls, the following
sums are obtained : —
1.
Old Northern skulls of the stone age . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 18.877 ins.
2.
Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England 18.858
„
3.
Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales . . . 18.649
„
4.
Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France . . . . . . 18.220
„ The average of the now living
Europeans is 18.579 inches ; of Hottentots,
17.795
inches !
Which
figures show plainly “ that the size of the brain of the oldest
populations known to us is not such as to place them on a lower level than that
of the now living inhabitants of the Earth ” ( “ The Age and
Origin of Man ”). Besides which, they show the “ missing link
” vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more anon : we must return
to our direct subject.
The
race which Jupiter so ardently desired “ to quench, and plant a new one
in its stead ” (Æsch.* 241), suffered mental, not
physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to mortals, as he tells the
“ Chorus,” was to hinder them “ from foreseeing death
” (256) ; he “ saved the mortal race from sinking blasted down to
Hades’ gloom ” (244) ; and then only, “ besides ” that,
he gave them fire (260). This shows plainly the dual character, at any rate of
the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of the seven
keys taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man’s
spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or discovering fire. For fire
was never “ discovered,” but existed on earth since its beginning.
It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being
as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we
are told that men appeared so late on Earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with
the exception of a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances
had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer : Let a new race of
men — whether evolved from angel or gorilla — appear now on any
uninhabited
* Prometheus Vinctus.
spot
of the globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one
it would not be a year or two old before discovering fire, through the fall of
lightning setting in flames grass or something else. This assumption, that
primitive man lived ages on earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is
one of the most painfully illogical of all. But old Æschylus was an
initiate, and knew well what he was giving out.*
No
occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from
the East, will deny for a moment that the myth of Prometheus has reached Europe
from Aryavarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus
represents fire by friction. Therefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F.
Baudry, who shows in his Les Mythes du feu et breuvage celeste (Revue
germanique, 1861 p. 356† one of the aspects of Prometheus and
his origin from India. He shows the reader the supposed primitive
process to obtain fire, still in use to-day in India to light the sacrificial
flame. This is what he says : —
“
This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic Sutras, consists in
rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in the centre of a piece of wood. The
friction develops intense heat and ends by setting on fire the particles of
wood in contact. The motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a
series of motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick in
its middle : the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and pulls them
alternately. . . . The full process is designated in Sanskrit by the verb
manthâmi, mathnâni ; which means ‘ to rub, agitate, shake and
obtain by rubbing,’ and is especially applied to rotatory friction, as
proved by its derivation from mandala, which signifies a circle. . . .
The pieces of wood serving for the production of fire have each their name in
Sanskrit. The stick which turns is called pramantha ; the discus which
receives it is called arani and aranî : ‘ the two aranis
’ designating the ensemble of the instrument ” (p.
358 et seq.).‡
It
remains to be seen what the Brahmins will say to this. But supposing Prometheus
has been conceived in one of the aspects of his
*
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, being an ignorant ancient Greek,
he could not ex-press so well himself, is absurdly ludicrous !
†
See also his Mémoires de la Societé de la Linguistique
following the “ Fire Myths,” (Vol. 1, p. 337, et
seq.)
‡
There is the upper and nether piece of timber used to produce
this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices, and it is the aranî
which contains the socket. This is proven by an allegory in the Vayu
Purâna and others, which tell us that Nemi, the son of Ikshwaku, had
left no successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the earth without a
ruler, introduced the king’s body into the socket of an aranî
— like an upper aranî — and pro- duced from it a
prince named Janaka. “ It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he
was engendered that he was called Janaka.” ( But see Goldstücker’s
Sanskrit Dictionary at the word Arani. ) Devaki, Krishna’s mother, in
prayer addressed to her, is called “ the aranî whose attrition
engenders fire.”
myth
as the producer of fire by means of pramantha, or as an animate and
divine pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no other than
the phallic meaning attributed to it by the modern symbologists ? Decharme, at
any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth ; for he
unconsciously corroborates by his remarks all that the Occult sciences teach
with regard to the Manasa Devas, who have endowed man with the
consciousness of his immortal soul : that consciousness which hinders man
“ from foreseeing death,” and makes him know he is
immortal.* “ How has Prometheus got into the possession of the (divine)
spark ? ” he asks. “ Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there
he must have gone to find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to
approach the gods, he must have been a god himself.” The Greeks held that
he was of the divine race ; the Hindus, that he was a Deva. Hence
“ with the Greeks he was the son of the Titan Iapetos,” ᾽
Iαπετονίδης (Theog.
528). . . . “ But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods
alone ; it was a treasure they reserved for themselves . . . over which they
jealously watched . . . ‘ The prudent son of Iapetus,’ says Hesiod,
‘ deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing in the cavity of a narthex,
the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow ’ (Theog. 565). . .
Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made from heaven. .
.” “ Now according to Greek ideas,” (identical in this with
those of the Occultists) “ this possession forced from Jupiter, this
human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be followed by an
expiation. . . . Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that race of Titans who had
rebelled† against the gods, and whom the master of Olympus had hurled
down into Tartarus ; like them, he is the genius of Evil, doomed to cruel
suffering, etc., etc.”
That
which is revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one-sided view taken
of this grandest of all the myths. The most intuitional among modern writers
cannot or will not rise in their conceptions above the level of the Earth and
Cosmic phenomena. It is not denied that the moral idea in the myth, as
presented in the Theogony of Hesiod, plays a certain part in the primitive
Greek conception. The Titan is more than a thief of the celestial fire. He is
the representation of humanity — active, industrious, intelligent, but at
the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling divine powers. Therefore it is
humanity punished in the person of Prometheus, but it is only so with the
Greeks. With the latter, Prometheus is not a
*
The monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute
knows nothing of this ; it lives an animal life of sensation just as the first
human would have lived, when attaining physical development in the Third Race,
had it not been for the Agnish-watta and the Manasa Pitris.
†
The fallen angels, therefore ; the Asuras of the Indian Pantheon.
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. H e is simply the image of the pernicious
and dreaded effects of lightning. He is the “ evil fire ” (mal
feu) and the symbol of the divine reproductive male organ. “
Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to explain is then
simply a (Cosmic) genius of fire ” (p. 261). It is the former idea (the
phallic) which was pre-eminently Aryan, if we believe Ad. Kuhn (in
his Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks) and Baudry. For
—
“
The fire used by man being the result of the action of pramantha in the aranî,
the Aryas must have ascribed (?) the same origin to celestial fire, and
they must * have imagined (?) that a god armed with pramantha, or
a divine pramantha, exercised in the bosom of the clouds a violent friction,
which gave birth to lightning and thunderbolts. . . . . This idea is supported
by the fact that, according to Plutarch’s testimony (Philosoph. Plant.,
iii. 3), the Stoics thought that thunder was the result of the struggle of
storm-clouds and lightning — a conflagration due to friction ; while
Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action of clouds which clashed with
each other. What was this theory, if not the scientific translation of the
production of fire by friction ? . . . . . . Everything leads us to think that,
from the highest antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Aryans, it was
believed that the pramantha lighted fire in the storm cloud as well as in the
aranîs.” ( Revue Germanique, p. 368.)
Thus,
suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered truths.
Defenders of the Bible dead-letter could never help the writers of missionary
tracts more effectually, than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for
granted that the ancient Aryans based their religious conceptions on no higher
thought than the physiological.
But
it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic philosophy is against such an
interpretation. And if, as Decharme himself confesses, “ this idea of the
creative power of fire is explained at once by the ancient assimilation of the
human soul to a celestial spark,” as shown by the imagery often made use
of in the Vedas when speaking of Aranî, it would mean something
higher than simply a gross sexual conception. A hymn to Agni in the Veda is
cited as example : — “ Here is the pramantha, the generator is
ready. Bring the mistress of the race (the female Aranî). Let us
produce Agni by attrition, according
* The italics are ours ; they show how
assumptions are raised to laws in our day.
to
ancient custom ” — which 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 Devaki, the mother of Krishna, or
the incarnated LOGOS ; and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and
irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may already be regarded as having a
sexual significance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image. The
subjective had been transformed into the objective ; Spirit had fallen into
matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance had become, in human
thought, the mystic, but still sexual union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus
acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning.
Between the Vedas and the Purânas there is an abyss of which both are the
poles, like the seventh (atmic) and the first or lowest principle (the
physical body) in the Septenary constitution of man. The primitive, purely
spiritual language of the Vedas, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier,
had found its purely human expression for the purpose of describing events
taking place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna’s death (from which day
the Kali Yuga, or Black-Age, began for mankind).
As
Aditi is called Surârani (the matrix or “ mother ” of
the sura gods), so Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, is called in
Mahabhârata Pandavârani
—which
term is already physiologized. But Devaki, the antetype of the Roman
Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is the
goddess mother, the “ Deva-matri ” of Seven Sons (the six and
the seven Adityas of early Vedic times) ; the mother of Krishna, Devaki,
has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagaddhâtri (the “ nurse
of the world ”), the seventh (Krishna, the Logos,) being transferred to
that Rohini. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven children, of
five sons and two daughters, (a later transformation of sex) in Matthew’s
Gospel (xiii. 55-56). No one of the worshippers of the Roman Catholic
Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by the gods
to Devaki. Let the reader judge.
“
Thou art that Prakriti (essence), infinite and subtile, which bore 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 triform
sacrifice, becoming the germ of all. . . . Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit
proceeds ; thou art the aranî whose attrition engenders fire
” . . . . (“ Womb of Light,” “ holy Vessel,” are
the epithets of the Virgin). “ As Aditi, thou art the parent of the gods.
. . . Thou art Jyotsna (the morning twilight).” The Virgin is often
addressed as the “ morning Star ” and the “ star of Salvation
”
—the
light whence day is begotten. “ Thou art Samnati (humility, a
daughter of Daksha), the mother of Wisdom ; thou art Niti, the parent of
harmony (Naya) ; thou art modesty, the progenitrix of affection (Prasraya
or vinaya) ; thou art desire, of whom love is born. . . . Thou art
the mother of knowledge (Avabodha) ; patience (Dhriti),
the parent of fortitude (Dhairya) . . . . etc., etc.”
Thus
aranî is shown here as the Roman Catholic “ vase of election
” and no worse. As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical.
No unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the
Zohar —far less metaphysical than any other symbolism — the
idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the Zohar (iii.,
290) says : “ All that which exists, all that which has been formed by
the ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and female
principle,” it means no more than this : “ The divine Spirit of
Life is ever coalescing with matter.” It is the WILL of the Deity that
acts ; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian. “ When Atteekah
Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the concealed, desired to form
all things, it formed all things like male and female. This wisdom comprises
ALL when it goeth forth.” Hence Chochmah (male wisdom) and Binah (female
consciousness or Intellect) are said to create all between the two — the
active and the passive principles. As the eye of the expert jeweller discerns
under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, enshrined
within its bosom, his hand dealing with the former but to get at its contents,
so the eye of the true philosopher reads between the lines of the Purânas
the sublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedantic
wisdom. Our Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the thick
coating of the shell, and — act accordingly.
From
all that has been said in this section, one sees clearly that, between the
Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the
sledge hammer of ancient philosophy can kill this dogma.
§ XXI.
ENOÏCHION-HENOCH.
THE
history of the evolution of the Satanic myth would not be com- plete if we
omitted to notice the character of the mysterious and Cosmopolitan Enoch,
variously called Enos, Hanoch, and finally Enoichion by the Greeks. It is from
his Book that the first notions of the Fallen Angels were taken by the early
Christian writers.
The
“ Book of Enoch ” is declared apocryphal. But what is an Apocrypha
? The very etymology of the term shows that it is simply a secret
book, i.e., one that belonged to the catalogue of temple libraries under
the guardianship of the Hierophants and initiated priests, and was never meant
for the profane. Apocrypha comes from the verb crypto,
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 (see Joshua xv., 15).
Some
of the writers interested in the subject — especially Masons — have
tried to identify Enoch with Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with
the Latin Mercury. As individuals, all these are distinct one from the other ;
professionally — if one may use this word, now so limited in its sense
— they belong one and all to the same category of sacred writers, of
Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in the Kurân
(see Surât XIX.) are generically termed the Edris, or the “
Learned ” (the Initiated), bore in Egypt the name of “
Thoth,” the inventor of arts, sciences, writing or letters, of
music and astronomy. Among the Jews the Edris became “ Enoch,”
who, according to Bar-Hebræus, “ was the first inventor of
writing,” books, arts, and sciences, the first who reduced to a system
the progress of the planets. In Greece he was called Orpheus, and thus changed
his name with every nation. The number Seven being attached to, and connected
with, each of those primitive Initiators,* as well as the number 365, of the
days in the year, astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the
sacred office of all those men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is
the seventh Patriarch ; Orpheus is the possessor of the phorminx,
the 7-stringed lyre, which is the seven-fold mystery of initiation. Thoth, with
the seven-rayed Solar Discus on his head, travels in the Solar boat, the 365
degrees, jumping out every fourth (leap) year for one day. Finally, Thoth-Lunus
is the septenary
*
Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch means the “ Initiator ” and “
teacher,” as well as the “ Son of Man,” Enos (vide
Genesis iv., 26), esoterically.
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 under the
pillars of Mercury or Seth his precious rolls or books, is the same as that
told of Hermes, “ the father of Wisdom,” who concealed his books of
Wisdom under a pillar, and then, finding the two pillars of stone, found the
science written thereon. Yet Josephus, notwithstanding his constant efforts in
the direction of Israel’s unmerited glorification, and though he does
attribute that science (of Wisdom) to the Jewish Enoch — writes history.
He shows those pillars as still existing during his own time. He tells us
that they were built by Seth ; and so they may have been, only neither by the
Patriarch of that name, the fabled son of Adam, nor by the Egyptian god of
Wisdom
—Teth,
Set, Thoth, Tat, Sat (the later Sat-an), or Hermes, who are all one,
— but by the “ sons of the Serpent-god,” or “ Sons of
the Dragon,” the name under which the Hierophants of Egypt and Babylon
were known before the Deluge, as were their forefathers, the Atlanteans.
What
Josephus tells us, therefore, must be allegorically true, with the
exception of the application made of it. According to his version the two
famous pillars were entirely covered with hieroglyphics, which, after the
discovery, were copied and reproduced in the most secret corners of the inner
temples of Egypt, and have thus become the source of its Wisdom and exceptional
learning. These two “ pillars,” however, are the prototypes of the
two “ tables of stones ” hewn by Moses at the command of the
“ Lord.” Hence, in saying that all the great adepts and mystics of
antiquity — like Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Plato — got the
elements of their theology from those hieroglyphics, he is right in one sense,
and wrong in another ; for he errs in accuracy. The Secret Doctrine teaches us
that the arts, sciences, theology, and especially the philosophy of every
nation which preceded the last universally known, but not universal
Deluge, had been recorded ideographically from the primitive oral records of
the Fourth Race, and that these were the inheritance of the latter from the
early Third Root-Race before the allegorical Fall. Hence, also, the Egyptian
pillars, the tablets, and even the “ white Oriental porphyry stone
” of the Masonic legend — which Enoch, fearing that the real and
precious secrets would be lost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of
the Earth — were simply the more or less symbolical and allegorical
copies from the primitive Records. The “ Book of Enoch ” is one of
such copies and is a Chaldean, now very incomplete compendium. As already said,
Enoïchion means in Greek the “ inner eye,” or the Seer
; in Hebrew, and with the help of Masoretic points it means the
initiator and instructor, . It is a generic title ; besides which his legend is
that of several other prophets, Jewish and heathen, with changes of made-up
details, the root-form being the same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven alive
; and the astrologer, at the court of Isdubar, the Chaldean Hea-bani,
is likewise raised to heaven by the god Hea, who was his patron, as
Jehovah was of Elijah (whose name means in Hebrew “ God-Jah,”
Jehovah, ), and again of Elihu, which has
the
same meaning. This kind of easy death, or euthanasia, has an esoteric
meaning. It symbolises the death of any adept who has reached the power and
degree, as also the purification, which enable him to die only in the physical
body and still live and lead a conscious life in his astral body. The
variations on this theme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same.
The Pauline expression (Hebrews
xi.
5) “ that he should not see death ” — ut non videret
mortem — has thus an esoteric meaning, but nothing supernatural
in it. The mangled interpretation given of some Biblical hints to the effect
that Enoch, “ whose years will equal those of the world,” (of the Solar
year, 365 days,) will share with Christ and the prophet Elijah the honours and
bliss of the last advent and of the destruction of Antichrist — signify, esoterically,
that some of the great adepts will return in the Seventh Race, when all Error
will be made away with, and the advent of TRUTH will be heralded by those Sishta,
the holy “ Sons of Light.”
The
Latin church is not always logical, nor prudent either. She declares the
“ Book of Enoch ” an apocrypha, and has gone so far as to claim,
through Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from
the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, though an inspired apostle,
quotes from and thus sanctifies the Book of Enoch, which is alleged to be an
apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics perceived the peril in
time. Had they accepted Cajetan’s resolution, they would have been forced
to reject likewise the fourth Gospel ; as St. John borrows literally from
Enoch, and places in the mouth of Jesus, a whole sentence ! (Vide
supra, § XV I I I., sub-sect. A, about the sheep and the robbers.)
Ludolph,
the “ father of Ethiopic literature,” commissioned to investigate
the various Enochian MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the Mazarine
Library, declared that “ no book of Enoch could exist among the
Abyssinians ” ! Further researches and discoveries worsted his too
dogmatic assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel found and brought that same
work from Abyssinia some years later, and Bishop Laurence translated it. But
Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its contents ; as did all the rest of the
Scientists. He declared it “ a Gnostic work,” in which
“ the age of giants who devour ” men — is given . . . hence
it is another “ Apocalypsis.” Giants ! another fairy-tale.
Such,
however, was not the opinion of all the best critics. Dr. Hanneberg places the
Book of Enoch along with the Third Book of the Maccabees, at the head of the
list of those whose authority stands the nearest to that of the canonical
works.
Verily,
“ where doctors disagree . . .”
As
usual, however, they were all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a
Biblical character, a single living man, is like accepting Adam as the first
one. Enoch was a generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of
individuals, at all times and ages, and in every race and nation. This may be
easily inferred from the fact that the ancient Talmudists and the teachers of
Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about Hanokh, the Son of
Yered. . . . Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by God, and taken
alive to heaven (i.e., one who reached Mukti or Nirvana,
on earth, as Buddha did and others still do) ; and others maintain that he was
a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that Enoch, or its equivalent,
was a term, even during the days of the later Talmudists, which meant “
Seer,” “ Adept in the Secret Wisdom,” etc., without
any specification as to the character of the title-bearer. When Josephus,
speaking of Elijah and Enoch (Antiquities, ix., 2), remarks that “ it is
written in the sacred books they (Elijah and Enoch) disappeared, but so that
nobody knew that they died,” it means simply that they had died in
their personalities, as Yogis die to this day in India, or even some
Christian monks to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die
— on the terrestrial plane — even for themselves. A seemingly
figurative way of speaking, yet literally true.
“
Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of computing
the seasons to Noah,” says the Midrash Pirkah R. Eliezar (cap.
viii.), referring to Henoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus,
because the two are identical in their esoteric meaning. “ Hanokh ”
in this case, and his “ Wisdom,” belong to the cycle of the Fourth
Atlantean Race,* and Noah to that of the Fifth.† In this case both
represent the Root-Races, the present one and the one that preceded it. In
another sense, Enoch disappeared, “ he walked with God, and he was not,
for God took him,” the allegory referring to the disappearance of the
Sacred and Secret knowledge from among men ; for “ God ” (or Java
Aleim —the high hierophants, the heads of the colleges of initiated
priests‡) took him ; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoïchions,
the Seers and their knowledge and wisdom, became strictly
*
Says the Zohar, “ Hanokh had a book which was one with the book of
the generations of Adam ; this is the Mystery of Wisdom.”
†
Noah is heir to the Wisdom of Enoch ; in other words, the Fifth is heir to the
Fourth Race.
‡
Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1, p. 575, et seq.
confined
to the Secret Colleges of the Prophets, with the Jews, and to the temples with
the Gentiles.
Interpreted
with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual
nature of man — spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of
the astronomical cross (given by Eliphas Lévi from a secret work), which
is a six-pointed star, “ the Adonai.” In the upper triangle is the
Eagle ; in the left lower triangle stands the lion ; in the right, the bull :
while between the bull and the lion, over them and under the eagle, is the face
of Enoch or man. (Vide illustrated diagram in Isis Unveiled, Vol.
I I., p. 452). Now the figures on the upper triangle represent the Four Races,
leaving out the first — the Chhayas or Shadows — and the
“ Son of Man,” Enos or Enoch, is in the centre,
because he stands between the two (the Fourth and the Fifth) Races, as he
represents the Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four animals of Ezekiel
and of the Revelation. The same double triangle which in Isis,
Vol. I I, (p. 453), faces the Hindu Adanari, is by far the best. For
there, only the three (for us) historical races are symbolized the third, the
androgynous, by Ada-nari ; the fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful lion
; and the fifth — the Aryan — by that which is its most sacred
symbol to this day, the bull (and the cow).
A
man of great erudition — a French savant — M. de Sacy, finds
several most singular statements in the Book of Enoch, “ worthy of the
most serious examination,” he says. For instance, “ the author
(Enoch) makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and seems to know periods of
three, of five, and of eight years, followed by four supplementary days,
which, in his system, appear to be those of the equinoxes and solstices.”
* . . . . To which he adds, later on, “ I see but one means to palliate
them (these ‘ absurdities ’), it is to suppose that the author
expounds some fanciful system which may have existed BEFORE THE
ORDER OF NATURE HAD BEEN ALTERED AT THE PERIOD OF THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE.”
Precisely
so ; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that that “ order of nature ”
has been thus altered, and the series of the Earth’s humanities too. For,
as the angel Uriel tells Enoch : “ Behold, I have showed thee all
things, O Enoch ; and all things have I revealed to thee. Thou seest the Sun,
the Moon, and those which conduct the stars in Heaven, which cause all
their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners THE
YEARS SHALL BE SHORTENED . . . . the moon shall change its laws, etc.”
(chap. lxxix). In those days also, years before the great Deluge that carried away
the Atlanteans and changed the face of the whole earth — because “
the earth (on its axis) became inclined ” —
* See Danielo’s criticisms upon De
Sacy, in the Annales de Philosophie, p. 393.
nature,
geologically, astronomically, and cosmically in general, could not have been
the same, just because the Earth had inclined. See chap. lxiv. (Sect.
xi.) . . . . “ And Noah cried with a bitter voice ‘ Hear me, hear
me, hear me ’ ; three times. And he said ‘ The earth labours and is
violently inclined ; surely, I shall perish with it.’ ”
This,
by the way, looks like one of those many “ inconsistencies,” if the
Bible is read literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange fear in
one who had “ found grace in the eyes of the Lord ” and been told
to build an ark ! But here we find the venerable Patriarch expressing as much
fear as if, instead of a “ friend ” of God, he had been one of the
Giants doomed by the wrathful deity. The earth has already inclined, and
the deluge of waters has become simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems
to know nothing of his intended salvation.
A
decree had come indeed ; the decree of nature and the Law of Evolution, that
the earth should change its race, and that the Fourth Race should be destroyed
to make room for a better one. The Manvantara had reached its turning point of three
and a half Rounds, and gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of
gross materiality. Hence the apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment
gone forth that they may be destroyed, “ that their end may be ”
(of the race) ; for they knew truly “ every secret of the angels,
every oppressive and secret power of the Satans, and every power of
those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten images in the
whole earth.”
And
now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author of this
powerful vision (to whatever age he may be assigned before the day of Galileo)
that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis ? Whence has he
derived such astronomical and geological knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of
which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is but a fancy, an invention
of the later ages ? Has Enoch read prophetically perchance in Frederick
Klee’s work on the Deluge (p. 79) these lines : “ The position of
the terrestrial globe with reference to the Sun has evidently been, in
primitive times, different from what it is now ; and this difference must have
been caused by a displacement of the axis of rotation of the Earth.” ?
This
reminds one of that other unscientific statement made by the Egyptian
priests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it arises
now, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at right
angles.*
There
are many such “ dark sayings ” throughout Purânas, Bible and
Mythology ; and to the occultist they divulge two facts : (a) that the
ancients knew as well, and better, perhaps, than the moderns
* Astronomie Ancienne, Bailly,
Vol. I., p. 203, and Vol. I I., p. 216.
do,
astronomy, geognosy and cosmography in general ; and (b) that the globe
and its behaviour have altered more than once since the primitive state of
things. Thus, on the blind faith of his “ ignorant ”
religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the hidden
truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course — Xenophantes asserts
somewhere that, “ the Sun turned toward another country ” ; which
is a parallel, however slightly more scientific, if as bold, of Joshua stopping
the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching of the
Northern mythology (in Jeruskoven) that, before the actual order of
things, the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone in the
East, whereas now it is in the North.
The Book
of Enoch, in short, is a 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, since Origen, among others, lived in the second century of the
Christian era, yet he mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret
and sacred name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically
described in the old volume. From the XV I I Ith to the Lth chapter, the Visions
of Enoch are all descriptive of the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is
the Burning Valley of the “ Fallen Angels.”
Perhaps
St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the BOOK OF
ENOCH out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity, ob nimiam
antiquitatem.* There was no room for the events noticed in it within the
limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the world from its “ creation
” !
* City of God, I. xv. ch. xxiii.
§ XXI I.
THE
SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERY-NAMES IAO AND
JEHOVAH,
WITH THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS
AND
CIRCLE.
WHEN
the Abbé Louis Constant — known as Eliphas Lévi —
said in his Histoire de la Magie that the “ Sepher Jezirah,
the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John) are the master-pieces of the
Occult Sciences,” he ought, if he wanted to be correct and clear, to have
added, “ in Europe.” It is quite true that these works contain
“ more significance than words ” ; and that “ its
expression is poetical, while in numbers it is exact.” Unfortunately,
before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness
of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the
terms and symbols used. And man will never learn this so long as he remains
ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in
Oriental Esotericism, or in the Kabalistical symbology : — the key,
or value, in all their aspects, of the “ God ”-names,
“ Angel”-names, and “ Patriarchal”
names in the Bible
—their
mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested nature.
Therefore,
if, on the one hand, the Zohar “ astonishes (the mystic) by the
profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images,” on the
other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used
with respect to AIN-SOPH and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that
“ the book is careful to explain that the human form with which it
clothes God is but an image of the word, and that God should not be
expressed by any thought, or any form.” It is well known that Origen,
Clemens, and the Rabbis confessed, with regard to the Kabala and the Bible, to
their being veiled and secret Books ; but few know that the
esotericism of the Kabalistic books in their present re-edited form is
simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism
of these secret volumes.
The
idea of representing the hidden deity by the circumference of a Circle,
and the Creative Power (male and female, or the Androgynous WORD), by the
diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception
that every great Cosmogony was built. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and
the Chaldeans, it was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and
immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from
the incipient stage of (the so-called) creation ; and comprised
psychological and even Spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or
cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former
conception is to be distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jezirah
— or what remains of the latter — that which has been embodied
subsequently in the Pentateuch proper, and especially in Genesis,
is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or
rather of construction ; while theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.
It
is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the rejected Book of
Enoch, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of Job, that
true echoes of the archaic doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost,
even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of
the middle ages have preferred, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and
especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, to cast it into the deep
sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless and
fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from,
and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out
of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the “ lord
god of Abraham and Jacob ” could hardly be crammed without damage and
breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weakest, the Judeans could not
help the desecration ; but they kept the secret of the origin of their Adam
Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah ; and the new tabernacle proved a complete
misfit for the old god : they were, indeed, avenged !
The
statement that Jehovah was the tribal god of the Jews and no higher, will be
denied like many other things. Yet the theologians are not in a position to
tell us, in that case, the meaning of verses 8 and 9 in Deuteronomy, chapter
xxxii. These verses say quite plainly : “ When the MOST HIGH (not the
“ Lord,” or “ Jehovah ” either) divided to the nations
their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam he set the bounds . . .
according to the number of the children of Israel. . . . The Lord’s
( Jehovah’s) portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his
inheritance.” This settles the question. So impudent were the modern
translators of Bibles and Scriptures and so damaging are these verses, that,
following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each
translator rendered these verses in his own way. While the above-cited
quotation is taken verbatim from the authorized English version, in the
French Bible (of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to
the version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald) one finds the “ Most High
” translated by Souverain (a Sovereign ! !), the “ sons of
Adam ” rendered by “ the children of men,” and the “
Lord ” changed into the “ Eternal.” For impudent
sleight-of-hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even
English ecclesiasticism.
Nevertheless,
one thing is patent : the “ Lord’s (“ Jehovah’s
”) portion ” is his “ chosen people ” and none else,
for, Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance. What, then, have other
nations, who call themselves Aryans, to do with this Semitic deity, the tribal
god of Israel ? Astronomically, the “ Most High ” is the Sun, and
the “ Lord ” is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao,
the genius of the moon, or IldaBaoth-Jehovah, that of Saturn, according to
Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.* Let the “ Angel Gabriel,” the
“ Lord ” of Iran, watch over his people ; and Michael-Jehovah, over
his Hebrews. These are not the gods of other nations, nor were they ever those
of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet (see
Origen’s Copy of the Chart), so each Hindu Deva (a “ Lord ”)
has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of
worlds implies plurality of gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize,
but will never worship, the latter. (Vide Part I I I., “ On Chains
of Worlds and their Plurality.”)
It
has been repeatesdly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical
symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate
plane of thought, i.e., either purely metaphysical or astronomical ; psychic
or physiological, etc., etc. These seven meanings and their applications are
hard enough to learn when taken by themselves ; but the interpretation and the
right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of
being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of and to follow each
other, each, or any one of these meanings is accepted as the one and sole
explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it
admirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations given by two
learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus,
xxxiii, 18-23. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his “ glory.”
Evidently it is not the crude dead letter phraseology as found in the Bible
that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabala, of which
we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them quotes,
while explaining : “ Thou canst not see my face . . . I will put thee in
the cleft of the rock . . . cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And then I
will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my a’hoor, my
back ; . .” and tells us in a gloss, “ That is, I will show you
‘ My back,’ i.e., my visible universe, my lower
manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou canst not
*
With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of the Seven (Vide
“ Book of the Dead ”). Their names are given by Origen, as Adonai
(of the Sun) Iao (of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao
(Mars), Orai (Venus), Astaphoi (Mercury), and, finally, Ildabaoth
(Saturn).
see
my invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.”* This is correct, and is
the cosmo-metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving
the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far
more fully given, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an
unpublished MSS., and explains more fully what was given in § XV I I.,
“ The Holy of Holies,” page 467.
The
numbers of the name Moses are those of “ I AM THAT I AM,” so that
the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony.
The
word Moses is , and the sum of the values of its letters
is
5,300,40,
345 ; Jehovah — the genius par excellence of the lunar year
— assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345. . . . In the third
chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is said : And Moses said . .
. Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The
God of your fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall say, What is his
name ? What shall I say unto them ? and God said unto Moses — “ I
am that I am.”
The
Hebrew words for this expression are âhiye asher ahiyé, and
in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus : —
�
21
501 21 . . . This being his (God’s) name, the sum of the values composing
it are 21, 501, 21 are 543, or simply a use of the simple digit numbers in the
name of Moses . . . but now so ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and
reads 543. . . . So that when Moses asks “ Let me see Thy face or
glory,” the other rightly and truly replies “ Thou canst not see my
face ” . . . but thou shalt see me behind —(the true sense,
though not the precise words) ; because the corner and the behind of 543
is the face of 345 — “ for check and to keep a strict use
of a set of numbers to develop certain grand results, for the object of
which they are specifically employed.” “ In other uses,” adds
the learned Kabalist, “ of the number they saw each other face to face.
It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the gnostic
Kabalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also
the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotient. . . .
The chief end of all this system of number checks was to preserve in perpetuity
the exact value of the Lunar year in the natural measure of days.”
This
is the astronomical and numerical meaning in the secret theogony of
sidereo-cosmical gods invented by the Chaldeo-Hebrews,
* The Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer.
and
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 not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with
the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the
many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians — the civilized
nations — have accepted for their God. The latter has collapsed under the
too close analysis, and is — drowned. Symbologists have discovered with
dismay that their adopted deity was only a mask for many other gods, an Euhemerized
extinct planet, at best, the genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of
the Sun and Jupiter, with early Christians ; that the Trinity was, in truth,
only an astronomical triad — unless they accepted the more abstract and
metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles — composed of the Sun
(the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost, Sophia,
the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and
morning Star ; vide “ Revelation,” ch. xxii.,
15). Because, if the Father is the Sun (the elder Brother in the Eastern inner
philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thot), the
name of whose mother on Earth was Maïa ; the planet which receives seven
times more light than any other : which fact led the Gnostics to call their
Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the “
seven-fold light ” (vide at end of this §). Finally, this
God was Bel ; the Sun being “ Bel,” with the Gauls, “ Helios
” with the Greeks, “ Baal,” with the Phœnicians ;
“ El ” in Chaldean, hence “ EL-ohim,” “
Emanu-EL,” El, “ god,” in Hebrew. But even the Kabalistic
god has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the
innermost metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it anything like
Ain-Soph, the nameless deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly
claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic
books, by those who try to read without a Key to them. Ever since it was lost
Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but
in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal Deity
of ITS majestic character and primitive meaning.
This
is what was said in “ Isis Unveiled ” :—
It
would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery-god
Ι αω, 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.
In
the Ophite gems of King (“ Gnostics ”) we find the name of IAO
repeated, and often confounded with that of Jevo, while the latter
simply represents one of the genii antagonistic to Abraxas. But the name IAO
neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it
had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary “ Spirit,”
the alleged protector and national deity of the “ chosen people of
Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should
receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether.
Besides, there is the fact that Jaho or Iao was a “ Mystery name ”
from the beginning, for and never came into use before King David. Anterior to
his time, few or no proper names were compounded with Iah or Jah. It
looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and
Philistines (2 Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high
priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at
Hebron , Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods)
were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law
of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to , like the structures erected by
Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says
Fürst : “ The very ancient name of God, Yaho, 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 Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found among the
Neo-Platonists, the highest divinity, enthroned above the seven heavens,
representing the Spiritual Light-Principle . . . . and also conceived of as
Demiurgus,* was called Ι αω (), who was, like the Hebrew Yaha,
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 Ι αω.”† (Isis Unveiled), Vol. I
I., p. 298.)
The Cross,
say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most
ancient — nay, perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This is
demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem (Vol. I.). The Eastern
Initiates show it coeval with the circle of Deific infinitude and the first
differentiation of the Essence, the union of spirit and matter. This was
rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone was accepted and made to fit into
cunningly imagined terrestrial events.
Let
us demonstrate this statement. In astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of
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 ” by mouth ; the LOGOS, or VERBUM. Now, Mercury, besides being born
on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, is the patron of the
* By
very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always
con-sidered as subordinate gods to the Most High Deity.
†
Lydus I., c. Ledrenus, I. c.
latter.
A psychopompic genius, he conducted the souls of the dead to Hades and brought
them back, an office attributed to Jesus, after his death and resurrection. The
symbols of Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along and at the
turning points of highways (as crosses are now placed in Italy) and they
were cruciform.* Every seventh day the priests anointed these termini
with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointed.
Mercury, when speaking through his oracles said, “ I am he whom you
call the Son of the Father (Jupiter) and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven (the
Sun) I come to help you, mortals.” Mercury heals the blind and restores
sight, mental and physical.† He was often represented as three-headed and
called “ Tricephalos,” “ Triplex,” as one with the Sun
and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus‡ shows, was sometimes figured
under a cubic form, without arms, because “ the power of speech and
eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this
cubic form which connects the termini directly with the cross, and the
eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury, which made the crafty Eusebius say
“ Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets
all,” for it is the creative word ; and he shows Porphyry teaching
that the speech of Hermes, (now interpreted “ Word of God ”
(!) in Pymander) a creative speech (Verbum), is the seminal principle
scattered throughout the Universe.§ In Alchemy “ Mercury ” is
the radical Moyst, primitive or elementary water, containing the seed of
the Universe, fecundated by the solar fires. To express this fecundating
principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the
vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians (Vide Egyptian
Museums). The cruciform termini also represented this dual idea, which
was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of “ Source of
Measures ” tells us why. (But see the last page of § XV I., about
the Gnostic Priapus).
As
shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the tau,
or the Egyptian, form ; or again, “ the circle attached to the tau gives
the ansated cross ” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their
priests and their “ Kings Initiates ” for ages, and also what was
meant by “ the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea
“ was made to co-ordinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence
the phallic form.” Only the latter came into action aeons and ages
after the idea of the carpenter and artificer of the Gods,
*
Montfaucon, Antiquities. See plates in Vol. I., plate 77. The disciples
of Hermes go after their death to his planet, Mercury — their Kingdom of
Heaven.
†
Cornutus.
‡
Lydus de Mensibus, iv. § Preparat, Evang. I. iii. ch. 2.
Visvakarma,
crucifying the “ Sun-Initiate ” on the cruciform lathe. As the same
author writes : “ the attachment of a man to the cross . . . was
made use of in this very form of display by the Hindus ” ; but, made
“ to co-ordinate ” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual,
not physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation was attached to the tau
or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin
of mere terrestrial life.
On
the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life
than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to
the reading of the Bible by means of the numerical method, the author of the
“ Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery ” is quite correct. Their (the
Jewish) entire system —
“
Seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which
was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis of law of the exertion
practically of creative power — i.e., it was the creative
design, of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be
established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of planetary
times serve co-ordinately as measures of the size of planets, and of
the peculiarity of their shapes — i.e., in the extension of their
equatorial and polar diameters ” . . . etc., etc. (p. 3). . . . “
This system seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure (that of creative
design), as a foundation for its ritualism and for its display of the
works of the Deity in the way of architecture, by use of the sacred unit
of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the
Temple of Solomon.”
Thus,
on the very showing of the defenders of this system the Jewish Deity is proved
to be, at best, only the manifested duad, never the One absolute ALL.
Geometrically demonstrated, he is a NUMBER ; symbolically, an euhemerized
Priapus ; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration
of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a god with a divine, not
anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of 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.* One author believes that “ man
(read the Jew and Rabbi) obtained knowledge of the practical measure . . . . by
which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the
notation of their movements ” . . . . and adds : “ it seems he did
obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the
Deity — that is, he approached so nearly to a conception of a Being
having a mind like his own, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to
realize a law of creation
*
See the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs (by Messrs. I. Myer and Mathers),
with interpretations, if the reader would satisfy himself of this.
established
by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (Kabalistically
called the Word) ” (“ Source of Measures,” p.
5).
This
may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist
has to decline the offer of such a God ; indeed, a Deity, a Being,
“ having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,”
is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has
nought to do with the ideal conception of the eternal universe. He is,
at best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the Totality of which
is called the “ Sephiroth,” the “ Heavenly Man,” and
Adam Kadmon, the second logos of the Platonists.
This
very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the
Kabala and its mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same
work : —
“
The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area
of the circle inscribed in the square, or, of the cube to the sphere,
giving rise to the relation of diameter to circumference of a circle with the
numerical value of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of
diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god-names of
Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of these relations
respectively, the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter),
embraces all. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are
used in the Bible : (1) The perfect, and (2) the imperfect. One of the
relations between these is such that
(2)
subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or
in the denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit
straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value
” (p. 22).
Such
calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third
stage of Evolution, or the “ third creation of Brahmâ.” The
initiated Hindus know how to “ square the circle ” far better than
any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics
commence their speculation only at that stage when the universe “ falls
into matter,” as the occultists say. Throughout the whole series of
Kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the
remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical
and physiological secrets of “ creation.” Shall we, then,
regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic
scale, of the act of procreation ? as “ divine ” Phallicism,
and rhapsodize on it as the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name
has done ? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so,
since the most careful reading of the Old Testament — esoterically, as
well as exoterically — seems to have carried the most enthusiastic
enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the
first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every character
or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of
birth in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and
ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern
Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.
It
is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the Cross
and Circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Eliphas 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 E. 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. Something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been
ascribed, in the minds of the ancient philosophers, to the shape of the circle.
The old world, consistent in its symbolism with its pantheistic intuitions,
uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity
and its outward VEIL alike — by a circle. This merging of the two into a
unity, and the name theos given indifferently to both, is explained, and
becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Plato’s
etymological definition of the word theos has been shown elsewhere. He
derives it from the verb θεεῖν (see Cratylus),
“ to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which
he connects with deity. According to the Esoteric philosophy, this Deity is
during its “ nights ” and its “ days ” (i.e.,
cycles of rest or activity) “ the eternal perpetual motion,”
“ the EVER-BECOMING, as well as the ever universally present, and the
ever Existing.” The latter is the root-abstraction, the former —
the only possible conception in human mind, if it disconnects this deity from
any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing evolution, circling back in
its incessant progress through aeons of duration into its original status
— ABSOLUTE UNITY. It was only the minor gods, who were made to carry the
symbolical
attributes
of the higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo, the personification of Ra,
who appears as “ the great Cat of the Basin of Perséa, in An
” (See “ Book of the Dead,” Ritual XV I
I., 45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated, and holding
a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements, attached to a Circle.
In
that very learned work, “ The Natural Genesis,” by Mr. Gerald
Massey, on pp. 408 —455 (Vol. I.), under the heading, “ Typology of
the Cross,” there is more information to be had on the cross and circle
than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity
of the Cross is referred to these two volumes. The author shows that “
the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The crux ansata unites the
circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin they came to be
interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a
circle. The names denote the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel
of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner,
Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed cross (Swastica) and
a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the
year. . . . The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in
one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and
the Ankh-te
Nor was the double glyph sacred with the
profane, but only with the 
Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid)
“ the sign
,
occurring as the reverse of a Phoœician coin, with a Ram as the
obverse. . . . . The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking-Glass,
because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters of
valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses ”
(Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansée, Mém. de l’Académie
des Sciences, pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in “ Nat.
Gen.”), which proves that so far back as those early days the cross
had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the divine
origin of Cross and Circle had been forgotten. Another form of the cross is
given from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (vol. xviii., p.
393, pl. 4) : — “ At each of the four corners is placed a quarter
arc of an oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval ;
thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round in four parts,
corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments answer to the
four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus
flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus
being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs,
if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on
each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth . .
. . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the
following specimen 
, which
is here presented, as the cross of the two
equinoxes and the two solstices placed
within the figure of the earth’s path.
The
same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with
seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru.”
This
is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects,
however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is
so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.
But
the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of Cross and Circle, spoken of in
the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final
colour from Aryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author : —
“
The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross
sign is not always simple.* This is a type that was developed from an
identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas
afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the
gods,
the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh
the
sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . . . The top of this is the hieroglyphic
Ru
set
upright on the Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the
place
of outlet. This denotes the birth-place in the northern quarter of the
heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh sign is the
feminine type of the birth-place, representing the north. It was in
the NORTHERN QUARTER that the GODDESS OF THE SEVEN STARS, called the “
Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest cycle of
the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is
the earliest shape of 
the
Ankh-cross , a mere loop which contains both a circle and the
cross
in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon
of the great Bear, as her Ark, the ideograph of a period, an
ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution.
“
This then represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear,
which constituted the earliest year of time, from which we infer that the loop
or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birth-place of time when
figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is
an Ark or Rak type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was
continued
in the Cypriote
and
the Coptic Ro, 
.† The Ro was carried
into the Greek cross 
, which
is formed of the Ro and Chi or R-K. . . . The
Rak,
or Ank, was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the
Anktie is the cross of the North, the hind part of Heaven. . . .”
Now
this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Purânic version in
India gives the whole another colour ; and without, however,
*
Certainly not ; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize other
symbols, and these are in turn used in ideographs.
†
The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza) is also the Latin
P.
destroying the above interpretation it
is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical
key, and thus offers a
more
metaphysical rendering. The “ Ankh-tie ” does not belong to Egypt
alone. It exists under the name of pâsa, a cord which Siva holds in the
hand of his right back arm* (Siva having four arms). The Mahadeva is
represented in the posture of an ascetic,
as Maha-Yogi, with his third eye 
,
which is “ the Ru,
, set upright on the Tau-Cross ”
in another form.
The pâsa is held in the hand in
such a way that it is the first finger and hand near the thumb which make the
cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord
to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kali, Siva’s
consort, has the same as an attribute !
The pâsa
has here a double significance, as also has Siva’s trisuli and
every other divine attribute. This significance lies in Siva, as Rudra has
certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian ansated cross in its cosmic and
mystic meaning. In the hand of Siva it becomes linghayic and yonic. That
which is meant is this : Siva, as said before, is unknown by that name in the
Vedas ; and it is in the white Yajur Veda that he appears for the first
time as the great god — MAHADEVA — whose symbol is the lingham. In
Rig Veda he is called Rudra, the “ howler,” the beneficent and the
maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu
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 manas, as eleventh, whereas as
Siva, he is the Destroyer of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra,
and gives him, besides, seven other names, which names are his seven forms of
manifestation, also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or
regenerate.
Hence
the cruciform noose (pâsa) in his hand, when he is represented as
an ascetic, the Mahayogin, has no phallic signification, and it, indeed,
requires a strong imagination bent in this direction to find such even in
* See Moor’s “ Hindu
Pantheon,” plate xiii.
an
astronomical symbol. As an emblem of “ door, gate, mouth, the place of
outlet ” it signifies the “ strait gate ” that leads to the
kingdom of heaven, far more than the “ birth-place ” in a
physiological sense.
It
is a Cross in a Circle and Crux Ansata, truly ; but it is a Cross
on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogi passes
through the “ strait gate,” the narrow circle that widens into an
infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold.
As
to the mysterious constellation of the Seven Rishis in the great Bear, if Egypt
made them sacred to “ the oldest genitrix, Typhon ” — India
has connected all these symbols ages ago with time or Yuga revolutions,
and the Saptarishis are intimately connected with our present age — the
Dark Kali Yug.* The great Circle of Time, on the face of which fancy in
India has represented the Tortoise (Kurma, or Sisumâra, one of the
Avatars of Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature in its division and
localisation of stars, planets and constellations. Thus in Bhagavata
Purâna V., xxx., it is said that “ at the extremity
of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the South and
whose body is in the shape of a ring (Circle), Dhruva (the ex-pole star)
is placed ; and along that tail are the Prajâpati, Agni, Indra,
Dharma, etc. ; and across its loins the Seven Rishis.” This is
then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into the formation of which
enters the Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kala,
on whose plane lie crossways all the gods, creatures, and creations born in
Space and Time ; — who, as the philosophy has it, all die at the
Mahapralaya.
Meanwhile
it is they, the Seven Rishis, who mark the time and the duration of events in
our septenary life cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the
Pleiades, of whom only one — she who hides — has proven virtuous.
The Pleiades (Krittika) are the nurses of Karttikeya, the God of War (Mars of
the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the celestial armies
— or rather of the Siddhas (translated Yogis in heaven, and holy sages on
the earth) — “ Siddha-sena,” which would make Karttikeya
identical with Michael, the “ leader of the celestial hosts ” and,
like himself, a virgin Kumâra.† Verily he is the “
Guha,” the mysterious one, as much so as are the Saptarshis and
the Krittika (seven Rishis and the Pleiades), for the interpretation of all
these combined, reveal to the adept the greatest mysteries of occult nature.
One point is worth mention in this question of cross and
*
Described in the “ Mission des Juifs ” by the Marquis St.
Yves d’Alveydre, the hiero-phant and leader of a large party of
French Kabalists, as the Golden Age !
†
The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurasura and the Titan Taraka.
Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and Karttikeya are often made
identical.
circle,
as it bears strongly upon the elements of fire and water, which play such an
important part in the circle and cross symbolics. Like Mars, who is alleged by
Ovid to have been born of a mother alone (Juno), without the participation of a
father, or like the Avatars (Krishna, for instance), in the West as in the East
— Karttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner —
begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra Siva, viâ
Agni, who dropped it into the Ganges. Thus he is born from fire and
water— a “ boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the
moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhuva (Agni’s son) and Ganga-putra
(Son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittika, his nurses, as Matsya
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 are called Agneya — and the connection is easy to follow.
It
is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali-yuga, the age of
sin and sorrow. See in the Bhagavata Purâna XI I., 11, 2, 6, 32, and
Vishnu Purâna. Says the latter : “ When the splendour of Vishnu
(Krishna) departed for heaven, then did the Kali Yug, during which men delight
in sin, invade the world. . . . . When the Seven Rishis were in Maghâ,
the Kali Yug, comprising 1,200 (divine) years (432,000 years of mortals), began
; and when from Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvashadha, then will this
Kali age attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.” * This is
the revolution of the Rishis “ when the two first stars of the Seven Rishis
(of the Great Bear) rise in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at
night, at an equal distance between them, then the Seven Rishis continue
stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,” a hater of Nanda
makes Parasâra say. According to Bentley, it is in order to show the
quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among
the astronomers. It was done “ by assuming an imaginary line, or great
circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the
fixed Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the
Great Bear. . . . The seven stars being called the Rishis, the Circle so
assumed was called the line of the Rishis . . . . and being invariably fixed to
the beginning of the lunar asterism Maghâ, the precession would be noted
by stating the degree . . . of any moveable lunar mansion cut by that line or
circle as an index ” (“ Historical View of the Hindu
Astronomy,” p. 65).
*
Nanda is the first Buddhist Sovereign, Chandragupta, against whom all the
Brahmins were so arrayed ; he of the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of
Asoka. This is one of those passages that do not exist in the earlier
Purânic MSS. They were added by the Vaishnavas, who interpolated almost
as much, out of Sectarian spite, as the Christian Fathers did.
There
was, and still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of
the Hindus. Here is a point that could help to determine — approximately
at least — the age when the symbolism of the Seven Rishis and their
connection with the Pleiades began. When Karttikeya was delivered to them by
the gods to be nursed, the Krittika were only six — whence Karttikeya is
represented with six heads ; but when the poetical fancy of the early
Aryan symbologists made of them the consorts of the Seven Rishis, they were
seven. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dula, Nitatui, Abrayanti,
Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names
which differ, however. Anyhow, the Seven Rishis were made to marry the Seven
Krittika before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could
the Hindu astronomers speak of that which, without the help of the strongest
telescopes, no one can see ? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the
majority of the events described in the Hindu allegories is fixed upon as
“ a very recent invention, certainly within the Christian era
” ?
The
oldest MSS. in Sanskrit on astronomy, begin their series of Nakshatras
(the 27 lunar asterisms) with the sign of Krittika, and this can hardly
make them earlier than 2780 B.C., (see the “ Vedic Calendar,”
accepted even by the Orientalists) ; though they get out of the difficulty by
saying that the said Calendar does not prove that the Hindus knew
anything of astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars
notwithstanding, the Indian pundits may have acquired their knowledge of
the lunar mansions headed by Krittika from the 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 of Taurus,
regarded by Mädler and others, in astronomy, as the central group
of the system of The Milky Way, and in the Kabala and Eastern Esotericism, as
the sidereal septenate born from the first manifested side of the upper
triangle, the concealed
.
This manifested side is Taurus, the Symbol of ONE (the figure 1), or of
the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (bull or ox) whose
synthesis is ten (10), or Yodh, the perfect letter and number. The
Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in astronomy, as the
central point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolves, the
focus from which, and into which the divine breath, MOTION, works
incessantly during the Man- vantara. Hence — in the Occult philosophy and
its sidereal symbols
—it
is this Circle and the starry cross on its face, which play the most prominent
part.
The
Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the universe, as well as the
universe itself, is formed (created) during its periodical manifestations
— by accelerated MOTION set into activity by the BREATH of the
ever-to-be-unknown power (unknown to present mankind, at any rate) within the
phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized
by a circle : hence the serpent biting his tail, represents the circle of
Wisdom in infinity ; as does the astronomical cross — the cross within a
circle, and the globe, with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred
Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the
secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is called in Egypt (in the papyri)
Khopirron and Khopri from the verb Khopron “ to
become,” and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and
of the successive becomings of man, through the various peregrinations
and metempsychoses (reincarnations) of the liberated Soul. This mystical symbol
shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and the successive
lives and existences of the Immortal entity. Being, however, an esoteric doctrine,
revealed only during the mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the
Kings-Initiates to the candidates, it was kept secret. The incorporeal
intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always
represented under the form of circles. In the primitive philosophy of the
Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic causes and
builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or
coverings, and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal
teaching in antiquity. (See Ezekiel, ch. 1.)
“
Before the mathematical numbers,” says Proclus (in Quinto Libro,
EUCLID), “ there are the Self-moving numbers ; before the figures
apparent — the vital figures, and before producing the material worlds which
move in a Circle, the Creative Power produced the invisible
Circles.”
Deus
enim et circulus est,
says Pherecydes, in his hymn to Jupiter. It was a Hermetic axiom, and
Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours
of contemplation. “ The devotee must approach as much as possible the
form of a perfect circle,” prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to
spread among the people the same custom, Pierius* tells his readers ; and Pliny
says : “ During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring, totum
corpus circumagimur.Ӡ The vision of the prophet Ezekiel
reminds one
* Pierius
Vale.
†
The goddess Basht (or Pasht) was represented with the head of a cat. This
animal was sacred in Egypt for several reasons : as a symbol of the Moon “
the eye of Osiris ” or the “ Sun,” during night. The cat was
also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was because of its body being
rolled up in a circle when asleep. The posture is prescribed for occult
and magnetic purposes, in order to regulate in a certain way the circulation of
the vital fluid, with which the cat is pre-eminently endowed. “ The nine
lives of a cat ” is a popular saying based on good physiological and
occult reasons. Mr. G. Massey gives also an astronomical reason for it which
may be found in § I. “ SYMBOLISM.” “ The cat saw the
Sun, had it in its eye by night (was the eye
forcibly
of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind from which
came out “ one wheel upon the earth ” whose work “ was
as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel ” (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . .
“ for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels ”
(v. 20).
“
Spirit whirleth about continually and returneth again according to his
circuits ” — says Solomon (Eccles. i. 6), who is made in the
English translation to speak of the “ Wind,” and in the original
text to refer both to the Spirit and the Sun. But the Zohar,
the only true glossary of the Kabalistic Preacher, in explanation of
this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend, says
that “ it seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers
to the Spirit under the Sun, called the holy Spirit, that moves
circularly, toward both sides, that they (It and the Sun) should be united
in the same Essence.” . . . (Zohar, fol. 87, col. 346.)
The
Brahmanical “ Golden Egg,” from within which emerges 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 PARABRAHMAM, or the “ GREAT EXTREME ”
of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by PHTA, the Eternal Light, or again the
Jewish EN-SOPH, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the “
nought ” (absolute No-Thing and Nothing, because it is infinite
and the ALL) ; while the god-manifested (by its works) is referred to as the diameter
of that circle. The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident :
the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical
sense, length, but neither breadth or thickness : it is an imaginary and
feminine symbol, crossing eternity and made to rest on the plane of existence of
the phenomenal world. It is dimensional, whereas its circle is
dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an
equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean
sacred Decade which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the 1
and a circle or cipher), the absolute ALL manifesting itself in the WORD or
generative Power of Creation.
B. THE FALL OF THE CROSS INTO MATTER.
Those
who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that
it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of
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.”
antiquity
the nought or cipher occurs for the first time — especially in
India — are referred to Vol. I I. of “ Isis Unveiled,”
pp. 299, 300, et seq.
Admitting
for argument’s sake that the ancient world was no, acquainted with our
modes of calculation or Arabic figures — though we know it was —
yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the
first symbol in cosmogony. Before the trigrammes of Fo-hi, Yang,
the Unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Eliphas
Lévi thus (Dogme et Rituel, Vol. I., p. 124) : — China had
her Confucius, and her Tau-ists.* The former circumscribes the “ great
extreme ” within a circle with a horizontal line across ; the latter
place three concentric
Yang - Yin.
circles
beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the “ great
Extreme ” in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and
smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later
invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, many
epithets of his applied to the “ God over all ” (ὁ ἐπὶ
πᾶσι θεός) notwithstanding. Plato
having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God — a gigantic
Shadow of Man. His epithets of “ monarch ” and “ Law-giver of
the Universe ” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every
Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that
governs the Universe, recognizing it at the same time as immutable. “
Beyond all finite existences,” he says, “ and secondary
causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an INTEL-LIGENCE 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 pervades the Universe ” — who is called, by way of
preëminence and excellence, the Supreme† good “ 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 ? ‡ Not he, who considered only those
to be
*
Also in T’sang-t-ung-ky, by Wei-Pa-Yang.
†
Cocker’s “ Christianity and Greek Philosophy,” xi., p. 377.
‡
The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier in his 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
genuine
philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the really
existing in opposition to mere seeming ; of the always existing in
opposition to the transitory ; and of that which exists permanently in
opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed
alternately.* Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The ONE, the
original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. “
The τίμιον (honoured one) dwells in the
centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—
the world Soul ” † — the plane of the surface of the circle.
The Cross and Circle are a universal conception — as old as human mind
itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say,
international symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths,
besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological
mysteries ; and this symbol is precisely one of this kind, and is based upon
the oldest esoteric cosmogony.
It
is no explanation to say, as Eliphas Lévi does, that God, the universal
Love, having caused the male unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary,
or chaos, produced thereby the world. Besides being as gross a conception as
any, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing
one’s veneration for the rather too human-like ways of the Deity. It is
to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never use the
epithet “ God ” to designate the One and Secondless Principle in
the Universe ; and that — faithful in this to the oldest traditions of
the Secret Doctrine the world over — they deny that such imperfect and
often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There
is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties.
Between speculative Atheism and idiotic anthropomorphism there must be a
philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle
throughout all nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth —
MAN, can alone help to solve the Problem, which is that of the mathematician
whose x must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus
have tried to solve it by their avatars, the Christians think
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 debris dans tout l’Univers.” The
“ still greater and still more exacting divinity ” than the god of
this world, supposed so “ good ” — is KARMA. And this true
Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our inner God (personal for the
time being), has no power to arrest the mighty hand of this greater Deity, the
CAUSE awakened by our actions generating smaller causes, which is called the
LAW OF RETRIBUTION.
*
See “ Isis Unveiled,” Before the Veil, xii. (Vol. I.).
†
Plato : “ Parmenides,” 141, E.
they
did it — by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically — both are
wrong ; esoterically both of them are very near the truth. Alone, among
the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed — if
not actually revealed — the archaic mystery of the Cross. As for the rest
of those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have thus
synthesized it into one symbol — the central Point in the Crucifix
— they have shown thereby that they have never seized the true Spirit of
the teaching of Christ, and by their interpretations they have degraded it in
more than one way. They have forgotten the Spirit of that universal symbol and
have selfishly monopolized it — as though the Boundless and the Infinite
can ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one
man, or even in a nation !
The four arms of the “ 
,”
the decussated cross, and of the “ Her
metic,”
pointing to the four cardinal points — were well understood by the
mystical minds of the Hindus, Brahmins and Buddhists, thousands of years before
it was heard of in Europe ; and that symbol was and is found all over the
world. They bent the ends of that cross and made of it
their
Swastica
now
the Wan of the Buddhist Mongolian.* It implies
that
the “ Central point ” is not limited to one individual, however
perfect. That the Principle (God) is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all
the rest, is in it, like drops of water are in the Ocean, the four ends being
toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity.
Isarim,
an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the dead body of Hermes,
the well known Smaragdine tablet, which, it is said, contained the
essence of Hermetic wisdom . . . . “ Separate the earth from the fire,
the subtile from the gross . . . . Ascend from the earth to heaven and then
descend again to earth ” was traced on it. The riddle of the cross
is contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved — to the
Occultist.
“
The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the
horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the
geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the
magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribed within the
perfect square, is the basis of the occultist. Within its mystical precinct
lies the master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as
spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circum
*
The Swastica is certainly one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient
Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (Royal Masonic
Cyclopædia) it (the Swastica) “ has survived in the form of the
mallet ” in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many “ meanings
” the author gives of it, we do not find, however, the most important
ne,
masons evidently not knowing it.
scribes
the four points of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death,
and IMMORTALITY.
“
‘ Attach thyself,” say the alchemists, “ to the four letters
of the tetragram disposed in the following manner : The letters of the
ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The
incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is
called the magic arcanum by the masters.’ ” ( “ Isis
Unveiled.” )
Again
: — The
(Tau),
and the astronomical cross of Egypt
are
conspicuous
in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso-relievos
of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right
under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over
the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the
veil of initiation ; while it extends its right with the index and middle
finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a Christian bishop
giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at
the Last Supper. . . . The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress which he
had to wear always during his functions. . . . The perfect Tau, formed
of the perpendicular (descending male ray), and a horizontal line (matter,
female principle), and the mundane circle was an attribute of Isis, and it is
but at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the
mummy.” These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests.
The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era,
is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of
Judah, who feared the Lord (Ezekiel ix. 4), with the signum Thau,
as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign
was
formed thus
,
but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a
perfect
Christian cross (Tat, the emblem of stability). In the
Revelation, also, the “ Alpha and Omega
” (spirit and matter), the first and the last, stamps the name of his
Father in the foreheads of the elect, (p. 323, Vol. I I.) Moses, in Exodus
xii. 22, orders his people to mark their door-posts and lintels with
blood, lest the “ Lord God ” should make a mistake and smite some
of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a tau !
The identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of which talisman
Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philœ.
Enough
was said in the text about the Swastica and the Tau. Verily may
the Cross be traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable Archaic Ages
! Its Mystery deepens rather than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter
Island — in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks as Tau and
Swastica, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, everywhere ! The author of the “
Hebrew Egyptian Mystery ” stands perplexed before the endless shadow it
throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular nation
or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by
translation. In Joshua (viii. 29) read in Arabic, and in the Targum
of Jonathan, it is said : “ The king of Ai he crucified upon a
tree.” The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a double
word (Wordsworth on Joshua.) . . . The strangest expression of this kind is
in Numbers xxv. 4, where, by Onkalos ( ?) it is read : “ Crucify them
before the Lord (Jehovah) against the Sun.” “ The word here
, to nail to, is rendered properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate to
crucify. The very construction of this sentence is mystic.”
So
it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. “ To crucify
before (not against) the sun ” is a phrase used of initiation. It comes
from Egypt, and primarily from India. The enigma can be unriddled only by
searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The initiated adept, who
had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not nailed,
but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau
(in
Egypt) of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (thus :
,
not ) plunged in a deep sleep (the “ Sleep of Siloam ” it is
called
to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher
Egypt). He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights,
during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to confabulate with the “
gods,” descend into Hades, Amenti, or 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 Philœ, represents a scene of initiation. Two
Gods-Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis-headed
(Mercury, Thoth, the god of Wisdom and secret learning, the assessor of
Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body of a candidate just initiated. They are
in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of water (the water of life
and new birth), which stream is interlaced in the shape of a cross and
full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the
candidate (now an Initiate), when the beams of the morning sun (Osiris) strike
the crown of his head (his entranced body being placed on its wooden tau
so as to receive the rays). Then appeared the Hierophants-Initiators, and
the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly, to the Sun-Osiris, addressed
in reality to the Spirit Sun within, enlightening the newly-born man. Let the
reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the Cross in both its
generative and spiritually regenerative capacities — from the highest
antiquity. Let him examine the tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses I I.,
where he will find the crosses in every shape and position. So again, on the
throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment from the Hall of the
ancestors of Totmes I I I., preserved in the National Library of Paris, which
represents the adoration of Bakhan-Alearé.
In
this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disc of the Sun beaming
upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary were
perfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the “ hard couches of
those who were in (spiritual) travail, the act of giving birth to
themselves.” A quantity of such cruciform “ couches,” on
which the candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme
initiation, was placed and secured, were found in the underground halls of the
Egyptian temples after their destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of the
Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely, believing they had been brought
and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens
Alexandrinus and other ex-initiates, knew better. But they preferred to keep
silent.
Again,
let the reader read the Hindu “ fables,” as the Orientalists call
them, and remember the allegory of Visvakarma, the creative power, the great
architect of the world, called in the Veda “ the all-seeing god,” who
“ sacrifices himself to himself ” (the Spiritual Egos of mortals
are his own essence, one with him, therefore). Remember that he is
called Deva Vardhika “ the builder of the gods ” and that it
is he who ties (the Sun) Sûrya, his son-in-law, on his lathe, in the
exoteric allegory ; on the Swastika, in esoteric tradition, as on earth he is
the Hierophant Initiator, and cuts away a portion of his brightness.
Visvakarma, remember again, is the Son of Yoga-Siddha, i.e., the holy
power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the “ fiery weapon,” the magic
Agneyâstra. The narrative is given more fully elsewhere. The author of
the Kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks : —
“
The theoretical use of crucifixion must have been somehow connected with the
personification of this symbol (the structure of the garden of Paradise
symbolized by a crucified man). But how ? And as showing what ? The symbol was
of the origin of measures, shadowing forth creative law or design. What
practically, as regards humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken ? Yet, that
it was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is
shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep as to
the mysterious workings of these number values — (the symbolization of the
connection of 113 : 355, with 20612 : 6561, by a crucified man). Not
only are they shown to work in the Kosmos . . . . but by sympathy, they seem to
work out conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets
seem to have held knowledge of the connecting link. . . . Reflection becomes
more involved when it is considered that the power of expression of the law, exactly,
by numbers, clearly defining a system, was not the accident of
the language, but was its very essence, and of its primary organic
construction ; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system
attaching to it, could be of man’s invention, unless both
were founded upon a prior language, which afterwards became obsolete
. . . ”
(p.
205).
The
author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret
meaning of more than one dead-letter narrative, by showing that probably
man was the primordial word — “ the very first word
possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea by sound of a man.
The essential of this word was 113 (the numerical value of that word) from
the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system
displayed.”
This
is demonstrated by the Hindu Wittoba — a form of Vishnu — as said
already. The figure of Wittoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet,* is that
of Jesus crucified, in all its details save the Cross ; and that MAN
was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the Initiate being reborn
after his crucifixion on the TREE OF LIFE. This “ tree ” has
now become exoterically, through its use by the Romans as an instrument of
torture, and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers, the tree of
death !
Thus,
one of the seven esoteric meanings implied in this mystery of
Crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system — the original
elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very establishment of the
MYSTERIES — is discovered in the geometrical symbols containing the
history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews, whose prophet Moses was so
learned in the esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical system
from the Phœnicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom they borrowed
most of their Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously, the Cosmic and
anthropological symbols of the “ heathen ” nations to their
peculiar secret records. If Christian
*
See Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, where Wittoba’s left foot bears the mark
of the nail — on the figure of his idol.
sacerdotalism
has lost the key of it to-day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries
were well versed in Esoteric philosophy and the Hebrew occult metrology, and
used it dexterously. Thus they took the word aish (one of the Hebrew
word forms for MAN) and used it in conjunction with that of Shânâh
“ lunar year,” so mystically connected with the name of Jehovah,
the supposed “ father ” of Jesus, and em-bosomed the mystic idea in
an astronomical value and formula.
The
original idea of “ Man Crucified ” in Space belongs certainly to
the ancient Hindus, and Muir shows it in his “ Hindu Pantheon ” in
the engraving that represents Wittoba. Plato adopted it in his decus
sated Cross in Space, the 
,
“ the Second God who impressed himself
on
the Universe in the form of the Cross ” ; Krishna is likewise shown
“ crucified.” (See Dr. Lundy’s Monumental Christianity,
fig. 72.) Again it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to
crucify men before the Lord, the Sun —which is no prophecy at
all, but has a direct phallic significance. In § I I. of that same most
suggestive work on the Kabalistic meanings — “ The Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery,” we read again : —
“
In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a
solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or phallic emblem, for
the nail. Taking the position of the three nails in the Man’s
extremities and on the cross, they form or mark a triangle in shape, one
nail being at each corner of the triangle. The wounds or stigmata in the
extremities are necessarily four designative of the square. . . .
The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which
denotes the 6 faces of the cube unfolded (which make the cross or
man-form, or 7, counting three horizontal and four vertical bars) on which the
man is placed ; and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on
to the edges of the cube. The one wound of the feet separates into two
when the feet are separated, making three together for all,
and four when separated, or 7 in all — another most holy
(and with the Jews) feminine base number.”
Thus,
while the phallic or sexual meaning of the “ Crucifixion Nails ” is
proven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is
indicated by the short remarks upon it, as given above, in its connection with,
and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he is crucified on the
Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to
the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.
Now,
the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the Cross,
is not “ of human invention,” for Cosmic ideation and the Spiritual
representation of the divine Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it expanded in
the beautiful idea adopted by and represented in the Mysteries, that of
regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his
passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal.
Leaving the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation
like an empty chrysalis, the Ego Soul became as free as a butterfly. Still
later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony
and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol.
With
the Esotericists, from the remotest times the Universal Soul or anima mundi,
the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all
beings and of the life principle of the three kingdoms ; and it was Septenary
with the Hermetic philosophers, as with all ancients. For it is represented as
a Sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity,
terrestrial magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and Intelligence,
or what some call self-consciousness.
We
have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were adopted as
symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a sign of recognition
among adepts and neophytes, the latter being called Chrests (from
Chrestos, man of tribulation and sorrow). Says E. Lévi : “ The
sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to
them. It is Kabalistic, and represents the opposition and quaternary
equilibrium of the elements. We see by the Occult verse of the Paternoster
that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least two very
different formulas to express its meaning — one reserved for priests-initiates,
the other given to neophites and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate,
carrying his hand to his forehead, said : To thee ; then he added, belong
: and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast — the
kingdom ; then, to the left shoulder
—justice
: to the right shoulder — and mercy. Then he joined the two
hands, adding : throughout the generating cycles : ‘ Tibi sunt
Malchut et Geburah et Chassed per Æonas ’ — a sign of the
Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations
of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose.”
(Dogma et Ritual, etc., Vol. I I., p. 88.)
The
“ militant and official Church ” did more : having helped herself
to what had never belonged to her, she took only that which the “ profane
” had, the Kabalistic meaning of the male and female
Sephiroth. She never lost the inner and higher meaning since she never
had it —
E.
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 CHREST.
§ XXI I I.
THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE.
We
are reminded in King’s “ Gnostics ” that the Greek language
has but one word for vowel and voice ; and this has led the uninitiated
to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of that
well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon
several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the Upanishads and the
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 Gnostics and their Remains.”
Through
Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus
—
a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist
most certainly — had received in mystic revelation. It is said that
“ Marcus had it revealed unto him that ‘ the seven heavens ’
* . . . . sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a
complete doxology ” ; in clearer words : “ the Sound whereof
being carried down (from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and
parent of all things that be on earth.” (See “ Hippolytus,”
vi., 48, and King’s Gnostics,
p.
200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer
language this would read : “ The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated
into seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels) these (the second
logos, or “ Sound ”) created all on Earth.
Assuredly
one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St.
John’s Apocalypse, a work of the same school of thought. For we
find John saying (chap. x. 3, 4), “ Seven thunders uttered their voices .
. . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard a voice from heaven saying
unto me, ‘ Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
write them not.’ ” The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same
to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of
equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a
portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in
every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number
seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now when
the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis
* The “ Heavens ” are
identical with “ Angels,” as already stated.
Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them,
“ the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father ” (i.e.,
of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus
answers : “ Do ye seek after these mysteries ? No mystery is more
excellent than they which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto
the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor
female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered.
Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving
only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY AND NINE
POWERS, and their numbers thereof ; and no name is more excellent than all
these vowels.” “ The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons
blaze in DARK- NESS, but they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation
thereof through the Great Age ” — says the Commentary speaking of
the “ Fires.”
Now
it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs
expressed in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea — the
basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the
divine THREE (
)
making the perfect number ten.
Also,
these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography metaphysical
and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus
these Seven vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical
with the three and the Seven Fires of the Hindus and their
forty-nine fires ; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian
Simorgh ; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing
the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive
renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven
renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely,
7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years
only. (Compare § “ Chronology of the Brahmins.”)
Now,
the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds
of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous
half-man and half-bird, — the Vahan or vehicle on which Vishnu
(who is Kâla, “ time ” ) is shown to ride — is the
origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phœnix, the
emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the “ man-lion ” Singha,
of whose representations the so-called “ gnostic gems ” are so
full.* “ Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding
to their points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet
ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ, testifying to the Seven
Heavens.” This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar
cycle, as
* As
confessed by King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these gnostic
gems are not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to pre-christian
periods, and are the work of magicians (p. 241).
Garuda*
is that of the great cycle, the “ Maha-Kalpa ” co-eternal
with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This
is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni,
the God of Fire, on account of his (Garuda’s) “ dazzling
splendour,” and called thereupon Gaganeswara, “ lord of
the sky.” Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of
allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and
beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes Garuda’s solar and
cyclic character. His Son is Jâtabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As
well remarked by C. W. King : — “ Whatever the primary meaning (of
the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present
shape from INDIA, that true fountain head of gnostic iconography ”
(Gnostics, p. 218).
The
mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can
be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought
into India by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia.
And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is
possible in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life
and evolution around our terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.†
When the seven “ thunders,” or “ sounds,” or “
vowels ” — one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel
relating directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round
— “ had uttered their voices ” — but forbidden the Seer
to write them, and made him “ seal up those things ” — what
did the Angel “ standing upon the sea and upon the earth ” do ? He
lifted his hand to heaven “ and sware by him that liveth for ever and
ever . . . . that there should be time no longer.” “ But in
the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound,
the Mystery of God (of the Cycle) should be finished ” (x. 7), which
means, in theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed,
then Time will cease. “ There shall be time no longer ” very
naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on
earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest
of conscious life.
Dr.
Kenealy and others believed this doctrine of the Rabbins (their calculations of
cyclic seven and forty-nine) to have been brought by
*
The lack of intuition in Orientalists and antiquarians past and present,
is remark-able. 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
co-eternal with Vishnu, the Maha Kalpa, or Great Life-Cycle, beginning
with and ending with the manifesting Vishnu, what other account of
Garuda’s birth could be expected !
†
Vide Revelation xvii., verses 2 and 10 ; and Leviticus xxiii.,
verses 15 to 18 ; the first passage speaking of the “ Seven Kings,”
of whom five have gone ; and the second about the “ Seven
Sabbaths,” etc.
them
from Chaldea. This is more than likely. But the Babylonians, who had all those
cycles and taught them only at their great initiatory mysteries of astrological
magic, got their wisdom and learning from India. It is not difficult,
therefore, to recognize in them our own esoteric doctrine. In their secret
computations, the Japanese have the same figures in their cycles. As to the
Brahmins, their Purânas and Upanishads are a good proof of it. The latter
have passed entirely into Gnostic literature ; and a Brahmin needs only to read
Pistis Sophia* to recognize his forefathers’ property, even to the
phraseology and similes used. Compare : in Pistis Sophia the disciple
says to Jesus : “ Rabbi, reveal unto us the Mysteries of the Light (i.e.,
the “ Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment ”) . . . forasmuch
as we have heard thee saying that there is another baptism of smoke, and
another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light,” i.e., the Spirit of
FIRE. “ I baptize you with water, but . . . . he shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire,” says John of Jesus (Matt. iii. 2) ;
meaning this esoterically. The real significance of this statement is very
profound. It means that he, John, a non-initiated ascetic, can impart to his
disciples no greater wisdom than the mysteries connected with the plane of matter
(water being a symbol of it). His gnosis was that of exoteric and
ritualistic dogma, of dead-letter orthodoxy ; † while the wisdom which
Jesus, an Initiate of the higher mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a
higher character, for it was the “ FIRE ” Wisdom of the true gnosis
or the real spiritual enlightment. One was FIRE, the other the SMOKE.
For Moses, the fire on Mount Sinai, and the spiritual wisdom imparted ;
for the multitudes of the “ people ” below, for the profane, Mount
Sinai in (through) smoke, i.e., the exoteric husks of orthodox or
sectarian ritualism.
Now,
having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Narada and
Davamata in the Anugîtâ, the antiquity and importance of
which MS. (an episode from the Mahabhârata) one can learn in the “
Sacred Books of the East,” edited by Prof. Max Müller.‡ Narada
is discussing upon the breaths or the “ life-winds,” as they are
called in
* Pistis
Sophia is an extremely important document, a genuine Evangel of the
Gnos-tics, ascribed at random to Valentinus, but much more probably a
pre-Christian work in its original. It was discovered in a Coptic MS. by
Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite accidentally, and translated by him
into Latin ; after which text and (Latin) version were published by Petermann
in the year 1853. In the text itself the authorship of this Book is ascribed to
Philip the Apostle, whom Jesus bids to sit down and write the revelation. It is
genuine and ought to be as canonical as any other gospel. Unfortunately it remains
to this day untranslated.
†
In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, water represented the first
and lower steps toward purification, while trials connected with fire
came last. Water could regenerate the body of matter ; FIRE alone, that of the inner
Spiritual man.
‡
See Introduction by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A.
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 Brahmans, being accompanied by
intelligence.” By “ fire,” says the Commentator, he means the
SELF. By “ intelligence,” the Occultist says, Narada means neither
“ discussion ” nor “ argumentation,” as Arjûna
Misra believes, but “ intelligence ” truly, or the adaptation of
the fire of Wisdom to Exoteric Ritualism for the profane. This is the chief
concern of the Brahmans (who were the first to set the example to other nations
who thus anthromorphized and carnalized the grandest metaphysical truths).
Narada makes it plain and is made to say : “ The smoke of that
fire, which is of excellent glory, appears in the shape of darkness ”
(verily so ! ) ; “ its ashes (are) passion ; and goodness is that in
connection with it in which the offering is thrown ” : i.e., that
faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle truth (the flame) which
escapes heavenward, while the objective sacrifice remains as a proof and evidence
of piety only to the profane. For what can Narada mean in teaching that
“ those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the
Vyâna as the principal (offering) ” ; and “ the
Prâna and Apâna, but 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, etc.,” and after every such contrast Narada
adds “ That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by
Brâhmanas.”
Now
many people do not know the full meaning of such terms as Samâna and
Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna, explained as being “ life-winds
” (we say “ principles and their respective faculties and senses
”), being offered up to Udâna, the soi-disant principal
“ life wind,” (?) said to act at all the joints. Therefore the reader,
who is ignorant that the word “ fire ” means in these allegories
both the “ Self ” and the higher divine knowledge, will understand
nothing in this ; and will therefore entirely miss the point of our argument,
as its translators and even its editor, the great Oxford Sanskritist, Max
Müller, has missed the true meaning of Narada’s words. Exoterically,
all this enumeration of “ life winds ” means, of course, approximately,
that which is surmised in the foot-notes ; namely, “ The sense appears to
be this . . . . worldly life is due to the operations of the life-winds which
are attached to the SELF, and lead to its manifestations as individual souls
(?). Of these the 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
”
(p.
259, Anugîtâ, “ Sacred Books of the East,”
Vol. V I I I.)
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
had reached all knowledge in this wise. Saying that he had “ perceived by
means of the SELF the seat abiding in the SELF,” where dwells the Brahman
free from all ; and explaining that that indestructible principle was entirely beyond
the perception of senses (i.e., of the five “ life-winds
”), he adds that “ in the midst of all these (life-winds) which
move about in the body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaisvânara fire
sevenfold.” This “ Fire,” according to Nilakantha’s
Commentary, is identical with the “ I,” the SELF, which is the goal
of the ascetic (Vaisvânara 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), the tongue
(taste), the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the
understanding, these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaisvânara,* .
. . . . those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me,† . . . . . these are
the seven great officiating priests.”
These
seven priests are accepted by Arjûna Misra in the sense of meaning
“ the soul distinguished as so many (souls, or principles) with reference
to these several powers ” ; and, finally, the translator seems to accept
the explanation, and reluctantly admits that “ they may mean ” this
; though he himself takes the sense to mean “ the powers of hearing, etc.
(the physical senses, in short) which are presided over by the several
deities.” (Vide loc. cit., p. 259, f.n. 6.)
But
whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or othodox interpretations, this
passage on page 259 explains Narada’s statements on page 276, and shows
them referring to exoteric and esoteric methods and contrasting them. Thus the
Samâna and the Vyâna, though subject to the Prâna and the
Apâna, and all the four to Udâna in the matter of acquiring the
Prânâyama (of the Hatha-Yogi, chiefly, or the “ lower ”
form of the Yoga) are yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as
rightly argued by the commentator, their “ operatîons are more
practically important for vitality ” ; i.e., they are the
grossest, and are offered in the sacrifice, to disappear, so to speak, in the
quality of darkness of that fire or its SMOKE (mere exoteric ritualistic form).
But
* In
the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaisvânara is Agni, son of the Sun, or
Viswânaras, but in the psycho-metaphysical symbolism it is the SELF, in
the sense of non-separateness, i.e., both divine and human.
†
Here the speaker personifies the said divine SELF.
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 ”
* have fire between them, i.e., esoteric knowledge, the Wisdom of the
divine SELF. Let those who are satisfied with the Smoke of the FIRE
remain wherein they are, that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of
theological fictions and dead-letter interpretations.
The
above is written only for the Western students of Occultism and Theosophy. The
writer presumes to explain these things neither to the Hindus, who have their
own Gurus ; nor to the Orientalists, who think they know more than all the
Gurus and Rishis, past and present, put together. These rather lengthy
quotations and examples cited are necessary, if even to point out to the
student the works he has to study so as to derive benefit and learning from
comparison. Let him read Pistis Sophia in the light of the
Bhagavatgîtâ, 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 this and compare with the explanation
from the Hindu scriptures just given.
. .
. “ And no name is more excellent than all these (seven) vowels. A name
wherein be contained all names, all Lights, and all (the forty-nine) powers,
knowing it, if a man quits this body of matter† no smoke (i.e.,
no theological delusion),‡ no darkness, nor Ruler of the Sphere (no personal
genius or planetary spirit called God), or of Fate (karma) shall
* 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 Gnosis. As the “ pairs of
opposites,” male and female, are all derived from Akâsa
(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 pre-existing eternal
Depth, and in their secondary emanation from Ampsiu-Ouraan (or sempiternal
Depth and Silence), the second Logos. In the esoteric emanation there are seven
chief “ pairs of opposites ; ” and so also in the Valentinian
system there were fourteen, or twice seven. Epiphanius, copying incorrectly,
“ copied one pair twice over,” Mr. C. W. King thinks, “ and
thus adds one pair to the proper fifteen.” (“ The Gnostics,”
etc., pp. 263-4.) Here King falls into the opposite error : the pairs of
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.
†
Not necessarily at death only, but during Samadhi or mystic trance.
‡
All the words and sentences between parenthetical marks, are the writer’s.
This is translated directly from the Latin MS. of the British Museum.
King’s translation in the Gnostics conforms too much to the
gnosticism as explained by the Church-Fathers.
be
able to hold back the soul that knoweth that name. . . If he shall utter that
(Name) unto the fire, the darkness shall flee away. . . And if he shall utter
that name unto. . . . all their Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,* the
Invisible God, and the triple-powered Gods, so soon as he shall have
uttered that name in those places, they shall all be shaken and thrown one upon
the other, so that they shall be ready to melt, perish and disappear, and shall
cry aloud, ‘ O, Light of all Lights that art in the Boundless Light,
remember us also and purify us !’ ”
It
is easy to see who this Light and Name are : the light of Initiation and the
name of the “ Fire-Self,” which is no name, no action, but a
Spiritual, ever-living Power, higher even than the “ Invisible
God,” as this Power is ITSELF.
But
if the able and learned author of the “ Gnostics and their Remains
” has not sufficiently allowed for the Spirit of allegory and mysticism
in the fragments translated and quoted by him, in the above named work, from Pistis
Sophia —other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his intuitional
perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic Wisdom still more than of their
“ gems,” most of them, beginning with Wilson and ending with the
dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders with regard to almost
every symbol. Sir M. Monier Williams and others show a very decided contempt
for the “ Esoteric Buddhists ” as theosophists are now called ; yet
no Student of Occult philosophy has ever mistaken a cycle for a living
personage and vice versâ, as was very often the case with our learned
Orientalists. An instance or two may illustrate the statement more graphically.
Let us choose the best known.
In
the Ramayana, Garuda is called “ the maternal uncle of Sagara’s
60,000 sons ” ; and Ansumât, Sagara’s grandson, “ the
nephew of the 60,000 uncles ” reduced to ashes by the look of Kapila,
“ the Purushottama ” (or infinite Spirit), who caused
Sagara’s horse for the Aswamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again,
Garuda’s son† — Garuda being himself the Maha-Kalpa or
great cycle — Jâtayu, the king of the feathered tribe, when on the
point of being slain by Ravana who carries off Sita — says, speaking of
himself :
“
It is 60,000 years O King, that I am born,” after which turning his
back on the Sun — he dies.
Jâtayu
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,
*
Barbelo is one of the three “ Invisible Gods,” and, as C. W. King
believes, includes “ the Divine Mother of the Saviour,” or rather
Sophia Achamoth (Vide cap. 359).
†
In other Purânas Jâtayu is the son of Aruna, Garuda’s
brother, both the Sons of Kasyapa. But all this is external allegory.
since
the whole meaning rests in his being placed on the line of Garuda’s
descendants. Then, again, there is Diti — the Mother of the Maruts
— whose descendants and progeny belonged to the posterity of
Hiranyâksha, “ whose number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of
men.” (See 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 Purânic
chronology ? There are many Kapilas ; but the Kapila who slew King
Sagara’s progeny — 60,000 men strong — was undeniably Kapila,
the founder of the Sankhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the
Purânas ; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without
explaining its esoteric meaning. It is the Bhagavata Purâna
(IX.
viii., 12 and 13), which says that “ the report that the sons of the King
were reduced to ashes by the mere glance of the sage is not true.”
“ For,” as it argues, “ how can the quality of darkness, the
product of anger, exist in a sage whose goodness was the essence that purified
the world — the earth’s dust, as it were, attributed to Heavens !
How should mental perturbation distract that sage, identified with the Supreme
Spirit, and who has steered here (on earth) that solid vessel of the Sankhya
(philosophy), with the help of which he who desires to obtain liberation
crosses the dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death ? ”
The
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 Gangadwara,
the “ door or gate of the Ganges ” ) at the foot of the Himalayas,
that Kapila sat in meditation for a number of years. Not far from the Sewalik
range, the “ pass of Hardwar ” is called to this day “
Kapila’s Pass ” ; and the place, “ Kapilasthen,” by the
ascetics. It is there that Ganga (Ganges) emerging from its mountainous
gorge, begins its course over the sultry plains of India. And it is as clearly
ascertained by geological survey that the tradition which claims that the ocean
ages ago washed the base of the Himalayas — is not entirely without
foundation, for there are traces left of this.
The
Sankhya philosophy may have been brought down and taught by the first,
and written out by the last Kapila.
Now Sagara
is the name of the Ocean, and even of the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the
Ganges, to this day in India (Vide Wilson’s Vishnu Purâna,
Vol. I I I. p. 309). Have geologists ever calculated the number of millenniums
it has taken the sea to recede to where it is now, from Hardwar, 1,024 feet
above the level of the sea at present ? If they did, those Orientalists who
show Kapila flourishing from the 1st to the 9th cent. A.D., might change their
opinions, if only for one of two very good reasons : the true number of years
elapsed since Kapila’s day is in the Purânas unmistakably, though
the translators fail to see it. And secondly — the Kapila of the Satya,
and the Kapila of the Kali-Yugas may be one and the same INDIVIDUALITY, without
being the same PERSONALITY.
Kapila,
besides being the name of a personage, of the once living Sage and the author
of Sankhya philosophy, is also the generic name of the Kumâras, the
celestial ascetics and virgins ; therefore the very fact of Bhagavata
Purâna calling that Kapila — which it showed just before as
a portion of Vishnu —the author of Sankhya philosophy, ought to
have warned the reader of a blind containing an esoteric meaning.
Whether the Son of Vitatha, as Harivansa shows him to be, or of anyone else,
the author of Sankhya cannot be the same as the Sage of the 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 just created men the arts and sciences, which have been
cultivated and preserved since then in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There
are several well-known Kapilas in the Purânas. First the primeval sage,
then Kapila, one of the three “ Secret ” Kumâras ; and
Kapila, son of Kasyapa and Kadrû — the “ many-headed
Serpent,” (See Vayu Purâna placing him on the list of the
forty renowned sons of Kasyapa), besides Kapila, the great sage and philosopher
of the Kali Yuga. Being an Initiate, “ a Serpent of Wisdom,” a
Nâga, the latter was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former
ages.
§ XXIV.
THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE.
THE
early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the GNOSIS, rested on a square, the
angles of which represented respectively Sigè (Silence), Bythos
(depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth).
It
is they who were the first to introduce and reveal to the world that which had
remained concealed for ages : namely, the Tau, in the shape of a
Procrustean bed, and Christos as incarnating in Chrestos, he who became
for certain purposes a willing candidate for a series of tortures, mental and
physical.
For
them the whole of the Universe, metaphysical and material, was contained
within, and could be expressed and described by the digits of Number 10, the
Pythagorean decade.
This
Decade representing the Universe and its evolution out of Silence and the unknown
Depths of the Spiritual Soul, or anima mundi, presented two sides or
aspects to the student. It could be, and was at first so used and applied to
the Macrocosm, after which it descended to the Microcosm, or Man. There was,
then, the purely intellectual and metaphysical, or the “ inner
Science,” and the as purely materialistic or “ surface
science,” both of which could be expounded by and contained in the Decade.
It could be studied, in short, from the Universals of Plato, and the
inductive method of Aristotle. The former started from a divine comprehension,
when the plurality proceeded from unity, or the digits of the decade appeared,
but to be finally re-absorbed, lost in the infinite Circle. The latter depended
on sensuous perception alone, when the Decade could be regarded either as the
unity that multiplies, or matter which differentiates, its study being limited
to the plane surface ; to the Cross, or the Seven which proceeds from
the ten — or the perfect number, on Earth as in heaven.
This
dual system was brought, together with the Decade, by Pythagoras from India.
That it was that of the Brachmans and Iranians, as they are
called by the ancient Greek philosophers, is warranted to us by the whole range
of Sanskrit literature, such as the 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, Munin,
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 (Sigè and Bythos), is the sevenfold
Saptaparna plant, born and manifested on the surface of the soil of
mystery, from the threefold root buried deep under that impenetrable soil. This
idea is fully elaborated in Vol. I. § “ Primordial Substance and
Divine Thought,” which the reader has to notice carefully, if he would
grasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as in nature,
it is, according to the cis-Himalayan esoteric philosophy (which is that of the
original Manu Cosmogony), the septenary division that is intended by
Nature herself. The seventh principle (purusha) alone is the divine
SELF, strictly speaking ; for, as said in Manu, “ He (Brahmâ)
having pervaded the subtile parts of those six of unmeasured brightness,”
created or called them forth to “ Self ”-consciousness or the
consciousness of that One SELF (V. 16, ch. i. Manu). Of these
six, five elements (or principles, or Tattva, as Medhâtithi, the
commentator thinks) “ are called the atomic destructible elements ”
(v. 27) ; they are described in the above-named section. We have now to speak
of the Mystery language, that of the prehistoric races. It is not a phonetic,
but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue. It is known at present in its
fulness to the very few, having become with the masses for more than 5,000
years an absolutely dead language. Yet most of the learned Gnostics, Greeks and
Jews, knew it, and used it, though very differently. A few instances may be
given. On the plane above, the Number is no Number but a nought —a
CIRCLE. On the plane below, it becomes one— which is an odd
number. Each letter of the ancient alphabets having had its philosophical
meaning and raison d’ètre, the number I signified
with the Alexandrian Initiates a body erect, a living standing man, he
being the only animal that has this privilege. And, by adding to the I a head,
it was transformed into a P, a symbol of paternity, of the creative
potency ; while R signified a “ moving man,” one on his way. Hence
PATER ZEUS had nothing sexual or phallic either in its sound or form of letters
; nor had πατὴρ Δεύς (vide
Ragon). If we turn now to the Hebrew Alphabet, we shall find that while I or
aleph, , has a bull or an Ox for its symbol, 10, the perfect number, or One
of the Kabala is a Yodh (y, i, or j) ; and means, as the first letter of
Jehovah, the procreative organ, et seq. The odd numbers are
divine, the even numbers are terrestrial, devilish, and unlucky. The
Pythagoreans hated the binary. With them it was the origin of differentiation,
hence of contrasts, discord, or matter, the beginning of evil. In the
Valentinian theogony, Bythos and Sigè (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 one
and only God, the Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol
— the Sun.
The
ternary is thus the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first of
the geometrical figures. This number is truly the number of mystery par
excellence. To study it on the exoteric lines one has to read Ragon’s
Cours Interprétatif des Initiations ; on the esoteric — the
Hindu symbolism of numerals ; as the combinations which were applied to it are
numberless. It is on the occult properties of the three equal lines or sides of
the Triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded the famous masonic
society of the Trinosophists (those who study three sciences ; an
improvement upon the ordinary three masonic degrees, given to those who study
nothing except eating and drinking at the meetings of their lodges). “
The first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for study,”
writes the founder, — “ is the mineral kindom, symbolized by Tubalc
. . . (Tubal-cain). The second side on which the ‘ companion
’ has to meditate, is the vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schibb
(Schibboleth). In this kingdom begins the generation of the bodies. This
is why the letter G is presented radiant before the eyes of the adept (? !) The
third side is left to the master mason, who has to complete his education by
the study of the animal kingdom. It is symbolized by Maoben
(Sun of putrefaction) ” etc.,
etc.
The
first solid figure is the Quaternary, symbol of immortality. It is the pyramid
: for the pyramid stands on a triangular, square, or polygonal base, and
terminates with a point at the top, thus yielding the triad and the quaternary
or the 3 and 4. It is the Pythagoreans who taught the connection and relation
between the gods and the numbers
—in
a Science called arithmomancy. The Soul is a number, they said, which
moves of itself and contains the number 4 ; and spiritual and physical man is
number 3, as the ternary represented for them not only the surface but
also the principle of the formation of the physical body. Thus animals were ternaries
only, man alone being a septenary, when virtuous ; a quinary when
bad, for : —
Number
5 was composed of a binary and a ternary, which binary threw everything in the
perfect form into disorder and confusion. The
*
The reason for it is simple, and was given in “ Isis Unveiled.”
In geometry, one line fails to represent a perfect body or figure, nor can two
lines constitute a demonstratively perfect figure. The triangle alone is the
first perfect figure.
perfect
man, they said, was
a quaternary and a ternary, or four material and three immaterial elements
; which three spirits or elements we likewise find in 5, when it represents the
microcosm. The latter is a compound of a binary directly relating to
gross matter, and of three Spirits : “ since 5 is the ingenious union of
two Greek accents ‘, placed over vowels which have or have not to be aspirated.
The first sign ‘ is called ‘ Strong Spirit ’ or superior
Spirit, the spirit of God aspired (spiratus) and breathed by man. The
second sign ’ the lower, is the Spirit of Love, representing the
secondary Spirit ; the third embraces the whole man. It is the universal
Quintessence, the vital fluid or Life.” (Ragon.)
The
more mystic meaning of 5 is given in an excellent article by Mr. Subba Row, in
“ Five Years of Theosophy ” (pp. 110, et seq.) —
“ The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” in which he gives some rules
that may help the inquirer to ferret out “ the deep significance of
ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Aryan myths and allegories.”
Meanwhile, let us see what has been hitherto stated about the constellation
Capricornus in theosophical publications, and what is known of it generally. 
Every
one knows that
is
the tenth sign of the Zodiac into which the Sun enters at the winter solstice,
about December 21st. But very few are those who know — even in India,
unless they are initiated — the real mystic connection which seems to
exist, as we are told, between the names Makara and Kumâra. The
first means some amphibious animal called flippantly ‘
crocodile,’ as some Orientalists think, and the second is the title of
the great patrons of Yogins (See “ Saiva Purânas,”)
the Sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Siva) ; 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.
The
word Makara, says the author of “ The Twelve Signs of the
Zodiac,” “ contains within itself the clue to its correct
interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to No. 5, and Kara
means hand. Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam
or Karam (both synonyms) being understood to mean a side. So Makaram
or Panchakaram means a Pentagon ” — the five-pointed star or
pentagon representing the five limbs of man.* Under the old system, we are
told, Makara was the eighth instead of the tenth sign.† It is
“ intended to represent the faces of the Universe, and indicates that the
Universe is bounded by Pentagons,” as the Sanskrit writers “
speak also of
*
What is the meaning and the reason of this figure ? Because, Manas is
the fifth principle, and because the pentagon is the symbol of Man
— not only of the five-limbed, but rather of the thinking, conscious
MAN.
†
The reason for it becomes apparent when Egyptian symbology is studied. See
further on.
Ashtadisa or eight faces bounding Space,”
referring thus to the loka-palas, the eight points of the compass (the
four cardinal and the four intermediate points) . . . “ From an objective
point of view the Microcosm is represented by the human body. Makaram
may be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm,
as external objects of perception.” (pp. 113, 115).
But
the true esoteric sense of the word “ Makara,” does not mean
“ crocodile,” in truth, at all, even when it is compared with the
animal depicted on the Hindu Zodiac. For it has the head and the fore-legs of
an antelope and the body and tail of a fish. Hence the tenth sign of the Zodiac
has been taken variously to mean a shark, a dolphin, etc. ; as it is the vahan
of Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this reason, Jala-rupa
or “ water-form.” The dolphin was the vehicle of Poseidon-Neptune
with the Greeks, and one with him, esoterically ; and this “ dolphin
” is the “ sea-dragon ” as much as the Crocodile of the
Sacred Nile is the vehicle of Horus, and Horus himself. “ I am the fish
and seat of the great Horus of Kem-our,” says the mummy-form God with the
crocodile’s head (ch. lxxxviii., 2, “ Book of the Dead
”). With the Peratæ Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune), who
converts into a sphere the dodecagonal pyramid, “ and paints its gate
with many colours.” He has FIVE androgyne ministers — he is
Makara, the Leviathan.
The
rising Sun being considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest itself to men
every day, and the crocodile rising out of the water at the first sunbeam, that
animal came finally to personify a Solar-fire devotee in India, as it
personified that fire, or the highest soul with the Egyptians.
In
the 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 Kurma Purâna it
is said of them : “ These five ( Kumâra ), O Brahman, were
Yogins who acquired entire exemption from passion.” Their very name shows
their connection with the said constellation — the Makara, and
with some other Purânic characters connected with the Zodiacal signs.
This is done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs of the
primitive Temples. They are mixed up astronomically, physiologically, and
mystically, in general, with a number of Purânic 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) are five in esotericism, as Yogis — because the last two
names have ever been kept secret ; they are the fifth order of Brahmadevas, and
the fivefold Chohans, having the soul of the five elements in them, Water and
Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both aquatic and fiery.
“ Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the golden
lotos (padma) floating on the water.” In India it is Vishnu (one
of whose avatars was Budha, as claimed in days of old). The Prachetasas, the
worshippers of 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. “ Prachetas ” is in Sanskrit, the
name of Varuna, the water god, Nereus, an aspect of the same as Neptune, the
Prachetasas being thus identical with the “ five ministers ”
of ΧΩΖΖΑΡ (Poseidon) of the Peratæ
Gnostics. These are respectively called ΑΟΤ,
ΑΟΑΙ, ΟΤΩ, ΟΤΩΑΒ,
“ the fifth, a triple name (making Seven) being lost
”* — i.e., kept secret. This much for the “ aquatic
” symbol ; the “ fiery ” connecting them with the fiery
symbol — spiritually. For purposes of identity, let us remember that as
the mother of the Prachetasas was 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 unwil
ingness
to wed Poseidon, and in Triton their son. The latter, whose body above the
waist is that of a man and below a dolphin, a fish, is, again, most
mysteriously connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag, and further also
with the (fish) Avatar of Vishnu, Matsya, both teaching mortals Wisdom.
The Dolphin, as every mythologist knows, was placed for his service by
Poseidon among the constellations, and became with the Greeks, Capricornus,
the goat, whose hind part is that of a dolphin, thus shown identical with Makara,
whose head is also that of an antelope and the body and tail those of a fish.
This is why the sign of the Makara was borne on the banner of Kama deva, the
Hindu god of love, identified, in Atharva Veda, with Agni (the fire-god), the
son of Lakshmi, as correctly given by Harivansa. For Lakshmi and Venus are one,
and Amphitrite is the early form of Venus. Now Kama (the Makara-ketu) is
“ Aja ” (the unborn), and “ Âtma-bhu ” (the
self-existent), and Aja is the LOGOS in the Rig-Veda, as he is shown therein to
be the first mani- festation of the ONE : “ Desire first arose in IT,
which was the primal
* So
is Brahmâ’s fifth head, said to be lost, burnt to ashes by
Siva’s “ central eye ” ; Siva being also panchânana
“ five faced.” Thus the number is preserved and secresy maintained
on the true esoteric meaning.
germ
of mind,” that “ which connects entity with non-entity ” (or
Manas, the fifth, with Atma, the seventh, esoterically) say the
Sages. This is the first stage. The second, on the following plane of
manifestation, shows Brahmâ (whom we select as a representative for all
the other first gods of the nations) as causing to issue from his body his
mind-born sons, “ Sanandana and others,” who, in the fifth
“ creation,” and again in the ninth (for purposes of blind) become
the 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 Durga Kali, who is only the black side of
Lakshmi (Venus), the white side of Sakti ; and by suggesting what
connection these animals may have with Capricornus, in which appear
twenty-eight stars in the form of a goat, which goat was transformed by the
Greeks into 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 (vide infra)
uttered by Brahmâ at “ creation,” which forthwith became the Panchadasa
(certain Vedic hymns, attributed to that God) are in their creative and magical
potentiality, the white side of the black Tantrik five
“ makaras,” or the five m’s. “
Makara,” the constellation, is a seemingly meaningless and absurd name.
Yet, even besides its anagrammatical significance in conjunction with the term
“ 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)* ; so the Dhyan
Chohans, called in India Kumâra, are connected with both.
Moreover, in the exoteric religions, they have become the synonyms of the
Angels of Darkness. Mara is the God of Darkness, the Fallen One, and
Death† ; and yet it is one of the names of Kama, the first god in the
Vedas, the Logos, from whom have sprung the Kumâras, and this
*
“ When the Sun passes away behind the 30th degree of Makara and
will reach no more the sign of the Meenam (pisces) then the night of
Brahmâ has come.” . . .
†
Death of every physical thing truly ; but Mara is also the unconscious
quickener of the birth of the Spiritual.
connects
them still more with our “ fabulous ” Indian Makara, and the
crocodile-headed God in Egypt.* The crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are Five,
and the God Toum, the primordial deity creating the heavenly bodies and the
living beings, calls forth these crocodiles in his fifth creation. When
Osiris, “ the defunct Sun,” is buried and enters into Amenti, the
sacred crocodiles plunge into the abyss of primordial Waters — “
the great Green One.” When the Sun of life rises, they reemerge out of
the sacred river. All this is highly symbolical, and shows how primeval
esoteric truths found their expression in identical symbols. But, as Mr. T.
Subba Row truly declares, “ The veil, that was dexterously thrown over
certain portions of the mystery connected with the (Zodiacal) signs by the
ancient philosophers, will never be fully lifted up for the amusement or
edification of the uninitiated public.”
Nor
was number five less sacred with the Greeks. The five words (Panchadasa)
of Brahmâ have become with the Gnostics the “ Five Words ”
written upon the akâsic (shining) garment of Jesus at his glorification :
the words 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
Nirvana. The E Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral five,
again ; and how sacred it was is shown by the fact that the Corinthians
(according to Plutarch) replaced the wooden numeral in the Delphic Temple by a
bronze one ; and this one was transmuted by Livia Augusta into a fac-simile
of gold.
It
is easy to recognize in the two spirits — the Greek accents or signs
(‘,) spoken of by Ragon (vide supra) — Atma and Buddhi, or
“ divine spirit and its vehicle ” (spiritual soul).
The six
or the “ Senary ” is dealt with later, while the Septenary will be
fully treated in the course of this volume. (Vide the “ Mysteries
of the Hebdomad.”)
The Ogdoad
or 8 symbolizes the eternal and spiral motion of cycles,
the
8,
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
*
Osiris is called in the “ Book of the Dead ” “ Osiris,
the double Crocodile.” (See Chapter “ On the Names of
Osiris,” cxlii.) “ He is the good and the bad Principle
; the Day, and the Night Sun, the God, and the mortal man.” Thus far the
Macrocosm and the Microcosm.
every
multiplication. It is the sign of every circumference, since its value in
degrees is equal to 9, i.e., to 3 + 6 + 0. It is a bad number
under certain conditions, and very unlucky. If number 6 was the symbol of our
globe ready to be animated by a divine spirit, 9 symbolized our earth
informed by a bad or evil spirit.
Ten, or the Decade, brings all these digits
back to unity, and ends the
Pythagorean
table. Hence this figure —
,
unity within zero —was
the
symbol of Deity, of the Universe, and of man. Such is the secret meaning of
“ the strong grip of the Lion’s paw, of the tribe of Judah ”
between two hands (the “ master mason’s grip ”),
the joint number of whose fingers is ten.
If
we now give our attention to the Egyptian cross, or the Tau, we may
discover this letter, so exalted by Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, to be
mysteriously connected with the Decade. The tau is the Alpha and
the Omega of secret divine Wisdom, which is symbolized by the initial and the
final letter of Thot (Hermes). Thot was the inventor of the Egyptian alphabet,
and the letter tau closed the alphabets of the Jews and the Samaritans,
who called this character the “ end ” or “ perfection,”
“ culmination ” and “ security.” Thence — Ragon
tells us — the words terminus (end), and tectum (roof), are
symbols of shelter and security, which is rather a prosaic definition. But such
is the usual destiny of ideas and things in this world of spiritual decadence,
if also of physical progress. PAN was at one time absolute nature, the
one and GREAT-ALL ; but when history catches a first glimpse of him, Pan has
already tumbled down into a godling of the fields, a rural god ; and
history will not recognize him, while theology makes of him the devil. Yet his
seven-piped flute, the emblem of the seven forces of nature, of the seven
planets, the seven musical notes, of all the septenary harmony, in short, shows
well his primordial character. So with the Cross. Far earlier than the Jews had
devised their golden candlestick of the temple with three sockets on one
side and four on the other, and made of number 7 a feminine number of
generation,* thus introducing
*
Reflecting on the Cross, the author of the “ Source of Measures
” shows that this candlestick in the temple “ was so composed that
counting on either side there were four candle-sockets ; while at the
apex, there being one in common to both sides, there were in fact three
to be counted on the one side and four on the other, making in all number 7
upon the self-same idea of one in common with the cross display. Take a line of
one unit in breadth by three units long, and place it on an incline ; take
another of four units long, and lean it upon this one, from an opposite
incline, making the top unit of the four in length the corner or apex of a
triangle. This is the display of the candlestick. Now take away the line of
three units in length and cross it on the one of four units in length,
and the cross form results. The same idea is conveyed in the six days of the
week in Genesis, crowned by the seventh, which was used by itself as a base of
circular measure ” (p. 51).
the
phallic element into religion, the more spiritually-minded nations had made of
the cross (as 3, 4 = 7), their most sacred divine symbol. In fact, Circle,
Cross, and Seven — the latter being made a base of circular
measurement — are the first primordial symbols. Pythagoras, who brought
his wisdom from India, left to posterity a glimpse into this truth. His school
regarded number 7 as a compound of numbers 3 and 4, which they explained in a
dual manner. On the plane of the noumenal world, the triangle was, as the first
conception of the manifested Deity, its image : “ Father-Mother-Son
” ; and the Quaternary, the perfect number, was the noumenal, ideal root
of all numbers and things on the physical plane. Some students, in view of the
sacredness of Tetraktis and the Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of
the Quaternary. The latter was with the ancients only a secondary “
perfection,” so to speak, because it related only to the manifested
planes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek delta, Δ,
which was the “ vehicle of the unknown Deity.” A good proof of it
lies with the name of the Deity beginning with Delta. Zeus was written
Δεύς 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 seven
was the invisible centre, the spirit of everything (see further the explanation
of 6), as there exists no body with six lines constituting its form without a seventh
being found as the central point in it (see crystals and snow-flakes in
so-called inanimate nature). Moreover, number seven, they said,
has all the perfection of the UNIT — the number of numbers. For as
absolute unity is uncreated, and impartite (hence number-less) and no number
can produce it, so is the seven : no digit contained within the decade can
beget or produce it. And it is 4, which affords an arithmetical division
between unity and seven, as it surpasses the former by the same
number (three), as it is itself surpassed by the seven, since four is by
as many numbers above one, as seven is above four. (From a
MS. supposed to be by “ St. Germain.”)
“
With the Egyptians number 7 was the symbol of life eternal,” says
Ragon, and adds that this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double 7 is
the initial letter of Zaô, “ I live,” and of Zeus,
“ the father of all living.”
* See Liddell’s Greek-English
Lexicon.
Moreover,
figure 6 was the symbol of the Earth during the autumn and winter “
sleeping ” months, and figure 7 during spring and summer,
—as
the Spirit of life animated her at that time — the seventh or central
informing Force. We find the same in the Egyptian mythos and symbol of Osiris
and Isis, personifying Fire and Water metaphysically, and the Sun and
the Nile physically. The number of the Solar year, 365 in days, is the
numerical value of the word Neilos (Nile). This, together with the Bull,
with the Crescent and the ansated cross between its
horns,
and the Earth under its astronomical symbol —
—are
the most phallic symbols of later antiquity. “ The Nile was the river of
time with the number of a year, or year and a day (364 + 1 365). It represented
the parturient water of Isis, or Mother Earth, the moon, the woman, and the
cow, also the workshop of Osiris, representing the T’sod
Olaum of the Hebrews. The ancient name of this river was Eridanus, or the
Hebrew Iardan, with the Coptic or old Greek suffix. This was the door of the
Hebrew word Jared, or ‘ Source,’ or Descent . . . of
the river Jordan, which had the same mythical use with the Hebrews that the
Nile had with the Egyptians,* it was the source of descent, and held the waters
of life ” (Unpub. MS.) It was, to put it plainly, the symbol of the
personified Earth, or Isis, regarded as the womb of that Earth. This is shown
clearly enough ; and Jordan — the river so sacred now to Christians
— held no more sublime or poetical meaning in it than the parturient
waters of the moon (Isis, or Jehovah in his female aspect). Now, as shown by
the same scholar, Osiris was the sun, and the river Nile, and the tropical year
of 365 days ; while Isis was the moon, the bed of that river, or the mother
earth “ for the parturient energies, of which water was a
necessity,” as also the lunar year of 354 days, “ the time-maker of
the periods of gestation.” All this then is sexual and phallic, and our
modern scholars seem to find in these symbols nothing beyond a physiological or
phallic meaning. Nevertheless, the three figures 365, or the number of days in
a solar year, have but to be read with the
Pythagorean
Key to find in them a highly philosophical and moral meaning. One instance will
be sufficient. It can read : —
T he Earth — animated by —
the Spirit of Life.
3. 6. 5.
Simply
because 3 is equivalent to the Greek gamma, or Γ, which letter is
the symbol of gaia (the Earth) ; while the figure 6 is the symbol of the
animating or informing principle, and the 5 is the universal
quintessence which spreads in every direction and forms all matter. (St.
Germain’s MS.)
* It had no such meaning in the
beginnings ; nor during the earlier dynasties.
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 was (like
Plato’s) to proceed from the universals down to the particulars, who
could ever have begun by symbolizing their religions by sexual emblems ! It is
quite true, though uttered by that incarnated paradox, Eliphas 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 Dhyan Chohans, by the ancients, Gods ; and now
transformed by the Church into devils on the left, and into the Saviour
on the right side !
But
all such dogma grew out of the one root, the root of wisdom, which grows and
thrives on the Indian soil. There is not an Archangel that could not be traced
back to its prototype in the sacred land of Aryavarta. These “ prototypes
” are all connected with the 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 Narada
— another bundle of apparent incongruities, yet a wealth of
philosophical tenets. Narada is the leader of the Gandharvas, the
celestial singers and musicians ; esoterically, the reason for it is explained
by the fact that the latter (the Gandharvas) are “ the instructors
of men in the secret sciences.” It is they, who “ loving the women
of the Earth,” disclosed to them the mysteries of creation ; or, as in
the Veda — the “ heavenly Gandharva ” is a deity who knew and
revealed the secrets of heaven and divine truths, in general. If we
remember what is said of this class of Angels in Enoch and in the Bible, then
the allegory is plain : their leader, Narada, while refusing to procreate,
leads men to become gods. Moreover, all of these, as stated in the Vedas, are Chhandaja
(will-born) or incarnated (in different Manvantaras) of their own will
;—and they are shown in exoteric literature as existing age after age
; some being “ cursed to be re-born,” others, incarnating as a
duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the seven Kumâras who went to visit
Vishnu on the “ White Island ” (Sveta-dwipa) the island
inhabited by the Maha Yogins — they are connected with Sâkadwipa
and the Lemurians and Atlanteans of the Third and Fourth Races.
In
Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras (Kumâras, Adityas, Gandharvas, Asuras,
etc.) are the highest Dhyan Chohans or Devas as regards intellectuality. They
are those who, owing to their having acquired by self-development the five-fold
nature — hence the sacredness of number five — became
independent of the pure Arupa devas. This is a mystery very difficult to
realize and understand correctly. For, we see that those who were “
obedient to law ” are, equally with the rebels, doomed to be
reborn in every age. Narada, the Rishi, is cursed by 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 are 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.* Hence we find the
Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and cutting the Gordian knot of
perplexity by declaring the whole scheme “ figments ” “ of
Brahminical fancy and love of exaggeration.” But to the student of
occultism, the whole is pregnant with deeply philosophical meaning. We willingly
leave the rind to the Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit
for ourselves. We do more : we concede that in one sense much in these
so-called “ fables ” refers to astronomical allegories about
constellations, asterisms, stars, and planets. Yet, while the Gandharva
of the Rig-Veda may there be made to personify the fire of the Sun, the Gandharva
devas are entities both of a physical and psychic character ; while the
Apsarases (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 Parasâra : “
These thirty-three divinities exist age after age, and their appearance and
disappearance is in the same manner as the sun sets and rises again.”
(Book I., xv.)
There
was a time, when the Eastern symbol of the Cross and Circle, the Swastica,
was universally adopted. With the esoteric (and, for the matter of that,
exoteric) Buddhist, the Chinaman and the Mongolian, it means “ the 10,000
truths.” These truths, they say, belong to the
*
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 un-intuitional believe it has not, and cannot have, any opening
in it. Still the Keys are there, deeply buried, yet ever present to him who
searches for them.
mysteries
of the unseen Universe and primordial Cosmogony and Theogony. “ Since
Fohat crossed the Circle like two lines of flame (horizontally and vertically),
the hosts of the Blessed Ones have never failed to send their representatives
upon the planets they are made to watch over from the beginning.” This is
why the Swastica is always placed — as the ansated Cross was in
Egypt — on the breasts of the defunct mystics. It is found on the heart
of the images and statues of Buddha, in Tibet and Mongolia. It is the seal
placed also on the hearts of the living Initiates, burnt into the flesh, for
ever, with some. This, because they have to keep those truths inviolate and
intact, in eternal silence and secrecy to the day these are perceived and read
by their chosen successors — new Initiates — “ worthy of
being entrusted with the ten thousand perfections.” So degraded, however,
has it now become, that it is often placed on the headgear of the “
gods,” the hideous idols of the sacrilegious Bhons, the Dugpas
(Sorcerers) of the Tibetan borderlands ; until found out by a Galukpa and
torn off together with the head of the “ god ; ” though it would be
better were it that of the worshipper which was severed from the sinful body.
Still, it can never lose its mysterious properties. Throw a retrospective
glance, and see it used alike by the Initiates and Seers, as by the priests of
Troy (found by Schliemann on the site of that old city). One finds it with the
old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldeans, as well as on the walls of the
old-world cyclopean buildings ; in the catacombs of the New world, and
in those of the Old (?), at Rome, where, because the first Christians
are supposed to have concealed themselves and their religion, it is called Crux
Dissimulata.
“
According to de Rossi, the Swastica from an early period was a favourite form
of the cross employed with an occult signification, which shows the
secret was not that of the Christian cross. One Swastica cross in the catacombs
is the sign of an inscription which reads ‘
ΖΩΤΙΚΩ
ΖΩΤΙΚΗ,’ ‘ Vitalis Vitalia,’
or ‘ life of life.’ ” *
But
the best evidence to the antiquity of the cross is that which is brought
forward by the author of Natural Genesis on page 433.
“
The value of the cross,” says Mr. Massey, “ as a Christian symbol,
is supposed to date from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. And yet in
the ‘ Christian ’ Iconography of the Catacombs no figure of a
man appears upon the Cross during the first six or seven centuries. There
are all forms of the cross except that — the alleged starting-point of
the new religion. That was not the initial but the final form of the
Crucifix.† During some six
*
Quoted in “ The Natural Genesis ” (p. 427, Vol. I.).
†
With the Christians, most undeniably. With the pre-Christian symbologists it
was, as said, the Bed or Couch of Torture during the Initiation Mystery, the
“ Crucifix ” being placed horizontally, on the ground, and not
erect, as at the time when it became the Roman gallows.
centuries
after the Christian era the foundation of the Christian religion in a crucified
Redeemer is entirely absent from Christian art ! The earliest known form of the
human figure on the cross is the crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great
to Queen Theodolinde of Lombardy, now in the Church of St. John at Monza,
whilst no image of the Crucified is found in the Catacombs at Rome earlier than
that of San Giulio, belonging to the seventh or eighth century. . . . There is
no Christ and no Crucified ; the Cross is the Christ even as the Stauros cross
was a type and a name of Horus, the Gnostic Christ. The Cross, not the
Crucified, is the essential object of representation in its art, and of
adoration in its religion. The germ of the whole growth and development can be
traced to the cross. And that cross is pre-Christian, is pagan and heathen, in
half a dozen different shapes. The cult began with the cross, and Julian was
right in saying he waged a ‘ Warfare with the X ’ ; which he
obviously considered had been adopted by the A-Gnostics and Mytholators to
convey an impossible significance.* During centuries the cross stood for the
Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It was made divine at
first, and humanized at last.”
Few
world-symbols are more pregnant with real occult meaning than the Swastica. It
is symbolized by the figure 6 ; for, like that figure, it points in its
concrete imagery, as the ideograph of the number does, to the Zenith and the
Nadir, to North, South, West, and East ; one finds the unit everywhere, and that
unit reflected in all and every unit. It is the emblem of the activity of
Fohat, of the continual revolution of the “ wheels,” and of the
Four Elements, the “ Sacred Four,” in their mystical, and not alone
in their cosmical meaning ; further, its four arms, bent at right angles, are
intimately related, as shown elsewhere, to the Pythagorean and Hermetic scales.
One initiated into the mysteries of the meaning of the Swastica, say the
Commentaries, “ can trace on it, with mathematical precision, the evolution
of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhya.” Also “ the
relation of the Seen to the Unseen,” and “ the first procreation of
man and species.”
To
the Eastern Occultist the TREE of Knowledge in the Paradise of man’s own
heart, becomes the Tree of Life eternal, and has nought to do with man’s
animal senses. It is an absolute mystery that reveals itself only through the
efforts of the imprisoned Manas and the Ego to liberate themselves from the
thraldom of sensuous perception and see, in the light of the one eternal
present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and now far more to the superficial
Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of materialistic science, there is
but one chief explanation of the mysteries of the Cross — its sexual
element. Even the otherwise spiritualistic modern commentator discerns in the
Cross and Swastica, this feature before all others.
* 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.
“
The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol of saving
power. Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained and bound to the cross. In
the Ritual, the Osirian cries, ‘ The Apophis is overthrown,
their cords bind the South, North, East, and West, their
cords are on him. Har-ru-bah has knotted him.’ * These were the cords
of the four Quarters, or the cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the
Serpent with his hammer . . . a form of Swastica or four-footed Cross. . . . In
the primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber had the form of a
Cross.† The pagoda of Mathura . . . the birth-place of Krishna, was built
in the form of a Cross . . . .” ‡
This
is perfect and no one can discern in this “ sexual worship,” with
which the Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about the
Jews, and the exoteric religions of some Hindu sects, especially the rites of
the Vallabacharyas ? For, as said, the Lingham and Yoni of Siva-worship stand
too high philosophically, its modern degeneration notwithstanding, to be called
a simple phallic worship. But the tree or Cross-worship § of
the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can hardly escape the charge. The
“ Sons of Sorcerers,” “ the seed of the adulterer,” as
Isaiah calls them (lvii.), never lost an opportunity of “ enflaming
themselves with idols under every green tree,” which denotes no
metaphysical recreation. It is from these monotheistic Jews that the
Christian nations have derived their religion, their “ God of gods, the
One living God,” while despising and deriding the worship of the Deity of
the ancient philosophers. Let such believe in and worship the physical form of
the Cross, by all means.
But
to the follower of the true Eastern archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in
spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart
that beats throughout, as in every atom of nature, each such atom contains the
germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give life
eternal and not physical life alone. For him the Cross and Circle, the Tree or
the Tau, are, after every symbol relating to these has been applied to, and
read one after another, still a profound mystery in their Past, and it is to
that Past alone that he directs his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be
the seed from
*
Apophis or Apap is the Serpent of evil, symbol of human passions. The
Sun (Osiris-Horus), destroys him, when Apap is thrown down, bound and chained.
The god Aker, “ the chief of the gate of the Abyss,” of Aker, the
realm of the Sun (xv. 39) binds him. Apophis is the enemy of Ra (light), but
the “ great Apap has fallen ! ” exclaims the defunct. “ The
Scorpion has hurt thy mouth,” he says to the conquered enemy (xxxix. v.
7). The Scorpion is the “ worm that never dies ” of the Christians.
Apophis is bound on the Tau or Tat, “ the emblem of
stability.” (See the erection of Tat in Tatoo, Ritual xviii.).
†
So have the crypts in cis-Himalayan regions where Initiates live, and where
their ashes are placed for seven lunar years.
‡
The Natural Genesis, Vol. I. p. 432. § The Cross and the Tree are
identical and synonymous in symbolism.
which
grows the genealogical Tree of Being, called the Universe. Nor is it the
Three in One, the triple aspect of the seed — its form, colour, and
substance — that interest him, but rather the FORCE which directs its
growth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown, For this vital Force, that
makes the seed germinate, burst open and throw out shoots, then form the trunk
and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like the boughs of the Aswattha,
the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and procreate other
trees — this is the only FORCE that has reality for him, as it is the
never-dying breath of life. The pagan philosopher sought for the Cause, the
modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in the latter.
What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A-gnostic care :
thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full security base his
Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to fathom
it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan,
not the antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine did,* is
forthwith regarded by the Church as a heathen : by Science, as a lunatic. This
because, while refusing to worship the god of physical generation, he confesses
that he can know nothing of the Cause which underlies the so-called First
Cause, the causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly admitting the
All-Presence of the boundless Circle and making of it the universal Postulate
upon which the whole of the manifested universe is based, the Sage keeps a
reverential silence concerning that upon which no mortal men should dare to
speculate. “ The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the logos (the
verb) of man is the revealer of God,” says Eliphas 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 (so we say too), and has no more
significance than the illusion of motion which forms the so-called “
Strobic circles.” No great importance was given to these “ singular
illusions ” when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited them at the
meeting of the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should like to learn
the scientific explanation why seven should ever form itself as a pre-eminent
number — six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings within
one another round a central point, etc., etc. — in this illusion,
produced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the solution refused
by science in the section which follows.
* Sermon the 160th.
§ XXV.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD.
WE
must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without an
attempt to explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number in
every scripture known to the Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest
to the latest, claims its presence, and explains it on its own grounds
agreeably with its own special dogmas, this is no easy task. We can, therefore,
do no better or more explanatory work than to give a bird’s-eye view of
all. These sacred numbers (3, 4, 7) are the sacred numbers of Light, Life,
and Union — especially in this present manvantara, our Life-cycle
; of which number seven is the special representative, or the Factor
number. This has now to be demonstrated.
If
one happened to ask a Brahmin learned in the Upanishads — so full of the
secret wisdom of old, why “ he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk the
juice of the moon-plant, is trisuparna,” as Bopaveda is credited
with saying ; and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the Brahmin trisuparna—
very few could answer the question ; or, if they knew, they would still less
satisfy one’s curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what the old Esoteric
doctrine teaches.
“
When the first ‘ Seven ’ appeared on earth, they
threw the seed of everything that grows on the land into the soil. First came
three, and four were added to these as soon as stone was transformed
into plant. Then came the second ‘ Seven,’ who, guiding
the Jivas of the plants, produced the middle (intermediate)
natures between plant and moving living animal. The third ‘ Seven’
evolved their Chhâyas. . . . The fifth ‘Seven’imprisoned
their ESSENCE. . . . Thus man became a Saptaparna.” (Commentary.)
A.
SAPTAPARNA.
Such
is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means as shown elsewhere, a
seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist
legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek “ myths.”
The T, or
(tau),
formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ (gamma), was (see
§ “ Cross and Circle ”) the symbol of life, and of
life eternal : of earthly life, because Γ (gamma) is the symbol of
the Earth (gaia)* ; and of “ life eternal,” because the
figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked with divine life, the
double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being : —
a
triangle and a quaternary, the symbol of septenary MAN.
Now,
the number six has been regarded in the ancient mysteries as an emblem
of physical nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions
of all bodies : the six lines which compose their form, namely, the four
lines extending to the four cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, and
the two lines of height and thickness that answer to the Zenith and the Nadir.
Therefore, while the senary was applied by the sages to physical
man, the septenary was for them the symbol of that man plus his
immortal soul.
Ragon
gives in his Maçonnerie Occulte a very good illustration of the
“ hieroglyphical senary,” as he calls our double equilateral
triangle,
. He shows it as the symbol of the
commingling of the “ philosophical
three fires and the three waters,
whence results the procreation of the elements of all things.” The same
idea is found in the Indian equilateral double triangle. For, though it is
called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the
Triad (or the Trimurti).
For,
even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle
with
the
apex
downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the god of the moist principle and water
(“ Nârâ-yana,” or the moving Principle in Nârâ,
water ;†) while the triangle, with its apex upward,
is
Siva, the Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand. (See
the bronze statue of Tripurantika Siva, “ Mahadeva destroying
Tripurasura,” at the museum of the India House). It is these two
interlaced triangles — wrongly called “ Solomon’s
seal,” which also form the emblem of our
*
Hence the Initiates in Greece called the Tau Γαιήϊος,
son of gaia, “ sprung from earth,” like Tityos in
Odyssey 7, 324.
†
See the Mahabhârata, e.g., I I I., 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.
Society
— that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and
are the Decad, whatever way this sign
is
examined, as all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the
middle or centre, thus
,
it is a sevenfold sign ; its triangles denote number 3 ; the two
triangles show the presence of the binary ; the triangles with the central
point common to both yield the quaternary ; the six points are the senary ; and
the central point, the unit ; the quinary being traced by combination,
as a compound of two triangles, the even number, and of three
sides in each triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras
and the ancients made the number six sacred to Venus, since “ the
union of the two sexes, and the spagyrisation of matter by triads are necessary
to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and tendency to
reproduction which is inherent in all bodies.”* Belief in “
Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism,
but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other planets of our system, the
Earth has seven Logoi — the emanating rays of the one “ Father-Ray
” — the PROTOGONOS, or the manifested “ Logos ” —
he who sacrifices his Esse (or flesh, the Universe) that the world may live and
every creature therein have conscious being. Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively
male and female, Spirit and Matter,
and
their union is the emblem of life eternal in spirit on its ascending arc, and
in matter as the ever resurrecting element — by procreation and
reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical
; the differentiated matter-line is
horizontal ; the two forming the cross or . The former (the 3), is invisible ;
the latter (the 4), is on the plane of objective perception. This is why all
the matter of the
Universe,
when analyzed by science to its ultimates, can be reduced to four elements only
— carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen : and why the three primaries,
the noumenoi of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a terra
incognita and mere speculations, names, to exact Science. Her servants must
believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom
the nature and acquaint themselves with the potentialities of the effects.
Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or
matter to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great
alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.† As
those Alche
*
The “ Potency of the Pythagorean Triangles ” (Ragon).
†
There are learned Brahmins who have protested against our septenary division.
They are right from their own standpoint, as we are right from ours. Leaving
the
mists
have it : — “ When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the
Quaternary joins its middle nature with that of the Triangle,” (or Triad,
i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of
the other), “ and becomes a cube ; then only does it (the cube unfolded)
become the vehicle and the number of LIFE, the Father-Mother SEVEN.”
The
following diagram will perhaps assist the student to grasp these parallelisms.
HUMAN
PRINCIPLES.
PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICAL VII. . . . .
ATMA.
NATURE.
VI.
. . . . BUDDHI.
V.
. . . . MANAS.
IV.
Kama-rupa, the principle The lightest of all gases ; it
of
animal desire, which burns in oxygen giving off
burns
fiercely during the most intense heat of any
life
in matter, resulting substance in combustion,
��HYDROGEN �
in
satiety ; it is in- and forming Water, the most
separable
from animal stable of compounds ; Hy-
existence.
drogen enters largely into
all
organic compounds.
III.
Linga-Sarira ; the inert An inert gas ; the vehicle with
vehicle
or form on which Oxygen is mixed to
which
the body is adapt the latter for animal
moulded
; the vehicle respiration ; it also enters
�� NITROGEN �
of
Life. It is dissipated largely into all organic sub-
very
shortly after the stances.
disintegration
of the
body.
II.
Prana, LIFE, the active The supporter of combustion
power
producing all ��
� the life-giving gas ; the ac
�� OXYGEN �
vital
phenomena. tive chemical agent in all
��
� organic life.
I.
The gross Matter of the �� � The fuel par excellence ; the body, the substance �� � basis of all organic sub-
formed
and moulded stances ; the (chemical ele
�� CARBON. �
over
the Linga-sarira ment which forms the
(Chhaya)
by the action �� � largest
variety of comof Prana. ��
� pounds. Now we are taught that all
these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of
numbers. From minerals or “ soft
three
aspects, or adjunct principles out of calculation, they accept
only four Upadhis (bases) including the Ego — the reflected image
of the Logos in the “ Karana Sarira ” — and even “
strictly speaking . . . . only three Upadhis.” For purely theoretical
metaphysical philosophy, or purposes of meditation, these three may be sufficient,
as shown by the Taraka Yoga system ; but for practical occult teaching
our septenary division is the best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of
school and choice.
stones
that hardened ” (Stanza) followed by the “ hard plants that
softened,” which are the product of the mineral, for “ it is from
the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born ” (Commentary, Book
IX.,
F. 19) ; and then to man — all the
primitive models in every kingdom of nature begin by being ethereal,
transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the first beginning of
life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the seventh begin to
branch off into species, all except men, the first of the mammalian
animals* in the Fourth Round.
Virgil,
versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in esoteric philosophy, sang
evolution in the following strains : —
Principio
cœlum ac terras, camposque liquentes
Lucentemque
globum lunæ, Titania que astra
SPIRITUS
intus alit ; totamque infusa per artus
MENS
agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
Inde
Hominum pecudumque genus, etc.† (Æneid V I.)
“
First came three, or the triangle.” This expression has a profound
meaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated in mineralogy, botany, and
even in geology, as was demonstrated in the section on “ Ancient
Chronology,” by the compound number seven, the three and the four being
in it. Salt in solution proves it. For when its molecules, clustering together,
begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of
triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of fire, whence
the word “ pyramids ” ; while the second geometrical figure
in manifested Nature is a square or a cube, 4 and 6 ; for, “ the
particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal ” truly
— (Enfield). The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines — the
most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic
nature — fire and water, heat and cold — begin their metro-graphical
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.
* 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 bi-sexual, 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.
†
“ 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.
Darwin,
in his “ Descent of Man,” p. 164. showing that the inhabitants of
the sea-shore are greatly affected by the tides : —
“
The most ancient progenitors in the Kingdom of the Vertebrata . . . apparently
consisted of a group of marine animals. . . . Animals living either about the mean
high-water mark, or about the mean low-water mark, pass through a
complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight. . . . Now it is a mysterious
fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata . . . many normal and
abnormal processes have one or more weeks (septenates) as their periods . . .
such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers,” etc. . . “
The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks (or 14 days) ; those of the
fowl in three ; those of the duck in four : those of the goose in five ; and
those of the ostrich in seven.” (Bartlett’s “ Land and
Water.”)
This
number is closely connected with the moon, whose occult influence is ever
manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the moon which is the guide of
the occult side of terrestrial nature, while the Sun is the regulator and
factor of manifested life ; (See also Vol. I., Part I I.), and this truth was
ever evident to the Seers and the adepts. Jacob Boehme, by insisting on the fundamental
doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting mother Nature, proved himself
thereby a great Occultist.
But
to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism.
To the metrological key to the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals
numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square,
Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine area, may be
added the theogonic Key. This Key explains that Noah, the deluge-Patriarch, is
in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law), for
the purpose of the formation of our Earth, its population, and the propagation
of life on it, in general.
Now
bearing in mind the Septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in Cosmic and
human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah-Noah is at
the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower Cosmic Quaternary. The upper
Sephirothal, 
, triad — of which
Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female, angle — emanates the
Quaternary.
The latter symbolizing by itself the “ Heavenly Man,” the sexless
Adam-Kadmon viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by
emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or
manifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth (the seventh being Malkuth,
the “ Bride of the Heavenly Man ”), thus forming, with the higher
triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree —
the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the
lower creative Sephiroth are seven. The above is not directly to our point,
though it is a necessary
reminder
to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to
show that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, the alleged Creator of
our Earth, of man and all upon it, is : —
(a)
The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim — in his Cosmic
aspect.
(b)
The Tetragrammaton or the Adam-Kadmon, “ the Heavenly Man
” of the Four letters — in his theogonic and Kabalistic aspects.
(c
) Noah — identical with the Hindu Sishta, the human
seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation or Manvantara,
as expressed in the 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 Bible Creative God is not
the Universal 10, unless blended with AIN-SOPH (as Brahmâ with
Parabrahm), but a septenary, one of the many Septenaries of the Universal
Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, his position and
status as Noah may best be
shown
by placing the 3,
, and 4,
,
on parallel lines with the “ Cosmic ” and “ Human ”
principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of.
Thus : —
HUMAN
ASPECTS, or
COSMIC
ASPECTS, or PRINCIPLES.
PRINCIPLES.
1.
Universal Spirit (Atma) 
1. The Unmanifested Logos
Triple aspect of the Deity.
2.
Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)
2.
Universal (latent) Ideation*
3.
Human Soul, Mind
3.
Universal (or Cosmic) (Manas)
active
† Intelligence
4.
Animal Soul(Kama-Rupa) 4. Cosmic (Chaotic) Energy
Spirit of the Earth. Jehovah.‡
5.
Astral Body(Linga Sarira) 5. Astral Ideation, reflecting
Noah.
terrestrial
things.
Space containing
Life
6. Life Essence (Prana) — the
Waters of the 6. Life Essence or Energy
Deluge.
7.
Body (Sthula Sarira) Mount Ararat.§ 7. The Earth.
As
an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to scientific
works. “ Ararat = the mount of descent = , Hor-Jared. Hatho
mentions it out of composition by Areth = . Editor
NOTE. — For footnotes, see next
page.
of
Moses Cherenensis says : ‘ By this, they say, is signified the first
place of descent (of the ark).’ (Bryant’s Anal.,
Vol. IV., pages 5, 6, 15.) Under “ Berge ” mountain,
Nork says of Ararat : ‘ , for (i.e., Ararat for Arath)
EARTH, Aramaic reduplication.’ Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make
use of the same equivalent in Arath, with the meaning of Earth.”||
Noah
thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the
Power which developed the planetary chain, and our earth, and the Seed
Race (the Fifth) which was saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth
perished — Vaivasvata Manu — the number Seven will be seen
to recur at every step. It is he (Noah), who represents, as Jehovah’s
permutation, the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or
Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence verses 2 and 3 of
*
The Adwaitee Vedantic philosophy classifies this as the highest trinity, or
rather the Trinitarian aspect of Chinmatra (Parabrahmam), explained by them as
the “ bare potentiality of Pragna ” — the power or the
capacity that gives rise to perception ; Chidakasam, the infinite field or
plane of Universal Consciousness ; and Asath (Mulaprakriti), or
undifferentiated matter. (See “ Personal and Impersonal God ”
in “ Five Years of Theosophy. ”)
†
Differentiated matter existing in the Solar System (let us not touch the whole
Kosmos) in seven different conditions, and Pragna, or the capacity of
perception, existing likewise in seven different aspects corresponding to the
seven conditions of matter, there must necessarily be seven states of
consciousness in man ; and according to the greater or smaller development of
these states, the systems of religions and philosophies were schemed out.
‡
Represented as the jealous, angry, turbulent and ever active-god, revengeful,
and kind only to his chosen people when propitiated by them. § Noah and
his three Sons are the collective symbol of this Quaternary in many and various
applications, Ham being the Chaotic principle.
||
“ Source of Measures,” p. 65. The author explains, “
Note that in Hebrew, Jared, the father of Enoch, is construed to be
‘ the mount of descent,’ and it is said to be the same with Ararat
on which the cubical structure of Noah, or foundation measure
rested. Jared, in Hebrew, is . The root derivations are the same with
those of Ararat, of
acre, of earth.” As by Hebrew
metrology “ Jared, is, literally in British Y R D ; hence in Jared
is to be found literally our English word yard (and also , for Jah,
or Jehovah, is rod ). It is noteworthy that the son of Jared,
viz., Enoch, lived 365 years, and it is said of him by rabbinical
commentators, that the year period of 365 days was discovered by him, thus
bringing, again, time and distance values together, i.e., year
time descended by co-ordination, through the yard, or jared,
who thus was its father, in or through Enoch ; and truly enough,
1296 = yard (or jared) × 4 = 5184, the characteristic value
of the solar day, in thirds, which as stated may be styled the parent
numerically, of the solar year ” (ibid. p. 65). This, however,
by the astronomical and numerical Kabalistic methods. Esoterically, Jared is
the Third race and Enoch the Fourth — but as he is taken away alive he symbolizes
also the Elect saved in the Fourth, while Noah is the Fifth from the beginning
— the family saved from the waters, eternally and
physically.
chapter
vii. of Genesis, “ Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by
sevens, the male (3), and the female (4) ; of fowls also of the air by sevens,”
etc., etc., followed by all the sevening of days and the rest.
B. THE TETRAKTIS IN RELATION TO THE
HEPTAGON.
Thus
Number Seven, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in every
ancient religion, because it is the factor element in nature. Its
adoption must be justified, and it must be shown to be the number par
excellence, for, since the appearance of “ Esoteric Buddhism,”
frequent objections have been made, and doubts expressed as to the correctness
of these assertions.
And
here let the student be told at once, that in all such numerical divisions the
ONE universal Principle, — although referred to as (the) one, because the
Only One —never enters into the calculations. IT stands, in its
character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the universal abstraction,
entirely by ITSELF and independent of every other Power whether noumenal or
phenomenal. IT “ is neither matter nor spirit ; IT is neither Ego nor
non-Ego ; and IT is neither object nor subject,” says the author of
“ Personal and Impersonal God,” and adds : —
“
In the language of Hindu philosophers it is the original and eternal
combination of Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti (matter). As the Adwaitees hold
that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is
nothing more than an illusion, and Purusha is the only reality ; it is the ONE
existence which remains in the universe of Ideas. This . . . then, is the
Parabrahm of the Adwaitees. . . . .”
“
Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material upadhi
(physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee there
will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in
the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the
origin of the Universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if
the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that the
grand total of all the states of consciousness in the Universe is their
deity, as these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic ideation ceases
during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the Universe,
which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (the
field of consciousness) in fact. When my readers once realize the fact that
this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of
consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of
unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees.”*
Being
itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this “ huge
aggregation of various states of consciousness ” is a Septenate,
* “ Five Years of
Theosophy,” Art. “ Personal and Impersonal God.”
in its
totality entirely composed of Septenary groups ; simply because “ the
capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to
the seven conditions of matter ” (ibid), or the seven
properties, or states, or conditions of matter. And, therefore, number 1 down
to number 7 begins in the esoteric calculations with the first manifested
principle, which is number one if we commence from above, and the seventh
when reckoning from below, or from the lowest Principle.
The Tetrad
is esteemed in the Kabala, as it was by Pythagoras, the most perfect, or rather
sacred number, because it emanated from the one, the first
manifested Unit, or rather the three in one. Yet the latter has been
ever impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though within the possibility of
the higher mental perceptions.
The
first manifestation of the eternal monad was never meant to stand as the symbol
of another symbol, the UNBORN for the Element-born, or the one LOGOS for the
Heavenly man. Tetragrammaton, or the Tetractys of the Greeks, is the Second
logos, the Demiurgos. The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thought (vide the
“ Pythagorean Triangle ”), “ is the animal itself
of Plato, who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of the Pythagoreans ;
it subsists at the extremity of the intelligible triad, as is most satisfactorily
shown by Proclus in the third book of his treatise on the theology of Plato.
And between these two triads (the double triangle), the one intelligible, and
the other intellectual, another order of gods exists which partakes of both
extremes.” “ The Pythagorean world,” Plutarch tells us (in De
anim. procr., 1027) “ consisted of a double quaternary.”
This statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric
theologies, of the lower Tetraktis. For : — “ The quaternary
of the intellectual world (the world of Mahat) is T’Agathon, Nous,
Psyche, Hyle ; while that of the sensible world (of matter), which is properly
what Pythagoras meant by the word Kosmos — is Fire, Air, Water, and
Earth. The four elements are called by the name of rizomata, the roots
or principles of all mixed bodies,” i.e., the lower
Tetraktis is the root of illusion of the world of matter ; and this is
the tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the “ mysterious deity,” over
which the modern Kabalists make such a fuss !
“
Thus number four forms the arithmetical mean between the monad and the heptad,
as this contains all powers, both of the productive and produced numbers ; for
this of all numbers under ten, is made of a certain number ; the duad doubled
makes a tetrad, and the tetrad doubled or unfolded makes the hebdomad
(the septenary). Two multiplied into itself produces four ; and retorted into
itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a fertile number, the
ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and four (depending on the
monad, the seventh). Thus the two principles of temporal things, the pyramis
and cube, form and matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon (on earth) the monad
(in heaven) . . . . ” (See Reuchlin, “ Cabala ” 1,
ii.).
Here
Reuchlin, the great authority on the Kabala, shows the cube to be matter,
whereas the pyramid or the triad is “ form.” With the
Hermesians the number four becomes the symbol of truth only when amplified
into a cube, which, unfolded, makes seven, as symbolizing the male and
female elements and the element of LIFE.*
Some
students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line, which is male,
becoming (vide infra) in the cross a four-partitioned line
—four being a female number, while the
horizontal (the line of matter) becomes three-divisioned. But this is easy of
explanation. Since the middle face of the cube unfolded is common to
both the vertical and the horizontal bar, or double-line, it becomes neutral
ground so to say, and belongs to neither. The spirit line remains triadic, and
the matter line two-fold — two being an even and therefore a female
number also. Moreover, according to Theon, the Pythagoreans who gave the name
of Harmony to the Tetraktis, “ because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia
” — were of opinion that “ the division of the canon of the
monochord was made by the tetraktis in the duad, triad, and tetrad
; for it comprehends a sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a double, a triple,
and a quadruple proportion, the section of which is 27.” “ In the
ancient musical notation, the tetrachord consisted of three degrees or
intervals, and four terms of sounds called by the Greeks diatessaron,
and by us a fourth.” Moreover, the quaternary though an even, therefore a
female (“ infernal ”) number, varied according to its form. This is
shown by Stanley (in Pythag. p. 61). The 4 was called by the
* In
the “ Hebrew Egyptian Mystery, the Source of Measures,”
the Author shows (on p. 50) that the figure of the cube unfolded in connection
with the circle . . . . “ becomes . . a cross proper, or of the tau
form, and the attachment of the circle to this last gives the ansated cross
of the Egyptians . . . . while there are but 6 faces to a cube, the
representation of the cross as the cube unfolded, as to the cross-bars,
displays one face of the cube as common to two bars, counted as
belonging to either . . . (i.e., once counted horizon-(CUBE
UNFOLDED) tally, and once vertically) . . . 4 for the upright, and 3 for
the 
cross bar making seven in
all,” adding — “ Here we have the
famous
4, and 3, and 7.” Esoteric philosophy explains that four is
the
symbol of the Universe in its potential state, or chaotic matter,
and
that it requires Spirit to permeate it actively, i.e., the
primordial
abstract triangle has to quit its one dimensional
quality
and spread across that matter, thus forming a manifested
basis
on the three dimensional space, in order that the Universe
should
manifest intelligibly. This
is
achieved by the cube unfolded. Hence the ansated cross
as
the symbol
of
man, generation and life. In Egypt ank signified soul, life and blood.
It is the ensouled, living man, the Septenary.
Pythagoreans
the Key-Keeper of Nature ; but in union with the 3, which made it seven, it
became the most perfect and harmonious number —nature herself. The
four was “ the Masculine of Feminine Form,” when forming the Cross
; and Seven is “ the Master of the Moon,” for this planet is forced
to alter her appearance every seven days. It is on number seven that Pythagoras
composed his doctrine on the Harmony and Music of the Spheres, calling “
a tone ” the distance of the Moon from the Earth ; from the Moon to
Mercury half a tone, from thence to Venus the same ; from Venus to the Sun 112
tones ; from the Sun to Mars a tone ; from thence to Jupiter 12
a tone ; from Jupiter to Saturn 1 2 a
tone ; and thence to the Zodiac a tone ; thusmaking seven tones — the
diapason harmony. All the melody of nature is in those seven tones, and
therefore is called “ the Voice of Nature.”
Plutarch
explains (de Plac. Phil., p. 878) that the Achæan Greeks regarded
the tetrad as the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of
the elements which gave birth to all visible and invisible created things.
With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the figure of the Cross, or Cube
unfolded, formed the subject of a disquisition in one of the theosophic
degrees of Peuret, and was treated according to the fundamental principles of
light and darkness, or good and evil.
“
The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind (or unit) after this
manner. The Tetraktis reflecting upon its own essence, the first unit, productrix
of all things, and on its own beginning, saith thus : Once one, twice two,
immediately ariseth a tetrad, having on its top the highest unit, and
becomes a Pyramis, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable to a
superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity produceth the
form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent of Juno (matter) to inferior
things. Hence ariseth essential light, not burning but illuminating. This is
the creation of the middle world, which the Hebrews call the Supreme,
the world of the (their) deity. It is termed Olympus, entirely light,
and replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal gods,
‘ deûm domus alta,’ whose top is UNITY, its wall trinity,
and its superficies quaternity.” (Reuchlin, Cabala, p.
689).
The
“ superficies ” has thus to remain a meaningless surface, if
left by itself. UNITY only “ illuminating ” quaternity ; the
famous lower four has to build for itself also a wall from trinity, if
it would be manifested. Moreover, the tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus,
is “ Jehovah ” arrogating to himself very improperly the “
Was, Is, Will be,” now translated into the “ I am that I am,”
and interpreted as referring to the highest abstract Deity, while esoterically
and in plain truth, it means only periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal
MATTER with all its poten- tialities. 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 Marcelinus
Vicinus 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, Theos
; the ancient Turks, Esar ; the Latins, Deus ; to which J.
Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott ; the Sarmatian, Bouh, etc.,
etc.
The
Monad being one, and an odd number, the ancients therefore called the
odd, the only perfect numbers ; and — selfishly, perhaps, yet as a fact
— considered them all as masculine and perfect, being applicable to the
celestial gods, while even numbers, such as two, four, six, and
especially eight, as being female, were regarded as imperfect, and given only
to the terrestrial and infernal deities. In his eighth eclogue, Virgil
records the fact by saying, “ Numero deus impare gaudet,”
“ Unequal numbers please the gods.”
But
number seven, or the heptagon, the Pythagoreans considered to be
a religious and perfect number. It was called “ Telesphoros,”
because by it all in the Universe and mankind is led to its end, i.e.,
its culmination (Philo. de Mund. opif.). Being under the rule of seven
sacred planets,* the doctrine of the Spheres shows, from Lemuria to Pythagoras,
the seven powers of terrestrial and sublunary nature, as well as the seven
great Forces of the Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones, which are
the seven notes of the musical scale. The heptad (our Septenary) was
regarded “ as the number of a virgin, because it is unborn ”
(like the Logos or the “ Aja ” of the Vedantins) ; “ without
a father or a mother, but proceeding directly from the Monad, which is
the origin and crown of all things.” (Pythag. Triangle, p. 174.)
And if the heptad is made to proceed from the Monad directly, then it
is, as taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest schools, the perfect and
sacred number of this Maha-Manvantara of ours.
The
septenary, or heptad, was sacred indeed to several gods and goddesses ;
to Mars, with his seven attendants, to Osiris, whose body was divided into
seven and twice seven parts ; to Apollo (the Sun), between his seven planets,
and playing the hymn to the seven-rayed on his seven-stringed harp ; to
Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others.
Cis-Himalayan
Occultism with its sevening, and because of such sevening, must be
regarded as the most ancient, the original of all. It is opposed by some
fragments left by Neo-Platonists ; and the admirers of the latter, who hardly
understand what they defend, say to us : “ See, your forerunners believed
only in triple man, composed of
*
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.
Spirit,
Soul, and body. Behold, the Taraka Raja Yoga of India limits that division to
3, we, to 4, and the Vedantins to 5 (koshas).” To this, we of the Archaic
school, ask : —
Why
then does the Greek poet say that “ it is not four but SEVEN who
sing the praise of the Spiritual Sun,” ῾
ΕΠΤΑΜΕ ? He says— “ Seven sounding
letters sing the praise of me, The immortal God, the Almighty deity.” . .
.
Why
again is the triune IAO (the Mystery God) called the “
fourfold,” and yet the triad and tetradic symbols come under one unified
name with the Christians — the Jehovah of the seven letters ? Why again
in the Hebrew Shebâ is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktis) identical
with number 7 ; or, as Mr. G. Massey has it, “ taking an oath was
synonymous with ‘ to seven,’ and the 10 expressed by the letter Yod,
was the full number of IAO-SABAOTH, the ten-lettered God ” ? In
Lucian’s Auction, Pythagoras asks, “ How do you reckon ?
” The reply is, “ One, Two, Three, Four.” “ Then, do
you see,” says Pythagoras, “ in what you conceive FOUR there
are Ten ; then, a perfect triangle and our Oath (tetraktis, four !),”
or Seven. Why does Proclus say in Timæus, c. iii.—
“ The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetractys as the
fountain of perennial nature ” ?
Simply
because those Western Kabalists who quote the exoteric proofs against us
have no idea of the real esoteric meaning. Because all the ancient
Cosmologies — the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of
the Fifth Root Race, the Hindu Aryans and the Egyptians, adding to them the
early Chinese races (the remnants of the Fourth or Atlantean Race) —
based the whole of their mysteries on number 10 : the higher triangle standing
for the invisible and metaphysical world, the lower three and four, or the Septenate,
for the physical realm. It is not the Jewish Bible that brought number seven
into prominence. Hesiod used the words “ The seventh is the sacred
day,” before the Sabbath of “ Moses ” was ever heard of. The
use of number seven was never confined to any one nation. This is well
testified by the seven vases in the temple of the Sun, near the ruins of Babion
in Upper Egypt ; the seven fires burning continually for ages before the altars
of Mithra ; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians ; the seven peninsulas, the
seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India ; and of the Zohar
(See Ibn Gebirol) ; the Jewish Sephiroth of the Seven
splendours ; the seven Gothic deities, the seven worlds of the Chaldeans and
their seven Spirits ; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod and Homer ;
and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS. they
discover.
What
we have to say finally is this : Enough has been brought forward to show why
the human principles were and are divided in the 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 Tetraktis : to become comprehensible, according to the
teachings of the esoteric ancient school, man must be regarded as a
Septenary. This was so well understood, that even the so-called Christian
Gnostics had adopted this time-honoured system (Vide § on “ The
Seven Souls ”). This remained for a long time secret as, though
suspected, no MSS. of that time spoke of it clearly enough to satisfy the
sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the literary curiosity of our age
— the oldest and best preserved gospel of the Gnostics, Pistis Sophia ΙΙΙCΤΙC
CΟΦΙΑ. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall
quote from an authority (C. W. King) — the only archæologist who
had a faint glimmer of this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the day
on the Gnostics and their gems.
According
to this extraordinary piece of religious literature — a true Gnostic
fossil — the human Entity is the Septenary ray from the One,* just as our
school teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of which are borrowed
from the four Kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus “ from Asia it gets
the Nephesh or seat of the physical appetites (vital breath, also) ;
from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the passions ( ? ! ) ; from Briah, the Neshamah,
and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life ;
” (King). “ This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of
the Soul’s obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its
downward progress through their Spheres. But the Pistis-Sophia, with its
accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical shape (§
282).” The Inner Man is similarly made up of four
constituents, but these are supplied by the rebellious 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 ᾽Αντίμιμον
Πνεύματος, Counterfeit of the
Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience), (the sixth) ; and
lastly the Μοῖρα, Fate† (Karmic Ego),
whose
*
The Seven Centres of Energy evolved, or rendered objective by the action of
Fohat upon the one element ; or, in fact, the “ Seventh Principle
” of the Seven Elements which exist throughout manifested Kosmos. We may
here point out that they are in truth the Sephiroth of the Kabalists ; the
“ Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost ” in the Christian system ; and in
a mystical sense, the seven children or sons of Devaki killed before the birth
of Krishna by Kamsa. Our seven principles symbolize all of these. We have to
part or separate from them before we reach the Krishna or Christ-state,
that of a Jivanmukta, and centre ourselves entirely in the highest, the
Seventh or the ONE.
†
Μοῖρα is destiny, not “ Fate,” in this
case, as it is an appellation, not a proper noun. (See Wolf ’s transl. in
Odyssey 22, 413). But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a deity
business
it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him ; if he hath to die by the
fire, to lead him into the fire, if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him
unto the wild beast, etc.” * — the SEVENTH !
C.
THE SEPTENARY ELEMENT IN THE VEDAS. IT
CORROBORATES THE OCCULT TEACHING CONCERNING THE SEVEN GLOBES AND THE SEVEN
RACES.
We
have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our
best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely
allegorical, the Rig-Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven rays
of Sûrya (the Sun) are made therein parallel to the Seven Worlds (of
every planetary chain), to the seven rivers of heaven and earth, the former
being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the Seven men, or primitive
human groups. The Seven ancient Rishis — the progenitors of all that
lives and breathes on earth — are the seven friends of Agni, his seven
“ horses,” or seven “ HEADS.” The human race has sprung
from fire and water, it is allegorically stated ; fashioned by the FATHERS, or
the ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni ; for Agni, the Aswins, the Adityas (Rig-Veda
I I I., 54, 16, I I., 29, 3, 4), are all synonymous with that
“ sacrificer,” or the fathers, variously called Pitar (Pitris,
fathers), Angirases† (Ibid, 1, 31, 17, 139, et seq.), the Sâdh
yas, “ divine sacrificers,” the most occult of all. They are
all called deva putra rishayah or “ the Sons of God ” (X.,
62 ; 1, 4). The “ sacrificers,” moreover, are collectively the ONE
sacrificer, the father of the gods, Visvakarman, who performed the great
Sarva-Medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself. (See Rig-Vedic Hymns.)
“
who like ᾽Αῖσα gives to all their portion of good
and evil,” and is therefore Karma (Vide Liddell). By
this abbreviation, however, the subject to Destiny or Karma is
meant, the SELF or Ego, and that which is reborn. Nor is
Αντίμιμον
Πνεύματος our conscience, but our Buddhi
; nor is it again the “ counterfeit of Spirit ” but
“ modelled after,” or a counterpart of the Spirit —
which Buddhi is, as the vehicle of Atma (Vide Ar. Theism,
17 ; and Liddell’s definitions).
* C.
W. King’s Gnostics, p. 38.
†
Prof. Roth (in Peter’s Lexicon) defines the Angirases as an intermediate
race of higher beings between gods and men ; while Prof. Weber, according to
his invariable custom of modernising and anthropomorphising the divine, sees in
them the original priests of the religion which was common to the Aryan Hindus
and Persians. Roth is right. “ Angirases ” was one of the names of
the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors (“ guru- deva ”), of the
late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race Initiates.
In
these Hymns the “ Heavenly Man ” is called purusha, “
the Man,”
(X.
90, 1) from whom Virâj was born (X. 90, 5) ; and from Virâj,
the (mortal) man. It is Varuna (now drawn from his sublime position to be the
chief of the lords-Dhyanis or Devas) who regulates all natural phenomena, who
“ makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow.” The seven rivers of
the sky (the descending creative gods) and the seven rivers of the earth (the
seven primitive mankinds) are under his control, as will be seen. For he who
breaks Varuna’s laws (Vratâni, “ courses of natural
action,” active laws) is punished by Indra (X. 113, 5), the Vedic
powerful god, whose Vratâ (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 — the
records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our race) concerning
the primordial teachings — speak of the Seven Races (two still to come)
allegorising them by the “ seven streams ” (1, 35, 8) ; and of the
Five Races (“ pânca krishtâyah ”) which have
already inhabited this world (ibid ) on the five regions “ pânca
pradicah ” (I X, 86, 29), as also of the three continents
that were.*
It
is those scholars only who will master the secret meaning of the Purushasukta
(in which the intuition of the modern Orientalist has chosen to see “ one
of the very latest hymns of the Rig-Veda ”), who may hope to understand
how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric
doctrines. One must study in all the abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning
the relations in it between the (Heavenly) man “ Purusha,”
SACRIFICED for the production of the Universe and all in it (See Visvakarman),
and the terrestrial mortal man (Hymn X. 20, 1., 16), before one realizes
the hidden philosophy of this verse : —
“
15. He (“ Man,” purusha, or Visvakarman) had seven enclosing
logs of fuel, and thrice seven layers of fuel ; when the gods performed
the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim ” . . . . This relates to the
three Septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity of the Vedas, who knew
of no other, probably in this earliest oral teachings ; and also
*
Three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, continents — the first “
continent ” of the First Race prevailing to the last and existing to this
day — are described in the occult Doctrine, the Hyperborean, the Lemurian
(adopting the name now known in Science), and the Atlantean. Most of
Asia issued from under the waters after the destruction of Atlantis ; Africa
came still later, while Europe is the fifth and the latest — portions of
the two Americas being far older. But of these, more anon. The Initiates who
recorded the Vedas — or the Rishis of our Fifth Race — wrote at a
time when Atlantis had already gone down. Atlantis is the fourth continent that
appeared, but the third that disappeared.
to
the seven primeval groups of mankind, as Visvakarman represents divine humanity
collectively.*
The
same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, and must
have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the case of the
Parsis, who read it in their Vendidad and elsewhere, without understanding the
allusions they contain any better than the Orientalists do ; yet the doctrine
is plainly mentioned in their old works. (See the enumeration of the seven spheres
— not the “ Karshvare of the earth,” as believed
— in Fargard XIX., 30). But see further on.
Comparing
the esoteric teaching with the interpretations by James Darmesteter (the
Vendidad, edited by Prof. Max Müller), one may see at a glance where the
mistake is made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus :
—
“
The Indo-Iranian Asura (Ahura) was often conceived as seven-fold ; by
the play of certain mythical (?) formulæ and the strength of certain mythical
(?) numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of
seven worlds,† and the Supreme God was often made seven-fold, as well
as the worlds over which he ruled.” ( Vide the foot note ).
“ The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the
earth : the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, only one of which is
known and accessible to man, the one on which we live, namely, Hvaniratha
; which amounts to saying that there are seven earths.‡ Parsi
mythology knows also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven
climes. (Orm. Ahr. § 72. “ Vendidad Introd. p. lx.,)”
and the same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most
revered of the Hindu
*
Nor is this archaic teaching so very unscientific, since one of the
greatest naturalists of the age — the late Professor Agassiz —
admitted the multiplicity of the geographical origins of man, and supported it
to the end of his life. The unity of the human species was accepted by the
illustrious Professor of Cambridge (U.S.A.) in the same way as the Occultists
do — namely, in the sense of their essential and original homogeneity and
their origin from one and the same source : — e.g., Negroes,
Aryans, Mongols, etc., have all originated in the same way and from the same
ancestors. The latter were all of one essence, yet differentiated, because
belonging to seven planes which differed in degree though not in kind. That
original physical difference was but little more accentuated by that of
geographical and climatic conditions, later on. This is not the theory of
Agassiz, of course, but the esoteric version. It is fully discussed in the Addenda
(Part I I I.).
†
The seven worlds are, as said, the seven spheres of the chain, each presided
over by one of the “ Seven great gods ” of every religion. When the
latter became degraded and anthropomorphized, and the metaphysical ideas nearly
forgotten, the synthesis or the highest, the seventh, was separated from the
rest, and that personification became the eighth god, whom monotheism
tried to unify but — failed. In no exoteric religion is God really one,
if analyzed metaphysically.
‡
The six invisible globes of our chain are both “ worlds ” and
“ earths ” as is our own, albeit invisible. But where could be the Six
invisible earths on this globe ?
scriptures
— the Rig-veda. Mention is made therein of six worlds, besides our
earth : the six râjamsi above prithivi — the
earth, — or “ this ” (idám) as opposed to that which
is yonder (i.e., the six globes on the three other planes
or worlds). (See Rig-veda I. 34, III. 56 ; VII. 10, 411,
and V.,
60.
6).
The
italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of the
esoteric doctrine, and the mistake made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in
what other people believed in ; namely, in seven “ worlds ” or
globes of our planetary chain, of which only one is accessible to man
(at the present time), our Earth ; and in the successive appearance and
destruction of seven continents or earths on this our globe, each continent
being divided, in commemoration of the seven globes (one visible, six
invisible), into seven islands or continents, “ seven climes,”
etc., etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret Doctrine
was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities under Septenary
division, that made the Orientalists (led astray, moreover, by the oblivion of
both the uninitiated Hindus and Parsis of their primitive doctrines) feel so
puzzled by this ever-recurring seven-fold number, as to regard it as “
mythical.” It is that oblivion of the first principles which has led the
Orientalists off the right track and made them commit the greatest blunders.
The same failure is found in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant
of the esoteric doctrine of the earliest Aryans, can never assimilate or
understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these BEINGS.
Ahura
Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas
(or Amshaspends), and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as “
Jehovah-Binah Arelim ” was the head and synthesis of the Elohim and no
more ; so Agni-Vishnu-Sûrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus
whence emanated in physics as in metaphysics, from the Spiritual as from the physical
Sun, the Seven Rays, the seven fiery tongues, the seven planets or gods. All
these became supreme gods and the ONE GOD, but only after the loss of
the primeval secrets, the sinking of Atlantis, or “ the Flood,” and
the occupation of India by the Brahmans, who sought safety on the summits of
the Himalayas, when even the high table-lands of what is now Tibet became
submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as “ the Most
Blissful Spirit, Creator of the corporeal World ” in the Vendidad.
“ Ahura Mazda ” in its literal translation means the “ Wise
Lord ” (Ahura “ lord,” and Mazda “ wise
”). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in Sanskrit Asura,
connects him with the Manasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed the
mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (manas). Ahura (asura) may
be derived from the root ah “ to be,” but in its primal
signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be.
When
geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed
waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when
the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know
the age of the Aryan Brahminical nation, and the time of its descent into the
plains of Hindostan, which it did millenniums later.
Yima,
the so-called “ first man ” in the Vendidad, as much as his
twin-brother Yama, the Son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of the
Universal History. He is the “ Progenitor ” of the Second human
Race, hence the personification of the shadows of the Pitris, and the father of
the postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said “ Yima,” as we say
“ man ” when speaking of mankind. The “ fair Yima,” the
first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is the first “ man
” who dies or disappears, not the first who is born. The “
Son of Vixanghat,” was, like the Son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man,
who stood in esotericism as the representative of the first three races
and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these races the first two never died
* but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the third knew death only
towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its “ Fall
” into generation. This is plainly alluded to in the I I. Fargard of the Vendidad.
Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying “
I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy
law.” And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and “
watch over his world ” (3 and 4).
He
refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest
and sacrificer, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer :
—
“
Yes ! . . . yes, I will rule and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I
am King, neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death.”
Then
Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty,
and under the sway of Yima —
“
Three hundred winters passed away, and the earth was replenished
with flocks and herds, with men, and dogs, and birds, and with red blazing
fires,” etc. (300 winters mean 300 periods or cycles.)
“
Replenished,” mark well, that is to say, all this had been on it before ;
and thus is proven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive
destructions of the world and its life cycles. Once the “ 300 winters
” were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the earth is becoming too full,
and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of
Spenta Armaïta (the female genius, or Spirit of the Earth) makes that
earth stretch out and become larger by
*
Death came only after man had become a physical creature, vide supra.
The men of the First Race and also of the Second, dissolved and disappeared
in their progeny.
one-third,
after which “ new herds and flocks and men ” appear upon it. Ahura
Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes the earth by the same magic power to
become larger by two-thirds. “ Nine hundred winters ” pass
away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the third time. The whole
of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the earth, refer to
the three successive continents and races issuing one after and from the other,
as explained more fully elsewhere. After the third time, Ahura Mazda
warns Yima in an assembly of “ celestial gods and excellent mortals
” that upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, and
all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for the “
flood,” and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every
race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a vara (an
enclosure, an ark) under the God’s direction, and brings thither the seed
of every living creature, animals and “ fires.”
It
is of this “ earth ” or new continent that Zarathustra became the
law-giver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men
of the Third began to die out. Till then, as said (vide supra, foot
note) there had been no regular death, but only a transformation, for men
had no personality as yet. They had monads — breaths of the ONE
Breath, and as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had
bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karmaless. Therefore,
as there was no Kamaloka — least of all Nirvana or even Devachan —
for the “ souls ” of men who had no personal Egos, there
could be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the
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.
Nevertheless,
it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott’s
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 one, and giving birth in their
turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again
corroborated by one of its echoes — the Gnostic. In their Anthropology
and Genesis of man they taught that “ a certain company of Seven
angels,” formed the first men, who were no better than senseless,
gigantic, shadowy forms — “ a mere wriggling worm ” (!)
writes Irenæus (I., 24, 1), who takes, as usual, the metaphor for
reality.
D.
THE SEPTENARY IN THE EXOTERIC WORKS.
We
may now examine other ancient Scriptures and see whether they contain the
septenary classification, and, if so, to what degree.
As
much, if not much more, even than in the Jewish Bible, scattered about in the
thousands of Sanskrit texts, some still unopened, others yet unknown, as well
as in all the Purânas, the numbers seven and forty-nine (7 × 7)
play a most prominent part. They are found from the Seven creations in Chapter
I., down to the seven rays of the Sun at the final Pralaya, which expand into
Seven Suns and absorb the material of the whole Universe. Thus the Matsya 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.”
Then again the same Purâna shows that “ in all the Manvantaras,
classes of Rishis* appear by seven and seven, and having established a
code of law and morality depart to felicity ” — the Rishis
representing many other things besides living Sages.
In
Hymn xix., 53, of Atharva Veda (Dr. Muir’s translation) one reads
: —
*
“ These are the seven persons by whom in the several Manvantaras ”
— says Parasâra — “ created beings have been protected.
Because the whole world has been pervaded by the energy of the deity, he is
entitled Vishnu, from the root Vis ‘ to enter ’ or ‘
pervade,’ for all the gods, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the Sons of the
Manu, the Indras, all are but the impersonated potencies ( Vibhutayah )
of Vishnu ” (Vish. Purâna). Vishnu is the Universe ; and the
Universe itself is divided in the Rig Veda into seven regions
— which ought to be sufficient authority, for the Brahmins, at all
events.
“
1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with seven rays, a thousand eyes,
undecaying, full of fecundity. On him intelligent sages mount ; his wheels are
all the worlds.”
“
2. Thus Time moves on seven wheels ; he has seven naves ;
immortality is his axle. He is at present all these worlds. Time hastens
onward the first God.”
“
3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many forms. He is
all these worlds in the future. They call him ‘ Time in the highest
Heaven ’ ” . . . .
Now
add to this the following verse from the Esoteric volumes : —
“
Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the
incognizable THAT, which can be sensed only through its seven rays
—which
are the Seven Creations, the Seven Worlds, the Seven Laws,”
etc., etc., etc. . . .
Remembering
that the Purânas insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space ; *
and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is MAQOM, “ Space,” it becomes
clear why, for purposes of a mani- festing Deity — Space, Matter, and
Spirit — the one central point became the Triangle and Quaternary (the
perfect Cube), hence Seven. Even the Pravaha wind (the mystic and
occult Force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the course of the stars
and planets) is septenary. The Kurma and Linga Purânas enumerate seven
principal winds of that name, which winds are the principles of Cosmic Space.
They are intimately connected with Dhruva† (now Alpha), the
Pole-Star, which is connected in its turn with the production of various
phenomena through cosmic forces.
Thus,
from the Seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc.,
etc. in the Aryan Scriptures, the number has passed through Indian, Egyptian,
Chaldaic, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian mystic thought, until it
landed in and remained impressed indelibly on every exoteric theology. The
seven old books stolen out of Noah’s ark by Ham, and given to Cush, his
son, and the seven Brazen columns of Ham and Cheiron, are a reflection and a
remem
*
Vishnu is all— the worlds, the stars, the seas, etc., etc. “
Vishnu is all that is, all that is not . . . . but is not Vastubhûta,”
“ a substance ” (Vishnu Purâna, Book I I. ch. xii). “
That which people call the highest God is not a substance but the cause of
it ; not one that is here, there, or elsewhere, not what we see, but
that in which all is — SPACE.”
†
Therefore it is said in the Purânas that the view of Dhruva (the polar
star) at night, and of the celestial porpoise (Sisumâra, a constellation)
“ expiates whatever sin has been committed during the day.” The
fact is that the rays of the four stars in the circle of perpetual apparition
— the Agni, Mahendra, Kasyapa, and Dhruva, placed in the tail of Ursa
Minor (Sisumâra) — focussed in a certain way and on a certain
object produce extraordinary results. The astro-magians of India will
understand what is meant.
brance
of the Seven primordial mysteries instituted according to the “ Seven
secret emanations,” the “ Seven Sounds,” and seven rays
— the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven thousand times seven
copies of them in later æons.
The
mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The
Vayu Purâna shows, and Harivansa corroborates, that the Maruts —
the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower gods in
the Rig Veda — “ are born in every manvantara (Round) seven
times seven (or 49) ; that in each Manvantara, four times seven (or
twenty-eight) they obtain emancipation, but their places are filled up by
persons reborn in that character.” What are the Maruts in
their esoteric meaning, and who those persons “ reborn in that
character ” ? In the Rig and other Vedas, the Maruts are represented as the
storm gods and the friends and allies of Indra ; they are the “
Sons of heaven and of earth.” This led to an allegory that makes them the
children of Siva, the great patron of the Yogis, “ the MAHA-YOGI, the
great ascetic, in whom is centred the highest perfection of austere
penance and abstract meditation, by which the most unlimited powers are
obtained, marvels and miracles are worked, the highest spiritual
knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe
is eventually gained.” In the Rig Veda the name Siva is unknown, but
the god is called Rudra, which is a word used for Agni, the fire god,
the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the Ramayana and the
Purânas, their mother, Diti
—the
sister, or complement of, and a form of Aditi — anxious to obtain a son
who would destroy Indra, is told by Kasyapa the Sage, that “ if, with
thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure, she carrys the babe in her womb
for a hundred years ” she will get such a son. But Indra foils her in the
design. With his thunderbolt he divides the embryo in her womb into seven
portions, and then divides every such portion into seven pieces again,
which become the swift-moving deities, the Maruts.* These deities are only
another aspect, or a development of the Kumâras, who are Rudras
in their patronymic, like many others.†
Diti,
being Aditi, unless the contrary is proven to us, Aditi, we say, or Akâsa
in her highest form, is the Egyptian seven-fold heaven. Every true
Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth
* In
the Ramayana it is Bala-Rama, Krishna’s elder brother, who does it.
†
With regard to the origin of Rudra, it is stated in several Purânas
that his (spiritual) progeny, created in him by Brahmâ, was 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, Vayu,
Matsya, and other Purânas.)
principle
of metaphysical nature, the Buddhi of Akâsa. Diti, the
mother of the Maruts, is one of her terrestrial forms, made to represent, at
one and the same time, the divine Soul in the ascetic, and the divine
aspirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from the webs of Maya, and
final bliss in consequence. Indra, now degraded, because of the Kali Yuga, when
such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal through a general
spread of Ahamkara (the feeling of Egotism, Self, or I-AM-NESS)
and ignorance — was, in the beginning, one of the greatest gods of the
Hindu Pantheon, as the Rig Veda shows. Sura-dhipa, “ the chief of
the gods,” has fallen down from Jishnu, “ the leader of the
celestial host,” — the Hindu St. Michael — to an opponent of
asceticism, the enemy of every holy aspiration. He is shown married to
Aindrî (Indrani), the personification of Aindri-yaka, the
evolution of the element of senses, whom he married “ because of her voluptuous
attractions ” ; after which he began sending celestial female demons
to excite the passions of holy men, Yogis, and “ to beguile them from the
potent penances which he dreaded.” Therefore, Indra, now characterized as
“ the god of the firmament, the personified atmosphere ” — is
in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and the fifth human — Manas
in its dual aspect : as connected with Buddhi ; and as allowing himself
to be dragged down by his Kama-principle (the body of passions and
desires). This is demonstrated by 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 Yogi — determined
to resist all such temptations, and thus destroy the passions within his
earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh conquers spirit
— (Diti is shown frustrated in the Dvâpara Yug, during that period
when the Fourth Race was flourishing). He divides the “ Embryo ”
(of new divine adeptship, begotten once more by the Ascetics of the
Aryan Fifth Race), into seven portions — a reference not alone to
the seven sub-races of the new Root-Race, in each of which there will be
a “ Manu,”* but also to the seven degrees of adeptship — and
then each
*
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) as there are fourteen Manus in
every Round, the “ presiding gods, the Rishis and Sons of the Manus
” being identical. (See Book I I I. ch. 1 of Vishnu Purâna.)
“ Six ” Man- vantaras are given, the Seventh being our own in the
Vishnu Purâna. The Vayu 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
portion
into seven pieces — alluding to the Manu-Rishis of each Root- Race, and
even sub-race.
It
does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining
“ four times seven ” emancipations in every “
manvantara,” and by those persons who, being reborn in that
character (of the Maruts in their esoteric meaning), “ fill up
their places.” The Maruts represent
(a)
the passions that storm and rage within every candidate’s breast,
when preparing for an ascetic life — this mystically ; (b)
the occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of Akâsa’s
lower principles — her body, or sthula sarira, representing the
terrestrial, lower, atmosphere of every inhabited globe — this mystically
and sidereally ; (c) actual conscious Existences, Beings of a cosmic and
psychic nature.
At
the same time “ Maruts ” is, in occult parlance, one of the names
given to those EGOS of great Adepts who have passed away, and who are known
also as Nirmanakayas ; of those Egos for whom — since they are
beyond illusion —there is no Devachan, and who, having either
voluntarily renounced it for the good of mankind, or not yet reached Nirvana,
remain invisible on earth. Therefore are the Maruts* shown firstly — as
the sons of Siva-Rudra — the “ Patron Yogi,” whose “ third
eye,” mystically, must be acquired by the ascetic before he becomes an
adept ; then, in their cosmic character, as the subordinates of Indra and his
opponents — variously. The “ four times seven ” emancipations
have a reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in
each of which Marut-Jivas (monads) have been re-born, and have obtained
final liberation, if they have only availed themselves of it. Instead of which,
preferring the good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in
the meshes of ignorance and misery, were it not for this extraneous help
—they are re-born over and over again “ in that
character,” and thus “ fill up their own places.” Who
they are, “ on earth ” — every student of Occult
science knows. And he also knows that the Maruts are Rudras, among whom
also the family of Twashtri, a synonym of Visvakarman — the great patron
of the Initiates — is included. This gives us an ample knowledge of their
true nature.
of
the Progenitors of mankind. All the Purânas speak of the seven
Prajâpatis of this period (Round).
*
“ Chakshuba was the Manu of the sixth period (Third Round and Third
Race), in which Indra was Manojava ” (Mantradruma in the Bhagavata
Purâna). As there is a per-fect analogy between the “ great
Round ” (Mahakalpa), each of the seven Rounds, and each of the
seven great Races in every one of the Rounds — therefore, Indra of the
sixth period, or Third Round, corresponds to the close of the Third Race (at
the time of the Fall or the separation of sexes). Rudra, as the father
of the Maruts, has many points of contact with Indra, the Marutwân, or
“ lord of the Maruts.” To receive a name Rudra is said to have wept
for it. Brahmâ called him Rudra ; but he wept seven times more and so
obtained seven other names —of which he uses one during each
“ period.”
The
same for the Septenary Division of Kosmos and 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
” (Book I.) ; then the “ World ” is said to be “
encompassed on every side ” by seven elements, also within the egg
— as explained, “ the universe is encompassed on every side, above
and below by the Andakat’áha —the shell of the
egg of Brahmâ.” . . . Around the shell flows water, which is
surrounded with fire ; fire by air ; air by ether ; ether by the origin of the
elements (Ahamkara) ; the latter by Universal Mind (“ Intellect ”
in the Texts) (Book I I., ch. V I I. Vishnu Purâna). It relates to
spheres of being as much as to principles. Prithivi is not our Earth,
but the World, the Solar system, and means the broad, the Wide. In
the Vedas —the greatest of all authorities, though needing the key
to read it correctly — three terrestrial and three celestial earths are
mentioned as having been called into existence simultaneously with 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 thereof. So with the planetary chain ; speaking of
which, esoterically, the Earth (as well as the seventh, or rather fourth
plane, one that stands as the seventh if we count from the first triple kingdom
of the Elementals that begin the formation) may be left out of consideration,
being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The language of occultism is
varied. But supposing that three earths only, instead of seven, are
meant in the Vedas, what are those three, since we still know of but one ?
Evidently there must be an occult meaning in the statement under
consideration. Let us see. The “ Earth that floats ” on the
Universal Ocean (of Space), which Brahmâ divides in the Purânas
into seven zones, is Prithivi, the world divided into seven principles
; a cosmic division looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, physical
in its occult effects. Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and, in its
turn, is divided into seven zones* on that same law of analogy that guided
ancient philosophers. After which one finds on it seven continents, seven
isles, seven oceans, seven seas and rivers, seven mountains, and seven
climates, etc., etc., etc.†
*
See the Purânas.
†
In Vishnu Purâna, Book I I., chap. iv., it is stated that the
EARTH, “ with its conti- nents, mountains, oceans, and exterior shell, is
fifty crores (500 millions) of yojanas in extent,” to which the
commentator remarks that “ this comprises the planetary spheres ; for
the diameter of the seven zones and oceans — each ocean being of the same
diameter as the continent it encloses, and each successive continent being
twice the
Furthermore,
it is not only in the Hindu Scriptures and philosophy that one finds references
to the Seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phœnician, Chaldean, and
Egyptian Cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phœnix*
— called by the Hebrews Onech (from
Phenoch, Enoch, symbol of a secret cycle and
initiation), and by the Turks, Kerkes —lives a thousand years,
after which, kindling a flame, it is self-consumed ; and then, reborn from
itself — it lives another thousand years, up to seven times seven :
(See “ Book of Ali ” — Russian transl.), when comes the day
of Judgment. The “ seven times seven,” 49, are a transparent
allegory, and an allusion to the forty-nine “ Manus,” the Seven
Rounds, and the seven times seven human cycles in each Round on each globe. The
Kerkes and the Onech stand for a race cycle, and the mystical
tree Ababel — the “ Father Tree ” in the Kûran
— shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the
Kerkes or Phœnix ; the “ Day of Judgment ” meaning a “
minor Pralaya ” (See “ Esoteric Buddhism ”).
The author of the “ Book of God ” and the “ Apocalypse
” believes that “ the Phœnix is very plainly the same as the Simorgh,
the Persian roc, and the account which is given us of this last bird,
yet more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the
Phœnix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world,
which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge ”
— (p. 175) ; and a watery one in turn. “ When the Simorgh was asked
her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been
already seven times replenished with beings different from men, and seven
times depopulated ;† that the age of the human race, in which we now
are, is to endure seven thousand numbers, and that she herself had seen twelve
of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see.” (Oriental
Collections, ii., 119.)
The
above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to
Dr. Kenealy, in this one, these facts have been noticed by several writers, but
now a connection can be established between
diameter
of that which precedes it — amounts to but two crores or fifty-four lakhs
etc. . . . Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas occur, they
have to be ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like.”
“ The like ” ought to read “ Occult meaning,” which
explanation is withheld by the commentator, who wrote for exoteric, sectarian
purposes, and was misunderstood by the translator for various other reasons,
the least of which is — ignorance of the esoteric philosophy.
*
The Phœnix, connected with the Solar Cycle of 600 years (with
ciphers taken out or with more added according to which cycle is meant), the
Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations — is a generic symbol for
several kinds of cycles. Fuller details will be given in the section on “
Kalpas and Cycles.”
†
The tense is the “ past ” because the book is allegorical, and has
to veil the truths contained.
the
Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the “ Book of
God ” : —
“
The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindus,
and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the
end of the world . . . . as a monstrous lion-bird. From these the Rabbins have
borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the Earth,
sometimes walking in the ocean . . . while its head props the sky ; and with
the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach
that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe, that each
reproduced system will last seven thousand years ; ( ? ) and that the total
duration of the universe will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which
involves the doctrine of the pre-existence of each renewed creature, they may
either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or it may have been
part of the primeval religion which their priests had preserved from remote
times ”
(p.
176). It shows rather that the initiated Jews borrowed, and their
non-initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost the sense, and applied the Seven
Rounds, and the forty-nine races, etc., to the wrong end.
Not
only “ their priests,” but those of every other country. The
Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and
universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of
Jesus in the very occult Pistis Sophia. We say more : even the Christian
editor or author of Revelation has preserved this tradition and speaks
of the Seven RACES, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two
have to come. It is stated as plainly as could be stated in chapter xvii.,
verses 9 and 10. Thus saith the angel : “ And here is the mind
which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman
sitteth. And there are SEVEN Kings, five are fallen, and one is,
and the other is not yet come . . . .” Who, acquainted in the least with
the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the five Kings
that have fallen, the four Root-Races that were, and part of the fifth, the one
that is ; and in the other, that “ is not yet come,”
the sixth and seventh coming root races, as also the sub-races of this, our
present race ? Another still more forcible allusion to the Seven Rounds and the
forty-nine root-races in Leviticus, will be found elsewhere in the
Addenda, Part I I I.
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, Karttikeya. It is
the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittika) who gave the god their name,
for Karttikeya is the planet Mars, astronomicall y 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
Siva — the holy spirit— hence called Agni-bhû. The
late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Karttikeya is the secret symbol of
the cycle of Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether
it is solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years that are counted ; and the six
visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the
completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and
religious symbols. Therefore, when made to commemorate one particular event,
Karttikeya appeared, of old, as a 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,
Karttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumâra (or Senâ) his female
aspect. He is then riding on a peacock — the bird of Wisdom and Occult
Knowledge, and the Hindu Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years
of Naros is well-known. A six-rayed star (double triangle) a Swastica, a six
and occasionally seven-pointed crown is on his brow ; the peacock’s tail
represents the sidereal heavens ; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are
hidden on his body ; for which he is also called Dwâdasa Kara,”
(“ the twelve-handed ”), and Dwâdasâksha, “
twelve-eyed.” It is as Sakti-dhara, however, the “
Spear-holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, “
Taraka-jit,” that he is shown most famous.
The
years of the Naros, being (in India) counted in two ways — either “
100 years of the gods,” (divine years) — or 100 mortal
years — one can see the tremendous difficulty for the non-initiated
in comprehending correctly this cycle, which plays such an important part in
St. John’s Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic Cycle ; yet in none of
the numerous speculations about it have we found anything but a few
approximate truths, because of its being of various lengths and relating to
various pre-historic events.
It
has been urged against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine
ages, that Suidas shows the ancients counting, in their chronological
computations, days for years. Dr. Sepp in his ingenious plagiarism —
exposed elsewhere — of the Hindu 432 in thousands and millions of years
(the duration of the Yugas) which he dwarfed to 4,320 lunar years before
the “ birth of Christ ” — as “ foreordained ” in
the sidereal (besides the invisible) heavens, and proved “ by the
apparition of the Star of Bethlehem ” — appeals to Suidas and his
authority. But Suidas had no other warrant for it than his own speculations,
and he was no Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, in showing him as having,
according to chronological claim, reigned 4,477 years, i.e., 4,477 days,
as he thinks, or rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days ; he has 5
days in his original — thus committing an error even in such an easy
calculation. (See Suidas, art. ῞Ηηλιος.)
True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations
— Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations
of the Chaldeans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognises 720,000 years (
Pliny. Histor. Natur. Lib. V I I. c. 56. ) The whole of these
hypotheses made by profane writers are based upon and due to a
misunderstanding. The chronology of all the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and
Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam
that 15 solar days make a Paccham ; two paccham (or 30 days) are
a month of the mortals, adding that such a month is only one day of the Pitar
Devata ( Pitris ). Again, two of these months constitute a roodoo,
three roodoo make an ayanam, and two ayanams a year
— which year of the mortals is but a day of the gods. It is on
such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the
initiated priests had transformed days into years !
This
mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in
Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of this century, relying
upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindu chronology, brought from India
by certain too zealous and as unscrupulous missionaries, Bailly, Dupuis, and
others built quite a fantastic theory upon the subject. Because the Hindus had
made half a revolution of the moon, a measure of time ; and because a month
composed of only fifteen days — of which Quint. Curtius speaks (Menses
in quinos dies descriperunt dies. Quint. Curt. LV I I I., c. 9) — is
found mentioned in Hindu literature, therefore, it is a verified fact that
their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day. The
Chinese, too, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, hence their year
into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it prevent
their having an astronomical year just the same as ours. And they have a period
of sixty days — the Southern Indian Roodoo, to this day in some
provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (Lib. I. § 26, p. 30) calls “ thirty
days an Egyptian year,” or that period during which the moon performs
a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch both speak of it (Hist. Nat. Lib.
V I I., c. 48, Vol. I I I., p. 185, and Life of Numa, § 16) ; but
does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew astronomy as well as any
other people did, made the lunar month consist of thirty days, when it
is only twenty-eight days with fractions ? This lunary period had an occult
meaning surely as much as the Ayanam and the roodoo of the
Hindus had. The year of two months’ duration, and the period of sixty
days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself
shows in his Traité de l’Astronomie Orientale. The
Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from
one equinox to the other (Mem. Acad. Ins. T. XV I., c. 48, Tom. I
I I., p. 183) ; the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each
composed of two months ; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-tche,
it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year ; and
to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as
they had when visited by Abbé Chappe (Voyage to Siberia, Vol. I I I., p.
19). But is all this a reason to say that when the Hindu Purânas say
“ a solar year ” they mean one solar day ! It is the
knowledge of the natural laws that make of seven the root nature-number, so to
say, in the manifested world — at any rate in our present terrestrial
life-cycle — and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that
unveiled to the ancients so many of the mysteries of nature. It is these laws,
again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes,
which enabled the old astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the
cycles and their respective effects on the march of events ; to record
beforehand (prophecy, it is called) the influence which they will have on the
course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and planets being the
never-erring time measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known,
became thus the great Ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven
domains, or “ spheres of action.” *
This
has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of
Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, had their attention called to this
law. Physicians and theologians, mathematicians and psychologists have drawn
the attention of the world repeatedly to this fact of periodicity in the
behaviour of “ Nature.” These numbers are explained in the “
Commentaries ” in these words.
THE
CIRCLE IS NOT THE “ ONE ” BUT THE ALL.
IN
THE HIGHER [heaven] THE IMPENETRABLE RAJAH [“ad bhutam,”
see Atharva-Veda ” X., 105], IT [the Circle] BECOMES
ONE, BECAUSE [it is] THE INDIVISIBLE, AND THERE CAN BE NO TAU IN IT.
IN
THE SECOND [of the three “ Râjamsi ” (triteye),
or the three “ Worlds ”] THE ONE BECOMES TWO [male
and female] ; AND THREE [add the Son or logos] ; AND THE SACRED FOUR
[ “ tetractis,” or the “ Tetragrammaton.”]
IN
THE THIRD [the lower world or our earth] THE NUMBER BECOMES FOUR, AND
THREE, AND TWO. TAKE THE FIRST TWO, AND THOU WILT
*
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.
OBTAIN
SEVEN, THE SACRED NUMBER OF LIFE ; BLEND [the latter] WITH THE MIDDLE
RÂJAH, AND THOU WILT HAVE NINE, THE SACRED NUMBER OF BEING AND
BECOMING.” *
When
the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic
divisions of the World — the two-fold, three-fold, six and seven-fold,
and especially the nine-fold division, the mystery of the cyclic divisions
applied to heaven and earth, gods and men, will become clearer to them than it
is now. For —
“
THERE IS A HARMONY OF NUMBERS IN ALL NATURE ; in the force of gravity, in
the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity,
and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in
the perception of the mind. The direction, indeed, of modern natural and
physical science, is towards a generalization which shall express the
fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to
Professor Whewell’s ‘ Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,’
and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and
form. From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the
laws regulating the harmonious perception of forms, colours, and
sounds, and probably of taste also, if we could analyse our sensations of
this kind with mathematical accuracy.” ( “ Medical Review,”
July, 1844).
So
much so, indeed, that more than one physician has stood aghast at the
periodical septenary return of the cycles in the rise and fall of
various complaints, and naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to
explain this law. “ The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions . . . .
change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals,
and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks,”
or seven days.† Dr. Laycock (Lancet, 1842-3), writing on the
Periodicity of Vital Phenomena, records a “ most remarkable illustration
and confirmation of the law in insects.”‡
* In
Hinduism, as understood by the Orientalists from the Atharvaveda, the
three râjamsi refer to the three strides of Vishnu ; his ascending higher
step, being taken in the highest world (A. V., V I I., 99, 1, cf. 1 155, 5). It
is the divo râjah, or the “ sky,” as they take it. But
it is something besides this in Occultism. The sentence pâréshu,
gûhyeshu, vrateshu, cf. 1, 155, 3, and IX., 75, 2 ; or
again, verse X., 114, in Atharvaveda — has yet to be explained.
†
H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his “ Approaching End of the
Age.”
‡
Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds :
“ The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot
happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind, FROM THE
LARVA OR OVUM OF A MINUTE INSECT UP TO MAN, at definite periods, from a
mere chance or coincidence . . . I think it impossible to come to any
less general conclusion than this, that in animals, changes occur
every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one,
or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks ”
or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that : — “
Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh
day . . . the fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment .
. . ” (either cure or death taking place). “ If the fourth
(paroxysm) be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh
paroxysm, and . . . change for the better . . . will be seen on the fourteenth
day,
To
all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness, the author of “ The Approaching End of
the Age,” says very pertinently, as he defends Biblical Chronology,
“ And man’s life . . . is a week, a week of decades. ‘
The days of our years are threescore years and ten.’ Combining the testimony
of all these facts, we are bound to admit that there prevails in organic
nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks ”
(p. 269). Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the
learned Founder of “ the East London Institute for Home and Foreign
Missions,” the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the occult
chronology of the Bible. Just as, while rejecting the theories and hypotheses
of modern Science and its generalizations, we bow before its great achievements
in the world of the physical, or in all the minor details of material nature.
There
is most assuredly an occult “ chronological system in Hebrew Scripture
” — the Kabala being its warrant ; there is in it “ a
system of
namely,
about three or four o’clock a.m., when the system is most languid.”
(See “ Approaching End of the Age,” by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to
269, wherein this is quoted.
This
is pure “ sooth-saying ” by cyclic calculations, and it is
connected with Chaldean astrolatry and astrology. Thus materialistic Science
— medicine, the most materialistic of all— applies our
occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its
presence as a fact in nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic
know-ledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary
Cycle is a law in nature, and it is one, as proven ; if it is found
controlling the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of
entomology, icthyology and ornithology, as in the King-dom of the Animal,
mammalia and man — why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in
general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental
development ? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient adepts have
studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects ?
Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that
“ in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in
the evening for six days out of seven ; and that on the seventh day it
is slower.” (Ibid. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, Jan. 1843.)
Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life
in the pulse of the planet and races ? Dr. Laycock divides life by three
great septenary periods ; the first and last, each stretching over 21
years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times
seven. He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other
two into three minor periods, and says that “ The fundamental unit
of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being
twelve hours ” ; and that “ single and compound multiples
of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as
multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law
binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods
observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the
highest of the vertebrata.” If Science does this, why should
the latter scorn the Occult information, namely, that (speaking Dr.
Laycock’s language) “ one week of the manvantaric (lunar)
fortnight, of fourteen days (or seven manus), that fortnight of twelve hours in
a day representing seven periods or seven races — is now passed ? ”
This language of science fits our doctrine admirably. We (mankind) have lived
over “ a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours,”
since three and a half races are now gone for ever, the fourth is submerged, and
we are now in the Fifth Race.
weeks
” — which is based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be
found in the old Jyotisha.* And there are in it cycles of “ the week of
days,” of the “ week of months,” of years, of
centuries, and even of millenniums, decamillenniums, and more, or “ the
week of years of years.Ӡ But all this can be found in the archaic
doctrine. And if this common source of the chronology in every Scripture,
however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible, then the six days,
and a Sabbath, the seventh, can hardly disconnect Genesis from the
Purânic 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 on some 760 pages every
proof of that septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the Bible
chronology is, as he says, “ regulated by the law of weeks,” and if
it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of
its days ; and if, finally, “ the Bible system includes weeks on a great
variety of scales,” then this system is shown to be identical with all
the pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years (in lunar
months) elapsed between “ Creation ” and the Nativity, is a clear
and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 of the Hindu Yugas. Otherwise,
why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are pre-eminently
Chaldean and Indo-Aryan, play such a part in the New Testament ? We shall prove
it now still more forcibly.
Let
the impartial critic compare the two accounts — the Vishnu 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 i. The two allegories are different, but the systems are all
built on the same foundation-stone. The Bible can be understood only by the
light of the Kabala. Take the Zohar, the “ Book of Concealed
Mystery,” however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the
fourteen Manus of the seven Manvantaras — issue from Brahmâ’s
head ; they are his “ mind-born sons,” and it is with them that
begins the division of mankind and its races from the Heavenly man, “ the
Logos ” (the manifested), who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Says (V.
70 in) the “ Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha ” (the Greater Holy Assembly) of
the skull (head)
*
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 Parasâra, “ and the basis of
calculation for larger cycles ” (Miscell. Essays, Vol, I., pp. 106
and 108) — up to the Mahayuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
†
The Hebrew word for “ week ” is Seven ; and any length of
time divided by Seven would have been a “ week ” in their
day, even 49,000,000 years, as it is seven times seven millions. But their
calculation is throughout septiform.
of
Macroprosopus, the ancient One* (Sanat, an appellation of Brahmâ),
that in every one of his hairs is a “ hidden fountain issuing from the
concealed brain.” “ And it shineth and goeth forth through that
hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it (which is the manifest QUATERNARY,
the Tetragrammaton) his brain is formed ; and thence that brain goeth
into THIRTY and TWO paths ” (or the triad and the duad, or
again 432). And again : (V. 80) “ Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one
side and on the other of the skull ” — i.e., six on one and
six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is
male-female, “ and through them commenceth the division of the hair
” (the division of things, Mankind and Races).
“
We six are lights which shine forth from a seventh
(light),” saith Rabbi Abba ; “ thou art the seventh light ”
(the synthesis of us all, he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his
seven “ companions,” whom he calls “ the eyes of
Tetragrammaton.”)
TETRAGRAMMATON
is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed four forms, in order to
create four kinds of supernal creatures, i.e., made himself fourfold,
or the manifest Quaternary (see Vishnu Purâna, Book I. ch. V.) ;
and who, after that, is re-born in the seven Rishis, his Manasaputras,
“ mind-born sons,” who became later, 9, 21 and so on, who are all
said to be born from various parts of Brahmâ.†
*
Brahmâ creates in the first Kalpa (day one) various “ sacrificial
animals ” pasu— or the celestial bodies and the Zodiacal
signs, and plants which he uses in sacrifices at the opening of Treta
Yuga. The esoteric meaning of it shows him proceeding cyclically and creating
astral prototypes on the descending spiritual arc and then on the ascending
physical arc. The latter is the sub-division of a two-fold creation,
subdivided again into seven descending and seven ascending degrees of spirit
falling, and of matter ascending — the inverse of what takes place (as in
a mirror which reflects the right on the left side) in this manvantara of ours.
It is the same, esoterically, in the Elohistic Genesis (chap. i.), and
in the Jehovistic copy, as in Hindu cosmogony.
†
It is very surprising to see theologians and Oriental scholars
express indignation at the “ depraved taste of the Hindu mystics
” who, not content with having invented the “ Mind-born
” Sons of 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 foot-note in his Vishnu
Purâna, Vol. I., p. 102). Because the average public is unacquainted
with the Kabala, the key to, and glossary of, the much veiled Mosaic Books,
therefore, the clergy imagines the truth will never out. Let any one turn to
the English, Hebrew, or Latin texts of the Kabala, now so ably translated by
several scholars, and he will find that the Tetragrammaton, which is the Hebrew
IHVH, is also both the “ Sephirothal Tree ” — i.e., it
contains all the Sephiroth except Kether, the crown — and the united body
of the “ Heavenly man ” (Adam Kadmon) from whose limbs emanate
the Universe and everything in it. Furthermore, he will find that the idea in
the Kabalistic Books (the chief of which in the Zohar are the “
Books of Concealed Mystery,” of the “ Greater,” and the
“ Lesser Holy Assembly ”) is entirely phallic and far more crudely
expressed than is the four-fold Brahmâ in any of the Purânas. (See
“ Kabala Unveiled,” by Mr.
S.
L. Mathers, Chap. xxii., concerning the remaining members of
Microprosopus).
There
are two Tetragrammatons : the Macro and the Microprosopus. The first is
the absolute perfect Square, or the TETRACTIS within the Circle, both
abstract conceptions, and is therefore called AIN — the Non-being, i.e.,
illimitable or absolute Be-ness. But when viewed as Microprosopus, or
the “ Heavenly man,” the manifested Logos, he is the triangle in
the square— the sevenfold cube not the fourfold, or the plane
Square. For it is written in the same “ Greater Holy Assembly ”
— (83). “ And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to
know in their minds, like as it is written (Exod. xvii. 7.) : ‘ Is
the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One ? ’
* (Where did they distinguish between Microprosopus, who is called
Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called AIN, Ain the
negatively existent ? ) ” †
Therefore,
Tetragrammaton is the THREE made four and the FOUR made three, and is
represented on this Earth by his seven “ companions,” or “
Eyes ” — the “ Seven eyes of the Lord.” Microprosopus
is, at best, only a secondary manifested Deity. For, verse 1,152 of the
“ Greater Holy Assembly ” (Kabala) says —
“
We have learned that there were ten (companions) who entered into the Sod,
(‘ mysterious assembly or mystery ’), and that seven only
came forth ”‡ (i.e., 10 for the unmanifested, 7 for the
manifested Universe.)
1,158.
“ And when Rabbi Shimeon revealed the Arcana there were found none
present there save those (seven companions). . . . 1,159. And Rabbi Shimeon
called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach.
iii., 9, ‘ These are the seven eyes (or principles) of
Tetragrammaton,’ ” — i.e., the four-fold Heavenly man,
or pure spirit, is resolved into Septenary man, pure matter and Spirit.
Thus
the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female
Chochmah-Binah, the 2d and 3d Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence
of number Seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and
nine — the basis and foundation (astrally) of our physical world and man,
in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For
Christians and believers, this reference to Zaccharias and
For,
this “ Tree of Life ” is also the “ tree of knowledge of good
and evil,” whose chief mystery is that of human procreation. It is a
mistake to regard the Kabala as explaining the mysteries of Kosmos or
Nature ; it explains and unveils only a few allegories in the Bible, and is
more esoteric than is the latter.
*
Simplified in the English Bible to : “ Is the Lord (! !) among us, or not
? ” (See Exodus xvii. 7.)
†
See Kabala Denudata, by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, F.T.S., p. 121.
‡
Translators often render the word “ companion ” (angel, also adept)
by “ Rabbi,” as the Rishis are called gurus. The
“ Zohar ” is, if possible, more occult than the Books of Moses ; to
read the “ Book of Concealed Mystery ” one requires the keys
furnished by the genuine “ Chaldean Book of Numbers,” which is not
extant.
especially
to the Epistle of Peter (1 P. ii. 2-5) ought to be conclusive. In the old
symbolism, man, chiefly the inner Spiritual man is called “ a
stone.” Christ is the corner-stone, and Peter refers to all men as
“ lively ” (living) stones. Therefore a “ stone with seven
eyes ” on it can only mean what we say, i.e., a man whose
constitution or (“ principles,”) is septenary.
To
demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only
does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that
it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally
paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the
spectroscope. This number is the factor, sine quâ non, in the
production of occult astral phenomena.
Thus,
if the chemical elements are arranged in groups according to their atomic
weights, they will be found to constitute a series of groups of seven ; the
first, second, etc., members of each group bearing a close analogy in all
their properties to the corresponding members of the next group. The following
table, copied from Hellenbach’s Magie der Zahlen, exhibits this
law and fully warrants the conclusion he draws in the following words : “
We thus see that chemical variety, so far as we can grasp its inner nature,
depends upon numerical relations, and we have further found in this variety a ruling
law for which we can assign no cause ; we find a law of periodicity governed by
the number seven.”
|
Row |
Group I. |
Group II. |
Group III. |
Group IV. |
Group V. |
Group VI. |
Group VII. |
Group V I I I. |
|
|
H1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
L 7 |
Be 9.3 |
B 11 |
C 12 |
N 14 |
O 16 |
Pl 19 |
—— |
|
2 |
Na 23 |
Mg 24 |
Ai 27.3 |
Si 28 |
P 31 |
S 32 |
Cl 35.4 |
|
|
3 |
K 39 |
Ca 40 |
— 44 |
Ti 48 |
V 51 |
C r 52.4 |
Mn 54.8 |
Fe 56. Co 58.6 Ni 58. Cu 63.3 |
|
4 |
Cu 63.3 |
Zn 65 |
Ga 682 |
— 72 |
As 75 |
Se 78 |
Br 79.5 |
—— |
|
5 |
Rb 85.2 |
Sr 87.2 |
Y 89.5 |
Zr 90 |
Nb 94 |
Mo 96 |
— 100 |
Ru 103 Rh 104 Pd 106 Ag 107.6 |
|
6 |
Ag 107.6 |
Cd 111.6 |
In 113.4 |
Sn 118 |
Sb 122 |
Te 125 |
J 126.5 |
—— |
|
7 |
C s 132.5 |
Ba 136.8 |
La 139 |
Ce 140 |
Di 144 |
— |
— |
—— |
|
8 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
—— |
|
9 |
— |
— |
Er. 178 |
— |
Ta 182 |
W 184 |
— |
Os 196. Jr 196.7 Pr 196.7. Au 197 |
|
10 |
Au 197 |
Hg 200 |
Tl 204 |
Pb 206 |
Bi 210 |
— |
— |
|
The
eighth column in this list is, as it were, the octave of the first,
containing elements almost identical in chemical and other properties with
those in the first ; a phenomenon which accentuates the septenary law of
periodicity. For further details the reader is referred to Hellenbach’s
work, where it is also shown that this classification is confirmed by the
spectroscopic peculiarities of the elements.
It
is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the
notes of the musical scale ; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical
elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope,
although in the latter case we deal with only one octave, while both in
music and chemistry we find a series of seven octaves represented
theoretically, of which six are fairly complete and in ordinary use in
both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach : —
“
It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which
all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly,
that they divide themselves into seven columns, and that the successive
numbers in each column are closely allied ; i.e., that they exhibit a
close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but
also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which
the ear confirms the verdict of the figures. . . . . . The fact that this
periodicity and variety is governed by the number seven is undeniable,
and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an
adequate cause, which cause must be discovered.”
Verily,
then, as Rabbi Abbas said : “ We are six lights which shine forth from a
seventh (light) ; thou (Tetragrammaton) art the seventh light (the
origin) of us all ; ” (V. 1,160) and — “ For assuredly there
is no stability in those six, save what they derive from the seventh. For ALL
THINGS DEPEND FROM THE SEVENTH.” (V. 1,161. Kabala, “ The Greater
Holy Assembly.”)
The
(ancient and modern) Western American 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 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
Ulûpi, the daughter of the Nâga (or rather Nargal) King ?
But to the Zuñi priests.
These
receive an annual tribute, to this day, of corn of seven colours.
Undistinguished from other Indians during the whole year, on a certain day,
they come out (the six priests and one priestess) arrayed in their priestly
robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and
personifies ; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each
receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white
represents the East, because from the East comes the first Sun-light ; the
yellow, corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the
aurora borealis ; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the
heat ; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which
lies to the West ; black is the colour of the nether underground region —
darkness ; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of
the upper region — of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds,
shining stars, etc. The “ speckled ” corn — each grain
containing all the colours — is that of the “ Priestess-Mother
” : woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and
future ; Eve being the mother of all living.
Apart
from these was the Sun — the Great Deity — whose priest was the
spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton
Cushing, who, as many are aware, became an Indian 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 Mahabhârata —the Agneyâstra
or “ fiery weapon ” bestowed by Aurva upon his chela Sagara
— is said to be built of seven elements. This weapon — supposed by
some ingenious Orientalists to have been a “ rocket ” (!) —
is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson
exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his Specimens of the
Hindu Theatre, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of
the Agneyâstra.
“
These weapons,” he argues, “ are of a very unintelligible
character. Some of them are wielded as missiles ; but, in general, they appear
to be mystical powers exercised by the individual —such as those of
paralysing an enemy, or locking his senses fast in sleep, or bringing
down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven. (Vide supra, pp. 427 and
428.) . . . . They assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties. . . .
. The Râmâyana calls them the Sons of Krisâswa ”
(p. 297).
The
Sastra-devatâs, “ gods of the divine weapons,” are no more
Agneyâstra, the weapon, than the gunners of modern artillery are the
cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent
Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of
Krisâswa, “ the allegorical origin of the (Agneyâstra)
weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”* It is the fiery javelin of
Brahmâ.
* It
is. But Agneyâstra are fiery “ missile weapons,” not
“ edged ” weapons, as there is some difference between Sastra
and Astra in Sanskrit.
The
seven-fold Agneyâstra, 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 ; ” *
and adds —
“
The followers of Böhme look on such matter as divine revelation of his
inspired Seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and
persistence of the Wisdom † of the past (or of the broken links), and are
unable to recognise the physical features of the ancient Seven Spirits beneath
their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the
Theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant
in the fragments of Hermes Trismegistus.‡ No matter whether these
teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or
Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their
beginnings.§ When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to
us claiming original inspiration, and utter something new, we judge of its
value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter
which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge
it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions.|| It is
useless for us to read our
*
The Natural Genesis, Vol. I. pp, 318-319.
†
Yet there are some, who may know something of these, even outside the
author’s lines, wide as they undeniably are.
‡
This connecting link, like others, was pointed out by the present writer nine
years before the appearance of the work from which the above is quoted, namely
in Isis Unveiled, a work full of such guiding links between ancient,
mediæval, and modern thought, but, unfortunately, too loosely edited.
§
Ay ; but how can the learned writer prove that these “ beginnings ”
were pre- cisely in Egypt, and nowhere else ; and only 50,000 years ago ?
||
Precisely : and this is just what the Theosophists do. They have never claimed,
“original inspiration,” not even as mediums, but have always
pointed, and do now point to the “ primary signification ” of the
symbols, which they trace to other
later
thought into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients meant
that.* Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in
theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in
order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or
supernatural knowledge.†
But
the able author of the “ Book of the Beginnings ” and of “ The
Natural Genesis ” does — very fortunately, for us — quite
the reverse. He demonstrates most triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist)
teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge
from his learned lecture on “ The Seven Souls of Man.”‡ Says
the author : —
“
The first form of the mystical SEVEN was seen to be figured in heaven by the
Seven large stars of the great Bear, the constellation assigned by the
Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the Seven Elemental Powers.”
Just
so, for the Hindus place in the great Bear their seven primitive Rishis
and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarishi, Riksha
and Chitra-Sikhandinas. But whether it is only an astronomical myth or a
primordial mystery, having a deeper meaning than it bears on its surface, is
what their adepts claim to know. We are also told that “ the Egyptians
divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The primary Heaven was
seven-fold.” So it was with the Aryans. One has but read the
Purânas about the beginnings of Brahmâ, and his “ Egg ”
to see it. Have the Aryans taken the idea from the Egyptians ? — “
The earliest forces,” proceeds the lecturer, “ recognized in nature
were reckoned as seven in number. These became seven elementals, devils (?) or
later, divinities. Seven properties were assigned to nature, as
countries,
older even than Egypt ; significations, moreover, which emanate from a
hierarchy (or hierarchies, if preferred) of living wise men, mortals,
notwithstanding that Wisdom, who reject every approach to supernaturalism.
*
But where is the proof that the ancients did not mean precisely that which the
theosophists claim ? Records exist for what they say, just as other records
exist for what Mr. G. Massey says. His interpretations are very correct, but
equally one-sided. Surely nature has more than one physical aspect ; for
astronomy, astrology, and so on, are all on the physical, not the spiritual
plane.
†
It is to be feared that Mr. Massey has not succeeded. We have our followers as
he has his followers, and materialistic Science steps in and takes little
account of both his and our speculations !
The
fact that this learned Egyptologist does not recognise in the doctrine of the
“ Seven Souls,” as he terms our principles, or “
metaphysical concepts,” but “ the primitive biology or physiology
of the Soul,” does not invalidate our argument. The lecturer touches on
only two keys, those that unlock the astronomical and the physiological
mysteries of esotericism, and leaves out the other five. Otherwise he would
have promptly understood that what he calls the physiological divisions
of the living Soul of man, are regarded by theosophists as also psychological
and spiritual.
matter,
cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and division — and
seven elements or souls to man.”
All
this was taught in the esoteric doctrine, but it was interpreted and its
mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with seven, not two, or at the
utmost, three keys ; hence the causes and their effects worked in invisible or
mystic as well as psychic nature, and were made referable to metaphysics and
psychology as much as to physiology. “ The principle of sevening ”
— as the author says — “ was introduced, and the number seven
supplied a sacred type that could be used for manifold purposes ”
; and it was so used. For “ the seven Souls of the Pharaoh are often
mentioned in the Egyptian texts. . . . Seven Souls or principles in man were
identified by our British Druids. . . . . The Rabbins also ran the number
of souls up to seven ; so, likewise, do the Karens of India. . . . ”
And
then, the author tabulates the two teachings — the Esoteric and the
Egyptian, — and shows that the latter had the same series and in the same
order.
(Esoteric)
Indian.
1.
Rupa, body or element of form.
2.
Prana, the breath of life.
3.
Astral body.
4.
Manas
— or Intelligence.*
5.
Kama—
rupa, or animal soul.
6.
Buddhi, Spiritual Soul.
7.
Atma,
pure spirit. . . .
Egyptian.
1.
Kha, body.
2.
Ba, the Soul of Breath.
3.
Khaba, the shade.
4.
Akhu,
Intelligence or Perception.
5.
Seb,
ancestral Soul.
6.
Putah,
the first intellectual father.
7.
Atmu,
a divine or eternal soul.
Further
on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) souls, as
(1)
The Soul of Blood — the formative ; (2) The Soul of Breath —
“ that breathes ” ; (3) The Shade or Covering Soul
— “ that envelopes ” ; (4) The Soul of
Perception — “ that perceives ; ” (5) The Soul of
Pubescence — “ that procreates ” ; (6) The
Intellectual Soul — “ that reproduces intellectually ”
; and (7) The Spiritual Soul — “ that is perpetuated
permanently.”
From
the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct ; it becomes
less so from the esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean
that the “ Esoteric Buddhists ” resolve men into a number of
elementary Spirits, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of
maintaining. No “ Esoteric Buddhist ” has ever been guilty of any
such absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows “ become
spiritual beings in another world,” or “ seven potential spirits or
elementaries of another life.” What is maintained is simply that every
time the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a com
*
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.
pound
unit of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of
being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. G. Massey adds : — “ The
seven souls (our “ Principles ”) are often mentioned in the
Egyptian texts. The moon god, Taht-Esmun, or the later sun god, expressed the
seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as
his seven souls (we say “ principles ”) . . . . The seven stars in
the hand of Christ in the Revelation, have the same significance,” etc.
And
a still greater one, as these stars represent also the seven keys of the
Seven Churches or the SODALIAN MYSTERIES, cabalistically. However, we will not
stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also found out that the
septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians.
In a series of remarkable articles in the “ Sphinx ” (Munich) Herr
Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the “
Book of the Dead ” and other Egyptian records. For details the reader
must be referred to the articles themselves, but the following diagram, summing
up the author’s conclusions, is demonstrative evidence of the identity of
Egyptian psychology with the septenary division in “ Esoteric
Buddhism.”
On
the left hand side the Kabalistic names of the corresponding human principles
are placed, and on the right the hieroglyphic names with their renderings as in
the diagram of F. Lambert.
Kabala.
Hieroglyphics.
��Jeshida
Chu — Divine Spirit.
Upper
circle : � Chayah
Cheybi — Spiritual Soul.
Tzelem
of
Neschamah.
Intellectual
Soul, ��Neschamah Bai
the
Intelligence. Middle circle :
The
Heart : AbFeeling : Tzelem of Ruach* Hati
Animal
Soul. The Astral Body :
Ruach.
��Nephesch Ka Evestrum :
Sidereal
man.
Lower
circle : ��Coach Vital
Force : Tzelem of ���ha Anch Archæus : Nephesch.��Guf.
Mumia.
��Guf.
Chat
—The Elementary Body.
*
There seems a confusion — lasting for many centuries — in the minds
of Western Kabalists. They call Ruach (Spirit) what we call Kama-rupa
; whereas, with us Ruach would be the “ Spiritual Soul ” Buddhi,
and Nephesh the 4th principle, the Vital, Animal Soul. Eliphas
Lévi falls into the same error.
This
is a very fair representation of the number of the “ principles ”
of Occultism, but much confused ; and this is what we call the 7 principles in
man, and what Mr. Massey calls “ Souls,” giving the same name to
the Ego or the Monad which reincarnates and resurrects, so to
speak, at each rebirth, as the Egyptians did, namely — “ the
Renewed.” But how can Ruach (Spirit) be lodged in Kama-rupa ? What does
Böhme, the Prince of all the mediæval Seers, say ?
“
We find Seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all
things ” (which he calls — fire, light, sound (the upper three) and
desire, bitterness, anguish, and substantiality,
thus analysing the lower in his own mystic way) . . . “ whatever the six
forms are spiritually, that the seventh, the body (or substantiality), is
essentially.” These are the seven forms of the Mother of all Beings from
whence all that is in this world is generated,* and again in Aurora xxiv. p.
27 (quoted in Natural Genesis) — “ The Creator hath in the
body of this world generated himself as it were creaturely in his
qualifying Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are . . . God’s powers,
and the whole body of the world consisteth in the seven qualifying or Fountain
Spirits.”
This
is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. . . But how can we
agree with Mr. G. Massey when he states that —
“
The Seven Races of men that have been sublimated and made Planetary (?)
by Esoteric Buddhism,† may be met with in the Bundahish as (1) the
earth-men ; (2) water-men ; (3) breast-eared men ;
(4)
breast-eyed men ; (5) one-legged men ; (6) bat-winged men ; (7) men with
tails.” . . . Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted
in their later form — is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine
teaching. They all refer to the pre-Human evolution of the water-men “
terrible and bad ” by unaided Nature through millions of years, as
previously described. But we deny point blank the assertion made that “
these were never real races,” and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our
answer. It is easy to infer and to say that our “ instructors have
mistaken these shadows of the Past, for things human and spiritual ” ; but
that “ they are neither, and never were either,” it is less easy to
prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that
man and the ape had a common pithecoid ancestor. What the Lecturer takes for a
“ mode of expression ” and nothing more, in the Egyptian Ritual, we
take as having quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance.
Says the Ritual, the “ Book of the Dead ” —
* Signatura
rerum xiv. ps. 10, 15 et seq.
†
This is indeed news ! It makes us fear that the Lecturer had never read “
Esoteric Buddhism ” before criticising it, as there are too many such
misconceptions in his notices of it.
“
I am the mouse.” “ I am the hawk.” “ I am the
ape.” . . . “ I am the crocodile whose soul comes FROM
MEN.” “ I am the Soul of the Gods.” Of these last two
sentences, one : “ whose soul comes from men ” — is explained
by the Lecturer, who says parenthetically, “ that is, as a type
of intelligence,” and the other : “ I am the Soul of the
Gods,” as meaning, “ the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of
all.”
The
occult teaching answers : “ It means far more.” . . .
It
gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the human monad
has passed on globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the
three kingdoms — the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal — in
this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man if the semi-ethereal,
many-shaped creature with the human Monad in it, of the first two races,
can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called ; for, in the esoteric
language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as
Man, which is in any way the MAN, but the inner divine MONAD with its manifold
principles or aspects.
The
lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes “ Esoteric Buddhism
” and its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to
represent the whole as a 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 Brahmins who
have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does not appear
so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the question of the order
of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, more than anything else. At
all events it is no greater divergence than the everlasting question of the filioque
dogma, which since the XI Ith. century has separated the Roman Catholic from
the older Greek Eastern Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in
which the septenary dogma is presented, the substance is there, and its
presence and importance in the Brahminical system may be judged by what one of
India’s learned metaphysicians and Vedantic scholars says of it : —
“
The real esoteric seven-fold classification is one of the most important, if
not the most important classification, which has received its arrangement from
the mysterious constitution of this eternal type. I may also mention in this
connection that the four-fold classification claims the same origin. The light
of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble-faced prism of
Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven
rays, which develop in course of time the seven principles of this classification.
The progress of development presents some points of similarity to the gradual
development of the rays of the spectrum. While the four-fold classification is
amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven-fold
classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance. It will be
necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of phenomena noticed by
occultists ; and it is perhaps better fitted to be the basis of a perfect
system of psychology. It is not the peculiar property of ‘ the
trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine.’ In fact, it has a closer connection
with the Brahminical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my
meaning clear I may point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other
words, there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has become
the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient
Wisdom-religion. This classification is not the seven-fold classification we
have adopted. I make this assertion without the slightest fear of
contradiction. The real classification has all the requisites of a scientific
classification. It has seven distinct principles, which correspond with seven
distinct states of Pragna or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the
objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit through which
ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter, and
to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two
poles, which define the limits of human consciousness.”*
The
above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, one point. The “ sevenfold
classification ” in the esoteric system has never been claimed (to the
writer’s knowledge) by any one belonging to it, as “ the peculiar
property of the Trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine ” ; but only as having
survived in that old school alone. It is no more the property of the trans,
than it is of the cis-Himalayan esoteric doctrine, but is simply the
common inheritance of all such schools, left to the sages of the Fifth Root
Race by the great Siddhas† of the Fourth. Let us remember that the
Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of the
oldest MSS. of India, only toward their fall, the submersion of their continent
having been brought on by it. What is claimed is simply the fact that the
wisdom imparted by the “ Divine Ones ” — born through the Kriyasakti
powers of the Third Race before its Fall and Separation into sexes —
to the adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity
in a certain Brotherhood. The said
* The
Theosophist, 1887 (Madras).
†
According to Svetâsvatara-Upanishad (357) the Siddhas are those
who are possessed from birth of superhuman powers, as also of “
knowledge and indifference to the world.” According to the Occult
teachings, however, Siddhas are the Nirmanakayas or the “ spirits
” (in the sense of an individual, or conscious spirit) of great
sages from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily incarnate in
mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its upward progress. Hence
their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers.
School
or Fraternity being closely connected with a certain island of an inland sea,
believed in by both Hindus and Buddhists, but called “ mythical ”
by geographers and Orientalists, the less one talks of it, the wiser he will
be. Nor can one accept the said “ sevenfold classification ” as
having “ a closer connection with the Brahminical Logos than with the
Buddhist Logos,” since both are identical, whether the one “ Logos
” is called Eswara or Avalôkitêswara,
Brahmâ or Padmapani. These are, however, very small differences, more
fanciful than real, in fact. Brahmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their
orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each
of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution.
While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree,
once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement
must fall, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The “ heel
of Achilles ” of orthodox Brahmanism is the Adwaita philosophy, whose followers
are called by the pious “ Buddhists in disguise ” ; as that of
orthodox Buddhism is Northern mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the
philosophies of Aryâsanga (the Yogâchârya School) and
Mahâyâna, who are twitted in their turn by their correligionists as
“ Vedantins in disguise.” The esoteric philosophy of both these can
be but one if carefully analysed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and
Sankarachârya 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 Anugîtâ.*
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, avarice, the beasts of prey and reptiles, and desire and anger are
the obstructors.” . . . . The sage describes the entrance into and exit
from the forest (a symbol for man’s life-time) and also that forest
itself : †
“
In that forest are seven large trees (the Senses, Mind and Understanding, or
Manas and Buddhi included), seven fruits and seven guests ; seven hermitages,
seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the
description of the forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid
flowers and fruits of five colours.”
*
“ The Sacred Books of the East,” vol. viii. Anugîtâ,
p. 284, et seq.
†
I propose to follow here the text and the editor’s commentaries, who
accepts Arjuna Misra and Nilakantha’s dead-letter explanations. Our
Orientalists never trouble to think that if a native commentator is a
non-initiate, he could not explain correctly, and if an Initiate, would
not.
“
The senses,” says the commentator, “ are called trees, as being
producers of the fruits . . . . pleasures and pains ; the guests are the
powers of each sense personified — they receive the fruits above described
; the hermitages are the trees, in which the guests take shelter. The seven
forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of the seven functions
of the seven senses, etc., already referred to ; the seven forms of initiation
refer to the initiation into the higher life . . . by repudiating as not
one’s own the actions of each member out of the group of seven.”
(See Khândagya, p. 219, and Com.)
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 seven) with two large trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of
undistinguished colours ( mind and understanding — the two higher
senses, or theosophically, ‘ Manas-Buddhi ’). Here is one Fire
(Self) here connected with the Brahman * and having a good mind (or true
knowledge, according to Arjuna Misra). And there is fuel here, namely, the
five senses (or human passions). The Seven ( forms of ) emancipation
from them are the Seven ( forms of ) initiation. The qualities are the
fruits. . . . There, the great Sages receive hospitality. And when they have
been worshipped and have disappeared, another forest shines forth, in which intelligence
is the tree, and emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade ( in
the form of ) tranquillity, which depends on Knowledge, which has
contentment for its water, and the KSHETRAGNA (the “ Supreme
SELF,” says Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, p. 102 seq.)
within for the Sun.”
Now,
all the above is very plain, and no theosophist, even among the least learned,
could fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists
making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The “ great sages
” who “ receive hospitality ” are explained as meaning the
senses, “ which, having worked as unconnected with the self
are finally absorbed into it.” But one fails to understand, if the senses
are “ unconnected ” with the “ Higher Self,” in what
manner can they be
*
The English editor explains here, saying, “ I presume devoted to the
Brâhman.” This would be a very poor devotion, indeed, in the
accomplishment of the gradually emancipating process of Yoga. We venture to say
that the “ Fire ” or Self is the higher real SELF “ connected
with,” that is to say one with Brahma, the One Deity. The “
Self ” separates itself no longer from the universal Spirit.
“
absorbed into it.” One would think, on the contrary, that just because
the personal senses gravitate and strive to be connected with the impersonal
Self, that the latter, which is FIRE, burns the lower five and purifies thereby
the higher two, “ mind and understanding ” or the higher aspects of
Manas* and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The
“ great sages ” disappear after having “ been
worshipped.” Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses) are “
unconnected with the self ” ? By MIND, of course ; by Manas (in this case
merged in the sixth sense) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman, the
SELF, or Kshetragna — the soul’s spiritual sun. Into the latter, in
time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped “ great sages
” and given hospitality to terrestrial wisdom : but once that
“ another forest shone forth ” upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi,
the 7th sense, but 6th principle) which is transformed into the tree
— that tree whose fruit is emancipation — which finally destroys
the very roots of the Aswattha tree, the symbol of life and of its
illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state of
emancipation have, in the words of the above-cited sage, “ no fear
afterwards.” In this state “ the end cannot be perceived because it
extends on all sides.”
“
There always dwell seven females there,” he goes on to say, carrying out
the imagery. These females, who, according to Arjuna Misra, are the Mahat,
Ahamkara and five Tanm âtras, have always their faces turned downwards,
as they are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension.
“
. . . . In that same (Brahman, the ‘ Self ’) the Seven perfect
Sages, together with their chiefs, abide and again emerge from the same. Glory,
brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection and power —
these seven rays follow after this same Sun (Kshetragna, the Higher Self). . .
. Those whose wishes are reduced (unselfish). . . . whose sins (passions) are
burnt up by restraint, merging the Self in the Self,† devote themselves
to Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of Knowledge (Brahman, or
SELF) praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that forest, they are (re-) born so
as not to lose courage.
* As
Mahat (universal intelligence) is first born, or manifests, as Vishnu, and
then, when it falls into matter and develops self-consciousness, it becomes Egoism,
Selfish-ness, so Manas is of a dual nature. It is respectively under the
sun and moon, for as Sankarachârya says “ The moon is the mind, and
the sun the understanding.” The sun and moon are the deities of our
planetary Macrocosmos, and therefore Sankara adds that “ the mind and the
understanding are the respective deities of the (human) organs ” (vide
Brihadâranyaka, pp. 521, seq.) This is perhaps why Arjuna Misra
says that the moon and the Fire (the self, the sun) constitute the
universe.
†
“ The body in the Soul,” as Arjuna Misra is credited with saying,
or rather the “ Soul in the Spirit,” and on a still higher plane of
development : “ the SELF or Atman in the Universal Self.”
Such
indeed, is this holy forest . . . . and understanding it, they (the Sages) act
accordingly, being directed by the KSHETRAGNA. . . . ”
No
translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing
allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism,
penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands
symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of SELF WITHIN SELF, will see in this
something far higher than mere ritualism, however often he may err in minor
details of the philosophy.
And
here, we must be allowed a last remark. No true theosophist, from the most
ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he
may say or write upon occult matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many
a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition
to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical
questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselves
— are all liable to err. Thus mistakes have been made in “ Isis
Unveiled,” in “ Esoteric Buddhism,” in “ Man,” in
“ Magic : White and Black,” etc., etc. ; and more than one mistake
is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large
or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error
and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a
great adept, if not by an Avatar. Then only should we say, “ This is
verily a work without sin or blemish in it ! ” But, so long as the artist
is imperfect, how can his work be perfect ? “ Endless is the search for
truth ! ” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for
the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For
who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his fingers’ ends,
even upon one minor teaching of Occultism ?
Our
chief point in the present subject, however, was to show that the Septenary
doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and
was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, for we are supported
in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediæval,
and modern writers. What the former said, was well said ; what the latter
repeated, was generally distorted. An instance : Read the “ Pythagorean
Fragments,” and compare the Septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver,
the learned mason, in his “ Pythagorean Triangle ” (ch. on “ Science
of Numbers,”
p.
179). He speaks as follows : — “ The Theosophic Philosophy counted
SEVEN properties (or principles),
in
Man, viz. : — (1.) The divine golden Man ; (2.) The inward holy body from
fire and light, like pure silver ; (3.) The elemental man ;
(4.)
The mercurial paradisiacal man ;
(5.)
The martial Soul-like man ;
(6.)
The passionate man of desires ;
(7.)
The Solar man ; a witness to and inspector of the wonders of the Universe. They
had also seven fountain Spirits, or Powers of Nature.”
Compare
this jumbled account and distribution of Western theosophic philosophy with the
latest theosophic explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then
decide which is the more correct. Verily : —
“
Wisdom hath builded her house,
She
hath hewn out her seven pillars.” — (Prov. ix, 1.)
As
to the charge that our School has not adopted the Seven-fold classification of
the Brahmins, but has confused it, it is quite unjust. To begin with, the
“ School ” is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) quite
another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical Eastern
Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the tremendously
abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of Pragna
(consciousness) ; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Pragna is,
in the Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification is to
try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of consciousness, by
accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge, through only one of
the states of that consciousness, came to him ; in other words, it is to
make him account for something he knows on this plane, by something he
knows nothing about on the other planes ; i.e., to lead him from the
spiritual and the psychological, direct to the ontological. This is why the
primary, old, classification was adopted by the Theosophists, of which
classifications there are many.
To
busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses and
proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional enumeration from
theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven
virtues of the Christian scheme are far less philosophical than even the Seven
Liberal and the Seven Accursed Sciences — or the Seven Arts of
enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the latter is now before the public,
pregnant with danger in the present as for the future. The modern name for it
is HYPNOTISM. In the ignorance of the seven principles, and used by scientific
and ignorant materialists, it will soon become SATANISM in the full accepta-
tion of the term.
BOOK I I. — PART I I I.
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 ?
”
CONTENTS.
§§
PAGE.
I.
ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY ? … … … … 645
I I.
THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE … … 656 Plastidular
Souls, and Conscious Nerve-Cells … … … 670
I I
I. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE … … 675 Western
Evolutionism : the comparative Anatomy of Man and Ape … … …
… … … … … 680 Darwinism and the Antiquity of Man
: the Anthropoids and their Ancestry … … … … …
… … 685
IV.
ON THE DURATION OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
… … … … … … 690 Modern Scientific
Speculations thereon … … … … 694 On Chains of Planets
and their Plurality … … … 699 Esoteric Geological Chronology
… … … … … 709
V.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION — CREATIVE CENTRES … … … … 731
The Origin and Evolution of the Mammalia … … … 734 The
European Palæolithic Races … … … … … 738
V I.
GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY …
… … … … … … … 742
V I
I. SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE EXSTENCE OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED
CONTINENTS … … … … … 778
ADDENDA TO BOOK II.
§ I.
ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY ?
WHENEVER
the question of the origin of man is offered seriously to an unbiassed, honest,
and earnest man of science, the answer comes invariably : — “ WE DO
NOT KNOW.” De Quatrefages, in his agnostic attitude, is one of such
anthropologists.
This
does not imply that the rest of the men of science are neither fair-minded nor
honest, as in such case our remark would be questionably discreet. But, it is
estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists. Are these
representatives of modern thought all guilty of flagrant misrepresentation of
the facts ? No one says this — but there are a few very exceptional
cases. However, the Scientists in their anti-clerical enthusiasm and despair of
any alternative theory to Darwinism, except that of “ special
creation,” are unconsciously insincere in “ forcing ” a hypothesis
the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the severe strain to
which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same subject is, however, patent
in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has come forward as a thoroughgoing
supporter of Darwinism in his “ Religion and Science.” This
clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter— after receiving
its “ primal impress ” — as the unaided evolver of all cosmic
phenomena. This view only differs from that of 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 that of Kant. Bishop Temple’s truce with
Materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic — apart from the fact
that it involves a total rejection of the Biblical cosmogony. In the presence
of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our “ learned
” age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the Masters
such theological truants profess to serve, Christ, and Christendom at large ?
However,
we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to the clergy,
our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The latter answers to
our question, in the person of its best representatives “ We do not know
; ” — yet the majority of these act as though Omniscience was their
heirloom, and they knew all things.
For,
indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of Scientists from
speculating on that question, each seeking to have his 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. G. St. Hilaire, Gaudry, Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen,
Hæckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, etc., etc., each evolved a more
or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De Quatrefages arranges them in two
principal groups — one holding to a rapid, and the other to a very
gradual transmutation ; the former, favouring a new type (man) produced
by a being entirely different ; the latter teaching the evolution of man by
progressive differentiation.
Strangely
enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that the most
unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of the origin of man has
hitherto emanated. This is so evident, that the hour is rapidly approaching
when the current teaching about the descent of man from an Ape-like mammal will
be regarded with less respect than the formation of Adam out of clay, and of
Eve out of Adam’s rib. For —
“
It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of Darwinism,
that an organized being cannot be a descendant of another whose development is
in an inverse order to his own. . . . Consequently, in accordance with these
principles man cannot be considered as the descendant of any simian type
whatever.”*
Lucae’s
argument versus the Ape-theory, based on the different flexures of the
bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of Man and the
Anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt (“ Doctrine of Descent and
Darwinism,” p. 290). He admits that “ the ape as he grows
becomes more bestial ; man . . . more human,” and seems,
indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on : e.g., “ This
flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be emphasized as a human
character, in contradistinction to the apes ; the peculiar characteristic of an
order can scarcely be elicited from it ; and especially as to the
doctrine of descent, this circumstance seems in no way decisive.”
The writer evidently is not a little disquieted at the argument. He assures us
that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors
of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and
anthropoid having had a common — though, so far, an absolutely
theoretical — ancestor.
*
“ The Human Species,” p. 111, by de Quatrefages. The
respective developments of the human and Simian brains are referred to. “
In the ape the temporo-spheroidal convolutions, which form the middle lobe,
make their appearance and are completed before the anterior convolutions which
form the frontal lobe. In man, the frontal con-volutions are, on the contrary,
the first to appear, and those of the middle lobe are formed later.” (Ibid.)
Even
“ Natural Selection ” itself is with every day more threatened. The
deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time its
most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but steadily
preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the “ Journal of the Royal
Microscopical Society ” for October, 1886, one can read as follows :
—
“
PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION. — Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties
in regarding natural selection as a theory for the origin of adaptive
structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls physiological selection,
or the segregation of the fit. His view is based on the extreme sensitiveness of
the reproductive system to small changes in the conditions of life, and he
thinks that variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must
frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that the
reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility with the parent
form, continues to be fertile within the limits of the varietal form, the
variation would neither be swamped by intercrossing nor die out on account of
sterility. When a variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must
divide the species into two parts. . . . . The author, in fine, regards mutual
sterility, not as one of the effects of specific differentiation, but as the
cause of it.”*
An
attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence to, the
Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public will soon
be made to believe that Mr. C. Dixon’s “ Evolution without
Natural Selection ” is also Darwinism — expanded, as the author
certainly claims it to be !
But
it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces or various portions of
man, and then maintaining that each portion is the identical man as he was
before ; only — expanded. Yet the author states on
p.
79 : — “ Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable
in the foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin’s theory
of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain certain phenomena .
. . . the more one studies Darwin’s works, the more one is convinced of
the truth of his hypothesis.” (! !)
And
before this, on p. 48, he alludes to : — “ the overwhelming array
of facts which Darwin gave in support of his hypothesis, and which triumphantly
carried the theory of Natural Selection over all obstacles and
objections.”
This
does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this theory as
“ triumphantly,” and from even openly calling his work
* 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 recognised that there are “ morphological ” and “
physiological ” species. The former have their origin in men’s
minds, the latter in a series of changes sufficient to affect the internal as
well as the external organs of a group of allied individuals. The “
physiological selection ” of morphological species is a confusion of
ideas ; that of physiological species “ a redun- dancy of terms.”
“
Evolution without a Natural Selection,” or, in so many words, with
Darwin’s fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.
As
to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among many
present-day thinkers who tacitly accept the conclusions of Darwinism. It is,
for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit “ Natural Selection
” with the power of originating species. “ Natural Selection
” is no Entity ; but a convenient phrase for describing the mode in which
the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit among organisms is
brought about in the struggle for existence. Every group of organisms tends to
multiply beyond the means of subsistence ; the constant battle for life —
the “ struggle to obtain enough to eat and to escape being eaten ”
added to the environmental conditions — necessitating a perpetual weeding
out of the unfit. The 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 resorted to as an explanation of the origin of species. It is
merely a representative term expressive of the manner in which “ useful
variations ” are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, “ it ”
can produce nothing, and only operates on the rough material presented
to “ it.” The real question at issue is : what CAUSE —
combined with other secondary causes — produces the “ variations
” in the organisms themselves. Many of these secondary causes are purely
physical, climatic, dietary, etc., etc. Very well. But beyond the secondary
aspects of organic evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The
materialist’s “ spontaneous variations,” and “ accidental
divergencies ” are self-contradictory terms in a universe of “
Matter, Force and NECESSITY.” Mere variability of type, apart from the
supervisory presence of a quasi-intelligent impulse, is powerless to account
for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the human body for instance. The
insufficiency of the Darwinists’ mechanical theory has been exposed at
length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse
of the reader’s intelligence to write, as does 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., 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 underlying physiological variation in species
— one to which all other laws are subordinate and secondary — is a
sub-conscious intelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a
REFLECTION of the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom.* A not altogether
dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von
Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of unaided Natural Selection,
regards evolution as intelligently guided by the UNCONSCIOUS (the Cosmic Logos
of Occultism). But the latter acts only mediately through FOHAT, or
Dhyan-Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great
pessimist describes.
It
is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their self-contradictions,
that gave the writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other
and older teachings — if only as hypotheses for future scientific
appreciation. Though not in any way very learned in modern sciences, so
evident, even to the humble recorder of this archaic clearing, are the said
scientific fallacies and gaps, that she determined to touch upon all these, in
order to place the two teachings on parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a
question of self-defence, and nothing more.
So
far, the “ Secret Doctrine ” has concerned itself with metaphysics,
pure and simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain
of physical science and practical anthropology, or those branches of study
which materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly
asserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of the Soul,
the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations of the zoologist
and the physiologist alone. (Hæckel on “ Cell-Souls
and Soul-Cells.”) This stupendous pretension comes from one, who, to
prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include among the ancestors
of man the Lemuridæ ; which have been promoted by him to the rank
of Prosimiæ, indeciduate mammals, to which he very incorrectly
attributes a decidua
*
The “ principle of perfectibility ” of Nägeli ; von de
Baer’s “ striving towards the purpose ” ;
Braun’s “ Divine breath as the inward impulse in the
evolutionary history of Nature ” ; Professor Owen’s “ tendency
to perfectibility, etc.,” are all veiled manifestations of the
universal guiding FOHAT, rich with the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic thought.
and
a discoidal placenta.* For this Hæckel was taken severely to task by de
Quatrefages, and criticised by his own brother materialists and agnostics, as
great, if not greater, authorities than himself, namely, by Virchow and du
Bois-Reymond.†
Such
opposition notwithstanding, Hæckel’s wild theories are, to this
day, called scientific and logical by some. The mysterious nature of Consciousness,
of Soul, Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere advance on the functions
of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively Protista, and the gradual
evolution and growth of human mind and “ social instincts ” toward
civilization having to be traced back to their origin in the civilization of
ants, bees, and other creatures, the chances left for an impartial hearing of
the doctrines of archaic Wisdom, are few indeed. The educated profane is
told that “ the social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been
regarded as being clearly the origin of morals, even of those of man
” ( ! ) and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and
aspirations have “ worked their way up from the lower stages of the
simple cell-soul ” of the gelatinous Bathybius — ( See
Hæckel’s “ Present Position of Evolution
” Notes),—and he seems to believe it. For such men,
the metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest
orchestral and vocal oratorios produce on the Chinaman : a sound that jars upon
their nerves.
Yet,
are our esoteric teachings about “ angels,” the first three pre-animal
human Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, on a lower level of fiction and
self-delusion than the 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 be easily crossed by any man
in the full possession of his intellectual faculties. Physical
evolution, as modern Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy ;
spiritual and moral development on the same lines is the insane dream of a
crass materialism.
Furthermore,
past as well as present daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been
accepted by the learned bodies unless it dovetailed
* Vide
infra, M. de Quatrefages’ exposé of Hæckel, in
§ ii., “ The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science.”
†
Strictly speaking du Bois-Reymond is an agnostic, and not a materialist.
He has protested most vehemently against the materialistic doctrine, which
affirms mental phenomena to be merely the product of molecular motion. The most
accurate physiological knowledge of the structure of the brain leaves us
“ nothing but matter in motion,” he asserts ; “ we must go
further, and admit the utterly incomprehensible nature of the psychical
principle which it is impossible to regard as a mere outcome of material
causes.”
with
the habitual preconceived ideas of their professors. “ The crown of the
innovator is a crown of thorns ” : — said G. St. Hilaire. It is
only that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a
general rule gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Hæckelian ideas,
notwithstanding their being proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois Reymond, and others
as the “ testimonium paupertatis of natural Science.”
Diametrically
opposed as may be the materialism of the German Evolutionists to the spiritual
conceptions of Esoteric philosophy, radically inconsistent as is their accepted
anthropological system with the real facts of nature, — the pseudo -
idealistic bias now colouring English thought is almost more pernicious. The
pure materialistic doctrine admits of a direct refutation and appeal to the
logic of facts. The idealism of the present day, not only contrives to absorb,
on the one hand, the basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a
tangle of unreality, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument
with such writers is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be
still more antagonistic to the Occult teachings now given than even the
Materialists. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric
Anthropo-Genesis than being openly called by their foes by their old and
time-honoured names of “ lunatics ” and “ ignoramuses,”
the present archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern
speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial recognition.
Only, as the existence itself of these “ archaic theories ” will
probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to the
bitter end.
In
our race and generation the one “ temple in the Universe ” is in
rare cases — within us ; but our body and mind have been too
defiled by both Sin and Science to be outwardly now anything better than
a fane of iniquity and error. And here our mutual position — that of
Occultism and Modern Science — ought to be once for all defined.
We,
Theosophists, would willingly bow before such men of learning as the late Prof.
Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and
several others, though we may not agree, from the stand-point of esoteric
philosophy, with all they say. But nothing could make us consent to even a show
of respect for the opinions of other men of science, such as Hæckel, Carl
Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany ; or even of Mr. Huxley and his
co-thinkers in materialism in England — the colossal erudition of the
first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the intellectual and moral
murderers of future generations ; especially 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 transl.) to feel a desire, in the words
of Job, that his remembrance should perish from the earth, and that he “
shall have no name in the streets.” Hear him deriding the idea of the
origin of the human race “ as a supernatural (?) phenomenon,” as
one “ that could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical
and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a creative
personality. . . ”
. .
. . “ Now the central point of Darwin’s teaching,” . . goes
on the creator of the mythical Sozura, “ lies in this, that it
demonstrates the simplest mechanical causes, purely physico-chemical phenomena
of nature, as wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult
problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force,
building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed
plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (or we say) without
aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of operation, we
have a necessary law of Evolution . . . . ” (So had Manu and Kapila, and,
at the same time, guiding, conscious and intelligent Powers). . . “
Darwin had very wisely . . . put on one side the question as to the first
appearance of life. But very soon that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide
reaching, was openly discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as
Huxley, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Büchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest
living form, was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin’s teaching
. . and we are at present concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the
natural origin of the human race through ALMIGHTY EVOLUTION ” (pp.
34, 37).
To
which, unabashed by this scientific farrago, Occultism replies : In the course
of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over, and nearly crushed under its
weight, spiritual and mental evolutions, the great gift of Kriyasakti *
remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age . . . . Spirit
strove vainly to manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic forms (as
has been explained in Part I. of this Volume), and the faculty, which had been
a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third Race, became one of the
class regarded as simply phenomenal by the Spiritualists and Occultists, and as
scientifically impossible by the materialists.
In
our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create
human forms — ready-made sheaths for the “ conscious monads
” or Nirmanakayas of past Manvantaras to incarnate within — is, of
course, absurd, ridiculous ! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the
other hand, is the production of a Frankenstein’s monster, plus
moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of
one’s own immortal nature within one’s self — by “
physico-chemical forces, guided by blind Almighty Evolution ” (“
Pedigree of Man ”).
* For explanation of the term Kriyasakti,
see Com. 2 in Stanza 26.
As
to the origin of that man, not ex-nihilo, cemented by a little red clay,
but from a living divine Entity consolidating the astral body with surrounding
materials — this conception is too absurd even to be mentioned in the
opinion of the materialists. Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are
ready to have their claims and theories — however unscientific and superstitious
at first glance — compared as to their intrinsic value and probability,
with those of the modern evolutionists. Hence the esoteric teaching is
absolutely opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and
partially so with regard to other species.
It
would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation of Evolution
in the Scientific brain of a materialist. What is EVOLUTION ? If asked
to define the full and complete meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor
Hæckel will be able to do it any better than Webster does : “ the
act of unfolding ; the process of growth, development ; as the evolution of a
flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.” Yet the bud must be traced
through its parent-plant to the seed, and the egg to the animal or bird that
laid it ; or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm from which it expanded and
grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the latent
potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the
unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which
they must pass before the flower or the animal are fully developed ? Hence, the
future plan, if not a DESIGN, must be there. Moreover, that seed has
to be traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinists been
successful in this ? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth ? But this atom
of the Watery Abysses is not homogeneous matter ; and there must be
something or somebody that had moulded and cast it into being.
Here
Science is once more silent. But since there is no self-consciousness as yet in
either speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists
of the modern school — Occultists agreeing in this for once with their
natural enemies — what is it that guides the force or forces so
unerringly in this process of evolution ? Blind force ? As well call blind
the brain which evolved in 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 Darwin’s natural
selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such
widely stretched conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N.
T. Danilevsky — “ Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory
” — upsets it completely and without appeal, and so does de
Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the
learned paper by Dr. Bourges — read by its author, a member of the Paris
Anthropological Society at a recent official meeting of the latter —
called “ Evolutionary Psychology ; the Evolution of Spirit,
etc.” in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings —
namely, those of the physical and spiritual evolutions. He explains the origin
of the variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such
evident intelligent design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction
of two principles in (manifest) nature, the inner Conscious Principle
adapting itself to physical nature and the innate potentialities in the latter.
Thus the French Scientist has to return to our old friend — Archæus,
or the life-Principle — without naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done in
England in his “ Nerve-Force,” etc. The same idea was recently
developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, “
Individuality in the light of Biology and modern Philosophy.”
We
find the same conclusions arrived at in still another excellent volume of
another Russian deep thinker, N. N. Strachof — who says in his “
Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology : — “ The most
clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be found in our own mental
or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow . . . . If
organisms are entities . . . then it is only just to conclude and assert
that the organic life strives to beget psychic life ; but it would be still
more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of
evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of
spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial
reality. It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the
lowest, never the reverse.” This is admitting, as Bourges does
in the Mémoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious,
integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner
Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large — the Soul. Thus,
gradually, all the best Scientists and Thinkers are approaching the Occultists
in their general conclusions.
But
such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be
listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of Isis, makes the
mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after
beholding naked Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our
Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at
the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils ? One might almost suspect it after
reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while
gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter
and ganglia in their brain, to respond to blind physico-chemical forces.
At any rate Shakespeare’s lines apply admirably to our modern
Evolutionist who symbolizes that “ proud man,” who —
“
Dress’d in a little brief authority ;
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His
glassy essence — like an angry ape,
Plays
such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As
make the Angels weep ! . . . . ”
These
have nought to do with the “ angels.” Their only concern is the
human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons — the
tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the “ arboreal ”
Palæolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every
doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific
inquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the evolution
theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate
definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the
first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is “
really of no account.” Every branch of knowledge is in the same
predicament, we are informed. The chemist bases his most abstruse calculations
simply “ upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has
ever been seen isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic
fluids which have never tangibly revealed themselves. No definite origin can be
assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend
to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter or life, . . .” etc.,
etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.)
And,
withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit
the one unpardonable sin ! We risk it.
§ I I. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE.
“
The question of questions for mankind — the problem which underlies all
others, and is more deeply interesting than any other — is the
ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of his relations
to the Universe of things.” — HUXLEY.
THE
world stands divided this day, and hesitates between divine progenitors
— be they Adam and Eve or the lunar Pitris — and Bathybius
Hæckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained
the occult theory, it may now be compared with that of the 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 “ 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 that German naturalist (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,”* 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 ”
— one may put in a few words, a question or two, for the information of
our readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing
* “ Pedigree of Man.”
— “ The Proofs of Evolution,” p. 273.
in
mind Darwin’s theories of natural selection, etc., we would ask Science
— with regard to the origin of the human and animal species — which
theory of evolution of the two herewith described is the more scientific, or
the more unscientific, if so preferred.
(1).
Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual
propagation ?
(2).
Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs ; their
solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple easy
separation from one into two or even several individuals. Then follows a fresh
development — the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes
— the hermaphrodite condition ; then again, a kind of Parthenogenesis,
“ virginal reproduction,” when the egg-cells are formed within the
body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it ;
until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings begin
procreating through sexual connection ?
Of
these two, the former “ theory,” — rather, a “ revealed
fact ” — is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles (except
the Purânas), preeminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The last one, is that
which is taught by the Occult philosophy, as explained all along.
An
answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr.
S.
Laing — the best lay exponent of Modern Science.* In chapter viii. of his
latest work, “ A Modern Zoroastrian,” the author begins by twitting
“ all ancient religions and philosophies ” for “ assuming a
male and female principle for their gods.” At first sight, he says
“ the distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and
animal.” . . . . “ The Spirit of god brooding over Chaos and
producing the world,” he goes on to complain, “ is only a later
edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean
legend which describes the creation of Kosmos out of Chaos by the co-operations
of great gods, male and female . . ” Thus, in the orthodox Christian
creed we are taught to repeat “ begotten, not made,” a phrase which
is absolute nonsense, an instance of using words like counterfeit notes, which
have no solid value of an idea behind them. For “ begotten ” is a
very definite term which “ implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes
to produce a new individual.”
However
we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of using wrong
words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old
Scriptures — especially in the orthodox Christian Bible —
nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly,
all these “ ancient philosophies ” and “ modern
* Author of “ Modern Science and
Modern Thought.”
religions
” are — as sufficiently shown in these two volumes — an
exoteric veil thrown over the face of esoteric truth ; and — as the
direct result of this — they are allegorical, i.e., mythological
in form ; but still they are immensely more philosophical in essence than any
of the new scientific theories, so-called. Secondly, from the Orphic
theogony down to Ezra’s last remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture
having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, it has been subjected to
constant alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there
remained but the name, a dead shell from which the Spirit had been gradually
eliminated.
This
alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be understood without
the help of the Archaic wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all
built.
But
to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct
question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of thought
on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ancient creeds,
he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the following terms : —
“
Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation
being the original and only mode of reproduction,* and the microscope and
dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us to new and altogether
unsuspected ( ? ) worlds of life. . . .”
So
little “ unsuspected,” indeed, that the original a-sexual
“ modes of reproduction ” must have been known — to the
ancient Hindus, at any rate — Mr. Laing’s assertion to the
contrary, notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu 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, (Vol. I I., p.
12, Wilson’s Transl.), it becomes difficult to deny the
fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note well, in an EXOTERIC work. Then,
Mr. S. Laing goes on to tell us that : — . . . . “ By far the
larger proportion of living forms, in number . . . . have come into existence, without
the aid of sexual propagation.” He then instances
Hæckel’s monera . . . . “ multiplying by self-division.”
The next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, “ which does
exactly the same thing.” The following stage is that in “ which the
organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it
swells out . . . . and finally parts company and starts on separate
existence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of
manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding inorganic materials.”
†
*
Vide Part I. of this volume, page 183, Stanza V I I I.
†
In this, as shown in Part I., Modern Science was again anticipated, far beyond
its own speculations in this direction, by Archaic Science.
This
is followed by a many-celled organism which is formed by “ germ-buds
reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted from the
parent ” . . . . when “ we are at the threshold of that system
of sexual propagation, which has (now) become the rule in all the higher
families of animals ” . . . . It is when an “ organism, having
advantages in the struggle for life, established itself permanently ” . .
. . that special organs developed to meet the altered condition . . . . . when
a distinction “ would be firmly established of a female organ or ovary
containing the egg or primitive cell from which the new being was to be
developed.” . . . . “ This is confirmed by a study of embryology, which
shows that in the HUMAN and higher animal species the distinction of sex
is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth
of the embryo . . . .” In the great majority of plants, and in some lower
families of animals . . . the male and female organs are developed within the
same being . . . . . a hermaphrodite. Moreover, in the “ virginal
reproduction — germ-cells apparently similar in all respects to
egg-cells, develop themselves into new individuals without any fructifying
element,” etc., etc. (pp. 103—107).
Of
all which we are as perfectly well aware as of this — that the above was
never applied by the very learned English popularizer of
Huxleyo-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 (palin-genesis) 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.” (Anthrop. 3rd edition, p.
11.)
This
shows to us that every living creature and thing on earth, including man,
evolved from one common primal form. Physical man must have passed
through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes of
procreation as other animals have : he must have divided himself ; then,
hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on the immaculate
principle) to his young ones ; the next stage would be the oviparous —at
first “ without any fructifying element,” then “ with the
help of the fertilitary spore ” ; and only after the final and definite
evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct “ male and
female,” when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal
law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to
be ascertained : the plain and comprehensively described processes of such ante-sexual
reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which was
attempted by the writer in Part I. of this Volume.
Either
this, or — man is a distinct being. Occult philosophy may call him that,
because of his distinctly dual nature. Science cannot do so, once that
it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of
no principle outside matter. The former — the archaic Science — allows
the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to
the very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex — to
use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this cycle (the fourth), the
frame having already existed among the types and models of nature from the
preceding Rounds — that it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this
Round.* The Monad had but to step into the astral body of the progenitors,
in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the
shadowy prototype.†
What
would Science say to this ? It would answer, of course, that as man appeared on
earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, no more than those
mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of procreation as above
described. His mode of procreation was already established on Earth when he
appeared. In this case, we may reply : since to this day not the remotest sign
of a link between man and the animal has yet been found, then (if the Occultist
doctrine is to be repudiated) he must have sprung miraculously in
nature, like a fully armed Minerva from Jupiter’s brain. And in such case
the Bible is right, along with other national “ revelations.” Hence
the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by the author of “ A Modern
*
Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching, Cyclic pralayas
so-called are but obscurations, during which periods Nature, i.e.,
everything visible and invisible on a resting planet — remains in
statu quo. Nature rests and slumbers, no work of destruction going on on
the globe even if no active work is done. All forms, as well as their astral
types, remain as they were at the last moment of its activity. The “
night ” of a planet has hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught
like a huge mammoth by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the
next dawn of its new day — a very short one indeed in comparison to the
“ Day of Brahmâ.”
†
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 proto-type being first formed in Space. From
Phidias down to the humblest workman in the ceramic art — a sculptor has
had to create first of all a model in his mind, then sketch it in one and two
dimensional lines, and then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or
objective figure. And if human mind is a living demonstration of such
successive stages in the process of evolution — how can it be otherwise
when NATURE’S MIND and creative powers are concerned ?
Zoroastrian
” upon ancient philosophies and exoteric creeds, becomes premature
and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden discovery of a “ missing-link
”-like fossil mend matters at all. For neither one such solitary specimen
nor the scientific conclusions thereupon, could insure its being the
long-sought-for relic, i.e., that of an undeveloped, still a once speaking
MAN. Something more would be required as a final proof (vide infra, Note).
Besides which, even Genesis takes up man, her Adam of dust, only where
the Secret Doctrine leaves her “ Sons of God and Wisdom ” and picks
up the physical man of the THIRD Race. Eve notsi “
begotten,” but is extracted out of Adam on the manner of “
Amœba A,” contracting in the middle and splitting into Amœba B
— by division. (See p. 103, in “ The Modern Zoroastrian.”)
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 lower rank ” (Darwinian theory in “ Pedigree of Man,”
p. 22) 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 in the human races
— amount to 99.35 cubic inches ! Figures are awkward witnesses
and cannot lie. Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises
are as sound and correct as his biblical conclusions are silly : —
“ The brain of the apes most like man, does not amount to quite a third
of the brain of the lowest races of men : it is not half the size of the
brain of a new-born child.” (“ The Age and Origin of Man.”)
From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove the
Huxley-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 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.” (“ Man before
Metals,”
p.
320, N. Joly. Inter. Scient. Series.)
Hæckel,
among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the Science of
languages. In the course of his attack on Evolutionism (1873, “ Mr.
Darwin’s Philosophy of Language ”), Prof. Max 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 pro. tem. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to condense the
linguistic case against the “ Ape ancestor ” theory : —
Languages
have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in nature. It is almost
certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages.
(1)
All words are roots and merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical
languages).
(2)
One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative
element (Agglutinative).
(3)
The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which
has longed lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
The
problem then is : Whence these ROOTS ? 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 are we to halt before the origin of language ?
” is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat. (Cf. his “ Doctrine
of Descent and Darwinism,” p. 304.)
We
respect those men of science who, wise in their generation, say : “
Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we are
too honest, too devoted to the truth — or what we regard as truth —
to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with
facts absolutely established in modern Science.” . . . . “ The
borderland of (metaphysical) knowledge is best left to time, which is the best
test as to truth ” (A Modern Zoroastrian, p. 136).
This
is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a materialist. But when a
Hæckel, after just saying that “ historical events of past
time . .” having “ occurred many millions of years ago,* . .
. are for ever removed from direct observation,” and that neither geology
nor phylogeny† can or will “ rise to the position of a real exact
science,” then insists on the development of all organisms
—“
from the lowest vertebrate to the highest, from Amphioxus to man ”
—we
ask for a weightier proof than he can give. Mere “ empirical sources
of knowledge,” so extolled by the author of “ Anthropogeny
” — when he has to be satisfied with the qualification for his own
views — are not competent to settle problems lying beyond their domain ;
nor is it the province of exact science to place any reliance on them.‡
If “ empirical ” — and Hæckel declares so himself
repeatedly — then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the sight
of exact research, when extended into the remote past, than our Occult
teachings of the East, both having to be placed on quite the same level. Nor
are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations treated in any
better way by the real scientists, than are our cyclic repetitions of the
evolution of the Great in the minor races, and the original order of evolutions.
For the province of exact, real Science, materialistic though it be, is to
carefully avoid anything like guess-work, speculation which cannot be verified
; in short, all suppressio veri and all suggestio falsi. The
business of the man of exact Science is to observe, each in his chosen
department, the phenomena of nature ; to record, tabulate, compare and classify
the facts, down to the smallest 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
* It
thus appears that in its anxiety to prove our noble descent from the catarrhine
“ baboon,” Hæckel’s school has pushed the times of
pre-historic man millions of years back. ( See “ Pedigree of
Man,” p. 273.) Occultists, render thanks to science for such
corroboration of our claims !
†
This seems a poor compliment to pay Geology, which is not a speculative but as
exact a science as astronomy — save, perhaps its too risky chronological
speculations. It is mainly a “ Descriptive ” as opposed to an
“ Abstract ” Science.
‡
Such newly-coined words as “ perigenesis of plastids,”
“ plastidule Souls ” ( ! ), and others less comely, invented by
Hæckel, may be very learned and correct in so far as they may express
very graphically the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As a fact, how-ever,
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 ape, is a deductive law
that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory of descent
” (“ Anthropogeny,” p. 392) — his no less
learned foes (du Bois-Reymond — for one) have a right to see in this
sentence a mere jugglery of words ; a “ testimonium paupertatis
of natural science ” — as he himself complains, calling them, in
return, ignoramuses (see “ Pedigree of Man,” Notes).
defects
or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other senses. He
has no right to trespass on the grounds of metaphysics and psychology. His duty
is to verify and to rectify all the facts that fall under his direct
observation ; to profit by the experiences and mistakes of the Past in
endeavouring to trace the working of a certain concatenation of cause and
effects, which, but only by its constant and unvarying repetition, may be
called A LAW. This it is which a man of science is expected to do, if he would
become a teacher of men and remain true to his original programme of natural or
physical sciences. Any sideway path from this royal road becomes speculation.
Instead
of keeping to this, what does many a so-called man of science do in these days
? He rushes into the domains of pure metaphysics, while deriding it. He
delights in rash conclusions and calls it “ a deductive law from
the inductive law ” of a theory based upon and drawn out of the
depths of his own consciousness : that consciousness being perverted by, and
honeycombed with, one-sided materialism. He attempts to explain the “
origin ” of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions.
He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and
denounces everything, save his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests
theories of the Universe, a Cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical forces of
nature alone, far more miraculous and impossible than even one based
upon the assumption of fiat lux out of nihil— and tries to
astonish the world by such a wild theory ; which, being known to emanate from a
scientific brain, is taken on blind faith as very scientific and the
outcome of SCIENCE.
Are
those the opponents Occultism would dread ? Most decidedly not. For such
theories are no better treated by real (not empirical) Science than our
own. Hæckel, hurt in his vanity by du Bois-Reymond, never tires of
complaining publicly of the latter’s onslaught on his fantastic theory of
descent. Rhapsodizing on “ the exceedingly rich storehouse of empirical
evidence,” he calls those “ recognised physiologists ” who
oppose every speculation of his drawn from the said “ storehouse ”
— ignorant men. “ If many men,” he declares —
“ and among them even some scientists of repute — hold that the
whole of phylogeny is a castle in the air, and genealogical trees (from monkeys
?) are empty plays of phantasy, they only in speaking thus demonstrate their
ignorance of that wealth of empirical sources of knowledge to which
reference has already been made ” (“ Pedigree of Man,” p.
273).
We
open Webster’s Dictionary and read the definitions of the word “
empirical ” : “ Depending upon experience or observation alone, without
due regard to modern science and theory.” This applies to the Occultists,
Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., etc. Again, “ an Empiric —One
who confines himself to applying the results of his own observations ”
(only) (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.” (“ Anthropogeny,” p.
392).
A
“ theory ” is simply a hypothesis, a speculation, and no law. To
say otherwise is only one of the many liberties taken now-a-days by scientists.
They enunciate an absurdity, and then hide it behind the shield of Science. Any
deduction from theoretical speculation is no better than a speculation on a
speculation. Now Sir W. Hamilton has already shown that the word theory is
now used “ in a very loose and improper sense ” . . . . “
that it is convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is
commonly used as another term for conjecture, whereas the terms ‘
theory ’ and ‘ theoretical ’ are properly used in opposition
to the term practice and practical.”
But
modern Science puts an extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks at the
idea. Materialistic philosophers and Idealists of Europe and America may be
agreed with the Evolutionists as to the physical origin of man — yet it
will never become a general truth with the true metaphysician, and the latter
defies the materialists to make good their arbitrary assumptions. That the
ape-theory theme* of Vogt and Darwin, on which the Huxley-Hæckelians have
composed of late such extraordinary variations, is far less scientific —
because clashing with the fundamental laws of that theme itself — than
ours can ever be
*
The mental barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as an
“ enormous gap, a distance practically immeasurable ”
! ! is, indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a
standing puzzle to the materialist, who relies on the frail reed of “
natural selection.” The physiological differences between Man and the
Apes are in reality — despite a curious community of certain
features— equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most
cautious and experienced of naturalists : —
“
In modern times there are no animals in creation that have attracted more
attention from the scientific student than the great quadrumana (the
anthropoids), bearing such a striking resemblance to the human form as to have
justified the epithet of anthropo-morphic being conferred on them. . . . But all
investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a confession of its
insufficiency ; and nowhere is caution more to be advocated, nowhere is
premature judgment more to be deprecated than in the attempt to bridge over the
MYSTERIOUS CHASM which separates man and beast.” “ Heart
of Africa ” i., 520.
shown
to be, is very easy of demonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent
work on “ Human Species ” by the great French naturalist de
Quatrefages, and our statement will at once be verified.
Moreover,
between the esoteric teaching concerning the origin of man and Darwin’s
speculations, no man, unless he is a rank materialist, will hesitate. This is
the description given by Mr. Darwin of “ the earliest ancestors of
man.”
“
They were without doubt once covered with hair ; both sexes having beards ;
their ears were pointed and capable of movement ; and their bodies were
provided with a tail, having the proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies
were acted on by many muscles which now only occasionally reappear in man, but
which are still normally present in the quadrumana. . . . The foot, judging
from the condition of the great toe in the fœtus, was then prehensile, and
our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting
some warm forest-clad land, and the males were provided with canine teeth which
served as formidable weapons. . . .” *
Darwin
connects him with the type of the tailed catarrhines, “ and consequently
removes him a stage backward in the scale of evolution. The English naturalist
is not satisfied to take his stand upon the ground of his own doctrines, and,
like 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. “ In fact,” he says, “ in the
theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take place, either by chance or in
every direction. They are ruled by certain laws which are due to the organization
itself. If an organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo
secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the impress of
the original. It is the law of permanent characterization, which
alone permits Darwin to explain the filiation of groups, their
characteristics, and their numerous relations. It is by virtue of this law that
all the descendants of the first mollusc have been molluscs ; all
the descendants of the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that
this constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine. . . . It follows that
two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to a common
ancestor, but the one cannot be the descendant of the other ” ; (p.
106).
“
Now man and ape present a very striking contrast in respect to type. Their
organs . . . correspond almost exactly term for term : but these
* A
ridiculous instance of evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt
(“ Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,” on page 292). He
says, “ Man’s kinship with the apes is not impugned by the bestial
strength of the teeth of the male orang or gorilla.” Mr. Darwin, on
the contrary, endows this fabulous being with teeth used as weapons !
organs
are arranged after a very different plan. In man they are so arranged that he
is essentially a walker, while in apes they necessitate his being a climber.
. . . There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction. . . . A glance at
the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the
skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently convincing
proof.”
The
consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the logical application
of the law of permanent characterizations, is that man cannot be
descended from an ancestor who is already characterized as an ape, any more
than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A walking
animal cannot be descended from a climbing one.
“
Vogt, in placing man among the primates, declares without hesitation
that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common
ancestor), from which the different types of this family have originated and
diverged.” (This ancestor of the apes, occult science sees in the lowest
human group during the Atlantean period, as shown before.) . . . “ We
must, then, place the origin of man beyond the last apes,” goes on de
Quatrefages, thus corroborating our Doctrine, “ if we would adhere to one
of the laws most emphatically necessary to the Darwinian theory. We then come
to the prosimiæ of Hæckel, the loris, indris, etc. But those
animals also are climbers ; we must go further, therefore, in search of our
first direct ancestor. But the genealogy by 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.* 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 ? ” asks de Quatrefages. “ Will he complete his
genealogy in this manner ? It is not for me to answer.” (“ The
Human Species,” p. 107-108.)
But
see Hæckel’s famous genealogy, in “ The Pedigree of
Man,” called by him “ Ancestral Series of Man.” In the
“ Second Division ”
*
According even to a fellow-thinker, Professor Schmidt, Darwin has
evolved “ a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points an
incorrect, portrait of our presump-tive ancestors in the dawn of
humanity.” (“Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,” p.
284.)
(Eighteenth
Stage) he describes “ Prosimiæ, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and
Makis (Lemur) as without marsupial bones and cloaca, but with placenta.”
And now turn to de Quatrefages’ “ The Human Species,” pp.
109, 110, and see his proofs, based on the latest discoveries, to show that
“ the prosimiae of 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 h is own words in actu by supporting
with all the weight of his scientific authority that most “ absurd
” of all theories — the descent of man from an ape !
“
This genealogy,” says de Quatrefages, “ is wrong throughout,
and is founded on a material error.” Indeed, Hæckel bases his
descent of man on the 17th and 18th stages (See Aveling’s
“ Pedigree of Man,” p. 77), 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 ha ving 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 these 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 be regarded even as the ancestors of the
zonoplacental mammals . . . and ought to be connected with the
pachydermata, the edentata, and the cetacea ” ;
(p.
110). And yet Hæckel’s inventions pass off with some as exact
science !
The
above mistake, if indeed, 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 17th and 18th stages 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.” (Ibid.)
It
comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul ; endow the whole
animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually evolving
from the latent and passive into active and positive polarity — and
Hæckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say.
But
there are important divergences 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 ” (19th stage).
Nevertheless,
we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school : it is the law of
gradual and extremely slow evolution, embracing many million years. The chief
quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the primitive “
Ancestor.” We shall be told that the Dhyan Chohan, or the “
progenitor ” of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on the physical
plane. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of antiquity, and by
nine-tenths of the present humanity ; whereas not only is the pithecoid man,
or “ ape-man,” a purely hypothetical creature of
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 ; and he admits very naively
his inventions himself. Does he not confess the non-existence of his sozura
(14th stage) — a creature entirely unknown to science — by
confessing over his own signature, that — “ The proof of its
existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type between the 13th
and the 14th stages ” !
If
so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of the
existence of our three ethereal races, and the three-eyed men of the Third and
Fourth Root-Races “ arises also from the necessity of an intermediate
type ” between the animal and the gods. What reason would the
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. Even thinkers of the
school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general epidemic. They
accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though they also postulate
the individual Ego as a manifestation of the Unconscious (the Western
presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine Thought). They say the evolution
of the physical man is from the animal, but that mind in its various phases is
altogether a thing apart from material facts, though organism (as an upadhi)
is necessary for ITS manifestation.
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), “
plastidule souls,” † and “ atom-souls ” are now
invented by them, on the basis of purely blind mechanical forces of matter.
We are informed that “ the study of the evolution of soul-life shows that
this has worked its way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul,
through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up to the soul
of man.” (“ Present Position of Evolution,” p.
266.)
“
Astonishing ” — truly, based as this wild speculation is on the Consciousness
of the “ nerve cells.” For as he tells us, “ Little as we are
in a position, at the present time, to explain fully the nature of
consciousness,‡ yet the comparative and genetic observation of it clearly
shows that it is only a higher and more complex function of the nerve cells.”
(Ibid, note 22.)
* Of
course the Esoteric system of Fourth Round Evolution is much more complex than
the paragraph and quotations referred to categorically assert. It is
practically a reversal— both in embryological inference and
succession in time of species — of the current Western conception.
†
According to Hæckel, there are also cell-souls ; “ an
inorganic molecular soul ” without, and a “ plastidular soul
with (or possessing) memory ”. What are our esoteric teachings to this ?
The divine and human soul of the seven principles in man must, of
course, pale and give away before such a stupendous revelation !
‡
A valuable confession, this. Only it makes the attempt to trace the descent of
Con- sciousness 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.
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 Kabala about the descent of souls as
conscious and unconscious atoms ; among the Pythagorean MONAD and the monads
of Leibnitz — and the “ gods, monads, and atoms ” of our
esoteric teaching ;* into the dead letter of Occult teachings, left to
the amateur Kabalists and professors of ceremonial magic. For this is
what he says, while explaining his newly-coined terminology : —
“
Plastidule-Souls ; the plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the smallest,
homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastic theory, to be regarded
as the active factors of all life-functions. The plastidular soul differs from
the inorganic molecular soul in that it possesses memory.”
(“ Pedigree of Man,” Note, p. 296.)
This
he develops in his mirific lecture on the “ Perigenesis of the
Plastidule, or the wave-motions of living particles.” It is an
improvement on Darwin’s theory of “ Pangenesis,” and a
further approach, a cautious move towards “ magic.” The former is a
conjecture that certain of the actual and identical atoms which had belonged to
ancestral bodies “ are thus transmitted through their descendants for
generation after generation, so that we are literally ‘ flesh of the
flesh ’ of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later
. . . period ” — explains the author of “ The Modern
Zoroastrian ” (in “ Primitive Polarities,”
etc.). The latter (Occultism) teaches that — (a) the life-atoms of
our (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 partially are drawn once more together and become the animating
principle of the new body in every new incarnation of
* 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 the animals have souls,
will, and sensation, hence soul-functions, leads him to make of psychology the
science of the zoologists. The archaic teaching that the “ Soul ”
(the animal and human souls, or Kama and Manas) “ has its
developmental history ” — is claimed by 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, p. 137, “ Pedigree
of Man.”)
the
Monads. Because (b), as the individual Soul is ever the same, so
are the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral, or life double,
etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same
individuality in a series of various bodies, etc., etc.*
To
be just, and, to say the least, logical, our modern Hæckelians
ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the “ Perigenesis of the
Plastidule,” and like lectures, should be bound up with those on “
Esoteric Buddhism,” and “ The Seven Principles in Man.” Thus
the public will have a chance, at any rate, of judging after comparison which
of the two teachings is the most or the least ABSURD, even from
the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science !
Now
the Occultists, who trace every atom in the universe, whether an aggregate or
single, to One Unity, or Universal Life ; who do not recognize that
anything in Nature can be inorganic ; who know of no such thing as dead
matter — the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of Spirit and
Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and sensation. But
what can a materialist mean by the qualification ? The law of biogenesis,
in the sense applied to it by the 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 “ most
plausibly,” as the author of the “ Modern Zoroastrian ”
thinks, “ that not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and
mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted ” (by heredity).
If
Hæckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does of the
nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this way. For he
only states, in a more metaphysical language than Darwin, one and the
same thing. The life-principle, or life energy,
* (See
“ Transmigration of the Life Atoms,” “ Five years
of Theosophy,” p. 533-539). The collective aggregation of
these atoms forms thus the Anima Mundi of our Solar system, the soul
of our little universe, each atom of which is of course a soul, a monad,
a little universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory (Vol.
I., Part I I I., “ Gods, Monads and Atoms.”)
which
is omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a force and a PRINCIPLE as noumenon,
atoms, as phenomenon. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be
considered as separate except in materialism.*
Further,
Hæckel enunciates concerning the Atom Souls that which, at first sight,
appears as occult as a Monad of Leibnitz. “ The recent contest as to the
nature of atoms, which we must regard as in some form or other the ultimate
factors in all physical and chemical processes,” he tells us —
“ seems to be capable of the easiest settlement, by the conception that
these very minute masses possess, as centres of force, a persistent soul,
that every atom has sensation and the power of movement.”
He
does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz’s theory,
and one pre-eminently occult. Nor does he understand the term “ Soul
” as we do ; for, with Hæckel it is simply, along with
consciousness, the production of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which,
as the “ cell-soul, is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic
body as is the human soul with the brain and spinal cord.” (Ibid.)
He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois-Reymond and
Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of science, as
of the greatest thinkers of this and the past ages, in saying that “ the
passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
Consciousness is unthinkable. Were our minds and senses so . . .
illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ;
were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings . . .
electric discharges . . . we should be as far as ever from the solution of the
problem . . . The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still
remain intellectually impassable.” But the complex function of the
nerve-cells of the great German EMPIRIC, or, in other words, his Consciousness,
will not permit him to follow the conclusions of the greatest thinkers of our
globe. He is greater than they. He asserts this, and protests
against all. “ No one has the right
* In
“ The Transmigration of the Life-Atoms,” we say, to explain
better a position which is but too often misunderstood : — “ It is omnipresent
. . . . though (on this plane of manifestation) often in a dormant state
— as in stone. The definition which states that when this indestructible
force is disconnected with one set of atoms (molecules ought to have
been said) it becomes immediately attracted by others, does not imply that it
entirely abandons the first set (because the atoms themselves would then
disappear), but only that it transfers its vis viva, or life power
— the energy of motion, to another set. But because it manifests itself
in the next set as what is called Kinetic energy, it does not follow that the
first set is deprived of it altogether ; for it is still in it, as potential
energy or life latent,” etc., etc. Now what can 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 ? He must
have read Paracelsus and studied “ Five Years of Theosophy,”
without properly digesting the teachings, before evolving such theories.
to
hold that in the future we (Hæckel) shall not be able to pass
beyond those limits of our knowledge that to day seem impassable ” ; and
he quotes from Darwin’s introduction to the “ Descent of Man
” these words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and
himself : “ It is always those who know little, and not those who know
much, that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be solved
by Science.”
The
world may rest satisfied. That day is not far off when the “ thrice great
” Hæckel will have shown (to his own satisfaction) that the
consciousness of Sir I. Newton was, physiologically speaking, but the reflex
action (or minus consciousness) caused by the peri-genesis of the
plastidules of our common ancestor and old friend, the Moneron
Hæckelii. The fact that the said “ Bathybius ” has been
found out and exposed as a pretender simulating the organic substance it
was not ; and since, among the children of men, L ot’s wife alone
(and even this, only after her disagreeable metamorphosis into a salt pillar)
could claim the pinch of salt it is, as her forefather — will not
dismay him at all. He will go on asserting, as coolly as he has always done,
that it was no more than the peculiar mode and motion of the ghost of the
long-vanished atoms of our “ Father Bathybius,” which, transmitted
across æons of time into the cell-tissue of the grey matter of the brains
of every great man, caused Sophocles and Æschylus, as well as
Shakespeare, to write their tragedies, Newton, his “ Principia,”
Humboldt, his “ Cosmos,” etc. etc. It 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 claim as an evidence corroborating his (the evolutionist’s)
claim, even this wealth of absent proofs, saying that “ all living forms
have not been preserved in the fossil series, the chances of preservation being
few and far between,” even primitive man “ burying or burning
his dead ” (A. Wilson). This is just what we ourselves claim. It is just
as possible that future should have in store for us the discovery of the
giant skeleton of an Atlantean, 30ft. high, as the fossil of a pithecoid
“ missing link ” : only the former is more probable.
§ I I I.
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 . . . . ”
(“ Man’s Place in Nature,” p. 159). It will —
undeniably — and thus vindicate the anthropology of the Occultists.
Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin’s Descent of Man,
Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes he has all but found the “ missing link ”
— in theory. It was due to theologians more than to geologists that, till
nearly 1860, man had been considered a relic no older than the Adamic orthodox
6,000 years. As Karma would have it though, it was left to a French Abbé
— l’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 already existed during the Miocene period ; for flints of
undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words of the
author of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” : — “
They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by
the Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which had a dose of intelligence
so much superior to the gorilla, or chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate
tools. But in this case the problem would be solved and the missing link
discovered, for such an ape might well have been the ancestor of
Palæolithic man.” Or —the descendant of Eocene Man,
which is a variant offered to the theory. Meanwhile, the Dryopithecus with such
fine mental endowments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic
and even
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 ” — why should not another theory be tried ? Let
us carry man, as an hypothesis, to the close of Mesozoic times —
admitting argumenti causâ that the (much more recent) higher apes
then existed ! This would allow ample time to man and the modern apes to have
diverged from the mythical “ ape more anthropoid,” and even
for the latter to have degenerated into those that are found mimicking
man in using “ branches of trees as clubs, and cracking cocoa-nuts with
hammer and stones. ”* Some savage tribes of hillmen in India build their
abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of
the two, the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the other, is
scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins’ theory. The
fanciful character of his hypothesis, is, however, generally admitted. It is
argued that while in the Pliocene and Miocene periods there were true apes and
baboons, and man was undeniably contemporaneous with the former of those times
— though as we see orthodox anthropology still hesitates in the teeth of facts
to place him in the era of the Dryopithecus, which latter “ has been
considered by some anatomists as in some respects superior to the chimpanzee or
the gorilla ” — yet, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil primates
unearthed and no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms.
And we find it also hinted that the Dryopithecus may have been the
“ missing link,” though the brain of the creature no more warrants
the theory than does the brain of the modern gorilla. (Vide also
Gaudry’s speculations.)
Now
we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that there was no
man in existence in the early Tertiary period ? What is it that prevented
his presence ? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther back than 6,
or 7,000 years was indignantly denied. Now he is refused admission into the
Eocene age. Next century it may become a question whether man was not
contemporary with the “ flying Dragons ; ” the pterodactyl, the
plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc., etc. Let us listen, however, to the echo of
Science.
*
This the way primitive man must have acted ? We do not know of men, not
even of savages, in our age, who are known to have imitated the apes who live
side by side with them in the forests of America and the islands. We do know of
large apes who, tamed and living in houses, will mimic men to the length of
donning hats and coats. The writer had personally a chimpanzee who, without
being taught, opened a newspaper and pretended to read in it. It is the
descending generations, the children, who mimic their parents — not the
reverse.
“
Now wherever anthropoid apes lived, it is clear that, whether as a question of
anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings, man, or some creature
which was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomically
speaking, apes and monkeys are as much special variations of the mammalian type
as man, whom they resemble, bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the
physical animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialised
for erect posture and a larger brain* . . . . If he could survive, as we know
he did, the adverse conditions and extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period,
there is no reason why he might not have lived in the semi-tropical climate of
the Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland and
Spitzbergen . . .” (“ Modern Science and Modern Thought,”
p. 152.)
While
most of the men of Science, who are uncompromising in their belief in the
descent of man from an “ extinct anthropoid mammal,” will not
accept even the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to
man and the Dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real scientific
value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it can be made
under the circumstances, i.e., without immediate danger of getting
knocked off one’s feet by the tidal wave of “
science-adulation.” Believing that the difficulty of accounting “
for the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not
so great as that presented by the difference as to physical structure†
between man and the highest animal,” the same author says : —
“
But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical structure arose,
and how a being came into existence which had such a brain and hand, and such
undeveloped capabilities for an almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is
this : the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and
the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being
the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some respects makes a slight
approximation towards the Simian type. His skull is narrower, his brain less
capacious, his muzzle more projecting, his arm longer than those of the
* It
is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific truth and fact
contained in the above sentence if it were to read : “ the ape is simply
an instance of the biped type specialized for going on all fours, generally,
and a smaller brain.” Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth,
and not the reverse.
†
We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like Huxley point to
“ the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and the
highest man in intellectual power,” the “ enormous gulf .
. . between them,” the “ immeasurable and practically infinite
divergence of the Human from the Simian stirps ” (Man’s
Place in Nature, pp. 102-3) ; when even the physical basis of mind —
the brain — so vastly exceeds in size that of the highest existing
apes ; when men like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of
extra-terrestrial intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature
as the Pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Hæckel, to the
level of the large-brained and moral man of to-day — it is idle to
dismiss Evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the structural evidence is
so unconvincing and, taken as a whole, so hostile to Darwinism, the
difficulties as to the “ how ” of the Evolution of the human mind
by natural selection are tenfold greater.
average
European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from
the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is
no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an
arrested man, not an ape.”
“
If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case of man and ape, we
must go back to some common ancestor from whom both may have originated . . . .
But to establish this as a fact and not a theory we require to
find that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some intermediate forms tending
towards it . . . . in other words . . . . the missing link ! Now it must be
admitted that, hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered,
but the oldest known human sculls and skeletons which date from the Glacial
period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old, show no very decided
approximation towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary, one of the
oldest types, that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon, * is
that of a fine race, tall in stature, large in brain, and
on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind. The reply
of course is that the time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a
common ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly, and
man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such ancestor must be
sought still further back at a distance compared with which the whole
Quaternary period sinks into insignificance . . . . It may well make us
hesitate before we admit that man . . . is alone an exception. . . . This is
more difficult to believe, as the ape family which man (?) so closely resembles
. . . . contains numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the
extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape
series. If a special creation is required for man, must there not have been
special creations for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang,
and for at least 100 different species of ape and monkeys which are all built
on the same lines ? ” (p. 182, “ Modern Science, etc.”)
There
was a “ special creation ” for man, and a “ special
creation ” for the ape, his progeny ; only on other lines than
ever bargained for by Science. Albert Gaudry and others give some weighty
reasons why man cannot be regarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds
that not only was the “ primeval savage ” (?) a reality in the
Miocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left
behind him were splintered by fire in that remote epoch ; when we learn
that the Dryopithecus, alone of the anthropoids, appears in those
strata, what is the natural inference ? That the Darwinians are in a quandary.
The very manlike Gibbon is still in the same low grade of development, as
it was when it co-existed with Man at the close of the Glacial Period. It
has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to
choose between the Dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids — gibbon,
gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-sufficient, how are we to
“ explain ” the evolution of this
* 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.
ape
into Man during the first half of the Miocene ? The time is far too short for
such a theoretical transformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in
species supervenes renders the thing inconceivable — more especially on
the Natural Selection hypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf
between a savage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal
anthropoid, is too much to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a period.
Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding Eocene,
if they prefer to do so ; let them even trace both Man and Dryopithecus to a
common ancestor ; the unpleasant consideration has, nevertheless, to be faced
that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by their
absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of 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 be
accorded equally to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of
puzzled materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the
Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most
brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the
Hæckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval
forests, and Mr. Grant Allen’s putative ancestor to have swung himself
from bough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third
Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the
civilization of the Fourth Race ; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no
respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean
giants, “ blurred copies ” of their bestial sires, and hence
of modern man (Huxley), now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative
Anthropologist of European Science.
Where
did the first men live ? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa, some in
Southern Asia, others, again, believe in an independent origin of human stocks
in Asia and America from a Simian ancestry (Vogt). Hæckel, however,
advances gaily to the charge. Starting from his “ prosimiæ ”
. . . “ the ancestor common to all other catarrhini, including man
” — a “ link ” now, however, disposed of for good by
recent anatomical discoveries ! — he endeavours to find a habitat for the
primeval Pithecanthropus alalus. “ In all probability it (the
transformation of animal into man) occurred in Southern Asia, in which region
many evidences are forthcoming that here was the original home of the different
species of men. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of
the human race, but LEMURIA, a continent that lay to the south of Asia, and
sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. (Vide infra,
“ Scientific and geological proofs of the former existence of several
submerged continents.”) “ The period during which the evolution of
the anthropoid apes into apelike men took place was probably the last part of
the tertiary period, the Pliocene Age, and perhaps the Miocene, its
forerunner.” (Pedigree of Man, p. 73.)
Of
the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring to Lemuria,
which was the cradle of mankind — of the physical sexual creature
who materialized through long 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 apemen,”
just removed from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues,
some of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming
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 the man.
The anatomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case ; it
is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain
conformation being very much the same.
Well,
what of that ? All this was known before King Herod ; and the writers of the Ramayana,
the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanuman, the monkey-God, “
whose feats were great and Wisdom never rivalled,” must have known as
much about his anatomy and brain as does any Hæckel or Huxley in our
modern day. Volumes upon volumes were written upon this similarity, in
antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is nothing new whatever
given to the world or to philosophy, in such volumes as Mivart’s “
Man and Apes,” or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley’s defence of Darwinism.
But what are those crucial proofs of man’s descent from a
pithecoid ancestor ? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one —we
are told — if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we
are called upon to explain the reason of : —
(I.)
The similarity of structure between the two ; the fact that the higher animal
world — man and beast — is physically of one type or pattern.
(I
I.) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, i.e., traces of
former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted,
could not have had any scope for employment, except for a semi-animal,
semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in Man those “ rudimentary
” organs (as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the Apteryx of
Australia), the vermiform appendix of the cœcum, the ear muscles,*
the “ rudimentary tail ” (with which children are still sometimes
born), etc., etc. ?
Such
is the war cry ; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the Darwinians is
louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific Evolutionists themselves
!
Furthermore,
the latter themselves — with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such
eminent zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others — while defending the
Darwinian theory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties
in the way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of science as
the above-named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and
loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this
supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the works of Broca,
Gratiolet, of Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally, at the last great work of de
Quatrefages, “ Introduction à l’Etude des Races
humaines, Questions générales,” to discover the
fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may say more : the exaggerations concerning
such similarity of structure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have
become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley found himself forced
to protest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great anatomist
personally who called the “ smaller fry ” to order, by declaring in
one of his articles that the differences in the structure of the human body and
that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only far from being
trifling and unimportant, but were, on the contrary, very great and
suggestive : “ each of the bones of the gorilla has its own specific
impress on it that distinguishes it from a similar human bone.” Among the
existing creatures there is not one single intermediate form that could fill
the gap between man and the ape. To ignore that gap, he added, “ was as
uncalled-for as it was absurd.Ӡ
*
Professor Owen believes that these muscles — the attollens, retrahens,
and attrahens aurem — were actively functioning in men of the Stone Age.
This may or may not be the case. The question falls under the ordinary “
occult ” explanation, and involves no postulate of an “ animal
progenitor ” to solve it.
†
Quoted in the Review of the “ Introduction à l’Etude
des Races Humaines,” by de Quatrefages. We have not Mr.
Huxley’s work at hand to quote from. Or to cite another good authority :
— “ We find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon), in the
Finally,
the absurdity of such an unnatural descent of man is so palpable in the
face of all the proofs and evidence of the skull of the pithecoid as compared
to that of man, that even de Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our esoteric
theory by saying that it is rather the apes that can claim descent from man
than vice 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 being more and more spiritualized : whereas with the ape it is the
reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured,
while with age it becomes duller ; and, as its skull recedes and seems to
diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being
finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more room for
the animal type. The organ of thought — the brain — recedes and
diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast —
the jaw apparatus.
Thus,
as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla would have a perfect right to
address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from himself. It would
say to him, “ We, anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure from
the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are expressed by a
transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure of organism ; but in
what way could you, men, descend from us — how can you form a
continuation of our genus ? For, to make this possible, your organization would
have to differ still more than ours does from the human structure, it would
have to approach still closer to that of the beast than ours does ; and in such
a case justice demands that you should give up to us your place in nature. You
are lower than we are, once that you insist on tracing your genealogy from our
kind ; for the structure of our organization and its development are such that
we are unable to generate forms of a higher organization than our own.”
This
is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatre
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 cub. in., and that of the
chimpanzee only 25.45, the giant gap to be bridged by the
advocate of “ Natural ” Selection becomes apparent.
fages.
Owing to the very type of his development man cannot descend from either
an ape or an ancestor common to both, but shows his origin from a type far
superior to himself. And this type is the “ Heavenly man ” —
the Dhyan Chohans, or the Pitris so-called, as shown in the first Part
of this volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang, the
gorilla, and the chimpanzee can, and, as the Occult Sciences teach, do,
descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man
and an extinct species of mammal — whose remote ancestors were
themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality — which lived in the
Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the
Stanzas as originating in the sin of the “ Mind-less ” races of the
middle Third Race period.
When
it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the earth, are so many
variations on basic types originally thrown off by the MAN of the Third
and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the
“ unity of structural plan ” characterising all vertebrates, loses
its edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison
with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise ; but a
general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages.
The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly
opposed “ ground plans ” of organic evolution on one planet. Once,
however, that the general drift of the occult explanation is formulated,
inference as to detail may well be left to the intuitive reader.
Similarly
with the important question of the “ rudimentary ” organs
discovered by anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this line of
argument, when wielded by Darwin and 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
” — a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical
theory of natural selection. Criticising Darwin’s inference from “
rudiments,” an able writer remarks : “ Why is it not just as
probably a true hypothesis to suppose that Man was created with the
rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful
appendages in the lower animals into which man degenerated, as to suppose
that these parts existed in full development in the lower animals out of which
man was generated ? ” ( “ Creation or Evolution ? ” Geo. T.
Curtis, p. 76.)
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
l o wer 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 ;* 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,
*
“ 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 verte-brates. Even children are occasionally born
with an opening in the neck corresponding to one of the clefts.
—“
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 fætus is, at one
period, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every organ
useful to animal life is locked up in Man — the microcosm of the
Macrocosm — and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the
strange phenomena which Darwinists regard as “ reversion to ancestral
features.”* Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by
our present-day empiricists !
C
DARWINISM AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN : THE
ANTHROPOIDS AND THEIR ANCESTRY.
The
public has been notified by more than one eminent modern geologist and man of
science, that “ all estimate of geological duration is not merely impossible,
but necessarily imperfect ; for we are ignorant of the causes, though they must
have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentary
deposits.Ӡ And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll),
calculating that the tertiary age began either 15 or 212
million of years ago — the former being a more correct calculation,
according to Esoteric doctrine, than the latter
—there
seems in this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science,
refusing to see in man “ a special creation ” (to a certain degree
the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or
rather two-and-a-half Races — the Spiritual, the semi-astral,
and the
*
Those who with Hæckel regard the gill-clefts with their attendant
phenomena as illustrative of an active function in our amphibian and piscine
ancestors (Vide his
XI
I. and XI I I. stages), ought to explain why the “ Vegetable with
leaflets ” (Lefèvre) represented in fœtal growth, does
not appear in his 22 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.
“
Physiology,” Lefèvre, p. 480.
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.* The geologists of France place man in the mid-miocene age
(Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de
Quatrefages suggests ; while the English savants do not generally accept
such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For
“ If we consider,” says Sir Charles Lyell in “ Antiquity of
Man,” p. 246 —
“
the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata,
whether marine or fresh water, even in those formed in the immediate proximity
of land inhabited by millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the
general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent,
pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands
covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of
them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the chances,
after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them
must be infinitesimally small.”
The
men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement
concerning the age of man, as indeed they hardly could, and thus leave enormous
latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while the majority of the
Anthropologists carry back the existence of man only into the period of
the post-glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those
of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with that
of the monkey, do not show great consistency in their speculations. The
Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity for man, than
is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers. This is proven by the greatest
authorities on the question — Mr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore,
who accept the Darwinian evolution, ipso facto hold very tenaciously to
an antiquity
* We
confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E. Clodd’s
certain statement in Knowledge. Speaking of the men of Neolithic times,
“ concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given . . . a vivid and accurate
sketch,” and who are “ the direct ancestors of peoples of whom
remnants yet lurk in out-of-the-way corners of Europe, where they have been
squeezed or stranded,” he adds to this : “ but the men of
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.
of
man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of the
Occultist’s estimate.* The modest thousands of years of the 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 criticising the excellent average cranial capacity of
the Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with
“ pithecoid bony walls,” coupled with Mr. Grant Allen’s
assurances that this skull “ possesses large bosses on the forehead,
strikingly (?) suggestive of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce
appearance,Ӡ ( Fortnightly Review, 1882,) still Mr. Huxley
is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once more defeated by
the “ completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones,
together with the fair development of the Engis skull.” In consequence of
all this we are notified that those skulls, “ clearly indicate that the
first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded, need no longer
be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive
development in the newest Tertiaries ; but that they may be looked for in an
epoch more distant from the age of the ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS than that is
from us ”‡ (Huxley).
*
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 states (“ Man’s Place in Nature,” p. 159) that the most
liberal estimates for the antiquity of Man must be still further
extended.
†
The baselessness of this assertion, as well as that of many other exaggerations
of the imaginative Mr. Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent anatomist,
Pro-fessor R. Owen, in “ Longman’s Magazine,” No. 1. Must it
be repeated, moreover, that the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic type is superior
to a very large number of existing races ?
‡
It thus stands to reason that science would never dream of a pre-tertiary
man, and that de Quatrefages’ secondary man makes every
Academician and “ F.R.S.” faint with horror because, TO PRESERVE
THE APE-THEORY, SCIENCE MUST MAKE MAN POST-SECONDARY. This is just what de
Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the whole there
were more scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man from the
anthropoid. With this exception science has not one single valid argu
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 began to widen with every year the abyss that
now separates her from old Science, that of the Plinies and Hippocrateses, none
of whom would have derided the archaic teachings with respect to the evolution
of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist —
geologist or anthropologist — is sure to do.
Holding,
as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-human Fourth Round product, the
following diagram — as the writer understands the teaching — may
make the process clear : —
The
unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mammalian types
were not remote enough from their Root-type* — Primeval Astral
ment
to offer against the antiquity of man. But in this case modern Evolution
demands far more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary
period, for two very simple but good reasons : (a) No anthropoid ape has
been found before the Miocene period :
(b)
man’s flint relics have been traced to the Pliocene and their presence suspected,
if not accepted by all, in the Miocene strata. Again, where is the “
missing link ” in such case ? And how could even a Palæolithic
Savage, a “ Man of Canstadt,” evolve into thinking men from
the brute Dryopithecus of the Miocene in so short a time. One sees now
the reason why Darwin rejected the theory that only 60,000,000 years had
elapsed since the Cambrian period. “ He judges from the small amount of
organic changes since the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140 million
years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied
forms of life which certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian
period.” (Ch. Gould.)
*
Let us remember in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man
having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And
similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for
the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids
— apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a
resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires.
Man
— to develop the necessary barrier. Medical science records such cases of
monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even in our own day. The
possibility is, therefore, only one of degree, not of fact. Thus it is
that Occultism solves one of the strangest problems presented to the
consideration of the anthropologist.
The
pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated
herself from the shackles of theology, Science has embraced the opposite
fallacy ; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines,
she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages — the
derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine,
in one form or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be
needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology is the
incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of 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
was useful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races
resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters — the offspring of
human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms
consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were
modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated
in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans
renewed the sin of the “ Mindless ” — this time with full
responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now
known as Anthropoid.
It
may be useful to compare this very simple theory — and we are willing to
offer it even as a hypothesis to the unbelievers — with the Darwinian
scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of these
overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties
are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.
§ IV.
DURATION
OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
MILLIONS
of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of
the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to
the origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All
depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the
still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo
primigenius, then science may be right (argumenti causâ)
in basing its present anthropology — as to the date and mode of origin of
“ Homo sapiens ” — on the Darwinian theory.* But if the
skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but
no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid
— then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another
direction. And it is said in well-informed quarters that the XXth century will
be yet in its earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man’s
priority will be forthcoming.
Even
now evidence is brought forward that the dates for the foundations of cities,
civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed.
This was done as a peace-offering to Biblical chronology. “ No
date,” writes the well-known Palæontologist, Ed. Lartet, “ is
to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive
humanity ” ; but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to
force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one
hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of
“ Creation ” ; “ and between the extreme variations there is
a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning
of the world and the birth of Christ.† Within the last few years,
archæologists have had to throw back by nearly 3,000 years also the
beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the
It
may here be remarked that those Darwinians, who with Mr. Grant Allen, place our
“ hairy arboreal ” ancestors so far back as the Eocene Age,
are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil anthropoid ape — much
less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to Man and the Pithecoid —
appears in Eocene strata. The first presentment of an anthropoid ape is
Miocene.
†
Ed. Lartet, “ Nouvelles Recherches sur la co-existence de
l’homme et des Grands Mammitères Fossils de la dernière
période Géologique.” Annales des Soc. Nat.,
t.
XV., p. 256.
foundation
cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus
— are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his
discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the original temple built by
Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says
Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years before his own time.”
We
have shown in Isis that those who based history on the Jewish Chronology
(a race which had none of its own and rejected the Western till the XI Ith
century) would lose themselves, for the Jewish account could only be followed
through Kabalistic computation, and with a key to it in the hand. . . We had
characterised the late George Smith’s chronology of the Chaldeans and
Assyrians, made by him to fit in with that of Moses, as quite fantastic. And
now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our
denial. For, whereas G. Smith makes Sargon I. (the prototype of Moses in his
legend) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C. — probably out of a
latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 B.C. — we
now learn from the first of the six Hibbert lectures delivered by Professor A.
H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that : “ Old views of the early annals of
Babylonia and its religions have been much modified by recent discovery. The
first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who
established a great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests
across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as B.C.
3750.” “ The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must
be even older, reaching back to about
B.C.
4,000,” in other words, to the fourth year of the World’s creation
agreeably with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes.
Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The
well-known Oxford lecturer remarked during his disquisitions upon “ The
origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Babylonian Religion ”
that : “ The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and
history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our
knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being
obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact
that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the
religious texts in coils of almost insuperable difficulty.” That they
have confused the dates, and especially the order of events “
intentionally,” is undeniable, and for a very good reason : their
writings and records were all esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than
the Priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the
Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished
with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor Sayce’s remarks are
promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as — “ the
Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the
copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the
Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much
to the greatest of all our difficulties — namely, our being so often left
in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of
our materials for history.” Thus one has a right to infer that some still
fresher discovery may lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates
so far beyond the year 4,000 B.C., as to make them pre-Kosmic in the
judgment of every Bible worshipper.
How
much more would palæontology have learned had not millions of works been
destroyed ! We talk of the Alexandrian literary lore, which has been thrice
destroyed, namely, by Julius Cæsar B.C. 48, in
A.D.
390, and lastly in the year 640, A.D., by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is
this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive
Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned
skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters ? Or again the destruction of the
countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty,
Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C. ? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Imperial
Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections
could have never contained such information as one of the aforesaid “
Atlantean ” skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But
even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the
necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite
generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at
Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary
with the fourth dynasty in Egypt. Unfortunately, dynasties and Pyramids have
the fate of geological periods ; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the
respective whims of the men of science. Archæologists know now, it is
said, that the aforementioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that
can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai ; and “ they accord in the
style of art, and in the standard of measurement employed, with the similar
diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian
dynasties. . . . . Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian
occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of
the epoch at which the pyramids were built ; and thus only can we understand
how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive
Babylonian moon-god.” This is very logical, but what is the date fixed
for these “ dynasties ” ? Sanchoniathon’s and Manetho’s
Synchronistic tables and their figures have been rejected, or whatever remained
of these after holy Eusebius’ handling of them ; and still we have to
remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years B.C. so liberally
allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city
on the face of the earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is
Eridu. Geology has found it out. According to Professor Sayce again, —
“
They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the
Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the
period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth
of the Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and
India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of
eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called ‘ The
Observations of Bel ’ ; and we are also enabled to understand the
otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox, which has
occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the Earliest Babylonian
astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian months
were named, the sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even
in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being
known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus from about
4,700 years B.C., and we thus obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot
be impugned.”*
It
may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir
C.
Lyell’s nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of
the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods
— this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages
and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, 212
and 15 million years being assigned at different times to one and the same age
(the Tertiary) — and since no two geologists and naturalists seem to
agree on this point — Esoteric teachings may remain quite indifferent to
whether man is shown to appear in the Secondary or the Tertiary age. If the
latter age may be allowed even so much as 15 million years’ duration
— well and good ; for the Occult doctrine, jealously guarding its real
and correct figures as far as concerns the First, Second, and two-thirds of the
Third Root-Race — gives clear information upon one point only — the
age of “ Vaivasvata Manu’s humanity.” ( Vide Part I., Vol.
I I., “ Chronology of the Brahmins.” )
Another
definite statement is this : It is during the so-called Eocene period that the
continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and
perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking. And it was in the Miocene age,
that it was finally destroyed — save the little island mentioned by
Plato. It is these points that have to be checked by the scientific data.
*
From a Report of the “ Hibbert Lectures, 1887. Lectures on
the Origin and Growth of Religion, and Illustrated by the Religion of the
Ancient Babylonians.” By
A.
H. Sayce. (London : Williams and Norgate.)
A.
MODERN SCIENTIFIC SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE
AGES OF THE GLOBE,
ANIMAL EVOLUTION, AND MAN.
May
we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of Specialists ? The work on
“ Comparative Geology : the World-Life,” by Prof. A. Winchell,
furnishes us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the Nebular theory,
a reverend gentleman, smiting with all the force of the hammer of his odium
theologicum on the rather contradictory hypothesis of the great
stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and cosmical phenomena based on
their respective relations to terrestrial durations. The “ too
imaginative physicists and naturalists ” do not fare very easily under
this shower of their own speculative figures when placed side by side, and cut
rather a sorry figure. Thus he shows : —
“
Sir William Thomson, on the basis of the observed principles of cooling,
concludes that no more than ten million years (elsewhere he makes it
100,000,000) can have elapsed since the temperature of the Earth was
sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable life.* Helmholz calculates that
twenty million years would suffice for the original nebula to condense to the
present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only ten millions to
attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.† Croll estimates seventy
million years for the diffusion of the heat, etc.‡ Bischof calculates
that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a
temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Read, basing his estimate on
observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million years since sedimentation
began in Europe.§ Lyell ventured a rough guess of 240 million years ;
Darwin thought 300 million years demanded by the organic transformations which
his theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand a 1,000 millions
” (! !).
To
this Prof. Winchell observes that “ some biologists . . . . seem to close
their eyes tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years, of which
they have no more adequate estimate than of infinity.”|| Then he proceeds
to give what he takes to be more correct geological figures : a few will
suffice.
According
to Sir W. Thomson “ the whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000
years ” ; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton’s calculations of a
minimum limit for the time since the elevation of
* Nat.
Philos. App. D., Trans. Royal Soc., Edin.
†
“ Popular Astronomy,” p. 509.
‡
“ Climate and Time,” p. 335. § Read. Address, “
Liverpool Geolog. Society, 1876.” || “ World-Life,” p. 180.
Europe
and Asia, three hypothetical ages for three possible and different modes
of upheaval are given : varying from the modest figures of 640,730 years,
through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous figures of 27, 491,000 years ! !
This
is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four continents
and even the figures of the Brahmins.
Further
calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof.
Winchell’s work,* bring Houghton to an approximation of the sedimentary
age of the globe — 11,700,000 years. These figures are found too small by
the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
Again,
according to Croll,† 2,500,000 years “ represents the time since
the beginning of the Tertiary age ” in one work ; and according to
another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the
beginning of the Eocene period ; ‡ which, being the first of the three
Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between 212
and 15 millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, then
the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 years.§
As
the last glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago (Prof.
Croll’s view), therefore, man must have appeared on earth from 100 to
120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell, with reference to the antiquity
of the Mediterranean race, “ it is generally believed to have made its
appearance during the later decline of the continenta glaciers.” Yet, he
adds, this “ does not concern, however, the antiquity of the Black and
Brown races, since there are numerous evidences of their existence in more
southern regions, in times remotely pre-glacial ” (p. 379).
As a
specimen of geological certainty and agreement, these figures also may
be added. Three authorities — Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S. ; J. Croll, F.R.S.
; and Robert Hunt, F.R.S., — in estimating the time that has elapsed
since the Glacial epoch, give absolutely different figures,
|
namely : — |
||||||
|
Mr. Belt |
… |
… |
… |
… |
20,000 years. |
|
|
Mr. J. Croll … |
… |
… |
… |
240,000 |
„ |
|
|
Mr. R. Hunt |
… |
… |
… |
80,000 |
„ |
|
*
“ World-Life,” pp. 367-8.
†
“ Climate and Time.”
‡
Quoted in Mr. Ch. Gould’s “ Mythical Monsters,” p. 84.
§
According to Bischof, 1,004,177 years — according to Chevandier’s
calculations 672,788 years — were required for the so-called coal
formation. “ The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet in thickness,
required for their development about 350,000 years.” See “ Force
and Matter,” Büchner, J. F. Collingwood’s edition.
(But
see “ The Ice-Age Climate and Time,” Popular Science Review,
Vol. xiv., p. 242.)
No
wonder if Mr. Pengelly confesses that “ it is at present and perhaps
always will be IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even approximately, geological time
into years or even into millenniums ” ( Vide supra,
foot-note). A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen
geologists : they ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As
chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their
“ 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 to “ Selection,” and thinks “ natural selection not
the sole factor ” : —
“
We greatly suspect that she (Nature) does make considerable jumps in the way of
variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps
which appear to exist in the series of known forms ” (Review of
Kölliker’s Criticisms).
Again,
in “ Fallacies of Darwinism,” (p. 160), C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in
this wise in considering the fatal gaps in Mr. Darwin’s theory : —
“
It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must have been vast
in numbers. . . . . Mr. St. George Mivart believes that change in evolution
may occur more quickly than is generally believed ; but Mr. Darwin sticks
manfully to his belief, and again tells us ‘ natura non facit saltum ’
” — wherein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.
Esoteric
teaching fully corroborates the idea of nature’s slowness and dignified
progression. “ Planetary impulses ” are all periodical. Yet this
Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more with
Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his “ Contributions to the
Theory of Natural Selection,” shows pretty conclusively that something more
than “ natural selection ” was requisite to produce physical man.
Let
us, meanwhile, examine the scientific objections to this scientific
theory, and see what they are.
Mr.
St. George Mivart is found arguing that —
. .
. . “ . . . . it will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for
the deposition of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian. If,
then,
the evolutionary work done during this deposition only represents a hundredth
part of the sum total, we shall require 2,500,000,000 years for the complete
development of the whole animal Kingdom to its present state. Even one
quarter of this, however, would far exceed the time which physics and astronomy
seem able to allow for the completion of this process. Finally, a difficulty
exists as to the reason of the absence of rich fossiliferous deposits in the
oldest strata — if life was then as abundant and varied, as on the
Darwinian theory it must have been. Mr. Darwin himself admits ‘ the case
at present must remain inexplicable ’ ; and this may be truly urged as a
valid argument against the views entertained in his own work. . . . .
“
Thus, then, we find a wonderful (and on Darwinian principles all but
inexplicable) absence of minutely transitional forms. All the most marked
groups . . . . . appear at once upon the scene. Even the horse, the
animal whose pedigree has been probably best preserved, affords no conclusive
evidence of specific origin by infinitesimal fortuitous variations ; while some
forms, as the labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual
change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the sort. . . . All
these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new forms of animal life of all
degrees of complexity appear from time to time with comparative suddenness,
being evolved according to laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in
part internal— similar to the way in which crystals (and perhaps from
recent researches the lowest forms of life) build themselves up according to
the internal laws of their component substance and in harmony and
correspondence with all environing influences and conditions.” (“ Genesis
of Species,” p. 142.)
“
The internal laws of their component substance.” These are wise words,
and the admission of the possibility, a prudent one. But how can these internal
laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching is discarded ? As a friend
writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations : “ In
other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life-Impulses must be admitted.
Otherwise, why are species now stereotyped, and why do even domesticated
breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into their ancestral types when left
to themselves ? ” But the teaching about planetary life-impulses has to
be clearly defined and as clearly understood if present confusion would not be
made still more perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows
of night disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following
esoteric axioms were admitted : (a) the enormous antiquity (and the
existence) of our planetary chain ; (b) the actuality of the Seven
Rounds ; (c) the separation of human races (outside the purely
anthropological division) into Seven distinct Root-Races, of which our present
European Humanity is the fifth ; (d) the antiquity of Man in this
(Fourth) Round ; and finally (e) that as these Races evolve from
ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into relative
physical tenuity of texture, so every living (so-called) organic species
of animals with vegetation included, changes with every new Root-Race. Were
this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer
consideration, no less absurd, suppositions, if Occult theories have to
be considered “ absurd ” at present, then every difficulty would be
made away with. Surely, Science ought to try and be more logical than it
now is, as it can hardly maintain the theory of man’s descent from an
anthropoidal ancestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to
that man ! Once Mr. Huxley talks of “ the vast intellectual chasm between
the man and ape,” and “ the present enormous gulf between the
two,”* and if he admits the necessity of extending Scientific allowances
for the age of man on earth for such slow and progressive development, then all
those men of Science, who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to
come to some approximate figures, at least, and agree upon the probable
duration of those Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is
said, and about which nothing definite is known — if they dare not
venture beyond. But no two scientists seem to agree. Every period seems
to be a mystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the geologists ;
and, as just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with
regard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no reliance can
be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with them it is all
either millions or simply thousands of years !
That
which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by themselves and the
synopsis of it, found in that “ Circle of Sciences,” the 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 ; nevertheless, we find in it the refusal to assign any
definite chronological date, even to such, comparatively speaking, late epochs
as the Neolithic era, though, for a wonder, an age is established for the
beginnings of certain geological periods ; at any rate of some few, the
duration of which could hardly be shortened any more, without an immediate
conflict with facts.
Thus,
it is surmised in the great Encyclopædia (Vol. X., art. “
Geology,”
p.
227), that “ 100 million years have passed . . . . . since the
solidification of our Earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon
it.† ”
But
it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and
Ethnologists as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their mistakes.
About the Aryan Root-Race and its origins,
*
“ Man’s Place in Nature,” p. 102, note.
†
“ 100,000,000 of years is probably amply sufficient for all the
requirements of Geology,” says the text. In France, some savants
do not find it nearly “ sufficient.” Le Couturier claims for the
same 350 million years ; Buffon was satisfied with 34 mil-lions — but there
are those in the more modern schools who will not be content under 500 million
years.
Science
knows as little as of the men from other planets. With the exception of
Flammarion and a few mystics among astronomers, even the habitableness of other
planets is mostly denied. Yet such great adept astronomers were the Scientists
of the earliest races of the Aryan stock, that they seem to have known far more
about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern Anthropologist knows of those
of the early stages of the Earth.
Let
us leave modern Science aside for a moment and turn to ancient knowledge. As we
are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such geological cataclysms —
from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting of continents, down to the
present year’s cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
tidal waves, and even the extraordinary weather and seeming shifting of seasons
which perplexes all European and American meteorologists — are due to,
and depend on the moon and planets ; aye, that even modest and neglected
constellations have the greatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical
changes, over, and within our earth, let us give one moment’s attention
to our sidereal despots and rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies
any such influence ; archaic Science affirms it. We may see what both say with
regard to this question.
B.
ON CHAINS OF PLANETS AND THEIR
PLURALITY.
Did
the Ancients know of worlds besides their own ? What are the data of the
Occultists in affirming that every globe is a septenary chain of worlds —
of which only one member is visible — and that these are, were, or will
be, “ man-bearing,” just as every visible star or planet is ? What
do they mean by “ a moral and physical influence ” of the sidereal
worlds on our globes ?
Such
are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered from every
aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is : — We believe it
because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and the second
— analogy. “ As above, so below.” That time is gone by for
ever, when, although our pious ancestors believed that our earth was in the
centre of the universe, the church and her arrogant servants could insist that
we should regard as a blasphemy the supposition that any other planet could be
inhabited. Adam and Eve, the Serpent, and the Original Sin followed by
atonement through blood, have been too long in the way, and thus was universal
truth sacrificed to the insane conceit of us little men.
Now
what are the proofs thereof ? Except inferential evidence and logical
reasoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe in
the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates, the
data offered in the Secret Books are all-sufficient. The general public needs
other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists and even some Eastern
Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this point in all the
mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the teaching. Even such “
uniform evidence ” will be forthcoming presently. Meanwhile, we may
approach the subject from its general aspect, and see whether belief in it is
so very absurd, as some scientists along with other Nicodemuses would have it.
Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a plurality of inhabited “ Worlds,”
we imagine them to be like the globe we inhabit and peopled by beings more or
less resembling ourselves. And in so doing we are only following a natural
instinct. Indeed, so long as the enquiry is confined to the life-history of
this globe we can speculate on this question with some profit, and ask
ourselves what were the “ Worlds ” spoken of in all the
ancient scriptures of Humanity, with some hope of at least asking an
intelligible question. But how do we know (a) what kind of Beings
inhabit the globes in general ; and (b) whether those who rule
planets superior to our own, do not exercise the same influence on our earth consciously,
that we may exercise unconsciously —say on the small planets
(planetoids or asteroids) in the long run, by our cutting the Earth to pieces,
opening canals, and thereby entirely changing our climates. Of course, like
Cæsar’s wife, the planetoids cannot be affected by our
suspicion. They are too far, etc., etc. Believing in esoteric astronomy,
however, we are not so sure of that.
But
when, extending our speculations beyond our planetary chain, we try to cross
the limits of the solar system, then indeed we act as do presumptuous fools.
For — while accepting the old Hermetic axiom : “ As above, so below
” — we may well believe that as Nature on Earth displays the most
careful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous
transformations, and withal never repeating herself — we may
justly conclude that there is no other globe in all her infinite systems so
closely resembling this earth that the ordinary powers should be able to
imagine and reproduce its semblance and containment.*
* We
are taught that the highest Dhyan Chohans, or Planetary Spirits (beyond the
cognizance of the law of analogy), are in ignorance of what lies beyond the
visible planetary systems, since their essence cannot assimilate itself to that
of worlds beyond our solar system. When they reach a higher stage of evolution
these other universes will be open to them ; meanwhile they have complete
knowledge of all the worlds within and beneath the limits of our solar system.
And
indeed we find in the romances as in all the so-called scientific fictions and
spiritistic revelations from moon, stars, and planets, merely fresh
combinations or modifications of the men and things, the passions and forms of
life with which we are familiar, when even on the other planets of our own
system nature and life are entirely different from ours. Swedenborg was
pre-eminent in inculcating such an erroneous belief.
But
even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of consciousness
other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men dream ; they sleep
the profound sleep which is too deep for dreams to impress the physical brain ;
and in these states there must still be consciousness. How, then, while these
mysteries remain unexplored, can we hope to speculate with profit on the
nature of globes which, in the economy of nature, must needs belong to states
of consciousness other and quite different from any which man
experiences here ?
And
this is true to the letter. For even great adepts (those initiated of course),
trained seers though they are, can claim thorough acquaintance with the nature
and appearance of planets and their inhabitants belonging to our solar system
only. They know that almost all the planetary worlds are inhabited, but
can have access to
—even
in spirit — only those of our system ; and they are also aware how
difficult it is, even for them, to put themselves into full rapport even
with the planes of consciousness within our system, but differing from
the states of consciousness possible on this globe ; i.e., on the three
planes of the chain of spheres beyond our earth. Such knowledge and intercourse
are possible to them because they have learned how to penetrate to planes of
consciousness which are closed to the perceptions of ordinary men ; but were
they to communicate their knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because it
lacks that experience of other forms of perception which alone could enable
them to grasp what was told them.
Still
the fact remains that most of the planets, as the stars beyond our system, are
inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of science themselves. Laplace
and Herschell believed it, though they wisely abstained from imprudent
speculation ; and the same conclusion has been worked out and supported with an
array of scientific considerations by C. Flammarion, the well-known French
Astronomer. The arguments he brings forward are strictly scientific, and such
as to appeal even to a materialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such
thoughts as those of Sir David Brewster, the famous physicist, who writes :
—
“
Those ‘ barren spirits ’ or ‘ base souls,’ as the poet
calls them, who might be led to believe that the Earth is the only inhabited
body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the earth also to
have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if such minds were acquainted
with the deductions of geology, they would admit that it was uninhabited for
myriads of years ; and here we come to the impossible conclusion that during
these myriads of years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast
domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic formations there
existed neither plant nor animal in all the infinity of space ” !*
Flammarion
shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life — even as we
know it — are present on some at least of the planets, and points to the
fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than they are
on our Earth.
Thus
scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concur with the statements of
the seer and the innate voice in man’s own heart in declaring that life
— intelligent, conscious life — must exist on other worlds
than ours.
But
this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot carry him.
Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others bristling with
scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and describe life on
other globes. But one and all, they give but some distorted copy of the drama
of life around us. It is either, with Voltaire, the men of our own race under a
microscope, or, with de Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire ; but we
always find that at bottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in.
So strong is this tendency that even great natural, though non-initiated seers,
when untrained, fall a victim to it ; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to
dress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit-world, in
clothes such as are worn in Europe.
Commenting
on this tendency, Flammarion in his work “ Sur la Pluralité des
Mondes habités,” 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.
*
Since no single atom in the entire Kosmos is without life and consciousness,
how much more then its mighty globes ? — though they remain sealed books
to us men who can hardly enter even into the consciousness of the forms of life
nearest us ?
We
do not know ourselves, then how can we, if we have never been trained to
it and initiated, fancy that we can penetrate the consciousness of the smallest
of the animals around us ?
Those
who have written on this subject have allowed themselves to be dominated by
terrestrial ideas, and fell therefore into error.” (“ Pluralité
des Mondes,” p. 439.)
But
Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns, for he
tacitly takes the conditions of life on earth as the standard by which to
determine the degree to which other planets are adapted for habitation by
“ other Humanities.”
Let
us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which, though they
seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to enlarge our mental and
spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a factitious stimulation, and blind us
more and more to our ignorance not only of the world we inhabit, but even of
the infinitude contained within ourselves.
When,
therefore, we find in the Bibles of Humanity “ other worlds ”
spoken of, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states of
our planetary chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited globes — stars
and planets ; withal, that the latter were never speculated upon. The whole of
antiquity believed in the Universality of life. But no really initiated seer of
any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other stars could be judged
by the standard of terrestrial life. That which is generally meant by “
earths ” and worlds, relates (a) to the “ rebirths ”
of our globe after each manvantara and a long period of “ obscuration
” ; and (b) to the periodical and entire changes of the
Earth’s surface, when Continents disappear, to make room for Oceans, and
Oceans and Seas are violently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede
their emplacements to new Continents.
We
may begin with the Bible — the youngest of the World-Scriptures. In Ecclesiastes,
chap. i., we read these words of the King-Initiate : — “ One generation
passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for
ever,” and again, “ The thing that hath been, it is that
which shall be ; and that which is done, is that which shall be done,
and there is no new thing under the sun.” Under these words it is not
easy to see the reference to the successive cataclysms by which the Races of
mankind are swept away, or, going further back, to the various transitions of
the globe during the process of its formation. But if we are told that this
refers only to our world as we now see it,—then we
shall refer the reader to the New Testament, where St. Paul speaks (in Hebrews
i.) of the Son (the manifested Power) whom (God) hath appointed heir of all
things, by whom also he made the worlds (plural.)*
*
This relates to the Logos of every Cosmogony. The unknown Light
— with which he is said to be co-eternal and coeval — is reflected
in the “ First-Born,” the Protogonos ;
This
“ Power ” is Hokhmah or (Chochmah) the Wisdom and the Word. We
shall probably be told that by this term “ worlds,” the stars,
heavenly bodies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that “ stars
” were not known as “ worlds ” to the ignorant editors of the
Epistles, if even they must have been known to Paul, who was an Initiate
(“ a Master-Builder ”), we can quote on this point an eminent
theologian, Cardinal Wiseman. In Vol. 1, p. 309, of his work treating of the
indefinite period of the six days — or shall we say “ too definite
”
—period
of the six days of creation and the 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in
total darkness upon the meaning of that statement of St. Paul, unless we are
permitted to suppose that allusion is made in it, i.e., the period which
elapsed between the first and second verses of chapter i. of Genesis
—to those primitive revolutions, i.e., the destructions and
the re-productions (of the world) indicated in chapter i. of Ecclesiastes ;
or, to accept, with so many others, and in its literal sense, the
passage (Hebrews i. 1,) that speaks of the creation of worlds —
in plural. . . . . It is very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies
should agree to suggest the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first
series of revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again
renewed.
Had
the Cardinal studied the Zohar his doubts would have changed to
certitude. Thus saith Idra Suta (in the “ Zohar,” iii., 292,
c.) : “ There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into existence
; worlds with and without form called Scintillas —for they were
like the sparks under the smith’s hammer, flying in all directions. Some
were the primordial worlds which could not continue long, because the ‘
aged ’
—his
name be sanctified — had not as yet assumed his form,* the workman was
not yet the ‘ Heavenly man.’ ”† Again in the Midrash,
written long before the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai, Rabbi Abahu
explains : — “ The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively
formed and destroyed sundry worlds before this one‡ . . . Now this refers
both to the first races (the “ Kings of Edom ”) and to to the
worlds destroyed.” § “ Destroyed ” means here
what we call
and
the Demiurgos or the Universal Mind directs his Divine Thought into the Chaos
that under the fashioning of minor gods will be divided into the seven oceans
— Sapta samudras. It is Purusha, Ahura Mazda, Osiris, etc., and
finally the gnostic Christos, who is in the Kabala, Hokhmah or Wisdom
the “ Word.”
*
The form of Tikkun or the Protogonos, the “
first-born,” i.e., the universal form and idea, had not yet been
mirrored in Chaos.
†
The “ Heavenly man ” is Adam Kadmon — the synthesis of the
Sephiroth, as “ Manu Swayambhûva ” is the synthesis of the
Prajâpatis.
‡
Bereshith Rabba, Parsha IX. § This refers to the three Rounds that
preceded our fourth Round.
“
obscurations.” This becomes evident when one reads further on the
explanation given : — “ Still when it is said that they (the
worlds) perished, it is only meant thereby that they (their humanities)
lacked the true form, till the human (our) form came into being, in which all
things are comprised and which contains all forms. . . .* — it
does not mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their
status . . . ” (that of worlds in activity).†
When,
therefore, we read of the destruction of the worlds, this word has many
meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the Zohar
and Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only the destruction
of many worlds which have ended their life-career, but also that of the several
continents which have disappeared, as also their decline and geographical
change of place.
The
mysterious “ Kings of Edom ” are sometimes referred to as the
“ Worlds ” that had been destroyed ; but it is a “
cloak.” The Kings who reigned in Edom before there reigned a King in
Israel, or the “ Edomite Kings,” could never symbolize the “
prior worlds,” but only the “ attempts at men ” on this globe
: the “ pre-Adamite races,” of which the Zohar speaks, and which we
explain as the First Root-Race. For, as, speaking of the six Earths (the
six “ limbs ” of Microprosopus) it is said that the Seventh (our
Earth) came not into the computation when the Six were created (the six spheres
above our globe in the terrestrial chain), so the first seven Kings of Edom are
left out of calculation in Genesis. By the law of analogy and permutation, in
the “ Chaldean Book of Numbers,” as also in the “ Books of
Knowledge ” and of “ Wisdom,” the “ seven primordial
worlds ” mean also the “ seven primordial ” races (sub-races
of the First Root-Race of the Shadows) ; and, again, the Kings of Edom
are the sons of “ Esau the father of the Edomites ” (Gen. xxxvi.
43) ; i.e., Esau represents in the Bible the race which stands between
the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the Aryan. “ Two nations
are in thy womb,” saith the Lord to Rebekah ; and Esau was red and
hairy. From verse 24 to 34, ch. xxv. of Genesis contains the
allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.
“
And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs (crowns) were found no
more,” says Siphrah Dzenioutha (3). . . . “ The Head of a
nation that has not been formed at the beginning in the likeness of the
*
This sentence contains a dual sense and a profound mystery in the occult
sciences the secret of which if, and when, known — confers
tremendous powers on the Adept to change his visible form.
†
Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 136, c. “ A sinking down from their status
” — is plain ; from active worlds they have fallen into a temporary
obscuration — they rest, and hence are entirely changed.
White
Head : its people is not from this Form,” states the Zohar (iii.).
. . . “ Before it (the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of the Ancients)
arranged itself in its (own, or present) Form . . . all worlds have been
destroyed ; therefore it is written : And Bela, the Son of Beor, reigned in
Edom ” (Gen. xxxvi.). Here the “ worlds ” stand for races.
“ And he (such or another King of Edom) died, and another reigned in his
stead ” (ibid 31 et seq.).
No
Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden under
these “ Kings of Edom ” seems to have perceived more than one
aspect of it. They are neither the “ worlds that were destroyed,”
nor the “ Kings that died ” — alone ; but both, and much
more, to treat of which there is no space at present. Therefore, leaving the
mystic parables of the Zohar, we will return to the hard facts of
materialistic science ; first, however, citing a few from the long list of
great thinkers who have believed in the plurality of inhabited worlds in
general, and in worlds that preceded our own. These are, the great
mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Isaac Newton himself, as can be read in
his “ Optics ” ; Buffon, the naturalist ; Condillac, the sceptic ;
Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last
named — suspected at least of mysticism — Diderot and most of the
writers of the Encyclopædia. Following these come Kant, the founder of
modern philosophy ; the poet philosophers, Goethe, Krause, Schelling ; and many
astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and Herschell to Lalande and Laplace, with
their many disciples in more recent years.
A
brilliant list of honoured names indeed ; but the facts of physical astronomy
speak even more strongly in favour of the presence of life, even organised
life, on other planets. Thus in four meteorites which fell respectively at
Alais in France, the Cape of Good Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, there
was found, on analysis, graphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably
associated with organic life on this earth of ours. And that the presence of
this carbon is not due to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown
by the fact that carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite ;
while in one which fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was
found water and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of
vegetable substances.
And
further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other planets, it is easy
to show that several are far better adapted for the development of life and
intelligence — even under the conditions with which men are acquainted
— than is our earth. For instance, on the planet Jupiter the seasons,
instead of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by almost
imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times as long as ours. Owing to the
inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost entirely to the eccentricity
of its orbit, and hence change slowly and regularly. We shall be told, that no
life is possible on Jupiter, as it is in an incandescent state. But not all
astronomers agree with this. For instance what we say, is said by M. Flammarion
: and he ought to know.
On
the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as exists on
earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of temperature more
sudden ; though it is curious that the duration of the day is nearly the
same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars.
On
Mercury, the Sun’s heat and light are seven times what they are on the
Earth, and astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense atmosphere.
And as we see that life appears more active on earth in proportion to the light
and heat of the sun, it would seem more than probable that its intensity is
far, far greater on Mercury than here.
Venus,
like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars and the snows which
cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, the geographical
configuration of their seas and continents, the variations of seasons and
climates, are all closely analogous — at least to the eye of the physical
astronomer. But such facts and the considerations to which they give rise, have
reference only to the possibility of the existence on these planets of human
life as known on earth. That some forms of life such as we know are possible
on these planets, has been long since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems
perfectly useless to go into detailed questions of the physiology, etc., etc.,
of these hypothetical inhabitants, since after all the reader can arrive only
at an imaginary extension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest
content with the three conclusions which M. C. Flammarion, whom we have so
largely quoted, formulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known facts
and laws of science.
I.
The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave birth
to a great variety of beings on the several worlds ; both in the organic and
inorganic kingdoms.
a.
I I. The animated beings were constituted from the first
according to forms and organisms in correlation with the physiological state of
each inhabited globe.
b.
I I I. 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 such grounds.
In
this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of the
Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the earth’s rotundity, on the
ground that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of salvation
; and again how long it took for a nascent science to break down the idea of a
solid firmament, in whose grooves the stars moved for the special edification
of terrestrial humanity.
The
theory of the earth’s rotation was met by a like opposition — even
to the martyrdom of its discoverers — because, besides depriving our orb
of its dignified central position in space, this theory produced an appalling
confusion of ideas as to the Ascension — the terms “ up ” and
“ down ” being proved to be merely relative, thus complicating not
a little the question of the precise locality of heaven.*
According
to the best modern calculations, there are no less than 500,000,000 of stars of
various magnitudes, within the range of the best telescopes. As to the
distances between them, they are incalculable. Is, then, our microscopical
Earth — a “ grain of sand on an infinite sea-shore ” —
the only centre of intelligent life ? Our own Sun, itself 1,300 times larger
than our planet, sinks into insignificance beside that giant Sun —
Sirius, — and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in
infinite Space. The self-centred conception of Jehovah as the special guardian
of a small and obscure semi-nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside that which
confines sentient existence to our microscopical globe. The primary reasons
were without doubt : (1) Astronomical ignorance on the part of the early
Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of man’s own
importance — a crude form of selfishness ; and (2) the dread that, if the
hypothesis of millions of other inhabited globes was accepted, the crushing
rejoinder would ensue — “ Was there then a Revelation to each world
? ” involving the idea of the Son of God eternally “ going the
rounds ” as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and
energy in proving the possibility of the existence of such worlds. All
intelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated is,
that if it is once proven that there are inhabited worlds besides our own with
humanities entirely different from each other as from our own — as
maintained in the Occult
* In
that learned and witty work, “ God and his Book,” by the
redoubtable “ Saladin ” of Agnostic repute, the amusing calculation
that, if Christ had ascended with the rapidity of a cannon ball, he would not
have reached even Sirius yet, reminds one vividly of the past. It raises,
perhaps, a not ill-founded suspicion that even our age of scientific
enlightenment may be as grossly absurd in its materialistic negations, as the
men of the middle ages were absurd and materialistic in their religious
affirmations.
Sciences
— then the evolution of the preceding races is half proved. For where is
that physicist or geologist who is prepared to maintain that the Earth has not
changed scores of times, in the millions of years which have elapsed in the
course of its existence ; and changing its “ skin,” as it is called
in Occultism, that the Earth has not had each time her special humanities
adapted to such atmospheric and climatic conditions as were entailed. And if
so, why should not our preceding four and entirely different mankinds have
existed and thrived before our Adamic (Fifth Root) Race ?
Before
closing our debates, however, we have to examine the so-called organic
evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is quite
impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree up to a certain point
with those of Science.
C.
SUPPLEMENTARY
REMARKS ON ESOTERIC GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY.
It
seems, however, possible to calculate the approximate duration of the
geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before
us. Geology is, of course, able to determine almost with certainty one thing
— the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to reason
that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea-bottom must
bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless
the rate of erosion of land and the sorting out of matter on to ocean
beds has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds break
the “ uniformity ” of ordinary geological processes. Provided,
however, we have some definite numerical basis on which to work,
our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear to be.
Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit, Professor
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 70,000ft., the Primary 42,000ft., the Secondary 15,000ft.,
the Tertiary 5,000ft., and the Quaternary some 500ft. in thickness : —
“
Dividing into an hundred parts the time, whatever its actual length,
that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth (lower Laurentian strata),
we shall be led to attribute to the primordial age more than half of the whole
duration, say 53.5 ; to the Primary 32.2 ; to the
Secondary 11.5 ; to the Tertiary 2.3 ; to the Quaternary
0.5 or one-half per cent.” (“ Philosophy,” p.
481.)
Now,
as it is certain, on occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the
first sedimentary deposits = 320,000,000 years, we are able to infer
that the : —
ROUGH
APPROXIMATIONS.
Laurentian.
. . …………… Primordial Cambrian
……………… lasted 171,200,000 yrs. Silurian
………………… Devonian
……………… Primary Coal. . .
…………………… „ 103,040,000
„ Permian ………………… Triassic
………………… Secondary Jurassic
………………… „ 36,800,000 „
Cretaceous ……………… Eocene
…………………
„
7,360,000 „Tertiary Miocene
…………………
(probably
in excess).
Pliocene
………………… „ 1,600,000 „
Quaternary
... …………………………
(probably
in excess).
Such
estimates harmonise with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every
particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part-cycle, from the “ apex of
glory ” of that Race in the early Eocene to the great mid-Miocene
cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some 312 to
four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not rather (as seems
likely) overestimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be post-Tertiary.
It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too long a period to
both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very far back
into the Secondary Age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.
But
the argument from geological evidence being only in favour of
100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of
exact science.
Mr.
Edward Clodd,* in reviewing M. de Mortillet’s work “ Materiaux
pour l’Histoire de l’Homme,” which places man in
the mid-Miocene period,† remarks that “ it would be in defiance of
all that the doctrine of evolu
* Knowledge,
March 31, 1882.
†
And who yet, 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 incon-sistent, if not naïf in his views.
tion
teaches, and moreover, win no support from believers in special creation and
the fixity of species, to seek for so highly specialized a mammalian as man at
an early stage in the life-history of the globe.” To this, one could
answer : (a) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated by Darwin and
developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of infallible,
but it is repudiated by several great men of science, e.g., de
Quatrefages, in France, and Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany,
and many others, the ranks of the anti-Darwinists growing stronger with
every year ;* and (b) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth
and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were it
to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain
the favour of the evolutionists, and vice versâ. Truth must rest
upon its own firm foundations of facts, and take its chances for recognition,
when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been
already fully considered in its main aspects, it is, nevertheless, advisable to
combat every so-called “ scientific ” objection as we go
along, when making what are regarded as heretical and “ anti-scientific
” statements.
Let
us briefly glance at the divergences between orthodox and esoteric science, on
the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic
tables before him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance
of these divergences ; and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not
impossible — nay, it is most likely — that further discoveries in
geology and the finding of fossil remains of man will force science to confess
that it is esoteric philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate,
nearer to the truth.
PARALLELISM OF LIFE.
SCIENTIFIC
HYPOTHESES. ESOTERIC THEORY. Science divides the period of the Leaving the classification
of the globe’s history, since the beginning of geological periods to
Western Science, life on earth (or the Azoic age), into esoteric philosophy
divides only the five main divisions or periods, accord-life-periods on the
globe. In the preing to Hæckel.† sent 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
——
*
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.
†
History of Creation, p. 20.
Laurentian
System
PRIMORDIAL
Cambrian
„
Epoch
Silurian
„ The Primordial Epoch is, science tells us, by no means devoid of
vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of
the Eozoon Canadense — a chambered shell. In the Silurian are
discovered sea-weeds (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., 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 ?
Deva or Divine men, “ PRIMEVAL” *the “
Creators ” and Progenitors.†
The
Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by science (see parallel
column), demurring, however, in one particular. The 300,000,000 years of
vegetable life (see “ Brahminical Chronology ”) preceded the
“ Divine Men,” or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that there
were traces of life within the Earth besides the Eozoon Canadense in
the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation belonged to this Round,
the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian
systems, so called, are the relics of the Third Round. At first astral
like the rest, they consolidated and materialized pari passu with the
NEW vegetation.
Devonian‡
PRIMARY Coal “ PRIMARY ”
Permian
� �������������������
Divine
Progenitors, SECONDARY GROUPS, and the 212 races. “
Fern-forests, Sigillaria, Coniferæ, fishes, first trace of
reptiles.” Thus saith modern science ; the esoteric doctrine repeats that
which was
said above. These
are
all relics of the preceding Round.§
Once,however,
the prototypes are projected out of the astral envelope of the earth, an
indefinite amount of modification ensues.
*
The same names are retained as those given by science, to make the parallels
clearer. Our terms are quite different.
†
Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are seven degrees
of Devas or “ Progenitors,” or seven classes, from the most
perfect to the less exalted.
‡
It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this table a
Triassic.SECONDARY
Jurassic.
Chalk
or Cretaceous.
This
is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri,
etc., etc. Science denies the presence of man in that period. If so, it has to
explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them before
the age of Cuvier ? The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of Judea
are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also appear the
first (marsupial) mammals|| — insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous ;
and (as Prof. Owen thinks) an herbivorous hoofed mammal.
Science
does not admit the appearance of man before the close of the According
to every cal
culation
the Third Race
had
already made its ap-SECONDARY pearance, as during the
Triassic
there were al
ready
a few mammals, and
it
must have separated.
This,
then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth
may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely to
conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the Initiates.
The
analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early Mammalia
and pre-mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one kind into a
higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their procreative
processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the Monotremata, the
Didelphia (or Marsupialia) and the placental Mammals, divided in their turn into
three orders¶
Primary-Age
Man. The parallelism of
Races and geological periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of 1st
and 2nd are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being
available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible Race in the Carboniferous
Age, it is needless to renew the debate.
§
During the interim from one Round to another, the globe and everything
on it remains in statu quo. Remember, Vegetation began in its ethereal
form before what is called the Primordial, running through the Primary, and
condensing in it, and reaching its full physical life in the Secondary.
||
Geologists tell us that “ in the secondary epoch, the only mammals which
have been (hitherto) discovered in Europe are the fossil remains of a
small marsupial or pouch-bearer.” (Knowledge, March 31,
1882, p. 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only surviving
animal of the family of those who were on earth during the presence on it of
androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that was then on earth ? Its presence
speaks loudly for that of other (though unknown) mammals, besides the
monotremes and marsupials, and thus shows the appellation of “ mammalian
age ” given only to the Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous ;
as it allows one to infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds,
amphibians, and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times — the Secondary.
¶
These Placentalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears, into
Villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered tufts), the
Zonoplacentalia (girdle-shaped placenta), and the discoplacentalia (or
discoid). Hæckel sees in the Marsupialia Didelphia, one of the
connecting links genealogically between man and the Moneron ! !
Tertiary
period. * Why ? Because man has to be shown younger than the higher mammals.
But Esoteric philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as science is quite unable
to come to anything like an approximate conclusion as to the age of man, or
even the geological periods, therefore, even accepted only as a hypothesis, the
occult teaching is more logical and reasonable.
like
the First, Second, and Third Root-Races of men.† But this would require
more space than can be now allotted to the subject.
No man is yet allowed to have lived
during this period : —
Eocene.
‡ Tertiary Miocene.
Pliocene.
Says Mr. E. Clodd, in Knowledge :—
“ Although the placental mammals
and
the order of Primates to which man is
related, appear in Tertiary times and
the climate, tropical in the Eocene
age, warm in the Miocene and
temperate in the Pliocene, was favour-
able to his presence, the proofs of his
existence in Europe before the
close
of the Tertiary epoch . . . . are not
generally accepted here.”
Tertiary age.
�������������������������
The
Third race has now almost utterly disappeared, carried away
by the fearful geological cata
clysms of the Secondary age, leav
ing
behind it but a few hybrid races.
The Fourth, born millions of
years before§ the said cataclysm
took place, perishes during the
Miocene period,|| when the Fifth
(our Aryan race) had one million
years of independent existence.
( See “ Esoteric Buddhism,” pp.
53-55.
Fourth Ed. ) How much older
it is from its origin — who knows
?
As the “ Historical ” Period
has
begun, with the Indian Aryans,
with their Vedas, for their mul-
titudes,¶ and far earlier in the
Esoteric Records, it is useless to
establish here any parallels.
*
Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric Ethnology, which
pre-supposes the existence of Man in the Secondary Age, will do well to
note the fact that one of the most distinguished anthropologists of the day, M.
de Quatrefages, seriously argues in that direction. He writes : “ There
is nothing impossible in the supposition that he (Man) may have appeared on the
globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs in
virtue of his organism.” This statement approximates most closely to
our fundamental assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
Professor
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,” p. 499,
chapter on Organic Evolution.) Why does he reject the possibility of a
Secondary-Age man ? Simply because he is involved in the meshes of the
Darwinian Anthropology ! ! “ The origin of man is bound up with that of
the higher mammals ; ” he appeared “ only with the last
types of his class ” !! This is not
Geology has now divided the periods and
placed man in the —
Palæolithic
man. Quaternary Neolithic man, and Historical Period.
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** is shown to be a remarkable artist, neolithic
argument,
but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact ! Must
everything give place to the mere working-hypotheses of Western Evolutionists ?
Surely not.
†
This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily only a
provisional working-hypothesis — the actual chronology of the First,
Second, and Early Third Races being closely veiled by the Initiates. For all
that can be said on the subject, the First Root-Race may have been
Pre-Secondary, as is, indeed, taught. (Vide supra.)
‡
The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll’s earlier
calculations are adopted, namely, of 15,000,000 years since the beginning of
the Eocene period (see Charles Gould’s “ Mythical Monsters,”
p. 84), not those in his “ Climate and Time,” which allow only 212
million years’, or a t the utmost three million years’
duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the whole duration of
the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000 years according to Professor
Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric doctrine, sedimentation began in this
Round approximately over 320 million years ago. Yet h is calculations do
not clash much with ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the
Tertiary age, which is called in our Esoteric books the age of the “
Pigmies.” With regard to the 320 millions of years assigned to
sedimentation, it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the
preparation of this globe for the Fourth Round previous to stratification.
§
Though we apply the term “ truly human,” only to the Fourth
Atlantean Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion,
since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated sexually,
and that the first man was born according to the now normal process.
This “ first man ” answers in the Bible (Genesis) to Enos or
Henoch, son of Seth (ch. iv.).
||
Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, sheets of marine
sediments uniformly present everywhere testifying to it ; but, it is not even
the epoch referred to in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva-Man
(or Manu) saving in an ark (the female principle) the germs of humanity,
and also the seven Rishis
—who
stand here as the symbols for the seven human principles — of which
allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The “ Univer sal Deluge ” is the
watery abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. ( See Stanzas from
2 to 8 in Part I.). How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years to have
elapsed since the Eocene period (which we state on the authority of a
Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould) only 60 millions are assigned by him “ since
the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial Age ”
— passes com- prehension. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of
the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the
length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both the
Primary and the Primordial ? No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation.
¶
We hope that we have furnished all the Scientific data for it elsewhere.
* *
It is conceded by Geology to be “ beyond doubt that a considerable period
must have supervened after the departure of Palæolithic man and before
the arrival of his Neolithic successor.” (See James Geikie’s
“ Prehistoric Europe,” and Ch. Gould’s “ Mythical
Monsters,” p. 98).
man
is made out almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.* For
see what a learned geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his
“ Mythical Monsters ” : —
“
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., etc.
Yet,
though “ Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both
races . . . those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being
sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings
of the various animals living at the period ; whereas there appears to have
been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability† on the part
of Neolithic man.” Let us give the reasons for it.
(1)
The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old
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 ” (“ Modern
Science,” p. 181).
(2)
As to the so-called Palæolithic hâches . . .
“ when placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets
actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect
any difference ” (Ibid,
p.
112). This goes to prove that there have been savages at all
times ; and the inference would be that there might have been civilized
people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude
savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
*
Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
†
“ The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not
succeed very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint and stone and
bone were the materials to be engraved ” ! ! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins’
“ Cave-Hunting,” p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to
further insist on Huxley’s, Schmidt’s, Laing’s, and
others’ statements to the effect that Palæolithic man cannot be
considered to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race ; thus demolishing
the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit
here re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men, is traceable to their Atlantean
ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan invasion,
and immigrated from quite another quarter — Asia, and in a measure
Northern Africa. (The tribes peopling the latter towards the North-West, were
certainly of an Atlantean origin — dating back hundreds of thousands of
years before the Neolithic Period in Europe, — but they had so diverged
from the parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar
to it.) As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palæolithic Man, it is a
remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a
cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era not. Human manners
and customs do not seem to improve with time, then ? Not in this instance at
any rate.
(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 to get transformed from the “ missing link ” into what he is
known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e., even a
finer specimen than many of the now existing races.
The
above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism : (1) The primitive
man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus
than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was less
anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion : even
though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence would remain
more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man made dumb by some
fortuitous circumstances,* than tending to show that man descends from a
pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
On
the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is
believed that in the Eocene Age “ even in its very first part, the great
cycle of the fourth race men, the Atlanteans had already reached its highest
point . . . . ” (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 64) then some of the present
difficulties of science might be easily made to disappear. The rude workmanship
of the 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 that “ even these have been so
imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of
thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only
within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected
” (p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hâches
of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such
artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant
belonging to any European country — unless in exceptional cases. The
“ portrait ” of the “ Reindeer feeding,” from the
Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two
horse’s heads sketched close to him — a work of the Reindeer
period, i.e., at least 50,000 years ago — are pronounced
by Mr. Laing not only exceedingly well done, but, especially the reindeer
feeding, as one that “ would do credit to any modern animal painter
”
* On
the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and
without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the
lowest intelligence — say idiots born dumb — might by breeding
produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race,
and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape.
—by
no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see (Vide infra). Now, since
side by side with the modern Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their
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., we have our greatest painters
of Europe, why could not the same have happened in those days ? Compared with
the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching — “ 7,000 years ago
” — the “ earliest portraits ” of men,
horses’ heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, are certainly
superior. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have
been a highly civilized nation, whereas the Palæolithic men are called savages
of the lower type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet extremely
suggestive as showing that every new geological discovery is made to fit in
with current theories, instead of the reverse. Yes ; Mr. Huxley is right in
saying, “ Time will show.” It will, and must vindicate Occultism.
Meanwhile,
the most uncompromising materialists are driven by necessity into the most occult-like
admissions. Strange to say, it is the most materialistic — those of the
German school — who, with regard to physical development, come the
nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgärtner,
who believes that “ the germs for the higher animals could only be the
eggs of the lower animals ” ; who thinks that “ besides the advance
of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period
the formation of new original germs,” which formed the basis of
new metamorphoses, etc. — thinks also that “ the first men who
proceeded from the germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva
state.”
Just
so, in a larva state, we say, too ; only from no “ animal ”
germ, and that “ larva ” was the soulless astral form of the
pre-physical Races. And we believe, as the German professor does, with several
other men of Science in Europe now, that the human races “ have not
descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerous races ” ; (Anfänge
zu einer Physiologischen Schöpfungs-geschichte der Pflanzen und Thierwelt,
1885). Therefore, when we read “ Force and Matter,” and find that Emperor
of Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that “
the plant passes imperceptibly into the animal, and the animal into man ”
(p. 85), we need only add “ and man into a spirit,” to complete the
Kabalistic axiom. The more so, since on page 82 of the same work we read the
following admission : . . . “ Produced in the way of spontaneous
generation . . . it is by the aid of intense natural forces and endless
periods of time (that) there has progressively arisen that rich and
infinitely modified organic world by which we are at present
surrounded.”. . . And (page 84) “ Spontaneous generation played, no
doubt,
a
more important part in the primeval epoch than at present ; nor can i t b e
denied that in this way beings of a higher organization were produced than now,” * for
this is the claim of Occultism.
The
whole difference lies in this : Modern Science places her materialistic theory
of primordial germs on earth, and the last germ of life on this globe,
of man, and everything else, between two voids. Whence the first
germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of external forces,
are absolutely rejected now ? Germs of organic life, we are told, by Sir W.
Thomson, came to our earth in some meteor ? This helps in no way and
only shifts the difficulty from this earth to the supposed meteor.
These
are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the endless periods
we are, of course, at one even with materialistic speculation ; for we believe
in Evolution, though on different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says :
“ If any form of progressive development is correct, we
must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of
the antiquity of man.” But when we are told that this man is a product of
the natural forces inherent in matter, force, according to modern
views, being but a quality of matter, a “ mode of motion,” etc. ;
and when we find Sir W. Thomson repeating in 1885 what was asserted by
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 the magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron particles through
insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to
“ molecular motion,” or to the “ rotation of the molecules of
the magnet,” then, whether the teaching comes from a “ credulous
” Theosophist innocent of any notion of physics, or from an eminent man
of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts such a theory
in the teeth of fact, is only one more proof that “ When people
have not a niche in their minds in which to shoot facts, so much the worse for
the facts.”
As
present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their opponents
is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the latter. But even
they are forced to admit, as 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 sometime in the history of our
planet : and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural than
Sir W. Thomson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life
fell on our earth in some meteor ; or that other
*
“ Force and Matter,” by Dr. Louis Büchner, translated and
edited by J. Frederick Collingwood, F.R.S., F.G.S., 1864.
scientific hypothesis coupled to the recently
adopted belief that there exists no “ Vital principle ”
whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular
forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not help Science to solve the
still greater problem — the origin and the descent of Man, for
here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.
“
While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several directions
of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man presents the phenomenon of
an unspecialized skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of
these lines.” (“ Origin of the World,” p. 39, by Sir W.
Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.)
The
secret could be soon told, not only from the esoteric but even
REINDEER ENGRAVED ON ANTLER BY
PALÆOLITHIC MAN. (After Geikie.)
from
the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the
Occultists. The “ specialized skeleton ” is sought for in the wrong
place, where it can never be found. It is expected to be discovered in the
physical remains of man, in some pithecoid “ missing link,” with a
skull larger than that of the ape’s, and with a cranial capacity smaller
than in man, instead of looking for that specialization in the
super-physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can
hardly be excavated from any geological strata ! Such a tenacious, hopeful
clinging to a self-degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
Meanwhile,
this is a specimen of an engraving made by a Palæolithic “
savage ” : 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. Here we have the
true artistic raccourci, and correct lights and shadows without any plane
model before the artist, who copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a
knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer
belonged, we are asked to believe, to the primitive “ semi-animal ”
savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some
over-zealous Evolutionists once sought to picture to us as distinct
approximations to the type of their hypothetical “ pithecoid man ”
!
This
engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can that the evolution of the
races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man, perhaps, is
as old as incrustated Earth, and — if we can call his Divine ancestor
“ Man ” — far older still.
Even
de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of
modern archæologists, when he writes : — “ The prehistoric is
a new science, far, very far, from having said its last
word.” (“ Prehist. Antiq. of Man,” 1883.) According to
Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the “ Father
” of Geology : — “ The expectation of always meeting with a
lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is
based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to
be sound ; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct
geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races
of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races.”
(“ Antiq. of Man,” p. 25.) Nor has such evidence been found
to this day. Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has
hitherto never been seen by mortal eye !
This
concession of Lyell’s reads most suggestively with the subjoined
utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on the Darwinian
Anthropology from the standpoint of LANGUAGE has, by the way, never been
satisfactorily answered : —
“
What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their history ? ”
(Cf. this with the esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of
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. . . . How have they come
to be what they are ? . . . . Their language proves, indeed, that these
so-called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their
artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the
creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these savages,
they must be as old as the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (far older). . . .
They
may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as
primitive, may be, for all we know, a RELAPSE INTO
SAVAGERY or a corruption of something that was more rational and intelligible
in former stages.” (“ India,” 1883, F. Max Müller.)
“
The primeval savage is a familiar term in modern literature,” remarks
Professor Rawlinson, “ but there is no evidence that the primeval savage
ever existed. Rather all the evidence looks the other way.”
(“ Antiq. of Man Historically Considered.”) In his “
Origin of Nations,” p p. 10-11, he rightly adds : “ The mythical
traditions of almost all nations place at the beginning of human history a time
of happiness and perfection, a ‘ golden age ’ which has no
features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and
refinement.” How is the modern evolutionist to meet this consensus of
evidence ?
We
repeat the question asked in “ Isis Unveiled ” : “ Does the
finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no
contemporary races then who were highly civilized ? When the present population
of the earth have disappeared, and some 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 ’? ”
Another
strange inconsistency in scientific knowledge is that Neolithic man is
shown as being far more of a primitive savage than the Palæolithic one.
Either Lubbock’s “ Pre-historic Man,” or Evans’ “
Ancient Stone Implements ” must be at fault, or — both. For this is
what we learn from these works and others : —
(1)
As we pass from Neolithic to Palæolithic Man, the stone
implements become, from gracefully shaped and polished instruments, rude
lumbering makeshifts. Pottery, etc., disappear as we descend the scale. And yet
the latter could engrave such a reindeer !
(2)
Palæolithic Man lived in caves which he shared with
hyænas and lions also,* whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and
buildings.
Every
one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries of our day,
knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy
chipping and rude chopping of the early Palæolithic hâches,
to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period
immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is in Europe, a few portions
only of which were barely rising from the waters in the days
* In
such a case 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 next that it is that lion or hyæna which has engraved
the deer on the antler, as be told that this bit of workmanship was done by a
savage of such a kind.
of
the highest Atlantean civilizations. There were rude savages and highly
civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen
are exhumed from some African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants,
such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be
a reason to maintain that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies ?
Or if the weapons of the Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be
justified in setting us all down as Palæolithic savages ? All the articles
which geologists now excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than
from the close of the Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above
water before that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated
by theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by
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 . . . .
altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer.”
(“ Mod. Science and Mod. Thought,” p. 164.)
Another
evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings. Esoteric history
teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the
survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes,
&c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols ;
all the modern Hindu writings do.
“
In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre-historic cities
excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox-headed goddesses, and other
symbolical figures, or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into
Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found . . . . the only ones which may
be said with some certainty to have been idols are one or two discovered by M.
de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period . . . which appear to
be intended for female figures of life size ” . . . . (p. 199 Ibid.)
And
these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many
proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The fact that
no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond post-tertiary or
“ Quaternary ” times — though Abbé Bourgeois’
flints may serve as a warning* — seems to point to the truth of another
esoteric statement,
*
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
which
runs thus : “ Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places.
The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the
bottom of the seas.” . . . Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last
cataclysm by two-thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new
continents and islands that reappeared while their predecessors formed
the floors of new Oceans — deserted that which is now Europe and parts of
Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded
some of the latter having since “ retreated ” and made room for the
table lands of Central Asia.
The
most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded by the
celebrated Kent’s Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by
water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious record preserved
for us in the geological memoirs of the earth. Under the blocks of limestone,
which heaped the floor of the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of
black earth, many implements of the Neolithic period of fairly excellent
workmanship, with a few fragments of pottery — possibly traceable to
the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of 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 mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once for med 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, point to a very low
type of Humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something besides ; to a
race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
too
short for him to have been transformed— stretch it as you may. And
if he was, and if no monkey is found earlier, what follows ?
As
said by an anthropologist in “ Modern Thought ” (art.
“ The Genesis of Man ”) : “ 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 recognised that the lower race of man, comprising the
Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern
Africans, should be placed apart. The fact that in this species, or
rather sub-species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second,
and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the Homo
Afer on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds
of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts
of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively commented.
The history, in the past ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has never
originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own ” (Dr.
C. Carter Blake). It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the
Tasmanians. However it may be, fossil man in Europe can neither prove
nor disprove the antiquity of man on this Earth nor the age of his earliest
civilizations.
It
is time the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning
the heavy guns of the satire of the men of science as much as the pop-guns of
the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or
disproof, while their theories can stand the test better than the hypotheses of
the Scientists at any rate. As to the proof for the antiquity which they claim
for man, they have, moreover, Darwin himself and Lyell. The latter confesses
that they (the naturalists) “ have already obtained evidence of the
existence of man at so remote a period that there has been time for many
conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and this even
before the era of the earliest historical records.” * This is a
statement made by one of England’s great authorities upon the question.
The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be remembered by
the students of Occultism, for with all others he says : “ In spite of
the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he (Man) must have flourished on
Earth, there is no proof of any perceptible change in his bodily structure. If,
therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must
suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, possibly on some
continents or islands now submerged beneath the Ocean.”
Thus
lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds (also Races) are
periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn,
and renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldees, all antiquity
believed in this. Twice already
* “ Antiquity of Man,”
p. 530.
has
the face of the globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man
appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for
its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and
water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and
ending in a final change in the axis. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a
periodical change in the behaviour of the globe’s axis, and smile at the
conversation given in the Book of Enoch between Noah and his “
grandfather ” Enoch ; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an
astronomical fact : there is a secular change in the inclination of the earth’s
axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As
in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of
thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the Popular Science
Review (New Series in Vol. I. p. 115), Art. : “ Evidences of the Age
of Ice.” . . . . “ If it be necessary to call in extramundane
causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would
prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688 ; since, by Sir Richard
Phillips and others ; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E.,
F.G.S.
; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the ecliptic, a
proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the
introduction of which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the
great solar system.”
The
following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in
March, 1885, on “ The extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey ” shows the
hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept the
fact. It is a quotation in the body of the Lecture : —
“
Evergreen Figs, Laurels, Palms, and Ferns having gigantic rhizomes have their
existing congeners in a sub-tropical climate, such, it cannot
be doubted, as prevailed in Devonshire in Miocene times, and are
thus calculated to suggest caution when the present climate of any
district is regarded as normal.
“
When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the west coast of
Greenland, lying between 69° 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. . . . This accession of the
Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan
islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the
Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia . . . then along the Himalaya and
through China. . . . We learn also that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts
of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America. . . .
We note fu rther that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no
substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the
New World. . . . The consideration of these facts leads me to the opinion that
botanical evidence does not favour the hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other
hand, it strongly favours the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch
North-Eastern Asia was united to North-western America, perhaps by the line
where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.’ ” (Nat. Hist.
Rev. ii. 164, 1862.) See, however, “ Scientific and Geological Proofs
of the Reality of Several Submerged Continents.”
But
nothing short of a pithecoid man, will ever satisfy the luckless searchers
after the thrice hypothetical “ missing link.” Yet, if beneath the
vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient
emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to be broken up
miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As
Dr. C. R. Bree remarks (“ Fallacies of Darwinism ”), no
missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and
formations above the tertiaries, if they had gone down with the continents now
covered with the sea, they might still be found “ in those beds of
contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of
the sea.” Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the
former. Were not preconceptions to fasten vampire-like on man’s mind, the
author of “ Antiquity of Man ” would have found a clue to
the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (530) and
reading over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston’s work.
This physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity
in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult,
we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development
theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an
improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the
higher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the second
part in a progressive scheme.
This
hypothesis is made in relation to Evolution not being entirely due to
“ natural selection ” ; but it applies as well to our
case in hand. For we, too, claim that it is the “ Soul,” or the inner
man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic astral, the mould on
which physical man is gradually built — his Spirit, intellectual and
moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature grows and develops.
“
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense,”
. . . and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages
after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from the still gigantic (in
our modern sense) stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that
size at present.
Man
is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of
Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this
Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives
and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution —
is the “ Eternal Pilgrim,” the Protean differentiation in space and
time of the One Absolute “ unknowable.”
In
his “ Antiquity of Man,” Sir C. Lyell quotes — perhaps in
rather a mocking spirit — what Hallam says (in Vol. iv., p. 162) in his
“ Introduction to the Literature of Europe ” : —
“
If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape.
The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the
lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in
the forest of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and
angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both ? ”
An
Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in
the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel-Force,
or Dhyan Chohan ; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in
the image of man, since the 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 latter is at least certain on
scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that form should be
equally endowed with permanency.
And
yet what do we find : —
“
It is significant,” says Sir W. Dawson, F.R.S., “ that Professor
Huxley in his lectures in New York, while resting his case as to the lower
animals, mainly on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been
shown to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the discussion of
the origin of men from the apes, now obviously complicated with so many
difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart are staggered by them. Professor
Thomas in his recent lectures (‘ Nature,’ 1876), admits that there
is no lower man known than the Australian, and that there is no known link of
connection with the monkeys ; and that Hæckel has to admit that the
penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown
(‘ History of Creation.’) . . . . The so-called ‘ nallies
’ 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 writings were already in possession of the oldest race of men known
to archæology or geology.” (See Wilson’s “ Prehistoric
Man,” op. cit., vol. ii., p. 54. “ Origin of the
World,” p. 393.)
Again
in Dr. C. R. Bree’s “ Fallacies of Darwinism,” on page
160, we read : —
“
Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more especially
mentally, between the lowest form of man and the highest anthropomorphous ape,
is enormous. Therefore, the time —which in Darwinian evolution
must be almost inconceivably slow — must have been enormous also
during man’s development from the monkey.* The chance, therefore, of some
of these variations being found in the different gravels or fresh-water
formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not one single
variation, not one single specimen of a being between a monkey and a
man has ever been found. Neither in the gravel, nor the drift-clay, nor the
fresh-water beds, nor in the tertiaries below them has there ever been
discovered the remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey
and the man, as assumed to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they gone
down with the depression of the earth’s surface and are they now covered
with the sea ? If so, it is beyond all probability that they should not, also
be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone
down to the bottom of the sea ; still more improbable that some portions should
not be dredged from the ocean bed like the remains of the mammoth and the
rhinoceros which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravels and drift ! . .
. . . . the celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said,
belongs confessedly to this remote epoch (bronze and stone ages), and yet
presents, although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences
from the highest known anthropomorphous ape.”
*
And how much more “ enormous ” if we reverse the subjects and say
during the monkey’s development from the Third Race Man
Our
globe being convulsed each time that it reawakens for a new period of
activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed
for its new crop is thrown into it — it does seem quite hopeless that
fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds of either
its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara brings along
with it the renovation of forms, types and species ; every type of the
preceding organic forms — vegetable, animal and human — changes and
is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in this Round
its final opacity and hardness ; its softer portions having formed the present
vegetation ; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna having been
utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and determining the structure
of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia. And, finally, the form of
the gigantic Ape-Man of the former Round has been reproduced in this one by
human bestiality and transfigured into the parent form in the modern
Anthropoid.
This
doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is
assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and far more probable
than many “ scientific ” theories ; that, for instance, of the
first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth — like Ain Soph on
his Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as every one
knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of speech for
acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the germ on the meteor theory, as coming
from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible candidate for axiomatic
truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound to accept, if they would be
on a right level with modern Science. What the next theory necessitated by the
materialistic premises will be — no one can tell. Meanwhile, the present
theories, as any one can see, clash together far more discordantly among
themselves than even those of the Occultists outside the sacred
precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now that exact Science
has made even of the Life-principle an empty word, a meaningless term ; and now
insists that life is an effect due to the molecular action of the primordial
protoplasm ! The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be defined and
summarized in a few words, in which Mr. Herbert Spencer has defined “
special creation ” . . . “ it is worthless. Worthless, by its
derivation ; worthless, in its intrinsic incoherence ; worthless, as absolutely
without evidence ; worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need ;
worthless, as not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it
as counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the
origin of organic beings.” (Principles of Biology, Vol. I.,
p. 345.)
§ V.
ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE CENTRES.
IT
is argued that the Universal Evolution, otherwise, the gradual development of
species in all the kingdoms of nature, works by uniform laws. This is admitted,
and the law enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in modern Science. But we
are told also, that it is equally a law that “ development works from the
less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by
incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the
required direction.” It is from the infinitesimally small that the
comparatively gigantic species are produced.
Esoteric
Science agrees with it, but adds that this law applies only to what is known to
it as the Primary Creation— the evolution of worlds from
primordial atoms, and the pre-primordial ATOM, at the first differen-
tiation of the former ; and that during the period of cyclic evolution in space
and time, this law is limited and works only in the lower kingdoms. It did so
work during the first geological periods, from simple to complex, on the rough
material surviving from the relics of the Third Round, which relics are
projected into objectivity when terrestrial activity recommences.
No
more than Science, does esoteric philosophy admit design or “
special creation.” It rejects every claim to the “
miraculous,” and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws
of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of force (or spirit)
and of matter, which, starting from the neutral centre of Being,
develops in its cyclic progress and incessant transformations. The primitive
germ from which all vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being
distinct from the primitive germ from which the vegetable and the animal life
have evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in
which the materials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which Science
— physiology and anthropology especially
—seems
to be little aware. Its votaries speak of that “ primitive germ,”
and maintain that it is shown beyond any doubt that the “ design ”
and the “ designer,” if there be any, in the case of man,
with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand especially, “
must be placed very much farther back, and (the design) is, in fact, involved
in the primitive germ,” from which not only all vertebrate life, but,
“ probably all life, animal and vegetable, have been slowly developed
”
(p.
94 of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ”).
This
is as true of the “ primitive germ ” as it is false that that
“ germ ” is only “ very much farther back ” than man is
; for it is at an immeasurable and inconceivable distance (in time,
though not in space) from the origin even of our Solar system. As the Hindu
philosophy very justly teaches, the “ Aniyâmsam Aniyâsam,”
can be known only through false notions. It is the “ many ” that
proceed from the ONE — the living spiritual germs or centres of forces—
each in a septenary form, which first generate, and then give the PRIMARY
IMPULSE to the law of evolution and gradual slow development.
Limiting
the teaching strictly to this, our earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal
forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by seven
Dhyan-Chohanic centres of Force, so there are centres of creative power
for every ROOT or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable and animal
life. This is, again, no “ special creation,” nor is there any
“ Design,” except in the general “ ground-plan ” worked
out by the universal law. But there are certainly “ designers,”
though these are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the
term. They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse
given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master Mason — the
ONE LIFE and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, or
possibility of working on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any
rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical
scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate ;
that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal
issues, etc.) is what natural history has sufficient evidence for. In the creation
of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the Parent stock, as in
the great variety of the genus Felis —like the lynx, the tiger,
the cat, etc. — it is the “ designers ” who direct the new
evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either
needed or becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature
provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak
correctly. For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the
aggregated Nature ; which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither
to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure ; since, belonging to a
differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that
alone conditioned and imperfect.
Were
there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, an eternal spiral progress into
matter with a proportionate obscuration of spirit — though the two
are one — followed by an inverse ascent into spirit and the defeat of
matter — active and passive by turn — how explain the discoveries
of zoology and geology ? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative science,
one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great Sea Dragon, from
the smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary Period
; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those
species decreasing, dwindling down and being dwarfed. If the
seeming process of development working from the less to the more perfect, and
from the simpler to the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of
being a very imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great
Cosmic process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the
Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It
is the Plesiosauri and the Ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the
present sea and river reptiles, instead of giving place to their dwarfed modern
analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good-tempered elephant, that would
be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene age who
would be in the menagerie ; the megalonyx and the gigantic megatherium
would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of South America, in
which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods would take the place of
moss and present trees — dwarfs, even the giants of California, in
comparison with the Titan-trees of past geological periods. Surely the
organisms of the megasthenian world of the Tertiary and the Mesozoic Ages must
have been more complex and perfect than those of the microsthenian
plants and animals of the present age ? The Dryopithecus, for instance, is
found more perfect anatomically, more fit for a greater development of brain
power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon ? How is this, then ? Are we to
believe that the constitution of all those colossal land and sea-dragons, of
the gigantic flying reptiles, was not far more developed and complex than the
anatomy of the lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales — in
short, all those animals we are acquainted with ?
Let
us admit, however, for argument’s sake, that all those cycles, races,
septenary forms of evolution and the tutti quanti of esoteric teaching,
are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and say
that man, instead of being an imprisoned “ Spirit,” and his
vehicle, the shell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete
mechanism for material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists
— is simply a more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one
and the same primitive germ on this earth, as the flying dragon and the gnat,
the whale and the amœba, the crocodile and the frog, etc., etc. In this
case, he must have passed through the identical developments and through the
same process of growth as all the other mammals ? If man is an animal, and
nothing more, a highly intellectual ex-brute, he should be
privileged, at least, and allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a
meganthropos in his day. It is just this, that esoteric science shows as
having taken place in the first three rounds, and in this, as in most other
things, it is more logical and consistent than modern science. It classifies
the human body with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal
evolution, from first to last, while science leaves man a parentless orphan
born of sires unknown, an “ unspecialized skeleton ” truly ! And
this mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.
A.
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE MAMMALIA : SCIENCE AND THE ESOTERIC PHYLOGENY.
Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of Man in the
foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to define the
position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation of species. The pre-human
fauna and flora have been already generally dealt with in the Commentary on the
Stanzas, and the truth of much of modern biological speculation admitted, e.g.,
the derivation of birds from reptiles, the partial truth of “
natural selection,” and the transformation theory generally. It now remains
to clear up the mystery of the origin of those first mammalian fauna which M.
de Quatrefages so brilliantly endeavours to prove as contemporary with the Homo
primigenius of the Secondary Age. The somewhat complicated problem relating to
the “ Origin of Species,” — more especially of the varied
groups of fossil or existing mammalian fauna — will be rendered less
obscure by the aid of a diagram.
It
will then be apparent to what extent the “ Factors of Organic
Evolution,” relied upon by Western biologists,* are to be considered as
*
The Darwinian theory has been so strained, that even Huxley was forced at one
time to deprecate its occasional degeneration into “ fanaticism.”
Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of a thinker who unconsciously exaggerates
the worth of an hypothesis. He admits (“ The Doctrine of Descent and
Darwinism,” p. 158), that “ natural selection ” “ is in
some cases . . . inadequate, . . . in others . . . not requisite, as the
solution of the formation of species is found in other natural
conditions.” He also asserts the “ intermediate grades are .
. . wanting, which would entitle us to infer with certainty the direct
transition from unplacental to placental mammals ” (p. 271) ; that
“ we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the
origin of the mammals ”
(p.
268) ; and the repeated failures of the framers of “ hypothetical
pedigrees,” more especially of Hæckel. Nevertheless he asserts
on p. 194, that “ what we have gained by the Doctrine of Descent based on
the theory of selection is the KNOWLEDGE of the connection of organisms as
‘ consanguineous beings.’ ” Knowledge in the face of the
above-cited concessions, is, then, the synonym for conjecture and theory only ?
adequate
to meet the facts. The line of demarcation between etherospiritual, astral and
physical evolution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider
the possibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the
fact that “ we are referred to conjecture and inference for the origin
of the Mammals ” ! ! (The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, p.
268, by Professor O. Schmidt.) At present the admitted chasm between the
systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia, constitutes
a hopeless crux to those thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all
existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent.
Let
us take — exempli gratiâ— the case of the ungulate
mammals. “ In no other division,” it is said, “ do we possess
such abundant fossil material.” So much progress has been made in this
direction, that in some instances the intermediate links between the modern and
Eocene ungulates have been unearthed ; a notable example being that of the
complete proof of the derivation of the present one-toed horse from the
three-toed Anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison
between Western Biology and the Eastern doctrine could not, therefore, be
improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views of scientists
in general, is that of Schmidt based on the exhaustive researches of
Rütimeyer. Its approximate accuracy — from the standpoint of
evolutionism — leaves little to be desired : —
UNGULATE MAMMALS.
The
midway point of evolution. Science comes to a standstill. “ The root
to which these two families lead back IS UNKNOWN ” (Schmidt).
The
“ Root ” according to occultism. ANOPLOTHERIDÆ.
PALÆOTHERIDÆ.
I I.
One
of the Seven primeval physico-astral and bisexual root-
types
of the Mammalian Kingdom (animal). These were con-temporaries of the early
Lemurian races — the “UNKNOWN ROOTS ” of Science.
No.
I. represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists, the area in which
climatic influences, “ natural selection,” and all the other physical
causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology and palæontology
find their province here in investigating the many physical agencies which
contribute so largely, as shown by Darwin, Spencer and others, to the segregation
of species. But even in this domain the sub-conscious workings of the Dhyan-Chohanic
wisdom are at the root of all the “ ceaseless striving towards
perfection,” though its influence is vastly modified by those purely
material causes which de Quatrefages terms the “ milieux ”
and Spencer the “ Environment.”
The
“ midway point of evolution ” is that stage where the astral prototypes
definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the
differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes
immediately on the assumption of “ coats of skin ” — i.e.,
the physiological equipment in general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous
to the separation of sexes* are woven out of astral matter, and possess a
structure utterly unlike that of the physical organisms, which eat, drink,
digest, etc., etc., etc. The known physiological contrivances in organisms were
almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7
Root-Types out of the astral — during the “ midway halt ”
between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the “ ground-plan ”
of evolution been limned out in these ancestral types, than the influence of
the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, supervened, resulting in the
whole crop of mammalian species. Æons of slow differentiation were,
however, required to effect this end.
*
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.
No.
I I. represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their
descent into (gross) matter. Astral matter, it must be noted, is fourth state
matter, having, like our gross matter, its own “ protyle.” There
are several “ protyles ” in Nature, corresponding to the various planes
of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas,
the fifth state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each
and all evolved from one of the six “ protyles ” which constitute
the basis of the Object-Universe. The three “ states,” so-called of
our terrestrial matter, known as the “ solid,” “
liquid,” and “ gaseous,” are only, in strict accuracy,
SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which
culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the
fact of the so-called spiritualistic “ materializations.”
In
all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the
physical takes place. The evolution of physiological Man out of the
astral races of early Lemurian age — the Jurassic age of Geology
— is exactly paralleled by the “ materialization ” of “
spirits ” (?) in the 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., etc., may effect, the fundamental unity of
structural plan remains practically unaffected by all subsequent
modifications. The “ Unity of Type ” common, in a sense, to all the
animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to hold, a
proof of the consanguineity of all organic forms, but a witness to the
essential unity of the “ ground-plan ” Nature has followed in
fashioning her creatures.
To
sum up the case, we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the actual factors
concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself
need no further comment here, being the basic principles underlying organic
development, than to enter on the domain of the biological specialist.
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF
SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.
BASIC ASTRAL PROTOTYPES PASS INTO THE
PHYSICAL.
————–
1.
Variation transmitted by heredity.
2.
Natural Selection.
The
Dhyan Chohanic Impulse 3. Sexual Selection.
constituting
Lamark’s “ in4. Physiological Selection.
herent
and necessary ” law
5. Isolation.
of
development. It lies 6. Correlation of Growth.
behind
all minor agencies.
7.
Adaptation to Environment. (Intelligent as opposed to mechanical causation.)
B.
THE EUROPEAN, PALÆOLITHIC RACES.
— WHENCE, AND HOW DISTRIBUTED.
IS
Science against those who maintain that down to the Quaternary period the
distribution of the human races was widely different from what it is now ? Is
Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil men found in
Europe — although having almost reached a plane of sameness and unity
from the fundamental physiological and anthropological aspects which continues
till this day — still differ, sometimes greatly, from the type of the now
existing populations. The late Littré confesses it in an article
published by him on the Memoir called Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes
by Boucher de Perthes (1849)
—
in the Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1, 1859). He says in it (a)
that in these periods when the Mammoths, exhumed with the hatchets in Picardy,
lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning
over all the terrestrial globe* ; nature was the contrary of what it is now
— thus leaving an enormous margin for the antiquity of
*
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 imple-ments are traceable
(since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores of feet) —
mnst be accepted with much reservation. The Somme-valley relics are postglacial,
and possibly point to the immigration of savages during one of the more
temperate periods intervening between minor ages of Ice.
those “ periods ” and 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 offered a great analogy with those of African negro races,
according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of the
Danube and the Rhine, resembled the skulls of the Caribs and those of the
ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether
Biblical or Atlantean, was denied. But further geological discoveries having
made Gaudry write conclusively : “ Our forefathers were positively
contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus
major ” ; and add that the soil called diluvial in geology
“ was formed partially at least after man’s apparition on
earth ” — Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed
the necessity, before “ the resurrection of so many old witnesses,”
of rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there
was AN AGE hitherto unknown to study “ either at the dawn of the actual
epoch or, as I believe, at the beginning of the epoch which preceded it.”
The
types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known : the
orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types ; such
as are now found only in the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor
Heer — who argues that the facts of Botany necessitate the hypothesis of
an Atlantis — has shown that the plants of the Neolithic lake-villagers
are mainly of African origin. How did the latter come to be in Europe if
there was no former point of union between Africa and Europe ? How many
thousand years ago did the seventeen men live whose skeletons were exhumed in
the Department of the Haute Garonne, in a squatting posture near the remains of
a coal fire, with some amulets and broken crockery around them, and in company
with the bear spelæus, the Elephas primigenius, the aurochs
(regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the Megaceros hibernicus —all
antediluvian mammals ? Certainly at a most distant epoch, but not one which
carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for Man
has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the Anthropological
Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of science, at any rate, makes some
approach to our esoteric computation, if we leave the first two semi-human,
ethereal races, and the early Third Race out of the computation.
The
question, however, arises — who were these Palæolithic men of the
European quaternary epoch ? Were they aboriginal, or the outcome of some
immigration dating back into the unknown past ? The latter is the only tenable
hypothesis, as all scientists agree in eliminating Europe from the category of
possible “ cradles of mankind.” Whence, then, radiated the various
successive streams of “ primitive ” men ?
The
earliest Palæolithic men in Europe — about whose origin Ethnology
is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though
expatiated on as “ ape-like ” by imaginative writers such as Mr.
Grant Allen — were of pure Atlantean and “ Africo ”-Atlantean
stocks.* (It must be borne in mind that by this time the Atlantis continent
itself was a dream of the past.) Europe in the quaternary epoch was very
different from the Europe of to-day, being then only in process of formation.
It was united to N. Africa — or rather what is now N. Africa — by a
neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar — N. Africa
thus constituting a species of extension of Spain, while a broad sea washed the
great basin of the Sahara. Of the great Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank
in the Miocene, there remained only Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so.
The Atlantean connections of the forefathers† of the Palæolithic cave-men
are evidenced by the upturning of fossil skulls (in Europe) reverting closely
to the West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian type — a
mystery indeed to all those who refuse to sanction the “ hypothesis
” of a former Atlantic continent to bridge the ocean (Cf. “
Scientific and geological proofs of the reality of several submerged continents
”). What are we also to make of the fact that while de Quatrefages points
to that “ magnificent race,” the TALL Cro-Magnon cave-men
and the Guanches of the Canary Islands as representatives of one type
— Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way
? Professor Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American
dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in
the chain of evidence are securely joined together. Legions of similar facts
could be adduced. As to the African tribes — themselves diverging
offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions — they crossed
into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine
races were many of these European cave-men ; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But,
as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole
of the vast period allotted
*
“ 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).
†
The pure Atlantean stocks — of which the tall quaternary cave-men
were, in part, the direct descendants — immigrated into Europe long prior
to the Glacial Period ; in fact as far back as the Pliocene and Miocene times
in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene flints of Thenay, and the traces
of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in Italy, are
witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of the once glorious
race, whose cycle from the Eocene downwards had been running down the
scale.
by
Science to the Chipped Stone-Age.* The cyclic impulse downwards weighs
heavily on the stocks thus transplanted — the incubus of the Atlantean
Karma is upon them. Finally, Palæolithic man makes room for his
successor — and disappears almost entirely from the scene. Professor 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 Celts ? But
whether, again, the deterioration produced in the populations of La
Vezère was the result of violent crossings, or of a general retreat
northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is of little moment to us.” He
continues : —
“
Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now fully formed,
her flora and fauna fixed. With the taming of the dog begins the pastoral life.
We enter on those polished stone and bronze periods, which succeed each
other at irregular intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of
ethnical fusions and migrations. . . . The primitive European populations are
interrupted in their special evolution and, without perishing, become absorbed
in other races, engulfed . . . by successive waves of migration overflowing
from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? ? far too late by
æons of years] and from prolific Asia . . . all FORERUNNERS OF THE GREAT
ARYAN INVASION ” (Fifth Race).
*
The artistic skill displayed by the old cave-men renders the hypothesis which
regards them as approximations to the “ pithecanthropus alalus ”
— that very mythica Hæckelian monster — an absurdity
requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in their skill in engraving
a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically re-appearing.”
It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern European as a renaissance
of Atlantean civilization. (“ Atlantis,” pp. 237-264.)
§ V I.
GIANTS, CIV ILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED
CONTINENTS TRACED IN HISTORY.
WHEN
statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought forward, the
writer is, of course, expected to furnish historical instead of legendary
evidence in support of such claims. Is this possible ? Yes ; for evidence of
this nature is plentiful, and has simply to be collected and brought together
to become overwhelming in the eyes of the unprejudiced.
Once
the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find it out for
himself. We give facts and show land-marks : let the wayfarer follow
them. What is given here is amply sufficient for THIS century.
In a
letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies of the
“ grand old invalid of Ferney ” should be attracted to the “
representatives of knowledge and wisdom, the Brahmans of India.” He then
adds a curious statement. “ But,” he says, “ your Brahmans
are very young in comparison with their ancient instructors.” *
Bailly,
who knew nought of the esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, believed,
nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in several
pre-historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without leaving any
undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and traditions
extensively, and he saw that the arts and sciences known to those we now call
the “ ancients,” were “ not the achievements of any of the
now or even then existing nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of
Asia.” And that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindoos, their
undeniable priority in the antiquity of their race had to be referred to a
people or a race still more ancient and more learned than were even the
Brahmans themselves.†
Voltaire,
the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist par excellence, shared
Bailly’s belief. He thought it quite likely “ that long
before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured,
learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians
overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and
savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature.” (“
Lettres sur l’Atlantide,” p. 15).‡
* Lettres
sur l’Atlantide.
†
Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne, p. 25, et seq.
‡
This conjecture is but a half-guess. There were such “ deluges of
barbarians ” in the Fifth Race. With regard to the Fourth, it was a bonâ
fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly,
however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East.
That
which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with
Bailly “ a question of historical facts.” For “ I make great
case of ancient traditions preserved through a long series of
generations,” he wrote. (Ibid.) It was possible, he
thought, that a foreign nation should, after instructing another nation,
so disappear that it should leave no traces behind. When asked how it could
have happened that this ancient, or rather archaic, nation should not have left
at least some recollection in the human mind, he answered that Time was a
pitiless devourer of facts and events. But, the history of the Past was never
entirely lost, for the Sages of old Egypt had preserved it, and “ it is
so preserved to this day elsewhere.” “ You do not know which was
the best and most handsome generation of men which has ever lived on this
earth,” said the priests of Sais to Solon, according to Plato. “
Only a weak seed of it, of which you (Greeks) are the descendants,* is all that
remains.” “ Their books,” they added, “ preserved the
records of a great nation, which emerging from the Atlantic sea had invaded
Europe and Asia (Timæus). The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak
remnant of that once glorious nation. . . .Ӡ
What
was this nation ? The secret doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh
sub-race of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races
of the Aryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading over the continent
and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the seas.
Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought
refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and
colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased
and multiplied on that virgin soil ; had divided into many families, which in
their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the 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 in course of
time — owing to new geological convulsions — islands. Being thus
forcibly
*
For a full discussion of the relations between the old Greeks and
Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, cf. “ Five Years of
Theosophy.”
†
The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told, as all know,
by Plato in his “ 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 Drop idas’ friend — Solon, one
of the Grecian Seven Sages. No more reliable source could be found, we
believe.
separated
from the continents, the result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of
the Atlantean stock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage
condition.
Did
not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with WHITE savage
chiefs ; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the
pre-historic ages been now ascertained ? It is this presence of a type
associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the Mongolian, which
is the stumbling-block of anthropology. The individual who lived at an
incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium (Vide Dr. Carter
Blake’s paper “ On the Naulette Jaw,” Anthrop.
Review, Sept., 1867), is an example. “ The caves on the banks of the
Lesse, in South-Eastern Belgium,” says this Anthropologist, “
afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by the Naulette
jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone, perforated for the purpose of ornament
; these are made of a psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde.”
Thus
Belgian man was extremely ancient. That man who was antecedent to the great
flood of waters — which covered the highlands of Belgium with a deposit
of lehm or upland gravel 30 metres above the level of the present rivers
— must have combined the characters of the Turanian and the negro. The
Canstadt, or La Naulette, man, may have been black, and had nothing to do with
the Aryan type whose remains are contemporary with those of the cave bear at
Engis. The denizens of the Aquitaine bone-caves belong to a far later period of
history, and may
ot
be as ancient as the former.
If
the statement is objected to on the ground that Science does not deny the
presence of man on earth from an enormous antiquity, though that antiquity
cannot be determined, since that presence is conditioned by the duration of
geological periods, the age of which is not ascertained ;
it
is argued that the Scientists object most decidedly to the claim that man
preceded the animals, for instance ; or that civilization dates from the
earliest Eocene period, or, again, that there have ever existed giants,
three-eyed and four-armed and four-legged men, androgynes, etc., then the
objectors are asked in their turn, “ How do you know ? What proof have
you besides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by new
discoveries ? ” And these future discoveries are sure to prove that,
whatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists was in complexion,
he was in no respect apish. The Canstadt man, the Engis man alike
possessed essentially human attributes. (Vide de Quatrefages and Hamy.
“ Crânes des Races Humaines.”) People have looked for
the missing link at the wrong end of the chain ; and the Neander valley man has
long since been dismissed to the “ limbo of all hasty blunders ” (Ibid.).
Disraeli divided man into the associates of the apes and the angels. Reasons
are given in the text in favour of an “ angelic theory,” — as
Christians would say — at least as applicable to some of the races of
men. At all events, if man exists only since the Miocene period, even then,
humanity as a whole could not be composed of the abject savages of the
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 years old, nay, even millions — if
man dates from the geological periods* — not of any of those events which
happened during the few thousand years of the pre-historic margin allowed by
timid and ever-cautious history. Yet there are men of science who are almost of
our way of thinking. From the brave confession of the 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. Apropos of Peru,
has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological affinities
and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean erections,
the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization ? At Cuelap, for
instance, such are found, consisting “ of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600
feet long, 560 broad, and 150 feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level
summit. On this mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high,
making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and cells.” (Cf.,
the mass of evidence collected by Donnelly to prove the Peruvian colony
an offshoot of the Atlanteans.) A most suggestive fact is the startling
resemblance between the architecture of these colossal buildings and that of
the archaic European nations. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between
the ruins of “ Inca ” civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the
Pelasgians in Italy and Greece as a coincidence “ the most remarkable in
the history of architecture.” “ It is difficult to resist the conclusion
that there may be some relation between them.” The “ relation
” is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks,
*
Hæckel’s “ Man-ape ” of the Miocene period is
the dream of a monomaniac, which de Quatrefages (see his “ Human
Species,” pp. 105-113) has cleverly disposed of. It is not clear why
the world should accept the lucubrations of a psychophobic materialist, (to
accept whose theory necessitates the acceptance on faith of various
animals unknown to Science or Nature — like the Sozura, for instance,
that amphibian which has never existed anywhere outside Hæckel’s
imagination), rather than the traditions of antiquity.
who
devised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent. The
acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of this and
similar problems in almost every branch of modern science.
Dr.
Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring that :
— “ The truth, so long contested, of the co-existence of man with
the great extinct species ( Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros
tichorrhinus, Hyæna spelæa, Ursus spelæus, etc.,
etc. ), appears to me to be henceforth unassailable and definitely
conquered by science.” (“ Cavernes de Périgord,”
p. 35.)
It
is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages’ opinion. “ Man
has in all probability seen Miocene times* and consequently the entire Pliocene
epoch,” he says, and there are reasons for believing that “ his
traces will be found further back still, . . . . ” he adds (“ The
Human Species,” p. 152.)
Egypt
is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto-Aryan tribes began
to settle on it, when the British Islands† and France were not even in
existence. It is well known that “ the tongue of the 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 Aryan blood in them than their predecessors, arrived from the East,
and conquered it from a people whose very name is lost to posterity,
except in Secret works. It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in
slowly and surely every boat that approached these inhospitable shores, that
was, till within a few thousand of years B.C., the best safeguard of the later
Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and Nubia,
led on by Manu Vina in the day of Visvamitra. (See in “ Isis
Unveiled,” vol. 1, p. 627, what Kulluka Bhatta says.)
So
evident does the antiquity of man become with every day that even the Church is
preparing an honourable surrender and retreat. The learned Abbé
Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared
*
The ingenious author of “ Atlantis, the Ante-diluvian World,” in
discussing the origin of various Grecian and Roman institutions, expresses his
conviction that “ the roots of the institutions of to-day reach back
to the Miocene Age.” Ay, and further yet, as already stated.
†
As we know them, however. For not only does Geology prove that the British
islands have been four times submerged and re-elevated, but that the
straits between them and Europe were dry land at a remote former epoch.
that
pre-historic palæontology and archæology may, without any harm to
the Scriptures, discover in the tertiary beds . . . . . the traces of pre-adamite
man as much as they like. “ Since it disregards all creations anterior
to the last deluge but one, (that which produced the diluvium, according to
the 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 in regarding the men who inhabited
the globe in these primitive ages as our ancestors.*
The
day when the Church will find that its only salvation lies in the occult
interpretation of the Bible, may not be so far off as some imagine. Already
many an 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, from the wrong end. They are advised, before they begin
to speculate upon the metaphysical in their Scriptures, to study and
master that which relates to the purely physical — e.g., its
geological and ethnological hints. For such allusions to the Septenary
constitution of the Earth and Man, to the seven Rounds and Races, abound in the
New as in the Old Testaments, and are as visible as the sun in the heavens to
him who reads both symbolically. What do the laws in chapter xxiii., v. 15, of Leviticus
apply to ? What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadic offerings
and symbolical calculations as : “ ye shall count . . . . from the morrow
after the Sabbath . . . . that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering ; seven
Sabbaths shall be completed ” (15), “ And ye shall offer with
the bread seven lambs without blemish ” (18), etc. etc. We shall be
contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these “ wave ” and
“ peace ” offerings were in commemoration of the Seven
“ Sabbaths ” of the mysteries, which Sabbaths are seven pralayas,
between seven manvantaras, or what we call Rounds —for “ Sabbath
” is an elastic word, meaning a period of Rest of whatever nature,
as explained elsewhere (Part I I., “ Sections on the Septenary.”)
And if this is not sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which
follows (16), and which adds, “ even unto the morrow after the seventh
Sabbath shall ye number fifty days ” (forty-nine, 7 × 7, stages of
activity, and forty-nine stages of rest, on the seven globes of the
chain, and then
*
“ Les origines de la terre et de l’homme,” p.
454. To this, Professor N. Joly, of Toulouse, who 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.
comes
the rest of Sabbath, the fiftieth) ; after which “ ye shall
offer a new meat offering unto the Lord,” i.e., ye shall
make an offering of your flesh or “ coats of skin,” and, divesting
yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This law of offering,
degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution that dated from the
earliest Atlanteans ; it came to the Hebrews 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,” and who had settled in Babylonia ages before. And if this
interpretation from Leviticus (full of the disfigured laws of Manu) is
found too far-fetched, then turn to Revelation. Whatever interpretation
profane mystics may give to the famous Chapter xvii., with its riddle of the
woman in purple and scarlet ; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics,
when reading “ MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND
ABOMI- NATIONS OF THE EARTH,” or Roman Catholics glare at the
Protestants, the Occultists pronounce, in their impartiality, that these words
have applied from the first to all and every exoteric Churchianity, that
which was the “ ceremonial magic ” of old, with its terrible
effects, and is now the harmless (because distorted) farce of ritualistic worship.
The “ mystery ” of the woman and of the beast, are the symbols of
soul-killing Churchianity and of SUPERSTITION. “ The beast that was, and
is not, and yet is.” “ And here is the Mind which hath wisdom. The
seven heads are seven mountains (seven continents and seven races) on which the
woman sitteth,” the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous
faiths which have covered that symbol “ with the blood of the saints and
the blood of the martyrs ” who protested and do protest. “ And
there are seven Kings (seven races) ; five are fallen (our fifth race
included), and one is (the fifth continues), and the other (the sixth
and the seventh races) is not yet come. . . . And when he (the race
“ King ”) cometh, he must continue a short space ” (v. 10).
There are many such Apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find them out
for himself. These five Kings were mentioned before.
If
the Bible combines with 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 too, to disbelieve, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene man,
while believing that the famous Thenay flints* “ were carved by the Dryopithecus
monkey ; or, with the Occultist, that the anthro
*
“ The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human
hands.” ( G. de Mortillet, “ Promenades au Musée
de St. Germain,” p. 76. )
pomorphous
monkey came ages after man ? For if it is once conceded, and even
scientifically demonstrated, that “ there was not in the middle of the
Miocene epoch a single species of mammal identical with species now extant
” (Albert Gaudry “ Les Enchainements du monde animal dans les
temps géologiques ” p. 240) ; and that man was
then just as he is now ; only taller, and more athletic than we are,* —
then where is the difficulty ? That they could hardly be the descendants of
monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the Miocene epoch,† is,
on the other hand, testified to by several eminent naturalists.
“
Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages who had to fight against the mammoth
with stone weapons, we find all those craniological characters generally
considered as the sign of great intellectual development ” (de Quatre
fages, “ The Human Species. p. 312.)
Unless
man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and wisdom, from his
brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired such brain within the
limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe the learned Abbé
Bourgeois (Vide infra, footnote † ).
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,”
and that it was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
And
if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7ft. to even 9ft. and
11ft. high, this only proves — on the law of atavism, or the reappearance
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 was sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the
Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of these early
races and what the moderns know now.
The
great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the
forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, had been
destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of
Palæolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato,
with the exception of priests and Initiates, no one seems
*
Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Périgord, Joly says of them that
“ they were of
great
height, athletic, with
a strongly built skeleton . . .” etc. (“ Man before Metals,”
353).
†
“ 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 Orléanais came the anthropomorphous monkey
(pliopithecus antiquus) ; therefore, later than man.” (See Comptes
Rendus of the “ Prehistoric Congress ” of 1867 at
Paris.)
to
have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest
Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages ;
they were themselves descended from an alien race, and had settled in
Egypt some 400,000 years before,* but their Initiates had preserved all the
records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their
possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little
Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race ( Vide about the latter “ Esoteric
Buddhism,” p. 66, Fifth Edition.) If one allows only twenty
years as an average figure for the reign of each King, the duration of the
Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000
years.
Bunsen
allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern
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.†
What
was the object of their long journey ? And how far back must we place the date
of such visits ? The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race
of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of
supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in
stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptables for the ashes of
generations to come. When was it ? The fact of their crossing from France to
Great Britain by land may give an idea of the date when such a journey
could have been performed on terrâ firmâ.
*
“ In making soundings in the stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked
bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 25 yards. If we
estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by the river at 8 inches
per century (more careful calcu-lations have shown no more than from three to
five per century), we must assign to the first of these bricks 12,000 years,
and to the second 14,000 years. By means of analo-gous calculations, Burmeister
supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first appearance of man on the
soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to the European man, who witnessed the
last glacial epoch, an antiquity of more than 250,000 years.” (“ Man
before Metals,” p. 183.) Egyptian Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years
of observation ! (See further.) Note well also that Burmeister speaks
only of the Delta population.
†
Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the
main continent in those days. “ The ancient inhabitant of Picardy could
pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel. The British Isles were
united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since been submerged.” (“ Man
before Metals,” p. 184.)
It
was —
“
When the level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it
is now ; when the valley of the Somme was not hollowed to the depth it has now
attained ; when Sicily was joined to Africa, Barbary to Spain,” when
“ Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxmal and
Palenqué were not in existence, and the bold navigators of Tyre and
Sidon, who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the
coasts of Africa, were yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that
European man was contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary
epoch . . . . that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps* and the extension of
the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands of years before the dawn of
the remotest historical traditions . . . . It is even possible that man
was the contemporary of extinct mammalia of species yet more ancient . . . . of
the Elephas meridionalis of the sands of St. Prest . . . and the Elephas
antiquus, assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since
their bones are found in company with carved flints in several English caves,
associated with those of the Rhinoceros hemitæchus and even of the
Machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date . . . . M. E.
Lartet is of opinion that there is nothing really impossible in the existence
of man as early as the Tertiary period.Ӡ
If
“ there is nothing impossible ” scientifically in the idea, and it
may be admitted that man lived already as early as the Tertiary period, then it
is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places the beginning of
that period 2,500,000 years back (See Croll’s “ Climate and Time
”) ; but there was a time when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
And
if all this may be said of European man, how great is the antiquity of
the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the Atlanto-Aryan man ? Every educated person who
follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man during the
Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on Desnoyers in
1863, when he made known to the Institute of France that he had made a
discovery “ in the undisturbed pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres,
proving the co-existence of man and the Elephas meridionalis ”
— were equal to the occasion. The later discovery (in 1867) by the
Abbé Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception
it was given at the Pre-historic Con
* He
witnessed and remembered it too, as “ the final disappearance of the
largest continent of Atlantis was an event coincident with the elevation of the
Alps,” a master writes ( See Esoteric Buddhism p. 70 ). Pari
passu, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere disappeared, some
land of the new continent emerged from the seas. It is on this colossal
cataclysm, which lasted during a period of 150,000 years, that traditions of
all the “ Deluges ” are built, the Jews building their version on an
event which took place later in “ Poseidonis.”
†
The Antiquity of the Human Race in “ Men before Metals,” by M.
Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of Toulouse, p. 184.
gress
held at Brussels in 1872, proves that the average man of Science will never see
but that which he wants to see.*
The
modern archeologist, though speculating ad infinitum upon the dolmens
and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing of them or their origin. Yet, these
weird, and often colossal monuments of unhewn stones — which consist
generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed together — are strewn
over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or rows. Stones of enormous
size are found placed horizontally and variously upon two, three, four, and as
in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People name them “ devil’s
altars,” druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of Carnac in the
Morbihan, Brittany — nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000 ranged
in eleven rows — are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The Conical menhir
of Loch-Maria-ker in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and nearly two
yards across. The Menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises thirty feet
above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such dolmens and
prehistoric monuments are met with in almost every latitude. They are found in
the Mediterranean basin ; in Denmark (among the local tumuli from
twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height) ; in Shetland, and in Sweden, where
they are called ganggriften (or tombs with corridors) ; in Germany,
where they are known as the giant tombs (Hünengräben) ; in Spain (see
the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga), and Africa ; in Palestine and
Algeria ; in Sardinia (see the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei giganti,
or tombs of giants) ; in Malabar, in India, where they are called the tombs of
the Daityas (giants) and of the Râkshasas, the men-demons
of Lanka ; in Russia and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan
; in Peru and Bolivia, where they are termed the chulpas or burial
places, etc., etc., etc.
There
is no country from which they are absent. Who built them ? Why are they all
connected with Serpents and Dragons, with Alligators and Crocodiles ? Because
remains of “ 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., hence they are declared ancient tombs. But
surely the two famous mounds — one in the Mississippi valley and the
other in Ohio — known respectively as “ the Alligator Mound ”
and “ the Great Serpent
*
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.
Mound,”
were never meant for tombs * ( Vide infra ). Yet one is told
authoritatively that the Mounds, and the Mound or Dolmen Builders, are all
“ Pelasgic ” in Europe, antecedent to the Incas, in America, yet of
“ not extremely distant times.” They are built by “ no
race of Dolmen Builders,” which never existed (opinion of De
Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp) save in the earlier archæological
fancy. Finally Virchow’s opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now
accepted as an axiom : — “ The tombs alone are gigantic, and not
the bones they contain ” — says that German biologist ; and
archæology has but to bow and submit to the decision. †
That
no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the “ tombs ” is
yet no reason to say there never were the remains of giants in them. Cremation
was universal till a comparatively recent period — some 80, or
100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned with
Atlantis. Nevertheless, the classics, as shown elsewhere, often speak of giant
skeletons still excavated in their day. Besides this, human fossils may be
counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ever yet found is older than
between 50, or 60,000 years,‡ and man’s size was reduced from 15 to
10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race
— born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and
conditions — had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily
been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone are
archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them ; and
that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,§ or
rather the ashes of generations of giants.
* We
take the following description from a scientific work. “ The first of
these animals (the alligator) designed with considerable skill, is no less than
250 ft. long. . . . . The interior is formed of a heap of stones, over which
the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The great serpent is represented
with open mouth, in the act of swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100
ft. in the thickest part ; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves
and the tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1,100
ft. This work is unique . . . . and there is nothing on the old continent which
offers any analogy to it.” Except its symbolism, however, of the Serpent
— the cycle of Time — swallowing Kosmos, the egg.
†
It might be better, perhaps, for FACT had we more Specialists in Science
and fewer “ authorities ” on universal questions. One never heard
that Humboldt gave authori-tative and final decisions in the matter of polypi,
or the nature of an excrescence.
‡
57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of the human
skeleton, found buried beneath four ancient forests at New Orleans on the banks
of the Mississippi river.
§
Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marvelled at the prowess
of the Atlanteans. “ Their physical strength was extraordinary
(witness indeed their cyclopean buildings), the earth shaking sometimes under
their tread. Whatever they did, was done speedily. . . . . . They were wise
and communicated their wisdom to men ” (Mythology p. 4).
Nor
were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with the
so-called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great
Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to do. And these
gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World’s history. They
are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build them,
for they were only the heirs to the cyclopean lore left to them by generations
of mighty builders and — “ magicians,” both good and bad.
It
will always be a subject of regret that history, rejecting a priori the
actual existence of giants, has preserved us so little of the records of
antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every mythology — which after
all is ancient history — the giants play an important part. In the
old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the
sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and
men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants to be the brethren of the
dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the gods to the history of the development
of the Aryan race, will only receive credence amongst the believers in the
Aryan theory, as expounded by Max 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 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 612
feet high. (Vide Schweinfurth’s latest works.)
In
Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on the
other hand, excessively common ; they are said to live even down to the time of
King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later date amongst the
Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.
If
we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants at Tarija on
the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated gods and men.
These old beliefs, which term certain localities “ Los campos de los
gigantes ” — “ the fields of giants,” are always
concomitant with the existence of pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of
pliocene raised beaches. “ All the giants are not under Mount
Ossa,” and it would be poor anthropology indeed that would restrict the
traditions of giants to Greek and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries,
Russia especially, teem with legends about the bogaterey (mighty giants)
of old ; and their folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of
national histories, their oldest songs, and their most archaic traditions,
speak of the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that
would make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were
real living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric
heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the history of
the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight beyond the
strength of the strongest men of modern times.
“
Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,
Such
men as live in these degenerate days.”
If
the fossil footprints from Carson, Indiana, U.S.A., are human, they indicate
gigantic men. Of their genuineness there can remain no doubt. It is to be
deplored that the 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 56 feet high, in
India, only show that belief in the existence of giants has never, at any time,
died out of the thoughts of men.
That
which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men have existed
and left distinct traces. In the journal of the Anthropological Institute (Vol.
1871, art. by Dr. C. Carter Blake) such a race is shown as having existed at
Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different from
those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race existed in
Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone circles in Galilee,
hewed neolithic flints in the Jordan valley and preserved an ancient Semitic
language quite distinct from the square Hebrew character — was of a very
large stature. The English translations of the Bible can never be relied upon,
even in their modern revised forms. They tell us of the Nephilim
translating the word by “ giants,” and further adding that they
were “ hairy ” men, probably the large and powerful prototypes of
the later satyrs so eloquently described by the patristic fancy ; some of the
Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they had themselves
seen these “ Satyrs ” — some alive, others pickled and
preserved. The word “ giants ” being once adopted as a synonym of Nephilim,
the commentators have since identified them with the sons of Anak. The
filibusters who seized on the Promised Land, found a pre-existing population
far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of giants. But the
races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before the birth of Moses.
This tall people existed in Canaan, and even in Bashan, and may have had
representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They were of far greater stature
than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years ago their cranial conformation
and large stature separated them from the children of Heber. Forty thousand
years ago their ancestors may have been of still more gigantic size, and four
hundred thousand years earlier they must have been in proportion to men
in our days as the Brobdingnagians were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of
the middle period were called the Great Dragons, and the first symbol of their
tribal deities, when the “ gods ” and the Divine Dynasties had
forsaken them, was that of a giant Serpent.
The
mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids, is as great as that
of their supposed fanes is to the modern Symbologist, but not to the initiated
Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last Atlanteans, and what
is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference that they were eastern
priests akin to the Chaldeans and Indians, though little more. It may be
inferred that they symbolized their deity as the Hindus do their Vishnu, as the
Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the builders of the Ohio
Great-Serpent mound worshipped theirs — namely under the form of the
“ mighty Serpent,” the emblem of the eternal deity TIME (the Hindu
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 Brahmins
of India. Dr. Borlase points to a close analogy between them and the Magi of
Persia* ; others will see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of
Thrace : simply because they were connected, in their esoteric teachings, with
the universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric
worship of all.
Like
the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (we speak of the Initiates), the Chaldees and
the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a succession of worlds,
as also in that of seven “ creations ” (of new continents) and
transformations of the face of the earth, and in a seven-fold night and day for
each earth or globe ( See “ Esoteric Buddhism ” ).
Wherever the Serpent with the egg is found, there this tenet was surely
present. Their Dracontia are a proof of it. This belief was so universal
that, if we seek for it in the esotericism of various religions, we shall
discover it in all. We shall find it among the Aryan Hindus and Mazdeans, the
Greeks, the Latins, and even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose
modern stocks
*
But the Magi of Persia were never Persians — not even Chaldeans. They
came from a far-off land, the Orientalists being of opinion that the said land
was Media. This may be so, but from what part of Media ? To this we receive no
answer.
hardly
comprehend now that which they read in their Scriptures. See what Seneca says
in Epistle 9, and Quæst. Nat. I I I., c., ult. : “ The world
being melted and having re-entered the bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for
some time to remain absorbed in himself and concealed, wholly immersed
in contemplation. After which a new world springs from him. . . . An innocent
race of men and animals are produced anew . . . etc.” Then again when
speaking of periodical mundane dissolution involving universal death, he
(Seneca) says that “ when the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and
the last day of the world shall come, the southern pole shall crush, as
it falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North pole shall overwhelm all the
countries beneath its axis. The affrighted sun shall be deprived of its
light ; the palace of heaven falling to decay shall produce at once both
life and death, and some kind of dissolution shall equally seize upon all
deities, who thus shall return into their original chaos ” ( Quoted in
“ Book of God,” p. 160.)
One
might imagine oneself reading the Purânic account by Parasâra of
the great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has Christianity
nothing of the kind ? It has, we say. Let the reader open any English Bible and
read chapter iii. of the Second Epistle of Peter, from verse iii. till
the xivth, and he will find there the same ideas. . . . “ There shall
come in the last days scoffers . . . saying, ‘ where is the promise of
his coming ? . . . . Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they
were from the beginning of creation.’ For, they are ignorant . . . . that
by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of
the water and in the water : whereby the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth that are
now, are reserved unto the fire . . . . wherein the heavens . . . . shall
be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat . . . . we
nevertheless look for new heavens and new earth, etc., etc.”
If the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to creation, the deluge,
and the promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a new Jerusalem in
heaven, this is no fault of “ Peter.” What the writer of the
Epistles meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by subterranean
fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents for the Sixth
Root-Race. For the writers of these Epistles were all learned in symbology if
not in the sciences.
It
was mentioned elsewhere that the belief in the septenary constitution of our
“ chain ” was the oldest tenet of the early Iranians, who got it
from the first Zarathustra. It is time to prove it to those Parsis who have
lost the key to the meaning of their Scriptures. In the Avesta the earth is
considered septempartite and tripartite at one and the same time, This is regarded
by Dr. Geiger, as an incongruity, for the following reasons, which he
calls discrepancies : the Avesta speaks of the three-thirds of the earth
because the Rig-Veda mentions “ three earths.” . . . . “
Three strata or layers, one lying above the other, are said to be meant by
this.”* But he is quite mistaken, as are all exoteric profane
translators. The Avesta has not borrowed the idea from the Rig-Veda, but
simply repeats the esoteric teaching. The “ three strata or layers
” do not refer to our globe alone, but to three layers of the globes of
our terrestrial chain — two by two, on each plane, one on the descending,
the other on the ascending arc. Thus, with reference to the six spheres or
globes above our earth, the seventh and the fourth, it is septempartite,
while with regard to the planes over our plane — it is tripartite. This
meaning is carried out and corroborated by the text in the Avesta and Vendidad,
and even by the speculations — a most laborious and unsatisfactory
guess-work — of the translators and commentators. It thus follows that
the division of the “ earth,” or rather the earth’s chain,
into seven Karshvars is not in contradiction with the three “
zones,” if this word is read “ planes.” As Geiger remarks,
this septenary division is very old — the oldest of all — since the
Gâthâs already speak of the “ septempartite earth.” (Bûmi
haptâiti, Yasna, xxxii., 3.) For, “ according to the
Parsee Scriptures, the seven Karshvars are to be considered as completely
disconnected parts of the earth,” which they surely are. For, “
between them there flows the Ocean, so that it is impossible, as stated
in several passages, to pass from one Karshvar to another.Ӡ The
“ Ocean ” is space, of of course, for the latter was called
“ Waters of Space ” before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the
word Karshvar is consistently rendered by Dwipa, and especially Qaniratha
by Jambudwipa (“ Neriosengh, the translator of the Yasna.”)‡
But this fact is not taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we
find even such a learned Zoroastrian and Parsi by birth as the translator of
Dr. Geiger’s work passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry
remarks of the former on the “ incongruities ” of this kind
abounding in the Mazdean Scriptures. One of such “ incongruities ”
and “ coincidences ” concerns the similarity of the Zoroastrian
with the Indian tenet with regard to the seven Dwipas (islands, or
continents, rather) as met with in the Purânas, namely : “
The Dwipas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean, surround Jambu
Dvipa, which is situated in the centre ” (p. 130, vol. I.), and, “
according to the Iranian view, the Karshvar Qaniratha is likewise
situated in the centre of the rest . . . . each of them (the other six Karshvars)
is a
* p.
129, “ Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times.”
†
Cf., e.g., Vol. I., 4, of the Pablavi Translation ; Bdh. xxi.,
2-3.
‡
Footnote by Dârâb Dastur Peshotan Sanjânâ, B.A., the
translator of Dr. Wilhelm Geiger’s work on the “ Civilization of
the Eastern Iranians.”
peculiar
individual space, and so they group themselves round (above) Qaniratha
” (ibid. p. 131). Now Qaniratha is not, as believed by
Geiger and his translator, “ the country inhabited by the Iranian
tribes,” and the other names do not mean “ the adjacent territories
of foreign nations in the North, South, West, and East ” (p. 132), but
our globe or Earth. For that which is meant by the sentence which follows the
last quoted, namely, that “ two Vorubarshti and Voru-Zarshti
lie in the North ; two, Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the
South ; Savahi and Arzahi in the East and West,” is simply
the very graphic and accurate description of the “ chain ” of our
planet, the Earth, represented in the book of Dzyan
(11)
thus :
N
(North)
(North)
(West)
Arzahi W
E
Savahi (East)
(South)
Tradadhafshu
Vidadhafshu
(South)
S
Qaniratha.
The
Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in the Secret
Doctrine to become an orthodox tenet. The “ Earth ” (our World),
therefore, is “ tripartite,” because the chain of the worlds
is situated on three different planes above our globe ; and it is septempartite
because of the seven globes or spheres which compose the chain. Hence the
further meaning given in Vendidad XIX. 39, showing that “ Qaniratha
alone is combined with imat, ‘ this ’ (earth), while all
other Karshvares are combined with the word ‘ avat,’
‘ that ’ or those —upper earths.” Nothing could
be plainer.
The
same may be said of the modern comprehension of all other ancient beliefs.
The
Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore, when, while all
the fires were extinguished on the 1st of November, their sacred and
inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those of
the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and later
Chaldees, the Greeks, and again like the Christians, who do the same to this
day, without suspecting the real meaning, they greeted the Morning Star —
the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.*
*
Dr. Kenealy quotes, in his “ Book of God,” Vallancey, who says
“ I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had
studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I heard a
peasant girl say to boor standing by her “ Teach an Maddin Nag ”
(Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of
the Chaldeans.”
Strabo
speaks of an island near to Britannia, “ where Ceres and Persephone were
worshipped with the same rites as in Samothrace (lib. iv.) and this island was
Sacred Ierna,” where a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the
rebirth of man, not as Lucian explains : “ that the same spirit
shall animate a new body, not here, but in a different world,” but in a
series of re-incarnations in this same world ; for as Diodorus says, they
declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods, would pass into
other bodies.*
These
tenets came to the Fifth Race Aryans from their predecessors of the Fourth
Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings, which told them
how their parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant, owing
to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been gradually gliding toward its
end. Those records reminded them of the giant intellect of the preceding races
as well as of their giant size. One finds the repetition of those records in
every age of history, in almost every old fragment which has descended to us
from antiquity.
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 to twice as old an age. They had wealthy cities with
temples, and one of such (cities) held more than a million of inhabitants in
it, gold and silver being found there in great abundance. . . .
Grote’s
suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a mirage
—clouds
on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a golden sea — is
too disingenuous to be even noticed.
A.
SOME
STATEMENTS ABOUT THE SACRED ISLANDS AND CONTINENTS IN THE CLASSICS, EXPLAINED
ESOTERICALLY.
All
that which precedes was known to Plato, and to many others. But as no Initiate
had the right to divulge and declare all he knew, posterity got only hints.
Aiming more to instruct as a moralist than as a geographer and ethnologist or
historian, the Greek philosopher merged the history of Atlantis, which covered
several million years, into one
*
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.
event
which he located on one comparatively small island 3000 stadia long by 2000
wide ; (or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland), whereas
the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as “ all Asia and Lybia
” put together. But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato’s
narrative bears the impress of truth upon it.* It was not he who invented it,
at any rate, since Homer, who preceded him by many centuries, also speaks of
the Atlantes (who are our Atlanteans) and of their island in his Odyssey.
Therefore the tradition was older than the bard of Ulysses. The Atlantes and
the Atlantides of mythology are based upon the Atlantes and the Atlantides of
history. Both Sanchoniathon and Diodorus have preserved the histories of those
heroes and heroines, however much these accounts may have become mixed up with
the mythical element.
In
our own day we witness the stupendous fact that such comparatively recent
personages as Shakespeare and William Tell are all but denied, an attempt being
made to show one to be a nom de plume, and the other a person who never
existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful races — the Lemurians
and the Atlanteans — have been merged into and identified, in time, with
a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the same patronymic ?
Herodotus
speaks of the Atlantes —a people of Western Africa which gave its
name to Mount Atlas ; who were vegetarians, and “ whose sleep was never
disturbed by dreams ” ; and who, moreover, “ daily cursed the sun
at his rising and at his setting because his excessive heat scorched and
tormented them.”
These
statements are based upon moral and psychic facts and not on physiological
disturbance. The story of Atlas (vide supra) gives the key to it. If the
Atlanteans never had their sleep disturbed by dreams, it is because that
particular tradition is concerned with the earliest Atlanteans, whose physical
frame and brain were not yet sufficiently consolidated, in the physiological
sense, to permit the nervous centres to act during sleep. With regard to that
other statement — namely, that
*
Plato’s veracity has been so unwarrantably impeached by even such
friendly critics as Professor Jowett, when the “ story of Atlantis
” is discussed, that it seems well to cite the testimony of a specialist
on the subject. It is sufficient to place mere literary cavillers in a very
ridiculous position : —
“
If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt appear that
in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord with the people of
America, they were both in accord with the people of Atlantis. . . . . It will
be seen that in every case where Plato gives us information in this respect
as to Atlantis, we find this agreement to exist. It existed in architecture,
sculpture, navigation, engraving, writing, an established
priesthood, the mode of worship, agriculture, and the construction
of roads and canals ; and it is reason-able to suppose that the same
correspondence extended down to all the minor details.” (Donnelly,
“ Atlantis,” p. 194.)
they
daily “ cursed the Sun ” — this again has nothing to do with
the heat, but with the moral degeneration that grew with the race. It is
explained in our Commentaries. “ They (the sixth sub-race of the
Atlanteans) used magic incantations even against the Sun ” —
failing in which, they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited with
the power of calling down the moon, as Greek history assures us. The Atlanteans
of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and wickedness, their
ambition and defiance of the gods. Thence the same traditions taking form in
the Bible about the antediluvian giants and the Tower of Babel, found also in
the “ Book of Enoch.”
Diodorus
records another fact or two : the Atlanteans boasted of possessing the land in
which all the gods had received their birth ; as also of having had Uranus for
their first King, he being also the first to teach them astronomy. Very little
more than this has come down to us from Antiquity.
The
myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old continents of
Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. The poets
attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and an universal
knowledge, and especially a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the
ocean : because both continents bore races instructed by divine
masters, and because both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where
they now slumber until their next reappearance above the waters. Atlas is the
son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is Calypso — “ the watery
deep,” (See Hesiod’s Theogony, 507-509, and
Odyssey 1, 51) : Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the
ocean, and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean floors.
The Odyssey makes of him the guardian and the “ sustainer ”
of the huge pillars that separate the heavens from the earth (1, 52-53). He is
their “ supporter.” And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine
fires, and Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps,*
Atlas is said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the earth, and
join his brother Iapetos in the depths of Tartarus. Sir Theodore Martin is
right in interpreting this allegory as meaning, Atlas “ standing on the
solid floor of the inferior hemisphere of the universe and thus carrying at the
same time the disc of the earth and the celestial vault — the
solid envelope of the superior hemisphere ” . . . (Mémoires de
l’Académie des
*
Christians ought not to object to this doctrine of the periodical destruction
of continents by fire and water ; for St. Peter speaks of the earth “
standing out of the water, and in the water, which earth, being overflowed,
perished, but is now reserved unto fire ” ; (See also
the “ Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers,” p. 4,
London, 1815).
Inscriptions, p. 176). 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 ἔχει
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 (
Æschylus, “ Prometheus Vinctus,” 351, 429, etc.)—
i.e., the feet of the giant tread the earth while his shoulders support the
celestial vault, an allusion to the gigantic peaks of the Lemurian and
Atlantean continents
—the
epithet “ supporter ” becomes very correct. The term “
conservator ” for the Greek word ἔχει, which
Decharme, following Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning
φυλάσσει and ἐπιμελεῖται,
does not render the same sense.
The
conception was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running along the
terrestrial border (or disc). These mountain peaks plunged their roots into the
very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads heavenward, their
summits being lost in the clouds. The ancient continents had more mountains
than valleys on them. Atlas, and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed
relics of the two lost continents, were thrice as lofty during the day of
Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the Lybians called Mount
Atlas “ the pillar of Heaven,” according to Herodotus ( IV.,
184), and Pindar qualified the later Ætna as “ the celestial pillar
” ( Pyth. 1, 20 ; Decharme, 315). Atlas was an inaccessible
island peak in the days of Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been
raised. It is the sole Western relic which survives, independent, of the
continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell,* for
Australia is now part of the Eastern continent. Proud Atlas, according to
esoteric tradition, having sunk one third of its size into the waters, its two
parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.
This
again was known to the priests of Egypt and to Plato himself, the solemn oath
of secrecy, which extended even to the mysteries of Neo-Platonism, alone
preventing the whole truth from being told.† So
*
This does not mean that Atlas is the locality where it fell, for this took
place in Northern and Central Asia ; but that Atlas formed part of the
continent.
†
Had not Diocletian burned the esoteric works of the Egyptians in 296, together
with their books on alchemy — “ περὶ
χυμείας
αργύρον καὶ
χρυσοῦ ” ; Cæsar 700,000 rolls at
Alexandria, and Leo Isaurus 300,000 at Constantinople (viiith cent.) ;
and the Mahomedans all they could lay their sacrilegious hands on — the
world might know to-day more of Atlantis than it does. For Alchemy had its birth-place
in Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its renaissance in
Egypt.
secret
was the knowledge of the last islands of Atlantis, indeed, — on account
of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants, the last direct
descendants of the gods or divine Kings, as it was thought — that to
divulge its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. Theopompus says as
much in his ever-suspected Meropis, when he speaks of the
Phœnicians as being the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western
coast of Africa ; and who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk
their own vessels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of
them.
There
are those Orientalists and historians — and they form the majority
—who,
while feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the Bible, and some
of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the immorality in
the pantheons of India and Greece.* We may be told that before them Euripides,
Pindar, and even Plato, express the same ; that they too felt irritated with
the tales invented — “ those miserable stories of the poets,”
as Euripides expresses it (ἀοιδῶν ὅιδε
δυστήνοι
λόγοι, Hercules furens, 1346, Dindorf’s
Edition).
But
there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who knew that
there was more than one key to theogonic symbolism, it was a mistake to have
expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if the educated and
learned philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom under the coarse rind of
the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the greatest laws and truths of
psychic and physical nature, as well as the origin of all things — not so
with the uninitiated profane. For him the dead letter was religion ; the
interpretation — sacrilege. And this dead letter could neither edify nor
make him more perfect, seeing that such an example was given him by his gods.
But
*
Professor Max Müller’s Lectures — “ on the Philosophy of
Mythology ” — are before us. We read his citations of Herakleitos
(460 B.C.), declaring that Homer deserved “ to be ejected from public
assemblies and flogged ; ” and of Xenophanes “ holding Homer and
Hesiod responsible for the popular super- stitions of Greece. . . . ” and
for ascribing “ to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among
men . . . unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud.” Finally the
Oxford Professor quotes from Professor Jowett’s translation of Plato,
where the latter tells Adaimantos (Republic) that “ the young man (in the
State) should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes, he is far
from doing any-thing outrageous, and that he may chastise his father (as Zeus
did with Kronos) . . in any manner that he likes, and in this will only be
following the example of the first and greatest of the gods. . . In my opinion,
these stories are not fit to be repeated.” To this Dr. Max
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 authorised codex and
of a settled system of faith ” (p. 349). So much the worse if it is
“ historical,” for surely Lot’s incident with his daughters
would only gain, were it “ allegorical.”
to
the philosopher — especially the Initiate — Hesiod’s theogony
is as historical as any history can be. Plato accepts it as such, and
gives out as much of its truths as his pledges permitted him.
The
fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranos for their first king, and that Plato
commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great continent by
Neptune, the grandson of Uranos, shows that there were continents and kings
before Atlantis. For Neptune, to whose lot that continent fell, finds on a
small island only one human couple made of clay (i.e., the first
physical human man, whose origin began with the last sub-races of the
Third Root-Race). It is their daughter Clito that the god marries, and it is
his eldest son Atlas who receives for his part the mountain and the
continent which was called by his name.
Now
all the gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindu Pantheon and the Rishis,
were the septiform personations (1) of the noumena of the intelligent
Powers of nature ; (2) of Cosmic Forces ; (3) of celestial bodies ; (4) of gods
or Dhyan Chohans ; (5) of psychic and spiritual powers ; (6) of divine kings on
earth (or the incarnations of the gods) ; and (7) of terrestrial heroes or men.
The knowledge how to discern among these seven forms the one that is meant,
belonged at all times to the Initiates, whose earliest predecessors had created
this symbolical and allegorical system.
Thus
while Uranos (or the host representing this celestial group) reigned and ruled
over the Second Race and their (then) Continent ; Kronos or Saturn governed the
Lemurians ; and Jupiter, Neptune* and others fought in the allegory for
Atlantis, which was the whole earth in the day of the Fourth Race. Poseidonis,
or the (last) island of Atlantis “ the third step of Idaspati ” (or
Vishnu) in the mystic language of the secret books — lasted till about
12,000 years ago.† The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in claiming that
it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas, where “ the
gods were born ” — i.e., “ incarnated.” But it
was after their fourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human
Kings and rulers.
Diodorus
speaks of Uranos as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either consciously
or otherwise, the continents ; but, as shown, Plato indirectly corrects the
statement. The first astronomical teacher of men was Uranos, because he is one
of the seven Dhyan Chohans of that second period or Race. Thus also in the
second Manvantara
*
Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindu Idaspati, identical with Narâyana (the
mover on the waters) or Vishnu, and like this Hindu god he is shown crossing
the whole horizon in three steps. Idaspati means also “ the master
of the waters.’
†
Bailly’s assertion that the 9,000 years mentioned by the Egyptian priests
do not represent “ solar years ” is groundless. Bailly knew nothing
of geology and its calcu-lations ; otherwise he would have spoken differently.
(that
of Swârochisha), among the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding gods or
Rishis of that race, we find Jyotis,* the teacher of astronomy
(Jyotisha), one of the names of Brahmâ. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien
(or the sky, Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of astronomy. Uranos
gave birth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they who (personified by
Saturn-Kronos) mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who fell into
generation, when “ creation by will was superseded by physical
procreation,” they needed Uranos no more.
And
here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence of the
last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century,
“ The Greater Gods of Olympos,” the ideas of the general public
about Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer is
credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as “
the true key to the Homeric conception,” whereas this “ key ”
was merely a blind. Poseidon “ is indeed essentially of the earth
earthy . . . . strong and self-asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and
vindictive,” — but this is because he symbolises the Spirit of the
Fourth Root-Race, the ruler of the Seas, that race which lives above the surface
of the seas (λίμνη, Il. xxiv., 79), which is composed
of the giants, the children of Eurymedon, the race which is the father of
Polyphemus, the Titan and one-eyed Cyclops. Though Zeus reigns over the
Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules, and who is the true key to the triad of
the Kronid Brothers and to our human races. Poseidon and Nereus are
one : the former the ruler or spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of
its submersion, the latter, after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the living
race ; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan Race :
and this is what the great Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or
even dimly perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the “
artfulness ” of Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we
arrive . . . . only through the patronymic of the Nereids !
Thus
the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their
speculations to the exoteric images of mythology and to lose sight of their
inner meaning : and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of
our age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured
scholars England has given birth to. Grecian literature has been the loving
study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public affairs to
enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek scholarship which
will make his name famous through coming generations. At the same time, as his
sincere
* See Matsya Purâna, which
places him among the seven Prajâpatis of the period.
admirer,
the present writer cannot but feel a deep regret that posterity, while
acknowledging his profound erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the
greater light which must then shine upon the whole question of symbolism
and mythology, judge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious
system which he has often criticised from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In
that future day it will be perceived that the esoteric key to the mysteries of
the Christian as well as of the Grecian theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret
Doctrine of the pre-historic nations, which, along with others, he has
denied. It is that Doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all human
religious speculations or even so-called Revelations, and it is this
teaching which infuses the Spirit of life into the lay figures on the Mounts of
Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a younger man, his
admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be crowned by the
discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes the golden hours of
his declining years in futile disputations with that giant free-thinker, Col.
Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of exoteric temper, drawn from the
arsenals of ignorant LITERALISM. These two great contro-versialists are
equally blind to the true esoteric meaning of the texts which they hurl at each
other’s head like iron bullets, while the world alone suffers by such
controversies : since the one helps to strengthen the ranks of materialism, and
the other those of blind Sectarianism and of the dead letter. And now we may
return once more to our immediate subject.
Many
a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our
commentators. The power of names is great, and was known since the first
men were instructed by the divine masters. And as Solon had studied it,
he translated the “ Atlantean ” names into names devised by
himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to bear
in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old Greek writers
contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the Great Continent and
others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has become customary to take
them all as referring to the latter only, but that this is incorrect is evident
from the incompatibility of the various statements as to the size, etc., of
“ Atlantis.”
Thus,
in the Timæus and Critias, Plato says, that the plain surrounding the
city was itself surrounded by mountain chains. . . . . And the plain was smooth
and level, and of an oblong shape, lying north and south, three thousand stadia
in one direction and two thousand in the other. . . . . They surrounded the plain
by an enormous canal or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and 1,250 miles in
length.
Now
in other places the entire size of the island of Poseidonis is given as
about the same as that assigned here to the “ plain around the
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 already several thousands of years before our era with
Atlantis) : and these were the Egyptians, the Phœnicians (vide
Sanchoniathon), and the old Greeks (vide Diodorus, after Plato). But the
oldest civilized country of Asia — India
—can
be shown to claim the same descent likewise. Sub-races guided by Karmic law or
destiny repeat unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother-races.
As the comparatively fair Brahmins have come — when invading India with
its dark-coloured Dravidians — from the North, so the Aryan Fifth Race
must claim its origin from northern regions. The occult sciences show that the
founders (the respective groups of the seven 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* who measures 9090 mortal
years, will understand the times of the pralayas, the final
destiny of nations, O Lanoo.”
Moreover
there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should locate its
great progenitors and saints in the Ursa Major, a northern
constellation. It is 70,000 YEARS, HOWEVER, SINCE THE POLE OF THE EARTH
POINTED TO THE FURTHER END OF URSA MINOR’S TAIL ; and many more thousand
years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the constellation
of Ursa Major.
The
Aryan race was born and developed in the far north, though after the sinking of
the continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further south into Asia. Hence
Prometheus is son of Asia, and Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah — he
who created men out of the stones of mother
* The equivalent of this name is given
in the original.
earth
— is called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the
brother of Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the Snows.*
Greece
had her Hyperborean as well as her Southern Apollo. Thus nearly
all the gods of Egypt, Greece, and 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.† All the “ fables ” of Greece were built
on historical facts, if that history had only passed unadulterated by myths to
posterity. The “ one-eyed ” Cyclopes, the giants fabled as the sons
of 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 ‡ ; for the two front eyes
were fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth
Race. The allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of
Ithaca was saved by putting out with a fire-brand the eye of Polyphemus, is
based upon the psycho-physiological atrophy of the “ third ” eye.
Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though a
“ sage ” in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in
the opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.§ His adventure with the latter
—a
savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the Odyssey
— is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean
civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual and physical
culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of
*
Deukalion is said to have brought the worship of Adonis and Osiris into
Phœnicia. Now the worship is that of the Sun, lost and found again in its
astronomical significance. It is only at the Pole where the Sun dies out for
such a length of time as six months, for in latitude 68° 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 “ Allégories d’Orient,”
p. 246, and by Bailly ; though neither Hercules nor Osiris are solar myths,
save in one of their seven aspects.
†
The Hyperboreans, now regarded as mythical, were described (Herod, IV.,
33-35 ; Pausanias, 1, 31, 2 ; V., 7, 8 ; ad X., 5, 7, 8)
as the beloved priests and servants of the gods, and of Apollo chiefly.
‡
The Cyclopes are not the only “ one-eyed ” representatives in
tradition. The Arimaspes were a Scythian people, and were also credited with
but one eye. (Géographie ancienne, Vol. I I, p.
321.) It is they whom Apollo destroyed with his shafts. (See supra.)
§
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 (Odyssey and elsewhere). Now
Calypso was a daughter of Atlas (Odys. Book XI I.), 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.
the
Third Race to lose their all-penetrating spiritual eye. That other
allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclops to avenge the death of his son Asclepios,
does not refer to the three races represented by the three sons of Heaven and
Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed
with the “ Wisdom-eye.” The former have left relics of their
buildings everywhere, in the south as much as in the north ; the latter, were
confined to the north solely. Thus Apollo
—pre-eminently
the god of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration — killed
them — his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal — and
hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions. (Hygin.
“ Astron. Poétique,” Book ii. c. 15).
Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean god is the Sun personified,
which during the course of the sidereal year (25,868 y.) changes the climates
on the earth’s surface, making of tropical, frigid regions, and vice
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 ” ( Nineteenth Century, July, 1887.)
The
history of Latona (Leto), Apollo’s mother, is most pregnant in various
meanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving
birth to the Sun, Apollo, 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 (Diod. Sic. I I. 307). Latona is the Hyperborean
Continent, and its race — geologically.*
* 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 I I.) : “
The golden apples carried away by Hercules are not, as some think, in Lybia ;
they are in the Hyperborean Atlantis.” The Greeks naturalised all the
gods they borrowed and made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. Thus
also the mythologists have tried to make of Eridan the river Po, in Italy. In
the myth of Phaeton it is said that at his death his sisters dropped hot tears
which fell into Eridan and were changed into amber ! Now amber is found only in
the northern seas, in the Baltic. Phaeton, meeting with his death while
carrying heat to the frozen stars of the boreal regions, awakening at the Pole
the Dragon made rigid by cold, and being hurled down into the Eridan, is an
allegory referring directly to the changes of climate in those distant times
when, from a frigid zone, the polar lands had become a country with a moderate
and warm climate. The usurper of the functions of the sun, Phaeton, being
hurled into the Eridan by Jupiter’s thunderbolt, is an allusion to the
second change that took place in those regions when, once more, the land where
“ the magnolia blossomed ” became the desolate forbidding land of
the farthest north and eternal ices. This allegory covers then the events of
two pralayas ; and if well understood ought to be a demonstration of the
enormous antiquity of the human races.
When
the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and divine —
Apollo and Athenê 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
(I l. 431-53), and has the gift of appearing to his Seers without being visible
to other persons present — (Iliad, xvii., 322-36) — a gift,
however, shared by every high Adept.
The
King of the Hyperboreans, was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the north-wind,
and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe (the Atlantean
race) — the mother of seven sons and seven daughters personifying the
seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches (see Apollodorus
for this number) — allegorizes the history of the two continents. The
wrath of “ the sons of god,” or of “ Will and Yoga,” at
seeing the steady degradation of the Atlanteans was great (See “ The
Sons of God and the Sacred Island ”) ; and the destruction of the
“ children of Niobe ” by the children of Latona — Apollo and
Diana, the deities of light, wisdom and purity, or the Sun and Moon
astronomically, whose influence causes changes in the earth’s axis,
deluges and other cosmic cataclysms — is thus very clear.* The fable
about the
* So
occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is made to reappear
even in Revelation (xii.) as the woman clothed with the Sun
(Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being with child “
cries, travailing in birth, pained to be delivered.” A great red Dragon,
etc., stands before the woman ready to devour the child. She brings forth the
man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and who was caught
unto the throne of God (the Sun). The woman fled to the wilder-ness still
pursued by the Dragon, who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a
flood, when the earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood ; and the Dragon
went to make war with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandment of God,
etc. (See xii., 1, 17.) Anyone, who reads the allegory of Latona pursued
by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognise the identity of the two
versions. Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to persecute and destroy Latona and
devour her babe. The latter is Apollo, the Sun, for “ the man-child, who
was to rule all nations with a rod of iron ” of Revelation, is
surely not the meek “ Son of God,” Jesus, but the physical Sun,
“ who rules all nations ” ; the Dragon being the North Pole,
gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the lands which became more and more
Hyperborean and unfit to be inhabited by those who were fast developing into
physical men, for they now had to deal with the climatic variations. The Dragon
will not allow Latona “ to bring forth ”
—(the
Sun to appear). “ She is driven from heaven, and finds no place where she
can bring forth,” until Neptune (the ocean), moved with pity, makes
immovable the floating isle of Delos (the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from
Jupiter under the waves of the ocean) on which Latona finds refuge and where
the bright god Δήλιος 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
never-ceasing
tears of Niobe, whose grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain —
Atlantis covered with water — is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let
it be remembered, is the daughter of one of the Pleiades (or Atlantides) the grand-daughter
of Atlas therefore, (See “ Metamor phoses of Ovid,”
Book V I.), because she represents the last generations of the doomed
continent.
A
true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous influence
on antiquity. “ If these names,” he adds, “ are mere
allegories, then all that those fables contain of truth comes from Atlantis ;
if the fable is a real tradition — however altered — then the whole
of the ancient history is still in it.” (Lettres sur l’Atlantide,
p. 137.)
So
much so, that all ancient writings — prose and poetry — are full of
the reminiscences of the Lemuro-Atlanteans, the first physical races,
though the Third and the Fourth in number. Hesiod records the tradition about
the men of the age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash-wood and who had
hearts harder than diamond. Clad in bronze from head to foot they passed their
lives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength,
invincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the poet (Hesiod,
in oper. and dieb. v. 143). Such were the giants of the first physical
races. The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in Yasna ix. 15.
Tradition maintains that the “ Sons of God,” or the great Initiates
of the Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge, to rid the earth of all the
Sorcerers among the Atlanteans. The said verse addresses Zoroaster as one of
the “ Sons of God.” — It says : “ Thou, O Zarathustra,
didst make all demons (i.e., Sorcerers), who before roamed the world in
human forms, conceal themselves in the earth ” (i.e., helped them
to get submerged).
The
Lemurians, as also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two distinct classes
— the “ Sons of Night ” or Darkness, and the “ Sons of
the Sun,” or Light. The old books tell us of terrible battles between the
two, when the former, leaving their land of Darkness, from whence the Sun
departed for long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and “
tried to wrench the lord of light ” from their better favoured brothers
of the equatorial regions. We may be told that the ancients knew nothing of the
long night of six months’ duration in the Polar regions. Even Herodotus,
more learned
chapter
just cited of the Apocalypse. Latona became a powerful goddess indeed,
and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in almost every fane of
antiquity. In his occult aspect Apollo is patron of Number 7. He is born on the
seventh of the month, and the swans of Myorica swim seven times around Delos
singing that event ; he is given seven chords to his Lyre — the seven
rays of the sun and the seven forces of nature. But this only in the
astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.
than
the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six months in the year,
and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew well that there was a
country in the north where the year was divided into a day and night of six
months’ duration each, for Pliny says so in his Fourth Book, c. 12. They
speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a distinction between
the two. The former inhabited the Palus 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
Tanais, having crossed Asia. “ These warlike multitudes lived
formerly on the ocean shores, in dense forests, and under a tenebrous sky. There
the pole is almost touching the head, there long nights and days divide the
year ” (in Mario). As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as
expressed by Solinus Polyhistor (c. 16), “ sow in the morning,
reap at noon, gather their fruits in the evening, and store them during the
night in their caves.”
Even
the writers of the Zohar knew of the fact (as shown in iii., fol. 10a),
as it is written : “ In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old, we learn . . .
. there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst others are
in darkness ; these have the day, when for the former it is night ; and there
are countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the night
continues only some instants.” (Isaac Myer’s “ Qabbalah,”
p. 139).
The
island of Delos, the Asteria of the Greek mythology, was never in
Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in its
molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country or an
island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece. Both Pliny
and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern seas. One calls it Basilea
or “ royal ” (Vol. I I., p. 225 of Diod.) ;
the other, Pliny, names it Osericta (Book xxxvii, c. 2), a
word, according to Rudbeck (Vol. I., p. 462-464), having had
“ a significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island of
the divine Kings or god-Kings,” or again the “ royal island
of the gods,” because the gods were born there, i.e., the divine
dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Let geographers
and geologists seek for it among that group of islands discovered by
Nordenskiöld on his Vega voyage in the arctic regions.* The secret
books inform us that the climate has changed in those regions more than once
since the first men inhabited those now almost inaccessible latitudes. They
were a paradise before they became hell ;
*
These islands were “ found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep, oxen,
etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses,” etc. If
there was no man on earth at that period “ how came horses and sheep to
be found in company with the huge antediluvians ? ” asks a master in a
letter. (“ Esoteric Buddhism,” 67). The reply is given above
in the text.
the
dark Hades of the Greeks and the cold realm of Shades where the Scandinavian
Hel, the goddess-Queen of the country of the dead, “ holds sway deep down
in Helheim and Niflheim.” Yet, it was the birth-place of Apollo, who was
the brightest of gods, in heaven — astronomically — as he was the
most enlightened of the divine kings who ruled over the early nations, in his
human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the Iliad I V., 239-62, vide
“ The Greater gods ” — wherein Apollo is said to have
appeared four times in his own form (as the god of the four races) and six
times in human form, i.e., as connected with the divine Dynasties of the
earlier unseparated Lemurians.
It
is those early mysterious peoples, their countries (which have now become
uninhabitable), as well as the name given to man both dead and alive, which
have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church fathers for inventing a
hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead of a freezing
locality.*
It
is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians,
the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths — known to and communicating with the
Greeks — who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of
their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of
future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis. Plato hints as
much in speaking of the latter, whose name it is averred came from pelagus,
the great sea. Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and allegorical, but it is
not mythical, for the story is based upon the same archaic tradition of men
— or rather of nations — which were saved during the cataclysms, in
canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that the Chaldean
Xisuthrus, the Hindu Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun — the “ beloved
of the gods,” who rescued him from the flood in a canoe — or the
Swedish Belgamer, for whom the gods did the same in the north, are all
identical as a personage. But their legends have all sprung from the
catastrophe which involved both the continent and the island of Atlantis.
The
allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no
myth. Biblical events are revealed indeed. But it is neither by the
voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount
* 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 1., 184).
Mannus is the ancestor of the German race ; the Hindu Manu, the thinking
being, from man ; the Egyptian Menes ; and Minos, the King
of Crete, judge of the infernal regions after his death — all proceed
from the same root or word.
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 upon the Titans —
the giants born of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who
took to themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was
Pherecydes quoting from Genesis when giving details on those giants which are
not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the Hyperboreans were of
the race of the Titans, which race descended from the earliest giants, and that
it was that Hyperborean region which was the birth-place of the first giants.
The Commentaries on the sacred books explain that the said region was the far
north, the polar lands now, the pre-Lemurian earliest continent, embracing once
upon a time the present Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.
But
who were the Nephilim of Genesis vi. 4 ? There were 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., etc.
Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and Race of Atlantis, but
also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and others devote an enormous space
to the meaning of the word Nephilim and explain very little. But
Esoteric records show these hairy creatures to be the last descendants of those
Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on female animals, of species now
long extinct ; thus producing dumb men, “ monsters,” as the
Stanzas have it.
Now
mythology, built upon Hesiod’s Theogony, which is but a poetised record
of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants, called Briareus,
Kottos, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they were imprisoned by
Kronos for their rebellion against him. All the three are endowed by myth with
an hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter standing for races, the former for
sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind that in mythology every personage almost
is a god or demi-god, and also a king or simple mortal in his second aspect ; *
and
*
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.
that
both stand as symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations,
races and sub-races, the esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It
says that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form
several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to make
room for another. The whole globe is convulsed periodically ; and has been so convulsed,
since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face
of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the arctic
and antarctic poles has but little altered. The polar lands unite and break off
from each other into islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same.
Therefore northern Asia is called the “ eternal or perpetual land,”
and the Antarctic the “ ever living ” and “ the concealed
” ; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear
and reappear in turn, into and above the great waters.
From
the first appearance of the great continent of Lemuria, the three polar giants
had been imprisoned in their circle by Kronos. Their gaol is surrounded by a
wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated by Poseidon (or
Neptune, hence by the seas), which they cannot cross ; and it is in that damp
region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three brothers languish. The
Iliad (viii., 13) makes of it the Tartaros. When the gods and Titans rebelled
in their turn against Zeus — the deity of the Fourth Race — the
father of the gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants in order to
conquer the gods and Titans, and to precipitate the latter into Hades ; or, in
clearer words, to have Lemuria hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom
of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and
perish in its turn.* The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a
repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm ; and, remaining impressed
on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the
general fate of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Râkshasas of
Lanka and the Bharateans, the melée of the Atlanteans and Aryans 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 Aryan
stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious
*
The continents perish in turn by fire and water : either through
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of
waters. Our continents have to perish owing to the former cataclysmal process.
The incessant earthquakes of this and the past years may be a warning.
thought
of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed
thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.
But
as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar — as it was
that of Bailly and Voltaire — that Hesiod’s theogony was based upon
historical facts (see Decharme’s Mythol. de la Grèce
Antique), it becomes easier for the occult teachings to find their way into
the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these passages from mythology
brought forward in our discussion upon modern learning in this Addendum.
Such
symbolisms as are found in all the exoteric creeds, are so many landmarks of
prehistoric truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the earliest
human races, has become several times since then hyperborean and Saturnine* ;
thus showing the Golden Age and reign of Saturn from multiform aspects. It was
many-sided in its character indeed — climatically, ethnologically and
morally. For, the Third, Lemurian Race must be physiologically divided into the
early androgynous and the later bi-sexual race ; and the climate of its
dwelling places and continents into that of an eternal spring and eternal
winter, into life and death, purity and impurity. The Cycle of legends is ever
being transformed on its journey by popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from
the dross it has picked up on its way through many nations and through the
countless minds which have added their own exuberant additions to the original
facts. Leaving for a while the Greek interpretations we may seek for some more
corroborations of the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.
*
Denis, the geographer, tells us that the great sea North of Asia was called
glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35). Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny
(Book I V., c. 16) corroborate the state-ment by showing that it
is its giant inhabitants who gave it the name. And the Secret Doctrine explains
both assertions by telling us that all the continents were formed from North to
South ; and that as the sudden change of climate dwarfed the race that had been
born on it, arresting its growth, so, several degrees southward, various
conditions had always produced the tallest men in every new humanity, or race.
We see it to this day. The tallest men now found are those in Northern countries,
while the smallest are Southern Asiatics, Hindus, Chinamen, Japanese, etc.
Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans, Norwegians, Russians,
Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and the English, with the inhabitants of central
India and the average European on the continent. Thus also the giants of
Atlantis, and hence the Titans of Hesiod, are all Northerners.
§ V I I.
SCIENTIFIC
AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE
EXISTENCE
OF SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS.
IT
may not be amiss — for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of
a lost Miocene Atlantis into an “ antiquated myth,” to append a few
scientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely
indifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit that, in
any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems concerning the
remote past is far more philosophical than a priori denial, or even
hasty generalizations on insufficient data.
Meanwhile
two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with, may be pointed
out as “ confirming ” certain passages in the letter of a Master,
published in “ Esoteric Buddhism.” The eminence of the authorities
will not be questioned : —
Extract
from p. 61 of “ Esoteric Bud-Extract from a Lecture by W. Pen
dhism.”
gelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.
No. I. No. I.
“
The sinking of the Atlantis (the “ Was there, as some have believed,
group of continents and islands) began an Atlantis — a continent or
Archiduring the Eocene period . . . . and pelago of large islands occupying the
it culminated in the Miocene, first in area of the North Atlantic ? There the final
disappearance of the largest, an is, perhaps, nothing
unphilosophical event coincident with the elevation of the in the
hypothesis. For since, as Alps, and second in the sinking of the
geologists state, ‘ The Alps have last of the fair islands
mentioned by acquired 4,000 and even in some places Plato.”
more than 10,000 feet of their pre
sent
altitude since the commencement of the Eocene epoch ’ (Lyell’s Principles 2nd
Ed. p. 256.) — a post-Miocene depression might have carried the
hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths.”*
*
Having already given several instances of the vagaries of Science, it is
delightful to find such agreement in this particular case. Read in connection
with the scientific admission (cited elsewhere) of the geologists’
ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods, the following passage is
highly instructive : “ We are not yet able to assign an approximate
date for the most recent epoch at which our Northern Hemisphere was covered
with glaciers. According to Mr. Wallace, this epoch may have occurred seventy
thousand years ago, while others would assign to it an antiquity of at
least two hundred thousand years, and there are yet others who urge
strong arguments on behalf of the opinion that a million of years is
barely enough to have produced the changes which have taken place since that
event.” (Fiske, “ Cosmic
No. 2. No. 2.
“
Lemuria cannot any more be “ It would be premature to say, confounded
with the Atlantis con-because no evidence has yet been tinent than Europe with
America. adduced, that men may not have existed Both sank and were
drowned with all in the Eocene Age, especially as it can their ‘
gods ’ ; yet, between the two be shown that a race of men, the
lowest catastrophes a short period of about we know of, co-exists
with that remnant some 700,000 years elapsed ; Lemuria of the Eocene
flora which still survives on flourishing and ending her career just the
continent and islands of Australia.” about that trifling lapse of
time before (Extract from an article in “ Popular the early Eocene
Age, since its Race Science Review,” Vol. V. p. 18, by was the Third.
Behold the relics of that Professor Seemann, Ph.D. F.L.S., once great
race in some of the flat-headed P.A.S.). aborigines of your
AUSTRALIA.” (“ Eso-Hæckel, who fully accepts the reality
teric Buddhism,” p. 55.) 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 . . . Papu
ans
and Hottentots . . . Australians
. .
. 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 the Australian civilization (?) indicates a higher
grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here, where everything
resounds like the expiring voices of a previous and richer age. The idea
that the Australians have no religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But
this religion is certainly quite deteriorated.” (Cited in
Schmidt’s “ Doctrine of Descent of Darwinism,” pp.
301-2.) As to his other statement, namely, that the Australians are a “
division of the Malays ” (Vide his ethnological theories in the
“ Pedigree of Man ” ), Hæckel is in error, if he
classes the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a mixed
stock, resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with
the Seventh sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of
indirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact —
to those concrete thinkers who demand a physical proof of Karma —
that the lowest races of men are now rapidly dying out ; a phenomenon largely
due to an extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time
that they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is
taking
Philosophy,” Vol. I I., p. 304).
Prof. Lefèvre, again, gives us as his estimate 100,000 years.
Clearly, then, if modern Science is unable to estimate the date of so
comparatively recent an era as the Glacial Epoch, it can hardly impeach the
Esoteric Chronology of Race-Periods and Geological Ages.
place
all over the globe, among those races, whose “ time is up ” —
among just those stocks, be it remarked, which esoteric philosophy regards as
the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is inaccurate to
maintain that the extinction of a lower race is invariably due to
cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, drunkenness,
etc., etc., have done much ; but those who rely on such data as offering an all-sufficient
explanation of the crux, cannot meet the phalanx of facts now so closely
arrayed. “ Nothing,” says even the materialist Lefèvre,
“ can save those that have run their course. . . . It would be
necessary to extend their destined cycle. . . . The peoples that have
been most spared . . . Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less
decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European intrusion.”
(“ Philosophy,” p. 508.)
True
; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed of the operation of CYCLIC LAW
difficult to account for on materialist lines ? Whence the “ destined
cycle ” and the order here testified to ? Why does this (Karmic)
sterility attack and root out certain races at their “ appointed hour
” ? The answer that it is due to a “ mental disproportion ”
between the colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does
not explain the sudden “ checks to fertility ” which so
frequently supervene. The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of
the most mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to
recognize with Occultists that the true solution has to be sought for in a
comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lefèvre remarks, “ the
time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great human types
” (before the Sixth Root-Race dawns), the white (Aryan, Fifth Root-Race),
the yellow, and the African negro — with their crossings
(Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans, Australians,
Polynesians, etc., etc. — all are dying out. Those who realize that every
Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc.,
will understand the “ why.” The tide-wave of incarnating EGOS has
rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks
; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some extraordinary and unexplained
statistics as to Race extinction are given in de Quatrefages’ “ Human
Species,” p. 428 et seq. No solution, except on the occult
lines, is able to account for these.
But
we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what Professor
Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific Continents.
He
writes in “ NATURE,” Nov. 4th, 1880 : “ There is nothing, so
far as I am aware, in the biological or geological evidence at present
accessible, to render untenable the hypothesis that an area of the
midAtlantic or Pacific sea-bed as big as Europe, should have been uplifted
as high as Mont Blanc, and have subsided again, any time since the
Palæozoic epoch, if there were any grounds for entertaining it.”
That
is to say, then, that there is nothing which can militate against positive
evidence to the fact ; nothing, therefore, against the geological postulates of
the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Seemann assures us in the “ Popular Science
Review ” (Vol. V., p. 18), article “ Australia and Europe
formerly one Continent,” * that : —
“
The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing these lost maps
of the globe are rather comprehensive ; and they have not been backward in
demonstrating the former existence of large tracts of solid land in parts now
occupied by the great oceans. The many striking points of contact between the
present flora of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to assume
that, during the present order of things, there existed a continental
connection between South-Eastern Asia and Western America. The singular
correspondence of the present flora of the Southern United States with that of
the lignite flora of Europe induces them to believe that, in the Miocene
period, Europe and America were connected by a land passage, of
which Iceland, Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are
remnants ; that, in fact, the story of an Atlantis, which
an Egyptian priest told to Solon, is not purely fictitious, but
rests on a solid historical basis. . . . Europe of the Eocene period
received the plants which spread over mountains and plains, valleys and
river-banks (from Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from
the East. The west also furnished additions, and if at that period these were
rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the bridge was already building,
which, at a late period, was to facilitate communication between the two
continents in such a remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western
Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of Atlantis, then
probably just (?) rising above the ocean.”
And
in another number of the same review (Vol. I., p. 143) Mr. Duppa Crotch, M.A.,
F.L.S., in an article entitled “ The Norwegian Lemming and its
Migrations,” alludes to the same subject.
“
Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad Atlantic rolls
? All tradition says so : old Egyptian records speak of Atlantis, as Strabo and
others have told us. The Sahara itself is the sand of an ancient sea, and the
shells which are found upon its surface
*
Undoubtedly a fact and a confirmation of the esoteric conception of the Lemuria
which originally not only embraced great areas in the Indian and Pacific
oceans, but projected round South Africa into the North Atlantic. Its Atlantic
portion subse-quently became the geological basis of the future home of the
Fourth Race Atlanteans.
prove
that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a sea rolled over what is now
desert. The voyage of the ‘ Challenger ’ has proved the existence
of three long ridges* in the Atlantic Ocean,† one
extending for more than three thousand miles, and lateral spurs may, by
connecting these ridges, account for the marvellous similarity of the fauna
of the Atlantic islands.‡ . . . . The submerged continent of LEMURIA,
in what is now the Indian Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of
many difficulties in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the
existence of a MIOCENE ATLANTIS will be found to have a strong elucidative
bearing on subjects of greater interest [Truly so !] than the migration of
the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that land existed in former ages
where the North Atlantic now rolls, not only is a motive found for these
apparently suicidal migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we
call instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial inheritance of
previously acquired experiences.”
(At
certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and perish.
Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful instinct which
survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their progenitors impels them
to seek a continent, once existing but now submerged beneath the ocean, and to
court a watery grave.)
In
an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace’s “ Island
Life ” — a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution
of animals, etc. — Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes (“ Subsidence and
Elevation,” Geological Magazine, June, 1881) : —
“
By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of different kinds,
he arrives at the conclusion that the distribution of life upon the land as we
now see it, has been accomplished without the aid of important changes in the
relative positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we must
believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New Zealand and Australia,
Europe and America, have been united at some period not remote geologically,
and that seas to the depth of 1,000 fathoms have been bridged over ; but we
must treat as utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to
*
Cf. the published reports of the “ Challenger ” expedition ; also
Donnelly’s “ Atlantis,” p. 468 and pp. 46-56, chap. “ The
Testimony of the Sea.”
†
Even the cautious 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,”
Eng. Ed., pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with rare
intuition that “ modern civilization is Atlantean . . . . the
‘ inventive ’ faculty of the present age is taking up the
delegated work of Creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago
” (Atlantis,
p.
133). He also refers the origin of culture to the Miocene
times. It is, however, to be sought for in the teachings given to the Third
Race-men by their Divine Rulers
—at
a vastly earlier period.
‡
An equally “ curious ” similarity is traced between some of the
West Indian and West African fauna.
all
the evidences at our command ( ! !), the supposition that temperate Europe and
temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been connected
except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic circles and that lands now separated
by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth have ever been united. Mr. Wallace, it
must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the chief features of existing
life-distribution, without bridging the Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the
Poles, yet I cannot help thinking that some of the facts
might
perhaps be more easily explained by admitting the former existence of the
connection between the coast of Chile and Polynesia* and Great Britain and Florida,
shadowed by the submarine banks which stretch between them. Nothing is urged
that renders the more direct connection impossible, and no physical reason
is advanced why the floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth.
The
route by which (according to the anti-Atlantean and Lemurian hypotheses of
Wallace) the floras of South America and Australia are supposed to have
mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable obstacles, and the apparently sudden
arrival of a number of sub-tropical American plants in our Eocene flora,
necessitates a connection more to the south than the present 1,000 fathom line
. . . . forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an
elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean should cease to
act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted out from the
sea, in comparatively recent geological times, the loftiest mountains on earth.
Mr. Wallace himself admits repeatedly that sea-beds have been elevated 1,000
fathoms and islands ha ve risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms ; and to
suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it seems to me,
‘ utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our
command.’ ”
The
“ Father ” of English Geology — Sir Charles Lyell — was
an Uniformitarian in his views of continental formation. On page 492 of his
“ Antiquity of Man ” we find him saying : —
“
Professor Unger (Die versunkene Insel Atlantis) and Heer (Flora
Tertiaria Helvetiæ) have admitted on botanical grounds the former
existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of the Tertiary Period,
as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined of the analogy
between the Miocene flora of central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern
America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the
American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the
theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which
the community of types in the Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene
flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication
from America to central Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of
latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction of the Aleutian
islands. By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene,
Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the Glacial Epoch, to Amoorland, on
the East coast of North Asia.”
The
unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to avoid the
hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too
*
The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by Dr. Carter
Blake, the anthropologist, “ Pacificus.”
apparent
to escape notice. If the botanical evidences stood alone, scepticism
would be half legitimate ; but in this case all branches of science converge to
one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater errors
than the admission of our two now invisible continents, would lay it open to.
It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of the mathematician Laplace down
to our own, and that only a few years ago.* We have Professor Huxley’s
authority for saying that there is no à priori improbability
whatever against possible evidences supporting the belief. (Vide supra.)
But now that the POSITIVE EVIDENCE is brought forward, will that eminent
scientist admit the corollary ?
Touching
on the problem in another place (“ Principles of Geology,”
pp. 12-13), Sir Charles Lyell tells us : “ Respecting the cosmogony of
the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian
sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that
of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world. (Continental,
not cosmic, catastrophes.) We learn from Plutarch that this was the theme of one
of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was
brought by him from the banks of the Nile ; and we even find in his verses, as
in the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every
successive World. The returns of great catastrophes were determined by the
present period of the Magnus Annus, or great year — a cycle composed of
the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these
return together to the sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to
set out. We learn particularly from the Timæus of Plato that
the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and
deluges. The sect of the Stoics adopted most fully the system of
catastrophes destined at intervals to destroy the world. These, they taught,
were of two kinds — the cataclysm, or destruction by water, and
the Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire (submarine volcanoes). From
the Egyptians they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a
state of innocence ” (nascent simplicity of the first sub-races of each
Root-Race). “ Towards the
*
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 ! ’
”
termination
of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of man, and a
shock of the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them ; (vide degeneracy into
magical practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans) after which calamity,
Astræa again descended on the earth to renew the golden age.” (Dawn
of a new Root-Race.)
Astræa, the goddess of justice, is the last of
the deities to forsake the earth, when the gods are said to abandon it and be
taken up into heaven by Jupiter again. But, no sooner does Zeus carry away
from earth Ganymedes (the object of lust, personified) than the father
of the gods throws down Astræa back 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 of these are connected with the
periodical renovations of the earth, with regard to its continents — even
Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It was already shown that while the
South Pole is the pit (or the infernal regions figuratively and
cosmologically), the North Pole is geographically the first continent ; while
astronomically and metaphorically the celestial pole, with its pole star in heaven,
is Meru, or the seat of 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 Magnus Annus, of which Plutarch was speaking.
Since that year (40,000 years ago) there has been a retrograde motion of the
equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the
vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian
mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic hymn on the
great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole esotericism of the event. Pluto
(in the pit) carries off Eurydice, bitten by the (polar) serpent. Then Leo, the
lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is in the pit, or below
the south pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him, and when her head,
down to the waist, is below the South horizon — she is inverted.
On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge constellations
; and Aldebaran (he who follows, or succeeds the daughters of
Atlas, or the Pleiades) looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from this
point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were commenced.
The student has to remember also, that when Ganymedes (Aquarius) is
raised to 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.
“
The connection,” comments Lyell, “ between the doctrine of
successive catastrophes and repeated deteriorations in the moral character of
the human race, is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined.
For, in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by the people
as judgments of God on the wickedness of man. . . . In like manner in the
account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests of the submersion of the island
of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an
earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral
depravity of the inhabitants.”
True
; but was it not owing to the fact that all esoteric truths were given out to
the public by the Initiates of the temples under the guise of allegories ? “
Jupiter,” is merely the personification of that immutable Cyclic Law,
which arrests the downward tendency of each Root-Race, after attaining the
zenith of its glory.* Unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske’s singularly
dogmatic opinion † that every myth “ is an explanation by
the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon ; not an allegory, not an
esoteric symbol, for the ingenuity is wasted (! !) which strives to detect in
myths the remnants of a refined primeval science — but an explanation.
Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory [How
does Mr. Fiske know ?], nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles
when plain language would serve their purpose.” We venture to say the
language of the I nitiated few was far more “ plain,” and
their science-philosophy far more com
*
The Cyclic Law of Race-Evolution is most unwelcome to scientists. It is
sufficient to mention the fact of “ primeval civilization ” to
excite the frenzy of Darwinians ; it being obvious that the further culture and
science is pushed back, the more precarious becomes the basis of the
ape-ancestor theory. But as Jacolliot says : — “ Whatever there may
be in these traditions (submerged continents, etc.), and whatever may have been
the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of
Egypt, and of India, was developed, it is certain that this civilization did
exist, and it is highly important for Science to recover its traces,
however feeble and fugitive they be.” (Histoire des Vierges ; les
peuples et les continents disparus, p. 15.) Donnelly has proved the
fact from the clearest premises, but the Evolutionists will not listen. A Miocene
civiliza-tion 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 i s no stone-age visible there, but a
more glorious culture is apparent, the further back we are enabled to carry our
retrospect. (Verb. Sap.)
†
“ Myths and Myth-Makers,” p. 21.
prehensive
and satisfying alike to the physical and spiritual wants of man, than
even the terminology and system respectively elaborated by Mr. Fiske’s
Master — Herbert Spencer. What, however, is Sir Charles Lyell’s
“ explanation ” of the “ myth ” ? Certainly, he in no
way countenances the idea of its “ astronomical ” origin, as
asserted by some writers.
The
two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell’s
solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes, from the absence
(?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from a strong bias
to the Uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,* he attempts to trace
the Atlantis “ tradition ” to the following sources : —
(1)
Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who
is assumed in this way to punish immoral races.
(
2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a
virtuous one.
(3)
The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was
Asia — a continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts
would thus be handed down the ages.
(4)
Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based
her not inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.
An
ingenious “ explanation,” as all such are. But proving a negative
is proverbially a difficult task. Students of esoteric science, who know what
the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such laboured
hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always able to furnish a
reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of science, seem to
necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic changes on the surface of
our planet, the impartial critic, who is not a
*
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 pro-gress. The whole coast of South America has been raised up 10 to
15 feet and settled down again in an hour. Huxley has shown that the British islands
have been four times depressed beneath the ocean and subsequently raised again
and peopled. The Alps, Himalayas and Cordilleras were all the result of
depositions drifted on to sea-bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces to their
present elevation. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene sea. Within the last
five or six thousand years the shores of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have risen
from 200 to 600 feet ; in Scotland there are raised beaches with outlying
stacks and skerries surmounting the shore now eroded by the hungry wave.
The North of Europe is still rising from the sea and South America presents the
phenomenon of raised beaches of over 1,000 miles in length, now at a height
varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above the sea-level. On the other hand, the coast
of Greenland is sinking fast, so much so that the Greenlander will not build by
the shore. All these phenomena are certain. Why may not a gradual change
have given place to a violent cataclysm in remote epochs ? —such
cataclysms occurring on a minor scale even now (e.g., the case of
Sunda island with 80,000 Malays).
specialist,
will recognise the immense difficulty of explaining away the cumulative
evidences, — namely, the archæological, ethnological, geological,
traditional, botanical, and even biological — in favour of former
continents now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the
cumulative force of the evidence in its collectivity is almost invariably lost
sight of.
In
the “ Theosophist ” (August, 1880), we wrote : “ We
have as evidences the most ancient traditions of various and wide-separated
peoples — legends in India, in ancient Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java,
and all the principal isles of Polynesia, as well as the legends of both
Americas. Among savages ; and in the traditions of the richest literature in
the world — the Sanskrit literature of India — there is an
agreement in saying, that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean,
a large Continent, which by a geological cataclysm was engulfed by
the sea,* (Lemuria). And it is our firm belief . . . that most, if not all,
of the islands from the Malayan archipelago to Polynesia, are fragments of that
once immense submerged Continent. Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the
two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man never had, and
never could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have
yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective
countries extended far, far into the Sea : that there were in the world but two
immense continents, one inhabited by yellow, the other by dark men ; and that
the Ocean, by command of the gods, and to punish them for their incessant
quarrelling, swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical proof that New
Zealand, the Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from each other of
between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according to every testimony, neither
these nor any other intermediate islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society,
Fiji, Tahitian, Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands,
ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated with each other
before the arrival of Europeans ; yet they one and all maintain that their
respective countries extended far toward the West, on the Asian side. Moreover,
with very small differences, they all speak dialects evidently of the same
language ; and understand each other with little difficulty ; have the same
religious beliefs and superstitions ; and pretty much the same customs. And as
few of the Polynesian islands were discovered earlier than a century ago, the
Pacific Ocean itself being unknown to Europe till the days of Columbus, and as
these islanders have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the
Europeans first set
*
For the opinions of Jacolliot, after long travels through the Polynesian
Islands and his proofs of a former great geological cataclysm in the Pacific
Ocean, see his “ Histoire des Vierges : Peuples et Continents disparus,”
p. 308.
foot
on their shores, it seems to us a logical inference that our theory is nearer
to the truth than any other. “ Chance would have to change its name and
meaning, were all this due but to chance alone.”
“
A great series of animal-geographical facts,” declares Professor Schmidt,
writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former Lemuria, “ is explicable
only on the theory of the former existence of a Southern Continent of which
Australia is a remnant. . . . . ” [the distribution of species]
“ points to the vanished land of the South where perhaps the home of
the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may also be looked for.”*
Mr.
A. R. Wallace, in his “ Malay Archipelago,” arrives at the
following conclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand : —
“ The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly that
the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Borneo and Sumatra do essentially
form part of a former Australian or Pacific Continent . . . This
continent must have been broken up before the extreme south-eastern portion of
Asia was raised above the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of
Borneo and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent formation.”
According
to Hæckel : — “ Southern Asia itself was not the earliest
cradle of the human race, but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the
South of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian
Ocean.” (“ Pedigree of Man,” Eng. Trans. p.
73.) In one sense 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 sight the ancient forests of Smith’s Sound and
Spitzbergen.” (Cited in Schmidt’s “ Doctrine
of Descent and Darwinism,” p. 237.)
Having
now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two questions, it
will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up the more striking
isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention of Esoteric
Ethnologists — the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria
*
“ Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,” p. 236. (Cf. also his
lengthy arguments on the subject, pp. 231-7.)
is
so widely accepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With
regard, however, to the former, it is found that : —
(1)
The Miocene flora of Europe have their most numerous and
striking analogues in the flora of the United States. In the forests of
Virginia and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip-trees, evergreen oaks,
plane trees, etc., etc., etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora
term for term. How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an
Atlantic Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe ? The proposed
“ explanation ” to the effect that the transition was by way of
Asia and the Aleutian islands is a mere uncalled-for theory, obviously upset by
the fact that a large number of these flora only appear EAST of the
Rocky Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a trans-Pacific migration.
They are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.
(2)
Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a
striking similarity to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians
(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 (“ Families of Speech ”)
the “ isolated language ” of the Basques has no affinities
with the other languages* of Europe, but with “ the aboriginal
languages of the vast opposite continent (America) and those alone.”
Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
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
*
For further facts as to the isolation of the Basques in Europe and their
ethnological relations, cf. Joly, “ Man before Metals,” p.
316. B. Davis is disposed to concede, from an examination of the skulls of the Guanches
of the Canary Islands and modern Basques, that both belong to a race proper
to those ancient islands, of which the Canaries are the remains ! !
This is a step in advance indeed. De Quatrefages and Hamy also both assign the
Cro-Magnon men of South France and the Guanches to one type — a
proposi- tion which involves a certain corollary which both these writers may
not care to father.
by
such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early men of Canary Islands
and America (Cf. Benjamin, the “ Atlantic Islands,”
p.
130.)
The
Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the Atlanteans. This
fact will account for the great stature evidenced by their old
skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners the Cro-Magnon
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. Such frequent questions led finally to the
expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place in the first
quarter of the present century. Some geologists maintained that the volcanic
islands had been raised right from the bottom of the ocean, the depth of which
in the immediate vicinity of the island varies from 6,000 to 18,000 feet.
Others were inclined to see in these groups, including Madeira, the Azores, and
the islands of Cape de Verdes — the remnants of a gigantic but submerged
continent which had once united Africa with America. The latter men of science
supported their hypothesis by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from
ancient “ myths.” Hoary “ superstitions,” such as the
fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of Hesperides, Atlas supporting
the world on his shoulders, all of them mythoi connected with the peak of
Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical Science. The identity of animal and
vegetable species — showing either a previous connection between America
and the remaining groups of the islands — (the hypothesis of their having
been drifted from the New to the Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand
long) — found more serious consideration. But it is only quite lately,
and after Donnelly’s book had been published several years, that the
theory has greater chances than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils
found on the Eastern Coast of South America have now been proved to belong to
the Jurassic formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic
fossils of Western Europe and Northern Africa. The geological structure of both
coasts is also almost identical ; the resemblance between the smaller
marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of South America, the
Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great. All such
facts are bound to bring naturalists to the conclusion that there has been, in
distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of
Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa,
and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
(6)
The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South
America,
North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and
admits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis. But
why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna (animal
life) of the —now —isolated Atlantic islands ? Why
did the specimens of Brazilian fauna dredged up by Sir C. Wyville
Thompson resemble those of Western Europe ? Why does a resemblance exist
between many of the West African and West Indian animal groups ?
Again :
“
When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot
but be struck with their identity ; all, nearly all belong to the same
genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both continents . . .
indicating that they radiated from a common centre ” (Atlantis),
(“ Westminster Review,” Jan., 1872).
The
horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large
proportion of the once “ missing links ” connecting it with
inferior forms have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse
penetrate into Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the
oceanic interspaces ? Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the
New World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the
first instance on the migration hypothesis ?
Again
“ Buffon had . . . remarked in the repetition of the African in the
American fauna, how, for example, the lama is a juvenescent and
feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represented
the lion of the Old World ” (Schmidt, “ Doctrine of
Descent and Darwinism,” p. 223).
(7)
The following quotation runs with No. (2), but its significance is such and the
writer cited so authoritative, that it deserves a place to itself : —
“
With regard to the primitive 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.” (Professor Retzius, “ Smithsonian
Report,” 1859, p. 266.)
If,
then, Basques and Cro-Magnon Cave-Men are of the same race as the Canarese
Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the aborigines of
America. This is the conclusion which the independent investigations of
Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages necessitate. The Atlantean affinities
of these three types become patent.
(8)
The sea-soundings undertaken by H.M.S. “ Challenger ” and the
“ Dolphin,” have established the fact that a huge elevation some
3,000 miles in length, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the
Atlantic, extends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving
round near Cape de Verde, and running in a south-easterly direction along the
West African Coast. This elevation averages some 9,000 feet in height,
and rises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the
ocean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a former
massive piece of land have been discovered (vide investigations of
United States Ship “ Dolphin ” and others). “ The
inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could never
have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the deposition of
sediment, nor by submarine elevation ; but, on the contrary, must
have been carved by agencies acting above the water-level.” — (Scientific
American, July 28th, 1877). It is most probable that necks of land formerly
existed knitting Atlantis to South America, somewhere above the mouth of the
Amazon ; to Africa near Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with
Spain is not unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly. (Vide his chart,
“ Atlantis,” p. 47, Eng. Ed., 1884, though he deals with only a
fragment of the real continent.) Whether the latter existed or not, is
of no consequence, as the fact that (what is now) N.W. Africa was —
before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the Gibraltar connection
— an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can be raised as to
how the migration of the European fauna (etc.) took place.
Enough
has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is
needless, in view of the manner in which the subject has now been developed on
the lines of esoteric knowledge, to swell the mass of testimony further.
In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive writers of the day may be
cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions of the occultist, who awaits in
patience the dawn of the coming day : —
“
We are but beginning to understand the past ; one hundred years ago the world
knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum ; nothing of the lingual tie that binds
together the Indo-European nations ; nothing of the significance of the vast
volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt ; nothing of the
meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon ; nothing of the marvellous
civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru. We are on
the threshold. Scientific investigation is advancing with giant strides. Who
shall say that one hundred years from now, the great museums of the world may
not be adorned with gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while
the libraries of the world shall contain translations of its inscriptions,
throwing new light upon all the past history of the human race, and all the great
problems which now perplex the thinkers of to-day.” *
* Donnelly, “ Atlantis ; the
Ante-Diluvian World,” p. 480.
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 were necessary in truth. In dealing with the secret annals and traditions
of so many nations, whose very origins have never been ascertained on more
secure grounds than inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and
philosophy of more than prehistoric races, it is not quite as easy to
deal with the subject matter as it would be if only the philosophy of one
special race, and its evolution, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine is the
common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates,
in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings
assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The
birth and evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very
night of Time ; and that, even, which is historic — i.e., that
which is found scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical
literature — is, in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to
lack of observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the
ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject as
one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well-known
historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an abundance of proofs
all tending to show that in every age, under every condition of civilization
and knowledge, the educated classes of every nation made themselves the more or
less faithful echoes of one identical system and its fundamental traditions
— that he can be made to see that so many streams of the same water must
have had a common source from which they started. What was this source ? If
coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot 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 heard but one side
— or rather the two 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 — Science and
Theology. And now our readers have an opportunity to hear the other — the
defendants’ — justification and learn the nature of our arguments.
Were
the public to be left to its old opinions : namely, on one side, that
Occultism, Magic, the legends of old, etc., were all the outcome of ignorance
and superstition ; and on the other, that everything outside the orthodox
groove was the work of the devil, what would be the result ? In other words,
had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for the few last years,
the present work would have had a poor chance of impartial consideration. It
would have been proclaimed — and by many will still be so proclaimed
— a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised in, and based on
the air ; built of soap bubbles, bursting at the slightest touch of serious
reflection, with no foundation, as it would be alleged, to stand upon.
Even “ the ancient superstitious and credulous classics
” have no word of reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and
the symbols themselves fail to yield a hint at the existence of such a system.
Such would be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that
the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an esoteric
history of the world, is based on fact ; that, though hitherto unknown to the
masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned, (because they never had the
key to a right understanding of the abundant hints thrown out by the ancient
classics), it is still no fairy tale, but an actuality — then the present
work will become but the pioneer of many more such books. The statement that
hitherto even the keys discovered by some great scholars have proved too rusty
for use, and that they were but the silent witnesses that there do exist
mysteries behind the veil which are unreachable without a new key — is
borne out by too many proofs to be easily dismissed. An instance may be given
as an illustration out of the history of Freemasonry.
In
his “ Franc-maçonnerie Occulte,” rightly or wrongly, Ragon,
an illustrious and learned Belgian Mason, reproaches the English Masons with
having materialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient
Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the craft,
the name of Free Masonry and Free Masons. The mistake is due, he
says, to those who connect Masonry with the building of Solomon’s
Temple, deriving its origin from it. He derides the idea, and says : . .
“ The Franc Mason (which is not maçon libre, or free
masonry) knew well when adopting the title, that it was no question of building
a wall, but that of being initiated into the ancient Mysteries
veiled under the name of Francmaçonnerie (Freemasonry) ; that his
work was only to be the continuation or the renovation of the ancient mysteries,
and that he was to become a mason after the manner of Apollo or
Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated poets, when
speaking of the foundation of a city, meant thereby the establishment
of a doctrine ? Thus Neptune, the god of reasoning, and Apollo,
the god of the hidden things, presented themselves as masons before
Laomedon, Priam’s father, to help him to build the city of Troy —
that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion.” (Maçonnerie
Orthodoxe, p. 44.)
Such
veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical
writers. Therefore, had an attempt been made to show that, e.g.,
Laomedon was the founder of a branch of archaic mysteries in which the
earth-bound material soul (the fourth principle), was personified in Menelaus’
faithless wife (the fair Helen), if Ragon had not come to corroborate what we
asserted, we might be told that no classical author speaks of it, and that
Homer shows Laomedon building a city, not an esoteric worship or
MYSTERIES ! And who are those left now, save a few Initiates, who
understand the language and correct meaning of such symbolical terms ?
But
after having pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our thesis, there
still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most important among
several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this could hardly be helped.
Wedged
in between theological chronology and that of the geologists, backed by all the
materialistic Anthropologists who assign dates to man and nature which fit in
with their own theories alone — what could the writer do except what is
being done ? Namely, since theology places the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the
World’s Creation only 5890 years ago ; and since the accurate researches
by the methods of exact Science, have led the geologists and physicists
to assign to the incrusted age of our Globe between 10 million and 1,000
million of years* (a trifling difference, verily !) : and the
Anthropologists to vary their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man
— between 25,000 and 500,000 of years — what can one who studies
the Occult doctrine do, but come out and bravely present the esoteric
calculations before the world ?
But
to do this, corroboration by even a few “ historical ” proofs was
necessary, though all know the real value of the so-called “ historical
evidence.” For, whether man had appeared on earth 18,000 or 18,000,000
years ago, can make no difference to profane History, since it begins hardly a
couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it grapples
hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually-destroying
opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect the average reader has
been brought up in for exact science, even that short Past would remain
meaningless, unless the esoteric teachings were corroborated and supported on
the spot —
* Vide Sir W. Thomson and Mr.
Huxley.
whenever
possible— by
references to historical names of a so-called historical period. This is
the only guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to
start among the (to him) unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the
pre-historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that
the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly bringing ancient
and modern evidence as a corroboration of the Archaic and quite unhistoric
Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up without
order or method the various and widely-separated periods of history and
tradition. But literary form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater
clearness of the general exposition.
To
accomplish the proposed task, the writer had to resort to the rather unusual
means of dividing each volume or Book into three Parts ; the first of which
only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and
the Evolution of Man on this globe. But these two volumes had to serve as a
PROLOGUE, and prepare the reader’s mind for those which shall now follow.
In treating of Cosmogony and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was
necessary to show that no religion, since the very earliest, has ever been
entirely based on fiction, as none was the object of special revelation ; and
that it is dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth. Finally,
that no human-born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and
antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of
Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost
sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only : and that bosom is in the
countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century Emanuel Swedenborg.
There lies the heart of nature, that shrine whence issued the early races of
primeval Humanity, and which is the cradle of physical man.
Thus
far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic,
earliest Races contained in their hitherto secret Scriptural records. But our
explanations are by no means complete, nor do they pretend to give out the full
text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys out of
the sevenfold bunch of esoteric interpretation, and even this has only been
partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for any one person to
undertake, far more to accomplish. Our main concern was simply to prepare the
soil. This, we trust we have done. These two volumes only constitute the work
of a pioneer who has forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of
the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made to
fell and uproot the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited
ignorance, so that these two volumes should form for the student a fitting
prelude for Volumes I I I. and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared
away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are dedicated, it
is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume
should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception with
which Volumes I. and I I. will meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics,
whether these last two volumes will ever be published, though they are almost
completed.
Satyât Nâsti paro dharmah.
THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.
END OF VOL. II.
INDEX
As Revised in 1925
INDEX
Aaru,
I 220, 674, II 374 Abacus, I 361 Abba, Rabbi, II 625, 628 Abd Allatif, II 362
Abel, II 125, 273, 469 Abenephius, I 362 Abjayoni, I 372 Abraham, I 578, II
174, 380 Abram, II 40, 77, 130 Abrasax, I 350, II 214 Abraxas, II 474, 541, 565
Absolute, I 16, 55, 135, 247, 275, 290, 326 Abul-Feda, II 210, 366 Abydos, I
385, 437, II 464 Achad, I 73, 112, II 508 Achamoth, I 132, II 43 Achar, II 508
Achath, I 129 Acheron, II 357 Achilles, II 394, 637 Achod, I 129 Achyuta, I 19,
542, II 47 Acosta, I 209, II 141 Acunha, Tristan d’, II 333 Ad-ah, II 203
Adam, I xxxi, 76, 242, 352, 444, II 3, 42, 71, 124, 162, 273, 382, 452, 511
Adam, receives apple, I 129 ; and Eve, I 137, II 193 ; creation of, II 1 ;
created by Elohim, II 95 ; driven from Paradise, II 216 ; Races before, II 394
; cursed by Jehovah, II 410 ; body of, kept above ground, II 467 Adam-Adami, I
355, II 42, 452 Adam-Galatea, II 150 Adam-Jehovah, II 43, 125 Adam Kadmon, I
60, 128, 179, 239, 337, 355, 619, II 2, 25, 112, 269, 456, 537, 595, 625, 704,
730 Adam Kadmon = Tetra-grammaton = Logos, I 99 ; Sephira its female
counterpart, I 215 ; of dust, I 247 ; Sephiroth, I 427 ; Archetypal man, I 443
; the likeness of God, II 46 ; separates himself, II 128 ; the Heavenly man, II
234
Adam,
Patriarch, I 642 Adam Rishoon, II 397 Adams, II 441 Addenda, I 477, II 643
Adelaide, II 196 Adepts, II 94, 211, 228Âdi, I xix, 129, II
42Âdi-Bhûta, I xix, 136Âdi-Buddha, I 110,
571Âdi-Buddhi, I 572, 635Âdi-Budh, II 48Âdi-Budha, I xix, 54Âdikrit,
I 372Âdi-Nidâna, I 31, 98Âdi-Śakti, I 10Âdi-Sanat,
I 31, 98Âdi-Varsha, II 201 Aditi, I 72, 101, 332, 430, 448, 460, 623, II
42, 65, 214, 247, 269, 458, 613 Aditi, in That, I 4 ; the Cosmical, I 53
; eight sons born from, I 99 ; Father-Mother of the Son, I 142 ; Vâch, a
form of, I 137 ; the Father and Mother, I 355 ; allegorized
fromÂkâśa, I 527 ; Primor-dial Light, II 107 ; Uni-versal
Wisdom, II 210 ; called the Mother, II 527 Aditi-Gaia, II 65 Aditi-Vâch,
I 355, II 107 Aditi-Vâch-Sophia, I 430, 434, II 43Âdityas, I 71,
92, 99, 100, 101, II 65, 90, 182, 248 Adonai, I 449, II 129, 465, 509, 538, 541
Adonis, I 353, II 769 Adrasteia, II 305 Advaita, I 636, II 597-8
Advaitîs, I 6, 54, 522, 636, II 598, 637 Adyta, I xxxvii, 117 Aeolus, I 466
Aeons, I 350, 351, 416, 442, 612, II 81, 381 Aerobes, I 249, 258, 261
Aeschylus, I 643, II 271, 411-22, 521-4, 763 Aesculapius, II 26, 106, 209
Aesir, I 427, II 27, 97, 386, 754 Aether, I 76, 87, 141, 332, 343, 365, 460,
487, 527
Africa,
II 200, 263, 327, 368, 402, 421, 444, 606
African
Races, II 168
Agassiz,
II 133, 170, 607, 611, 646
Agathodaimon,
I 410, 442, 472, II 28, 280, 362, 366, 378, 458, 518
Ages
of Man, II 198
Âgneyâstra,
II 427, 629
Agni,
I 443, 563, II 57, 92, 142, 176, 247, 363, 381, 414, 520, 568, 608, 619
Agni,
element of the Tri-mûrti, I 90 ; refulgent deity, I 341 ; seven-rayed, I
449 ; forty-nine, II 85 ; names for, II 311, an Asura god, II 500 ; produced by
at-trition, II 526 ; human race fashioned from, II 605
Agni-Abhimânin,
II 247, 521
Agnihotri,
I 87, II 499
Agnishvâttas,
I 86, 181, II 77, 88, 280, 361, 411
Agra-Sandhânî,
I 105
Agrippa,
I 453, 611
Ahamkâra,
I 66, 256, 260, 335, 453, 536, II 616, 639
A-hamsa,
I 20
Ah-hi,
I 27, 38, 53, 202
Ahriman,
II 93, 283, 420, 479 et seq., 516 et seq.
Ahu,
I 113
Ahura-Mazda,
I 110, II 92, 97, 233, 358, 480, 488, 500, 609, 704
Ain-Soph,
I 54, 179, 335, 391, 571, 614, II 215, 290, 386, 472, 553, 596, 730
Ain-Soph,
synonym for Pa-rabrahm, I 113, 423 ; nameless, I 350, II 730 ; sends forth the Logos,
I 356 ; formulates itself as a geometrical figure, I 429 ; geometrizes in
creation, II 39 ; nothing, II 128 ; Zohar on, II 536 ; the nameless
Deity, II 540
Aion,
I 349
Air,
I 121, 141, 205, 249, 458, 525, II 220, 582 Airy, Sir G., I 584 Aitareya-Brâhmana,
I 74, 101, II 47, 418, 500 Aitareya-Upanishad,I 7 Ajitas, II
90Âkâśa, I 18, 35, 61, 82, 110, 205, 253, 331, 338, 353, 372,
458, 508, 511, 534, 587, II 42, 400, 511, 569, 580, 613Âkâśa,
radiation of Mûla-prakriti, I 10 ; a form of matter, I 13 ; primor-dial
ether, I 76 ; lin-ing of, I 97 ; synthesis of forces in nature, I 137 ; cosmic
dust, I 140 ; and Astral Light, I 197 ; a Soul concealed in, I 231 ; and Ether,
I 296, 534 ; the Primordial Sub-stance, I 326 ; pervades all things, I 343 ; =
Chaos or Vacuity, I 452 ; not known to modern phy-sics, I 487 ; a Being not of
our plane, I 489 ; Universal Force, I 515 ; septenary, I 527 ; an inter-etheric
force, I 561 ; our primeval matter, I 601 ; objectively eternal, I 635 Akbar, I
xxiv, xxxiv, 68 Akkad, I 319, II 42, 61, 477 Alaya, I 27, 47, 58 Albertus
Magnus, I 582 Alcamenes I 387 Alchemy, I xliii, II 763 Alcyone, I 501, II 768
Aldebaran, I 663, II 785 Aldrovandi, II 207 Aletae, II 141, 360-1 Alexander, I
650, II 417 Alexandria, I 361, II 763 Alexandrians, I 364, 409 Algae, I 177, II
712 Algeria, II 752 Alhim, I 91, 342, II 37 Allahâbâd, I 392, II
221 Allen, Grant, II 288, 679, 687, 690, 740 Alm, Almeh, II 463 Alpha Polaris,
I 435 Alveydre, d’, I 471, II 549 Amânasa, II 191 Ambrose, St., I
123
Ambhâmsi,
I 459 Amdo, I 108 Amenophes, I 399 Amenti, I 134, 365, 385, 674, II 379, 481,
558 America, II 8, 327, 402 Amesha-Spentas, II 358, 384, 517 Amita-Buddha, I
108 Amitâbha, I 108, 356, 471 Ammianus Marcellinus, I 395, II 429 Ammon,
I 91, 365, 393, 430, 675, II 135, 213, 464 Amoeba, II 116, 255, 650
Ampère, I 512 Amphioxus, II 370 Amphitrite, II 578, 775 Amrita, I 67,
348, II 381 Amśâmśâvatâra, II 359 Amshaspends, I
113, II 6, 92, 358, 365, 384, 488, 516 Ana, I 91, II 463 Anaerobes, I 249, 261
Anâgâmin, I 206 Anagrânîyas, I 357 Anakim, II 336, 340,
755 Analogy, II 153, 254, 564 Anaxagoras, I 50, 117, 332, 451, 568, 595, 623
Anaximenes, I 77, 590 Andrews, Dr., II 136 Androgyne goat, I 253 Androgyne men,
II 197 Androgynes, II 165, 216 Anemos, I 342 Angels, I 127, 276, 416, II 80,
222, 388, 563 Ani, I 78 Anima Mundi, I 47, 97, 196, 353, 579, II 562
Anîyâmsam Anîyasâm, I 357, 542, II 732 Ankh, II 30, 546
et seq. Anson, W. S. W., I 424 Antediluvians, II 410, 483
Anthropogenesis, II 13 sq. Anthropology, I 323, II 649, 670, 689, 721
Anthropos, I 449 Antichrist, I 612, II 228 Antipodes, II 407, 428, 628
Antiquity of Man, II 688 Anu, I 357, 542, II 62, 139 Anubis, I 410, II 28, 385 Anugîtâ,
I 87, 94, 101, 571, II 637 Anugraha, I 448
Anuki,
I 367, II 31 Anupâdaka, I 11, 47, 52, 571 Apâm Napât, II 400
Apâna, I 94, 95, II 567 Apap, II 213, 380, 588 Ape, II 184, 315, 665 Apes
and monkeys, I 185 Apis, I 135, 657, II 418 Apocrypha, II 529 Apollo, I 167 ;
born from Leda’s egg, I 366 ; the Sun, II 7 ; Karneios, II 44 ; daughters
of, II 122 ; born on a sidereal is-land, II 383 ; Hyper-borean Apollo, II 769 ;
the birthplace of, II 774 Apollodorus, II 53, 122, 270, 519, 770 Apollo Python,
II 208 Apollonius Rhodius, II 342 Apollonius of Tyana, I 450, II 211, 345
Apollyon, II 229 Apophis, I 459, II 213, 588 Apple, I 129, 484, 504, II 97
Apsaras, II 174, 211, 585 Apteryx, II 681 Apuleius, II 491 Aquarius, I 651, II
785 Aquinas, Thos., I 582 Arachnidae, II 257 Aranî, II 101, 526 Ararat, I
444, II 145, 597 Arcadians, II 352 Archaeopteryx, II 183 Archaic Stanzas, I 1,
II 1 Archaic Teachings, II 251 Archangel, I 196, 638, II 60 Archebiosis, I 455,
II 164 Archimedes, I 117 Architect, I 279, 613, II 226 Arcturus, I 647 Ares, I
284, II 392 Argha, II 142, 462 Arghyanâth, II 416 Arghya-Varsha, II 416,
418 Argos, II 122, 294, 416 Arhan, I 206 Arhat, I xxviii, 6, 48, 95, 157, II
18, 339, 449, 635 Ariadne, II 67 Arimaspi, II 416, 769 Arion, II 399
Aristarchus, I 117 Aristobulus, I 648 Aristophanes, I 359. II 133 Aristotle, I
59, 153, 223,
279,
345, 595, 615, 631, II 159, 286, 573
Aristotle,
teaches spherici-ty of earth, I 117 ; in-corporeal principles, I 123 ; on
Chaos, I 337 ; on Neo-Pythagoreans, I 361 ; on Elements, I 461 ; badly digested
by Bacon, I 481 ; Rulers, I 493 ; against revolution of earth, II 153
Arjuna,
II 214, 628 Arjuna-Miśra, I 94, II 638 Ark, I 319, 444, II 313, 459 Arka,
II 463 Arkites, II 142 Arnaud, I 262 Arnobius, I 353, II 143, 342 Arrian, II
418 Artemis, I 228, 387, 395 Arthur, II 393, 398, 754 Arûpa, I 30, 89,
98, 118,
122,
197, 200, 436, 632 Arvâksrotas, I 456, II 163Âryabhata, I 117
Aryan, I 113, 645, II 68,
147,
378, 425, 754, 768 Aryanists, I 398, II 425 Aryan Races, II 429 Aryans, I 286,
388, 534,
II
196, 225, 442, 470, 536,
603,
631, 714, 741Âryas, II 85, 526Âryasangha, I 49, 158, II
637
Asat, II 449, 597 As-burj, II 403, 407 Ascidians, II 119 Asclepiades, II 342
Asclepius, I 285, 353, 566,
II
211, 259, 364, 770 Ases, I 427, II 97, 386 Asgard, I 424, 427, II 97 Asha, II
114 Ashburj, II 403, 407 Ashmogh, II 205 Ash-tree, II 97, 181, 519 Asia, I 115,
464, II 401, 776 Asiatic nations, II 795 Ask, II 97 Aśoka, II 220, 550
Assessors, I 105 Assier, Paul d’, I 620, II
149
Assyria, I 390, 650, II 202 Assyrian, II 428, 586 Astaphai, I 577 Astarte, I
468, II 461 Asterope, II 768 Astral, I 424, 639, II 74
Astraea,
II 785
Astrology,
I 105, II 623
Astronomers,
Antediluvian, II 47
Astronomy,
I 163 et seq., 588 et seq., 645 et seq., II 352 et seq.,
401 et seq.
Asuras,
I 188, 412, 521, 571, II 20, 32, 45, 78, 106, 148, 227, 283, 378, 436, 487,
516, 525, 585, 607
Asuras,
names of, I 92 ; four Mahârâjahs, I 126 ; Cosmic Demons, I 202 ;
Demons, I 348, II 405 ; penances of, I 419 ; spi-ritual Beings, II 59 ; high celestial
Beings, II 90 ; first Beings created, II 163 ; sanctity, chastity of, II 174 ;
enemies of gods, II 230 ; flames, II 248 ; incarnation of, II 318 ; human, II
323 ; conflict with gods, II 390 ; war of, II 500
Asura-maya,
II 47, 49, 67, 326, 436
Aśvamedha,
II 570
Aśvamedha-Parvan,
I 94
Aśvattha,
I 406, 523, 536, 549, II 97, 589, 639
Atah,
I 78
Atala,
II 147, 322, 403, 405, 408
Atavism,
I 261, II 741
Athanor,
I 81
Atheism,
I 7, 279, 568
Athena,
II 519, 771
Athenaeus,
II 31
Atlantean
giants, II 424
Atlantean
Race, II 603
Atlanteans,
modern San-skrit not spoken by, I 23 ; Gibborim of sub-merged race, I 415 ;
days of sinful, I 609 ; conti-nent of Atlantis, II 8 ; Asura-maya the
Atlan-tean Rishi, II 49 ; At-lantis, deluge in, II 141, 144 ; original type of,
II 201 ; Sons of God, II 224 ; fall of angels, II 229 ; prolongation of Africa,
II 263 ; belong to Fourth Race, II 266 ; finer phy-sical men, II 271 ; chose
wives, II 286 ; history, II 313 et seq. ; land of sin, II 322 ;
submergence of, II 331 ; record of deluge, II 365 ; Telchines an Atlantean
form, II 391 ; the Atlantean gi-ants, II 394 ; abode of wicked, II 402 ; exists
no longer, II 408 ; civili-zation of, II 429 ; heir-loom from, II 431 ; last of
population, II 433 ; mixed with Aryan ele-ment, II 444 ; fate of the
Atlanteans, II 493 ; great deluge carries away Atlantis, II 533 ; their
prowess, II 753 ; Druids descendants of, II 756 ; transmit to 5th Race, II 760
Atlantis,
I 23, 415, 609, II 8, 49, 141, 201, 224, 229, 249, 263, 266, 271, 286, 302, 313
et seq., 322, 330, 365, 371, 394, 402 et seq., 408, 429, 431,
433, 444, 493, 533, 756, 760, 767, 786 et seq.
Atlanto-Aryan,
II 750, 760
Atlas,
II 277, 404, 493, 761
Âtman,
I xx, 18, 59, 110, 119, 153, 169, 193, 199, 213, 237, 265, 291, 334, 428, 471,
567, 610, 619, II 36, 108, 231, 480, 527, 593, 605, 639
Âtmâ,
not Parabrahman, I 130 ; classification of, I 157 ; its Upâdhis, I 158 ;
after the death of man, I 220 ; spirit, I 226 ; seventh principle, I 571 ;
three-one principle, II 57 ; not the human Ego, II 79 ; region of, II 403 ;
seventh element, II 579 pure Spirit, II 632
Âtmâ-Buddhi,
I 178, 213, 216, 220, 227, 334, II 254
Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas,
I 18, 218, 220, 570, II 57
Âtmamâtrâsu,
I 334
Âtma-Vidyâ,
I 169, 199
Atom(s),
I 2, 82, 107, 258, 453, 510, 517, 542, 548, 579, 592, 603, 619, II 46, 574,
654, 671
Atom,
mineral, I 120 ; life
iv INDEX
and
adventures of an, I 143 ; of Leibnitz, I 179 ; atomic forms, I 218 ; spirits of
atoms, I 221 ; atomic forces, I 483 ; soul atom, I 568 Atri, II 78 Attica, II
352 Attock, II 418Âtyantika, I 371, II 309 Audhumla, I 367 Audubon, II
440 Augurs, II 518 Augustine, St., I 123, II 313, 476, 535, 589 Augustinus
Riccius, I 664 Aum, I 432, II 408 Aura, I 234, 538, II 117 Aurora Borealis, I
205 Australians, II 162, 196, 315, 661, 721, 779 Avabodha, II 528
Avalokiteśvara, manifesta-tion of, I xx ; two in Esotericism, I 72 ; the
first Buddha, I 108 ; manifested Îśvara, I 110 ; named by the
Buddhists, I 130 ; the Logos, I 136 ; mind-born sons of the first Lord, I 213 ;
of the Hindûs, I 428 ; Kwan-Shi-Yin is, I 471 ; the Logos, II 178, 637
Avasthâ, I 19, 66 Avatâra, I 18, II 483 Avatâras, I 52, II
423 Avidyâ, I 7 Avogadro, I 512, 622 Avyakta, I 521-2 Avyaktânugrahena,
I 521 Avyaya, I 370, 582 Ayesha, II 319 Ayin, I 350 Azazel, I 441, II 376, 389,
409, 491 Azhi-Dahâka, II 390 Aztecs, I 322, II 141, 445
Baal,
I 353, II 471, 540 Babbage, I 124 Babylonia, II 139, 202 Babylonians, I 390, II
203, 226, 379, 453, 618 Bacchic frenzy, II 461 Bacchus, I 347, II 416, 471
Bacon, I 481, II 439, 443
Bacon,
Roger, I 553, 581 Bacteria, I 249, 260, II 167 Badáoní, I xxiv
Baer, von, II 649 Bahak-Zivo, I 194, II 150 Bailly, I 658 et seq., II
265 et seq., 332, 368, 371, 394, 435, 534, 621, 742, 765, 777 Bain, I
121, 124, 251, 326, 528, II 156 Baissac, II 245, 509 Balaam, II 409 Bal-i-lu, I
100 Bala-Râma, II 613 Ball, Sir R. S., II 64 Balzac, I 66 Bamian, II 224,
336 et seq. Bandha, I 132 Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, II 204
Baphomet, I 253, II 389 Barahiel, Rabbi, I 618 Barhishad Pitris, II 77, 88
Barnabas, II 481 Barth, II 346, 450 Bartholdi, II 338 Basilideans, I 349, 473
Basnage, II 366 Basques, II 740, 790, 792 Bastian, II 260, 753 Bath-Kol, I 137,
431, II 106 Bathybius, I 542, II 190, 674 Batu, II 270 Baudry, II 524-6
Baumgärtner, II 718 Beale, I 540 Bede, I 441, II 395 Beelzebub, II 389
Beglor, I xxi Behemoth, II 486 Being, I 14, 352, II 239, 585 Bel, I xxvii, 397,
459, 463, II 62, 144, 210, 384, 477 Bel, the Creator, I 357 ; Jupiter, I 435 ;
a pre-siding God, II 23 ; a Babylonian God, II 139 ; umsimi of, II 284 ; and
the Dragon, II 379 ; the struggle of, II 503 ; the Sun, II 540 Benares, I xlii,
666 Benfey, II 92 Beni Shamash, II 506 Benjamin, S. G. W., II 790 Bentley, Dr.,
I 479, 490 sq.
Bentley,
J., I 369, 667, II 63, 76, 253, 431, 499, 550 Bereshîth Rabbah, II 53
Bergerac, de, II 702 Berkeley, I 3, 96 Bernard, Claude, I 249 Bernard, St., I
401 Berosus, I xxvi, 343, 649, 655, II 65, 115, 143, 394, 454, 477, 504, 715
Belt, T., II 695-6 Berthollet, II 790 Bes, I 385 Bethel, II 473 Be-with-us, I
32, 130, 265 Bhagavad-Gîtâ, I 10, 68, 130, 136, 138, 428,
535, 620, II 25, 48, 139, 140 Bhagavat, I 345, II 48 Bhâgavata-Purâna,
I 371, II 165, 214, 418, 549 Bhârata, II 321, 408 Bhârata-varsha,
II 132, 182, 321, 405, 501, 776 Bhâshya, I 271
Bhâshyâchârya, I 132Bhâskara-Âchârya, II
321 Bhrântidarśanatah, I 19 Bhrigu, I 436, II 30, 76 Bhûmi, I
237, 250, 605 Bhûta, I 446, 452, II 17 Bhûtadi, I 372, 452, II 108
Bhûtasarga, I 446, 452 Bhûts, I 295 Bhuvarloka, I 371, II 321 Bible,
I 128, 355, 465, 576 Bible, French, II 537 Binah, II 384, 528, 595
Binah, the third Sephir-oth, I 6 ; in the Mystic Triangle, I 98 ;
identi-fication with Jehovah, I 230 ; a female prin-ciple, I 239 ; the upper
mediating Mother, I 392 ; is the Chaldean Tiamat, I 394 ; the feminine name, I
438 ; is Intelligent Na-ture, II 84 ; is Intelli-gence, II 134 ; is fe-male
part of Adam-Kad-mon, II 269 Bird’s nest, II 292 Bischof, II 159, 695
Bjerregaard, I 623, 630 Black magic, I 254 Blake, Carter, II 725, 744, 755, 783
Blanchard, II 151, 159, 160
Boar
Avatâra, I 368, II 53, 75, 252, 321 Bodhisattva, I 42, 52, 69, 109, 571,
II 34, 178 Boehme, I 494, II 630, 634 Boeotia, II 270, 519, 582 Boëthius,
I 361 Bogolubof, I 249 Bopadeva, II 590 Bordj, I 341 Boreas, I 466, II 7, 771
Borlase, Dr., II 756 Borsippa, II 456 Boscovich, I 507 Bossuet, I 331, II 279,
485 Boucher de Perthes, II 675, 714, 738 Bouilland, Dr., II 784 Boulanger, II
372 Bourbourg, Brasseur de, II 96, 160, 213, 379, 745 Bourdin, J., I 587
Bourgeois, II 675, 723, 749, 751, 752 Bourges, Dr., II 654 Brachmans, II 573
Brachycephalic, II 168 Brahm, I 8, 449, 461, 570 Brahma, I 50, 134, 256, 374,
545, II 146, 568, 638 Brahma, Infinite Space, I 8 ; in every atom of Uni-verse,
I 17 ; the Infinite, I 80 ; (Para) Brahma, I 420 ; Black Swan, I 78, 357, II
465 Brahmâ, I xix, 3, 17, 53 80 88, 120, 197, 213, 231, 349, 358, 419,
430, 442, 464, 521, 538, 542, 552, 571, 656, II 6, 69, 76, 107, 132, 144, 163,
182, 247, 252, 307, 418, 471, 596, 613, 624, 630, 785 Brahmâ, Egg of, I
257 ; Vishnu and Śiva, I 286 ; first Unit only, I 333 ; Theos, I 344 ;
architect of the Universe, I 345 ; born from Egg, I 366 ; night of, I 376 ;
born of water, I 379 ; the Second Logos, I 381 ; emanation of Time, I 427 ; Age
of, I 446 ; sons of, I 457 ; dual form of, I 623 ; identical with Mars, II 43,
124 ; in the shape of a boar, II 53 ;
four
bodies of, II 58 ; gods issuing from thigh, II 59 ; is Virâja, II 89 ;
Yoga union with, II 115 ; generative Light of Logos, II 233 ; Asuras rebel
against, II 237 ; fifth head, II 578 Brahmâ Kalahamsa, I 78, II 122
Brahmâ-Prajâpati, I 80, 436, II 471, 624 Brahmâ-Purusha, I
349 Brahmâ-Rudra, I 458 Brahmâ-Vâch I 81, II 125
Brahmâ-Virâj, I 81, 355, II 43 Brahmâ-Vishnu, I 538
Brahmachârî Bawa, II 427 Brahmacharya, II 458 Brahman, I 406 Brâhmanas,
I 165, 269 Brahmanaspati, I 120, II 23, 45, 138, 456, 498 Brahmânda-Purâna,
I 367, 436, II 404 Brâhmândika, I 442 Brâhmanism, II 637
Brahmâputra, I 413, II 374 Brahmarandhra, I 132 Brâhmans,
chronology of, II 66 ; duties of, II 77 ; exclusiveness of the, II 471 ;
septenary accord-ing to, II 592 Branchiostoma, II 370 Braye, de, II 723
Bréal, II 269 Breath, I 2, 12, 14, 55. 95 Bree C. R., II 696, 727
Brewster, Sir D., I 580, II 701 Briareus, II 70, 775 Brihaspati, I 120, II 23,
45, 138, 456, 499 Brimham Rocks, II 346 Brimstone, II 513 Brittany, II 342, 352
Broca, II 249, 681, 790 Bronze, II 97, 198, 520 Brown, Robt., Jr., II 218, 317,
336-7 Bruce, Jas , II 440, 531 Brucker, I 451 Brunck, II 305 Bryant, I 359,
360, 367, 444, II 364, 391, 597 Bubastis, I 387 Buch, Leopold von, II 791
Büchner,
L., I 519, 639, 640, II 154, 651, 695, 718 Buckle, H. T., I 298, 515 Buckwell,
I 510 Buddha, I 270, 419, II 110, 215, 234, 359, 419, 586 Buddhas, I 574, II
224, 339, 415 Buddhas of Confession, II 423 Buddha-Dâkinî, II 285
Buddha-Lha, II 423 Buddhi, I xx, 17, 69, 216, 242, 288, 329, 373, 453, 527,
570, II 112, 247, 419, 596, 614, 637, 737 Buddhi, Manas the upâ-dhi of, I
101 ; formless divine soul, I 120, 567 ; spiritual soul, I 157, II 632 ; Cosmic
Monad, I 177 ; Root of Intelli-gence, I 572 ; in the Trimûrti, II 57 ;
not the Ego, II 79 ; soul in con-nection with, II 81 ; a part of Higher Self,
II 231 ; cemented to Ât-mâ, II 241 ; in a dia-gram, II 593
Buddhism, I xvii, II 637 Buddhist, II 220, 339 Buddhist works, II 224 Budh, I
xviii, 472 Budha, I xviii, 228, II 45 Buffon, I 596, II 646, 698, 792 Builder,
I 277, II 358 Bulaq, I xxix Bunsen, I xxvii, 115, 435, II 32, 82, 141, 413
Burmeister, II 154 Burnes, II 337 Burnouf, I 380, II 165 Bushmen, II 287, 721
Buthon (Bythos), I 214, 349, II 214, 574 Butler, C, II 200 Butlerof, I 251,
517, 518, 519, 520, 581, II 651
Caduceus,
I 253, 388, 550 Caecum, II 681 Caesar, II 692, 763 Cagliostro, II 156 Cain, I
412, 578, II 127, 269, 273, 388-94 Cain-Abel, I 412 Cainites, II 146, 209, 391
vi INDEX
Calypso,
II 762, 769 Cambry, II 206, 342, 344 Cambyses, I 399, II 360 Canary Islands, II
223, 678, 740, 790 Capellini, II 714, 740, 752 Capricornus, I 219, 233 Carlyle,
I 211, 212, 303 Carnac, II 70, 341, 380, 752 Carnelly, Dr., I 584 Carpenter,
Dr., II 257 Carson, Nevada, II 755 Cartailhac, II 752 Cassini, I 660, 661, 667
Cassius Hemina, II 363 Castor, I 366, II 121, 361-2 Catarrhini, II 171, 193,
264, 328, 663-9, 749 Cathderal organ, II 348 Catherine de Médicis, II 70
Catholics, Roman, I 481 Cauchy, I 482, 486, 489 Causality, I 139, 405, II 46
Cause, I 46, 569, II 189 Cause, First, I 327, 342 Cell-Souls, II 670 Causes, II
74 Celsus, I 445 Centrifugal and centripetal forces, I 282 Chakra, I 52, 114,
215 Chakshus, II 22 Chains of planets, II 699 Chaitanya, I 6 Chaldea, II 202,
386 Chaldeans, I 267, 575, II 62, 328, 452, 536, 691 Chambers, J. D., II 2
Champollion, J. F., I 436, 473, 673, II 210, 386 Chananea, I xliii
Chandâlas, I 313, II 200 Chandravanśas, I 388, 392 Chantong, II 179
Chaos, I 73, 109, 336, 342, 433, 434, 452, 599, 640 Charcot, II 156 Charles, I
84 Charton, II 343, 347 Chateaubriand, de, I 403 Chatterji, M. M., I 570
Chatur, I 29, 71, II 465 Chaubard, I 506 Chebel, II 125 Chemi, I 367 Chemis, I
367 Chemistry, I 46, 138, 149,
258,
338, 460, 580, 620
et
seq.
Chenresi,
II 173, 178 Cheops, I 115, 362, II 462 Cherchen, I xxxiii Cherub, I 363, 466
Cherubim, I 127, 364 Cherubs, II 115, 243, 361 Chesed, I 200
Chhâyâs, I 181, II 17, 120, 174, 233, 487, 503, 533 Chiim, I 130
Child, Lydia M., I 358 Chimpanzee, II 263, 675 Chinese, I 307, II 215, 280
Chinese works, II 301, 692 Chit, I 6 Chitra-Gupta, I 105
Chitraśikhandinas, I 453 Chnoubis, I 473, II 210 Chnouphis, II 210, 377
Chochmah, I 98, 99, 239, 355, 438, II 84, 134, 269 703 Chohans, II 16, 34, 233
Cholula, II 276 Christ, I 612, II 231, 708 Christianity, I 468, 611 Christians,
I 121, II 215, 377, 472, 539, 586, 759 Christos, I 132, 198, 459, II 378, 478,
540, 573 Christos-Sophia, I 473 Christy, II 714, 729 Chronology, II 66 et
seq. Chronos, I 417, 452, II 142 Chthonia, I 340, II 130 Chuang, II 219
Church Fathers, I xxxix, 73 Chyuta, II 47 Cicero, II 212, 419 Cidastes, II 218
Cifron, I 360 Cipher, I 360, II 234, 307 Circe, II 769 Circle, I 98, 359, 363,
612 Clausius, Prof., I 513, 587 Clavigero, II 35 Clemens Alexandrinus, I 125,
387, 462, II 361 Climacteric, I 656 Clodd, Edw., I 3, II 686, 710, 713 Cobras,
II 209 Cold mist, I 82, 600 Colebrooke, I 47, 334 Coleridge, I 275, 645, 653
Collingwood, J. F., II 154, 719
Colossal
stones, II 341 Comets, I 203, 599, 606 Confucius, I xxxvii, 440, 441, II 365,
553 Congreve, II 304 Conjunctions, I 656, II 76 Consciousness, I 38, 47, 56,
208, 280, 327, 635 Constantine, I xliv, 469 Continents, submerged, II 324, 393,
423, 606, 760 Cook, Capt., II 331 Cooke, J. P., I 512, 580 Cope, Prof., II 205
Copernicus, I 118, II 28 Coptic, I 115, II 432, 547 Coptic MSS., I 132
Coronado, II 35 Cory, I 70, 340, 348, 462, II 53, 65, 141, 190 Cosmic glyphs,
II 356 Cosmic gods, I 463 Cosmocratores, I 124, 235, 331, II 23, 97 Cosmos, I
309, 594, II 636 Coulomb’s law, I 501 Councils, II 279 Cow, I 390, 434,
II 31, 418 Cox, I 304 Cratylus, I 2, 353, II 545 Crawford, II 169
Creation of man, II 86 Creuzer, I 461, 463, 652, II 285, 345, 367, 369 Crocodile,
I 219, 233, 403 Croll, I 511, II 9, 141, 144, 314, 685, 715, 751 Cro-Magnon
skulls, II 678, 687, 740 et seq. Crookes, I 140-3, 283, 460, 514, 526,
543-53, 562, 580-6, 597, 620-6, II 105, 211, 651 Cross, I 321, II 216, 541
Crotch, Duppa, II 781 Cruden, I 127 Crux ansata, I 321, 366 Csoma de
Körös, I 49 Cudworth, II 159, 264 Cumberland, Bishop, II 264, 360,
393 Cumming, R. G., II 440 Cunningham, I xxviii Curds, I 66, 205, 543 Curse, I
192, II 244, 409 Curtis, G. T., II 683 Cusa, Cardinal, II 158 Cushing, F. H.,
II 629 Cutha tablet, II 2, 52, 55
Cuvier,
I 491, II 205, 739 Cuzco, I 209 Cycles, I 642, II 45, 379 Cyclopean ruins, II
341 Cyclopes, I 208, II 70, 289, 337, 345, 390, 766, 769 Cynocephalus, I 388,
II 193 Cyrus, I 652, II 360, 690 Cytoblastema, II 256 Czolbe, II 154
Dabar,
I 350 Dabarim, I 37, 350, 432 Daemon est deus inversus, I 70, 411, 424 Dagon,
II 139, 190, 495, 578 Dagon, Chaldean legend of, I 345 ; a fish, I 394 ; Oannes
or, II 54, 366 Daitya, island of, II 314 Daityas, I 92, 651, II 30, 141, 183,
274, 369, 405, 428, 501, 710, 740 Daityas, defeat deities, I 419 ; demons, I
422 ; Atlanteans, II 224 ; the monarch of, II 225 ; brought into disrepute, II
227 ; live on Black Land, II 319 ; in India, II 336 ; giant, a demi-god, II 381
Daivîprakriti, I 136, 216, 293, 430, 602, II 38 Dâkinî, II
20, 271, 285 Daksha, I 142, 415, 436, II 48, 68, 82, 140, 163, 375, 502, 528,
658 Daksha, his daughter Vi-natâ, I 366 ; his daugh-ter Vâch, I 430
; a form of Brahmâ, I 623 ; father of first human progenitors, II 177 ;
syn-thesis of races, II 178 ; the creator of physical man, II 182 ; typifies
early Third Race, II 183 ; reincarnated crea-tor of man, II 192 ; the
intelligent, II 247 ; first progeny of, II 275 Daksha’s daughters, I 521
Damascius, I 70, 235, 343, 425
Damavend,
II 397 Dan, I 651, II 211 Dana, Prof., II 324 Dânavas, I 92, 415, II 192,
336, 381, 498, 501 Dangma, I 27, 45 et seq. D’Anville, II 394, 769
Daram, I 466 Darkness, I 70, 356, 443 Darmesteter, I 336, II 97, 291, 292
Darśanas, I 47 Darwin, C, I 155, 185-6, 585, 600, II 9, 118-9, 187, 190,
256, 287, 595, 666 Darwinism, I 186, II 56 Däumling, I 165 Davids, Rhys, I
108, 471, 539 Davis, Barnard, II 790 Davy, Sir H., I 480 Dawkins, Boyd, II 675
Dayânand Sarasvatî, I xxx, xxxv, II 68, 214 De Boucheporn, II 330
Decharme, II 122, 269, 363, 519, 525, 763 Deitv, I 2, 35, 645, II 25 Delambre,
I 499 Delgarme, I 310 Delhi, II 221, 397 Deluge, I 67, 649, II 3, 138, 313,
350, 360, 391, 774 Demaimieux, I 310 Demiourgos, I 110, 346, II 5, 93, 387,
466, 599 Demiourgos, a collective creator, I 279 ; creator of heaven and earth,
I 413 ; descent of, II 75 ; of Nazarenes, II 243 Democritus, I 2, 50, 117, 343,
518, 579, 611, II 285 Demrush, II 398 Denkmäler, I 228 Denon, II
332, 431 Denton, I 201 De Rossi, II 586 Desbosses, Father, I 631 Descartes, I
117, 206, 492, 623, 627, 629, II 298 Des Mousseaux, I 670, II 346 Desnoyers, II
751 Deukalion, II 270, 309, 314, 335, 519, 768 Deus, I 70, 347, 411, II 422
Deus
Lunus, I 386, 396 Deus Mundus, I 463 Deva, I 206, II 292 Deva eye, II 292, 295
Devachan, I 173, 334, 571, II 111, 196, 281, 610 Devachan, the false bliss of,
I 39, 221 ; abode of bliss, I 365 ; and the higher element of Manas, II 57 ;
the higher prin-ciples in, II 374 Devajñânins, II 90 Devaloka, I
131, 605 Devamâtri, I 53, 356, 527 Deva-Rishi, II 48, 82 Devas, I xliii,
73, 276, 406, 630, II 58, 108, 264, 307, 394, 495, 516, 585, 776 Devas, angels,
II 292 et seq. ; a kind of spiri-tual being, II 90 ; their symbolism in
Greece, II 95 ; or Dhyân-Chohans, II 233 ; gods and demi-gods, II 373
Deva-Sarga, I 454, II 176 Devasenâ, II 199 Devayâna, I 132
Devîdurgâ, I 91 Devil, I 70, 73, 442, II 228, 376, 477, 581 Devils,
I 235, 331, 669 Devourers, I 250, 259 Devs, II 394 Dhaivata, I 534 Dhammapada,
II 110 Dhruva, I 435, II 489 Dhyâna, I 571, II 115-6
Dhyâni-Bodhisattva, I 109, II 116 Dhyâni-Buddhas, I 42, 113, 572,
II 34, 116 Dhyâni-Chohans, I 13, 63, 88, 103, 110, 134, 183, 193, 229,
288, 330, 339, 406, 434, 471, 478, 559, 586, 611, 619, II 16, 32, 58, 75,
109-61, 178, 239, 246, 393, 465, 510, 578, 584, 669, 700, 728, 732, 765
Dhyâni-Chohans, primor-dial men, I 10 ; trans-mit thought, I 16 ; have
divine powers, I 22 ; spiritual beings, I 38 ; creative spirits, I 42 ; the
highest, I 51 ; the
viii INDEX
invisible
deity and the, I 114 ; hosts of angelic beings, I 119 ; guiding intelligences,
I 146 ; ethereal races of, I 188 ; have to become angels, I 221 ; relations
with humanity, I 226 ; monad is an individual Dhyân-Chohan, I 265 ; high
planetary spirits, I 278, 635 ; Elohim, I 295 ; Builders, I 375 ; crea-tive
powers, I 427, II 60 ; solar and lunar Pitris, I 442 ; aggregate of in-telligence,
I 452 ; seven divisions of, I 458 ; hu-man, I 478 ; conscious-ness, I 573 ;
intelligences, I 601 ; cosmic, I 604, 630 ; or archangels, I 638 ; of
supra-mundane spheres, I 652 ; four orders or classes of, II 102 ; are Devas,
II 108 ; essence, II 120 ; pure celestial beings, II 233 ; Sons of Wisdom, II
267 ; incarnate, II 275 ; low-er, II 281 ; gods them-selves, II 303 ; help of,
II 307 ; hierarchies of, II 318 ; informing groups of, II 361 ; primitive, II
366 ; heavenly man, II 683
Dhyânipaśa,
I 90
Dhyânis,
I 181, 183, 184, 577, II 16, 80, 210, 228
Diana,
I 386, 395, II 123
Didymium,
I 141
Dinosaurians,
II 218
Diodorus
Siculus, I 366, II 143, 344, 363, 374, 465, 620, 761 et seq.
Diogenes
Laertius, I 434, 650, II 159
Dionysus,
I 360, 463, II 419
Diorite,
II 692
Dioscuri,
I 338, II 363
Dîrghatamas, II 97
Disc,
I 1, 4, II 464, 546
Dolichocephalic,
II 168
Donnelly,
II 221, 333
Dorjesempa,
I 52, 571
Douay
version, I 128
Dove,
I 354, 384, II 145
Dowler,
II 352
Drack,
Chev., I 467, II 476 Draco, I 411, II 32, 356 Dracontia, II 346, 380, 756
Dragon, I xxvii, 71, 127, 364, 657, II 19, 53, 104, 274, 390, 443, 786 Dragon,
the old Devil, II 98 ; Chinese, II 206 ; and Serpents, II 210 ; Great, II 351 ;
the con-stellation, II 353 ; fabu-lous, II 354 ; Yellow, II 365 ; Sons of the,
II 379 et seq. ; the fiery serpent, II 387 Dragon Logos, I 409 Dragons,
II 202 Draper, I 104, 357 Druid Circles, I 209 Drushim, I 438 Dryden, I 211,
644 Dryopithecus, II 675 et seq. Du Bois-Reymond, I 485, 518, II 650,
663, 711 Dugpaship, II 221, 586 Dulaure, I 652 Duncan, P. M., I 102 Dunlap, I
195, 353, II 212 Dupuis, I 653, II 26, 32 Durán, II 276
Dvâpara-Yuga, II 69, 147 Dvija, I 209, II 70 Dvîpa, I 236, 257,
373, II 6, 155, 366, 584, 758 Dvîpas, described in Pu-rânas, II 264
; seven, II 320 ; seven great islands, II 350 Dyaus, I 101, 347, 376 Dzyan, I
xx, xxiii, 606, 674, II 46, 220, 241, 375 Dzyu, I 31, 107
E
Delphicum, II 580 Ea,
II 61, 139, 226, 495 Eagle, I 127, 441, II 114 Earth, I 18, 74, 166, 204, 265,
366, 673, II 16, 104, 146, 246, 358, 483, 533 606, 701, 785 Earth, Devaloka
worlds, I 131 ; personification of, I 141 ; moon as a satel-lite of, I 155, 180
; visi-ble representative of the globes, I 159 ; three earths, I 250 ; forms of
nature,
I 257 ; progeny of moon, II 33 ; forma-tion of, II 66 East, I 123, II 535, 550
Easter Island, I 321, II 223, 317, 331, 336, 558 Ebionites, I 197 Echath, I 130
Echod, I 73, 112, 113, 130 Eckstein, II 357 Ecphantus, I 117 Eddas, I
344, II 27, 386 Eddin Ahmed ben Yah-ya, II 362 Eden, I 114, 612, II 31, 112,
279, 382, 493, 543 Eden, abode of gods, I 127 ; tree of good and evil, I 247 ;
true and perfect serpent, II 410 Edens, II 202 Edison, II 784 Edkins, Jos., I
xxviii, 72, 126, 440 Edom, II 2, 55, 84, 457 Edris, II 362, 366, 529 Effects, I
46, 171, II 74, 248 Egg, I 8, 28, 197, 556, II 14, 122, 312, 553, 653 Egg,
mundane, I 65 ; as a universal symbol, I 359 ; evolves Chemi, I 367 ;
Buddha’s refusal to eat, I 369 ; of Great Serpent, II 181 Ego, I 38, 129,
243, II 109 Egos, I 181, 237, II 291 Egypt, II 557 Egyptians, I 134, 229, II
357, 435, 536, 557 Egyptian temples, I 125 Eka, I 73, 113, 129 Ekaśloka-Śâstra,I
61 El, I 463, II 39, 376, 509 El’azar, Rabbi, I 394, II 134, 200, 315,
532 Electra, II 768 Electricity, I 81, 111, 139 El-El, I 463 Elements, I 218,
460, 462, 546 et seq., II 114, 574 Elephant, I 225, II 219, 723
Elephanta, II 85, 221 Eleusis, II 270 Elijah, I 466, II 342, 531 Elion, II 380
Elivagar, I 367 Ellora, II 221, 345
Eloah,
II 509
Elohim,
I 38, 42, 130, 254, 346, 619, II 2, 6, 23, 311, 388, 452, 540, 596, 608
Elohim,
as Jehovah, I 73 ; number for, I 90 ; in-ner divine entity, I 113 ; meaning of,
I 114 ; in systems of Gnostics, I 197 ; man a child of, I 225 ; tribal gods, I
421 ; assuming god-name, I 442 ; let there be a fir-mament, I 447 ; sacri-fice
to, I 493 ; septen-ary, I 548 ; minor lo-goi, II 37 ; Jehovah, II 38 ; create
man, II 44 ; inferior, II 61 ; lower divine beings, II 95 ; brought forth man,
II 134 ; impart secrets, II 220 ; know good and evil, II 243 ; symbols of, II
474
Elohistic,
I 230, II 75, 473
Eloi,
I 577, II 538
Elon,
II 380
Emepht,
I 344, 367
Emerson,
I 48, 140
Empedocles,
I 497
Enfield,
II 594
Ennoia,
II 214, 244, 490
Enoch,
I 523, 604, II 47, 82, 125, 211, 284, 382, 454, 497, 584, 617, 715
Enoch,
sage and hiero-phant, I 207 ; Uriel to him, I 609 ; visions of, II 229 ;
Archbishop Lau-rence on, II 230 ; generic name, II 267 ; traditions of, II 366
; Son of Man, II 533
Enoch, Book of, II 145, 229, 281, 482,
529, 532
Enoïchion,
II 529
Enos,
II 125, 469
Enosh,
II 129
En-Soph,
I 109, 214, 357, 429
Entities,
I 10, 106, 133, 145, 215, 233, 493
Entity,
I 66, 143, 154
Eocene,
I 439, II 9, 690
Ephialtes,
II 70
Epicurus,
I 2, 491, 518, 568, 629, II 285
Epigenes,
II 620
Epiphanius,
I 404, II 569
Erard-Mollien,
I 657 Eratosthenes, II 367 Erdmann, I 630 Erebus, I 110 Eridu, II 139, 203,
226, 693 Eros, I 109, 461, I 165, 234 Eros-Phanes, I 365 Esoteric, I 9, 110,
306, II 22 Esoteric Buddhism, I xvii, 152, 167, II 8, 156 Esoteric
tenets, II 449 Essence, Absolute, I 273 Essenes, II 111 Ether, I 57, 255, 372,
524, 668, II 14, 74, 298, 578, 758 Ether, grossest form of
Âkâśa, I 13 ; undula-tory, I 325 ; subdivi-sions, I 342 ; all
things have come from, I 462 ; universal, I 482 ; pro-duced sound, I 587
Ethiops, II 417 Euclid, II 522, 552 Eugenius Philalethes, I 260 Eugibinus, II
134 Euler, I 491 Euripides, II 123, 294, 764 Europe, I 209, 646, II 368
Eusebius, med., II 342 Eusebius, I xxvi, II 53, 278, 357 368, 692 Eustathius,
II 416, 463 Evans, J. II 442, 722 Eve, I 60, 129, 355, II 43, 95, 130, 193,
220, 270, 410, 467, 646, 661 Evil Spirit, I 344, II 475 Evolution, I 187, 219,
256, II 131, 191, 544, 649, 683, 719 (see Tables of Contents) Evolution,
law of, II 256 Evolution of a cathedral organ, II 348 Evolutionists, II 187
Ewald, II 454 Exodus, I 125, II 426 Eye, Third, I 46, II 20, 179, 227,
271, 288 et seq. Ezekiel’s wheel, I 127, 363, II 128, 133, 553
Ezra, I 655, II 4, 143, 461
Faber,
I 360, II 142, 246, 344, 360, 364, 390, 472 Fabre, II 746 Fafnir, I 404 Fa-Hwa-King,
I 470 Falconnet, II 342 Fall, I 5, 192, 412, 450, II 60, 94, 170, 227, 282
et
seq.
Fallen
Angel, II 475 Faraday, I 111, 507, 580 Faye, I 165, 496, 500, 505, 541, 588,
599 Fergusson, II 220, 745 Feridan, II 398 Ferrel, II 64 Ferrier, I 125 Feruer,
I 235, II 478, 480, 489 Fetahil, I 195, 248, II 239 Fichte, I 50, 51, 79, 281
Figanière, II 289 Figuier, II 136 Filioque dogma, II 635 Filippi, II 646
Fire, I 6, 85, 121, 141, 203, 252, 599, II 15, 101, 425 Fire-Mist, I 83, 140
Fire-Philosophers, I 81 Fire Worshippers, I 121 First Cause, I 327, 342 Fishes,
Palaeozoic, II 170 Fiske, II 680, 778, 786 Flagae, I 222 Flame, I 81, 121, 215,
599, II 16, 234, 411, 516, 591 Flammarion, I 606, II 135, 699, 701, 707
Florence, II 221 Flower, W. H., II 169 Fludd, I 70 Foetus, I 184, 389, II 131
Fohat, I 58, 63, 238, 284, 523, 554, 590, II 86, 330, 525, 604, 649 Fohat,
animating princi-ple, I 16 ; hardens the atoms, I 30 ; hisses as he glides, I
76 ; gives an impulse, I 82 ; im-presses mind on mat-ter, I 85 ; an abstract
philosophical idea, I 109 ; takes five strides, I 122 ; son of the son, I 137 ;
seven conditions of, I 138 ; in Occult science, I 142 ; scattering prod-ucts, I
143 ; produces seven laya centers, I 147 ;
has
many abodes, I 204 ; seven sons, I 216 ; cos-mic energy, I 328 ; en-ergizing
and guiding in-telligence, I 493 ; poten-tial breath of, I 635 ; the key of
occultism, I 673 ; in manifestation, II 65 ; Vedic names of, II 400 ; and the
Svas-tika, II 586 Foh-tchou, II 215 Foix, de, II 96 Fo-Kien, I 271
Foraminifera, II 257 Force, I 10, 147, 277, 482, 490, 587, II 24, 421 Force,
the coming, I 554 Forces, I 440, 464 Fossil relics of man, I 184, 637, II 68,
193, 287, 674 Foster, Sir M., II 131 Foucault, I 502 Fourth Root-Race, I 106,
187, 535, II 18, 144, 224 Franck, I xliii, 350, II 2 Francœur, I 529
François de Tours, II 114 Frankenstein, I 594, II 56, 349, 427, 508, 652
Fravashi, II 478, 480 Fresnel, I 482, 486 Frog, I 355 Frog-symbol, I 385
Fürst, II 77, 393, 541 Fylfot, II 546
Gabriel,
I 42, 127, 379, II 115, 246, 382, 472, 538 Gaia, I 109, II 65, 269 Galen, II
132 Galilean Adept, II 231 Galileo, I 117, 568, 623, II 534 Gamma, II 583, 590
Gandharvas, I 92, 126, 523, 571, II 90, 143 Gangâ, I 385
Gangâdvâra, II 571 Ganymedes, II 785 Garden of Wisdom, II 204
Gardner, Starkie, II 782 Garga, II 49 Garuda, I 366, 421, II 181, 254, 323,
565, 570
Gases,
I 82 Gaudry, Albert, II 646, 676, 714, 739, 749 Gauramukha, II 323 Gautama, I
xxi, 47, 108, 161, 271, 368, 379, II 27, 339, 423, 637 Gébelin, de, I
642, II 769 Gebers, I 114 Gebirol, Ibn, I 347, 376, 438, II 28, 116, 292, 461
Geborim, I 114 Gehenna, I 463 Geiger, Dr., II 358, 757 Geikie, II 715, 720
Gelukpas, I 108, II 586 Gemara Sanhedrim, II 473 Genesis, I 70,
73, II 1, 60, 81, 212, 375, 453, 501, 624 Genesis of man, II 797 Genii, I 288,
649, II 248 Gentil, M. le, I 663 Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, II 206, 646, 651
Geological chronology, II 710 Geological periods, II 688 Geometrical forms, I
97 George, St., II 238, 397 Gharma-ja, II 124 Giamshid, II 398 Giants, II 277 et
seq., 341, 752, 777 Gibborim, I 415, II 70, 273, 279, 340 Gibraltar, II 8,
727, 740, 793 Gilgoolem, I 568 Gimil, II 100 Ginnungagap, I 367, 427 Ginsburg,
II 284 Giraldus Cambrensis, II 345 Gladstone, W. E., II 252, 383, 766, 770, 774
Globigerina, II 257 Gnostics, I 72, 132, 227, 322, 361, 376, 460, 577, 618,
668, II 43, 150, 208, 280, 355, 458, 509, 530, 630 Gnostics, doctrines of, I
xliv ; C. W. King’s book, I 410 ; their Hebdomad, I 448 ; sacred serpent,
I 472 ; Christos Sophia, I 473 ; Codex Nazaraeus, II 96 ; adore the
ser-pent, II 214 ; Ilda Baoth,
II
243 ; founded by Ini-tiates, II 389 ; Egyp-tian, II 538 ; “five
words” of, II 580 ; Pistis Sophia, II 604 Goat, I 357, II 16, 386,
510 Goat of Mendes, I 253 Gobi, II 5, 220, 331, 404 God, I 2, 9, 61, 147, 295,
347, 569, 636, II 1, 60, 176, 273, 359 God, name of, II 602 Goddesses, I 71,
396, II 26 Godefroy, I 499, 506 Gods, I 10, 288, 396, 495, 548, 610, II 5, 57,
172, 355 Gods of Darkness, II 483 Goethe, I 83, II 706, 737 Gogard, II 97
Golden Age, II 421, 520 Goldstücker, II 524 Gorilla, II 193, 263, 675
Gorresio, I 415 Gosse, II 440 Gould, Ch., II 6, 54, 280, 293, 302, 311, 429,
440, 688, 695, 715 Gratiolet, II 681 Gravitation, I 299, 484-513, 592, II 64,
136, 622 Greely, I xxiii Greenland, II 11, 138, 402 Gregorie, II 467 Grihastha,
I 210, II 77, 499 Grote, II 760 Grove, Sir W., I 102, 465, 469, 483, 486, 491,
496, 508, 509 Guanches, II 678, 740, 790 Guardian angels, I 222 Guatemala, II
50 Gubernatis, I 304 Guebre, II 363 Guhya-Vidyâ, I 90, 169 Guinness, H.
G., II 622 Gulguleh, II 338 Gull, Dr., I 540 Gultweig, II 520
Guptâ-Vidyâ, I xxxix, 200, 356, II 498 Guru, I 376, II 31, 109, 215
Gurudeva, I 120, II 605 Gyan, II 394 Gyges, II 775
Ha
Idra Zuta Kadisha,I 240
Habel, II 397, 469 Hades, II 138, 234, 364 Haeckel, Ernst, I 306, 542, II 87,
154, 158, 164, 185, 187, 193, 258, 261, 295, 327 et seq., 348, 490, 645,
648, 659, 673, 679, 685, 711, 729, 734, 779, 789 Hagar, II 76 Haliburton, II
794 Hall, Fitzedward, I xix, 46, 419, 453, 545, II 155 Halliwell, II 347 Ham, I
418, II 146, 344, 391 Hamilton, Sir William, II 158, 665 Hamlet, II 306
Hamy, II 678, 714, 790 Hanneberg Dr., II 532 Hanokh, II 361, 532 Hansa, I 79,
80, 549 Hansa-vâhana, I 80 Hanumân, I 190, 388, II 163, 680 Haoma,
II 97, 517 Hare, Robt., I 520 Hari, I 18, 286, 370, 372, 421, II 76, 89 Harivanśa,
I 457, II 32, 75, 89, 176, 275, 572 Harikeśa, I 515 Haris, I 18, 370, II
76, 89 Hartmann, E. von, I 1, 50, 281, 282, II 156, 649 Hartmann, Franz, I 532
Hatha-Yoga, I 95, II 639 Hathor, I 91, 400, II 464 Hatteria, II 296 Haug, M. II
155 Hawaiians, II 780 Hayoh Bishah, II 262 Hea, I 357, II 5, 26, 282 Heat, I
29, 81, 103, II 15 Heaven, War in, I 418, II 237, 380 Hebdomad, I 448, II 590
Hebe, II 130 Hebel, II 135 Hebrew style, I 115 Hecate, I 387, 395 Heer, Prof.,
II 726, 739, 783, 789 Hegel, I 16, 50, 106, 257, 640, II 449, 490 Hel, II 99,
774 Hela, I 463 Helenus, II 342
Heliocentric
system, I 117, 441, 569, II 153 Heli-on, II 357, 509 Heliopolis, I 311, 395
Helios, II 357, 383, 540 Helium, I 218, 584, 595 Hell, I 204, II 98, 244, 402
Hellenbach, II 627, 654 Helmholtz, I 111, 508, 580, 671, II 64, 154, 694
Helmont, J. B. van, I 51, 514, 611 Henoch, II 366 Heptachord, I 167 Heptad, II
599, 602 Heqt, I 385 Heraclides, I 117 Heraclitus, I 77, II 764 Heracles, II
130, 431 Heraclius, II 342 Heraiscus, II 342 Herbelot, II 394, 396, 398
Herbert, Lord, II 653 Herculaneum, II 236, 793 Hercules, I 353, II 44, 202
Hercules, Pillars of, I 622, II 147, 223, 324, 394 Hermaphrodites, I 396, II 2,
118, 124, 167, 294 Hermeias, I 70, 343 Hermes, I 73, 90, 207, 279, 281, 285,
294, 362, 388, 426, 436, 480, 577, 625, 664, 672, II 2, 23, 45, 99, 129, 361,
366, 455, 491, 581, 630, 725 Hermes, a sage, I 207 ; his wisdom, I 279 ;
initiator of magic, I 473, II 211 ; a wide step to Huxley, I 625 ; astronomical
ob-servations, I 664 ; the Smaragdine Tablets, II 99, 109, 113, 556 ; gen-eric
name of Thoth, II 210 ; mysteries of, II 234 ; or Thot, II 267 ; Pymander, II
270 ; god of wisdom, II 380 ; way to Bible, II 383 ; con-ceals his books, II
530 ; Chief of the Seven, II 538 ; the Logos, II 541 Hermes Trismegistus, I
281, 286-7, 671, II 379 Hermetic Fragments, I 281, 285-8 Hermon, Mount, II 409
Herod, II 504 Herodotus, I 362, II 332,
334,
345, 360, 367, 369, 395, 419, 429, 431, 534 Heroes, I 266, II 336, 364
Herschel, Sir John, I 503 Herschel, Sir W., I 99, 499, 530, 576, 595, 604
Hesiod, I 336, 425, 466, II 63, 181, 268, 270, 413, 450, 525, 530, 603, 762
Hesperides, I 129, II 791 Hesperornis, II 183 Heterogenesis, II 177 Hexagon, I
224, II 582 Hezekiah, I 364, II 387 Hicetas, I 117 Hierophants, I 363 Higgins,
G., II 105 Hilaeira, II 122 Hilkiah, I 649, II 473 Himâlayas, II 145, 401
Hînayâna, I 39 Hindû philosophy, I 162 Hindûs, I 390
Hipparchus, I 409, 650, 658 Hippocrates, I 223, II 132, 259, 312, 688
Hippolytus, I 352, II 563, 569 Hippopotami, II 219, 397 Hiquet, I 385 Hiram
Abif, I 314, II 113 Hiranya, I 360 Hiranyagharba, manifesta-tion of spirit, I
18 ; lu-minous egg, I 66 ; the golden womb, I 89 ; glory to, I 286 ; is
Brahmâ in its highest manifesta-tion, I 406 ; golden egg, I 426 ; radiant
egg, II 470 Hiranyakaśipu, I 420 Hiranyapura, II 383 Hirn, G. A., I 482,
487, 511 Hivim, II 380 Hoa, I 78, II 26, 83 Hokhmah, I 438, II 85, 703 Hodson,
II 342 Holmboë, II 424 Holy Ghost, I 81, 353, II 512 Holy of Holies, I
114, II 212, 457, 459, 470, 472 Homer, I 426, 648, II 11, 383, 440, 591, 601,
761 Homogeneous One, I 411 Homunculus, I 345, II 120 Horne, Rev., II 473
xii INDEX
Horse,
white, I 87 Horus, I 59, 72, 366, 379, II 43, 233, 385, 464, 577 Hovelacque, II
169 Huc, Abbé, II 502 Huggins, Wm., I 598 Hugo, Victor, II 440 Human
race, II 161, 173 Humboldt, I 178, 205, 322, 497, II 141, 674, 753 Hume, II 156
Hunt, E. B., I 486 Hunt, Jas., II 169, 739 Hunt, Robt., I 530, 538, 580, II 695
Hunt, Dr. T. S., I 495 Hushenk, II 396, 399 Huxley, Prof., I 477, 501, 539,
542, 625, 634, 637, 640, 670, II 11, 72, 152, 155, 169, 252, 256, 259, 262,
315, 522, 646, 651, 675, 679, 687, 698, 780, 784, 787, 796 Hyde-Jekyll, I 416,
II 317 Hydrogen, I 121, 564 et seq., II 105, 112, 137, 592 Hyginus, II
122, 493, 770 Hylo-Idealistic, I 297 Hylozoism, II 158 Hyperborean, II 7, 769
Hyperboreans, II 11, 775 Hypnotism, I 297, II 156, 641
Iamblichus,
I 235, 409, 473, 650, II 210, 640 Iao, I 227, II 465, 536, 541 Iapetos, II 143,
762 Ibis, I 353, 362, II 464 Ichchhâśakti, I 293, II 173 Idâ,
II 140, 143-4 Idrah Zutah, I 78, II 25, 83 Iguanodon, II 151, 348, 676
Ikshvâku, I 378, II 524 Ilda-Baoth, II 215, 243, 481,
Ilda-Baoth,
son of dark-ness, I 197 ; an astral god, I 449 ; Jehovah, I 577 ; Jehovah an
emana-tion of, II 389 Ilus, I 58, 82, 140, 339 Immaculate conception, I xliv,
58, 393
Inachus,
II 414, 519 Incas, II 141, 745 India, I 311, II 178 Indra, I 10, 398, 463, 523,
II 92, 203, 378, 606 Indra, East, I 128 ; god of firmament, I 202 ; primitive
man, I 376 ; sends Apsarasas, II 174 ; belonged to Asuras, II 500 Indriya, I
446, 453 Indus, II 417 Infusoria, I 146, 177, II 151 Ingersoll, II 767
Initiates, I xix, 190, 516 Inman, I 405, II 38, 129 Inquisition, II 38, 238
Intelligences, I 106, II 34 Io, II 414, 417, 463 Iochai, Simeon ben, I 365,
450, II 487, 626 Iran, I 576, II 393, 439 Iranians, II 390, 573, 772 Irenaeus,
I 194, 448, II 611 Irish, II 114, 175, 472, 759 Isaiah, I 70, II 212, 480 Isanagi
and Isanami, I 217, 241 Iscariotes, II 389 Isidorus, II 342 Isis, I 72, 253,
299, 381, 410, 430, II 23, 344, 390, 461, 557, 583, 601, 655 Isis, queen of
heaven, I 91 ; China and Egypt, I 136 ; the daughter of Osiris, I 137 ; Ibis
sa-cred to, I 362 ; holding a lotus, I 366 ; cat sa-cred to, I 387 ; the
in-fernal Isis, I 400 ; is mystic Nature, I 434 ; goddess of life, II 26, 30 ;
identical with Aditi, II 43 ; and the moon, II 418 Isis Latona, I 340, II 130 Isis
Unveiled, I 3, 74, 115, 235, 641, II 3, 37 Isis Unveiled, called a
pla-giarism, I xlvi ; geomet-rical figures, II 575 ; Egyptological souls, II
630 Ister, II 43Îśvara, I 110, 130, 256, 330, 434, 573, II 76, 473
Jabal,
II 390 Jablonski, II 463 Jacob, I 467, II 211 Jacob’s dream, II 281
Jacob’s ladder, II 358 Jacolliot, I 377, II 222, 442, 786, 788
Jagad-Yoni, I 46, 582, II 108 Jagannâtha, I xli, II 130 Jah, I 355, II
39, 126, 388 Jah-Heva, II 125 Jah-Hova, I 113, II 125, 388, 468, 602 Jaina
Cross, II 98 Jambu, II 404 Jambu-dvîpa, II 182, 403 James, Sir H., II 314
Jana-loka, I 116, II 321 Janârdana, I 370 Janneus, II 504 Japanese, I
307, II 203 Japanese artists, II 441 Jared, II 366, 391, 597 Jatâyu, II
565, 570 Jaumes, Prof., I 506 Java-Aleim, II 202, 532 Jayas, II 90, 182, 585
Jehoshua, I 577, II 539 Jehovah, I 4, 18, 60, 71, 90, 99, 215, 230, 264, 316,
327, 335, 341, 387 et seq., 414, 421, 442, 462, 481, 548, 618, 642, II
44, 125, 174, 280, 379, 397, 420, 479, 558, 595, 708 Jehovah, the Serpent or
as-tral light, I 73 ; not the One Supreme Es-sence, I 130 ; one of the Elohim,
I 197 ; identi-fied with Binah, I 230 ; not the “Unknown God,” I
327 ; tempts the King of Israel, I 414 ; iden-tical with Satan, I 417 ; the
tempter, I 422, II 216 ; a tribal god, 492 ; a national god, I 576 ; Ilda-Baoth,
I 577 ; is Elohim, II 38 ; double-sexed, II 62 ; gifts of, II 76 ; a lower
angel, II 96 ; kingdom of, II 245 ; is Cain, II 269 ; the lunar spirits, II 397
; a phallic deity, II 460 ; only reads Adonai with Masoretic points, II 465 ;
“form” of, II 467 ; sub
stitute
for Deity, II 472 ; a personating spirit, II 509 et seq. ; his portion
is his people, II 538 ; genius of the Moon, II 539 Jehovah-Cain, II 388
Jehovistic, I 336, II 5, 473 Jennings, Hargrave, I 358, 472, II 467, 544 Jesus,
I 72, 132, 264, 318, 410, 574, 653, II 111, 134, 231, 313, 466, 508 et seq.,
560, 580 Jethro, II 465, 541 Jevons, I 104, 124, 430, 541 Jews, I 128, 230, II
508 Jinn, I 295 Jîva, I 132, 238, 603, II 46, 75, 161, 241 Jîva,
complete in man, I 224 ; the monad, I 246 ; pervaded by Parabrahm, I 522 ; is
quiescent a-lone, I 526 ; a truly in-divisible thing, I 570 ; an impassable
chasm, II 185 Jîvanmukta, I 371, II 604 Jîvas, I 216, 629, II 18,
81 Jîvâtma, I 140, 226, II 33 Jîvâtmas, I 132
Jñâna, I 62, II 282, 394 Jñânaśakti, I 292 Job,
I 70, 422, 647, II 206 Jod, I 60, 90, II 39, 129, 518 John, I 70, 226,
II 39 John the Baptist, I 194, II 442, 496, 566 Joly, II 101, 661, 747, 750
Jones, Sir W., I xxxi, 57, 379, 623, II 48, 442 Joseph, I 649, II 101 Josephus,
I 125, 367, 462, II 111, 200, 409, 530 Joshua, I 264, II 340, 535 Jötunn,
I 402, II 386 Jowett, II 761, 764 Judah, I 649, II 130, 557 Jude, II
229, 477, 482, 531 Jukes, Prof., II 196, 219 Julian, II 28, 35, 587 Julien,
Stanislas, I xxv Juno, I 129, 228, II 466 Jupiter, I 72, 153, 331, 423, 554,
593, 662, II 29, 122, 341, 456, 538, 660, 765 Jupiter, receives tree with
golden fruit, I 129 ; the
planet,
I 164, 378 ; names of I 463 ; the fourfold, I 464 ; the exoteric plan-et, I
575, II 23 ; the mass of, II 137 ; fables about, II 197 ; the Ti-tan, II 269 ;
is hurled down by Kronos, II 483 ; desires to quench man, II 523
Jupiter
Fulgur, I 467
Jupiter
Mundus, I 463
Jupiter
Pluvius, I 467, 554
Justin
Martyr, I 194, 433, II 489
Jyotis,
II 766
Jyotsnâ,
II 58, 528
Kabala,
I xliii, 3, 36, 75, 89, 179, 241, 270, 336, 391, 438, 610, 618, II 2, 25, 97,
125, 350, 388, 478, 574, 633, 704
Kabala,
circle of Elohim, I 114 ; Hebrew method of speech, I 115 ; words of Genesis,
I 215 ; Sephi-roth, I 230 ; the Chal-dean, I 350 ; the creation of man, I 444 ;
doctrine of light, II 37 ; Sepher Jezirah, II 39 ; primi-tive, II 85 ;
tree of life, II 216 ; fallen angels, II 229 ; modern Kabalists, II 238 et
seq. ; Pratt on the Kabala, II 246 ; first taught by God, II 284 ; of
Gnostics, II 458 ; of Simeon ben Iochai, II 487 ; glory of Jehovah, II 538 ;
Kabalistic books, II 544
Kabalism,
II 75
Kabalists,
I 413, 610, 636
Kabiri,
I 114, 435, II 3, 106, 115, 141, 264, 274, 360, 390
Kadeshim,
II 212, 460
Kadmos,
II 267, 362
Kadush,
I 463, II 460
Kaempfer,
II 365
Kafaristân,
II 396
Kailâsa,
I xxviii, II 416, 500
Kakodaimon,
I 344, 410
Kâla,
I 52, 62, 86, 407, 452, 583, II 142, 234, 549 Kalahansa, I 20, 77, 80, 362, II
122, 465 Kâlî, I 78, 443, II 548 Kali-Kâraka, II 48
Kali-Yuga, I xliv, 5, 377, 470, 645, 662, II 51, 140, 300, 420, 549, 614
Kalki-Avatâra, I 87, 268 Kalpa, I 32, 129, 206, 336, 436, 530, 635, II
53, 90, 147, 176, 232, 282, 408, 611, 625, 711 Kalpa, preceding Kalpas, I 183 ;
cycles, II 49 ; the 29th, II 249 ; or age, II 320 ; close of, II 325 Kalpas,
aeons of life, I 116 ; Daksha and, I 430 ; Kalpic masks, I 673 ; later Kalpas,
II 616 ; differences of, II 617 Kâma, II 18, 79, 176, 255, 578, 580, 614,
671 Kâma-loka, I 122, 244, 463 Kâma-rûpa, I 122, 153, 157,
527, II 105, 111, 161, 241, 593, 633 Kamchatka, II 402, 621 Kanâda, I
495, 518, 579 Kandu, II 171, 174, 411 Kanjur, I xxvii, 52 Kant, I 103,
133, 150, 589, 597 et seq., 601, 614, 623, II 522, 645 Kanyâ, I
92, 292, 658 Kapila, I 186, 585, II 42, 259, 483, 522, 571, 652 Kapilâksha,
I 563 Kapilavastu, I 271 Karabtanos, I 195, 217, 248 Karakorum, I xxiv, II 357
Kârana, I 41, 46, 280, II 46 Karma, I xxxvi, 39, 104, 123, 192, 294, 326,
412, 535, 571, 653, 675, II 20, 48, 93, 111, 196, 212, 244, 260, 269, 283, 329,
372, 394, 434, 453, 488, 510, 520, 569, 605, 614, 621, 671, 679, 741, 768
Karma, and doctrine of rebirth, I 171 ; compen-sation, I 173 ; and evolu-tion,
I 189, 634 et seq. ; all beings subject to, I 221 ; immutable law, I 276
; evil and, I 415 ;
xiv INDEX
the
Greek Nemesis, I 641 et seq. ; not inscru-table, I 643 ; adjusts hu-man
laughter, I 646 ; racial Karma, I 646 ; Australians and, II 168 ; the
“Fall,” II 192 ; jus-tice of God, II 234 ; of reincarnating Monads,
II 249 ; apes and, II 262 ; connected with third eye, II 302 ; and Eternal
Justice, II 304 ; men fa-vored by, II 318 ; At-lantis and, II 411 ; and origin
of evil, II 420 ; Past, Present and Fu-ture, II 446 ; evil an agent of, II 477
; Ezekiel as a witness to, II 492 ; sterility, II 780
Karnak,
I 400, II 380, 430
Karshipta,
II 292
Kâśi-Khanda,
II 182
Kaśyapa,
I xxviii, 366, II 47, 132,181, 253, 381, 570
Kebar-Zivo,
I 195
Kedara,
I 415
Keely,
J. W., I xxxv, 148, 253, 555-65
Kenealy,
Dr., I 209, 364, II 48, 114, 383, 397, 418, 463, 565, 619, 757-60
Kennedy,
Vans, I xxxii, 419 II 226, 310
Kepler,
I 103, 479, 493, 497, 589, 590, 622, 653, 655, II 486
Kepti,
I 408
Kesarî,
I 190
Kether,
I 90, 99, 215, 352, 394, II 625
Kether,
the brow of Ma-croprosopus, I 239 ; the Heavenly Man, I 433 ; first of the
Sephiroth, I 438 ; the Crown, II 595
Khado,
II 20, 271, 285
Khamism,
I 115
Khandakâla,
I 62
Khanoom,
II 394
Khem
(or Menu), I 220
Kheperu,
I 365, II 552
Khnum,
I 365, 385, 472, II 26, 270
Khonsu,
II 464
Kin-kwang-ming-king, I 470
King,
C. W., I 351, 361, 410, 449, II 243, 570, 605
Kingsford,
Mrs., I 281, 288, 672, II 229, 233
Kioto,
I 174
Kircher,
I 365, 435, II 207, 371
Kirchoff,
I 528
Kirjath
Sepher, II 529
Kiu-ti,
I xliii
Klaproth,
II 203
Klée,
Fdk., II 534
Kneph,
I 353, 364, 472, II 26
Knight,
Payne, I 405
Knuph,
I 472
Koh-i-baba,
II 338
Kon-ton,
I 214, 241
Kor,
II 317
Koran, II 454, 529, 617
Koros
(Kurios) I 353
Kośas,
I 157, 610
Kosmos,
I 13, 58, 82, 101, 128, 173, 337, 432, 521, 556, 634, II 23, 162, 234, 459,
527, 587, 626, 657
Kosmos,
chaos to the sense, I 2 ; emerging from space, I 65 ; operations of Fo-hat, I
147 ; higher planes in, I 199 ; dimensions of space, I 251 ; laws, I 274 ;
containment of space, I 342 ; periodically called into activity, I 348 ;
limi-tation in space and time, I 392 ; Buddhi in, I 453 ; formation of, I 477 et
seq., II 188 ; a huge fiery circle, II 357
Kratu,
II 78
Kratudvîshas,
II 501
Krauñcha-dvîpa,
II 321, 404
Krishna,
I xxxi, 86, 335, 535, II 48, 318, 527, 604
Krishna,
the Logos, II 69, 230 ; four Manus, II 140 ; reborn in every cycle, II 323 ;
represen-tation of sun, II 407 ; the redeeming Host, II 420 ; in Bhagavad-Gîtâ,
II 638
Krita,
I 378, II 308, 483
Krittikâs,
II 435, 551
Kriyâśakti,
II 19, 283, 436, 636, 652
Kriyâśakti,
Sons of Will and Yoga, I 207, 211, II 172 ; mysterious power of thought, I 293
; mysterious Yoga power, II 59 ; creation of women by will, II 140 ; power of
holy sages, II 181 ; creation of semi-divine man, II 228
Kroenig,
I 513
Kronos,
I 19, 113, 253, 408, 452, 583, 642, II 143, 268, 269, 341, 415, 483, 515, 764
Kronos-Sadic,
II 360 Kshatriya, I xxi, 378 Kshetrajña, I 284, II 638 Kuen-lun, I xxiv,
II 215 Kuhn, II 101, 413, 526 Kuhnrath, I 611, II 120 Kullûka, I 334, II
89, 495 Kumâras, I 75, 86, 324,
II
78, 82, 199, 232, 281, 382, 549, 613, 619
Kumâras,
are called the “Four,” I 89 ; the “Sev-en,” I 236 ;
Dhyân-Chohans, I 372 ; the “Ninth Creation,” I 457 ; mind born
sons and yo-gins, I 458 ; solar an-gels, II 88 ; incarnated in Third Race, II
89, 248 ; the creators of thinking man, II 95 ; Kabiri, II 106 ; incar-nating
gods, II 165 ; sons of Brahmâ, II 172 ; Ru-dra as a, II 192 ; incar-nate,
II 235 ; the virgin youths, II 243 ; virgin angels, II 246 ; arûpa gods,
II 318, connected with Makara, II 576 ; anagrammatical significa-tion, II 579 ;
refuse to create progeny, II 584
Kumuda-pati,
II 44 Kundalinîśakti, I 293 Kuni-to ko tachi-no mi-
koto,
I 241 Kurios, I 353 Kuśa-dvîpa, II 321, 404 Kuvera, I 128 Kuyunjik,
II 5 Kwan-shai-yin, I 32, 71,
136, 431, 470, 471, 473 Kwan-Yin, I 32,
72, 137, 288, 431, 470, 471, 473 Kwan-yin-t‘ien, I 32, 72,
136,
288, 431, 470 Kwoh P’oh, II 54 Kyriel, I 440, II 22 Labyrinthodon, II
299, 697 Lacaille, I 661 Lachelier, I 629 Laertius, I 433, 650, II 159 Lahhash,
I 354 Laing, Samuel, I 154, 504,
669,
II 71, 155, 172, 255,
510,
657, 671, 716, 731 Lajard, I 125 Lakshmî, I 380, II 76, 176 Lamarck, I
585, II 646 Lambert, Franz, II 633 Lamech, II 265, 391 Lane, Homer, I 85 Lange,
I 518 Language, I 174, II 199 Lankâ, II 70, 163, 236,
276,
332, 408, 435, 495 Lankester, Prof., II 295 Lanoo, I 11, 71, 120, 205,
231,
550, II 18, 113, 282 Lao-tse, I xxv, 174, II 37 Laplace, I 103, 150, 165,
498,
500, 502, 505, 576, 588, 591, 592, 595, 652, II 701, 784
La
Pluche, I 613 Lares, II 361 Lartet, II 278, 690, 714,
729,
746, 751 Lassen, I xxviii, II 424 Latona, I 366, II 419,
770-2
Laura, II 207 Laurence, R., II 230, 482 Laurentian, II 151, 254,
710,
712 Lavoisier, I 468 Laya, I 32, 88, 172, 181,
204,
453, 568, II 105
Laya,
seven centers, I 138 ; ilus, resting in, I 140 ; a condition, I 143 ; Fo-hat
produces laya cen-ters, I 147 ; state, I 258 ; occultist regarding, I 557 ; a
neutral condition, II 240
Layard,
II 5 Laycock, II 622 Lebanon, II 455, 494 Le Clerc, I 336, 354 Le Couturier, I
492, 494,
500,
502, 604, II 698 Leda, I 358, 366, II 121, 197 Lefèvre, II 66, 169, 187,
709,
714, 741, 779 Legge, I xxxvii Legends, II 311
Leibnitz,
I 103, 107, 139, 179, 310, 489, 579, 613, 622-32, II 186, 671-706
Lemming,
II 781
Lemnos,
II 3, 391
Lemuria,
I 439, II 35, 46, 171, 221, 313, 344, 361, 446, 585, 602, 679, 736, 749, 772
Lemuria,
proposed name of Third-Race Continent, II 7 ; destroyed by vol-canic action, II
141 ; cradle of primitive phy-sical man, II 193, 789 ; its half-animal races or
tribes, II 195 ; gigantic Lemurians, II 201 ; name of, II 323 et seq. ; Africa
later than, II 368 ; north-ern and southern divi-sions, II 371 ; Scandi-navia
part of, II 402 ; relics of, II 405 ; at highest point of civiliza-tion, II 433
et seq. ; combined with Atlantis, II 762 ; the kingdom of Saturn, II 768
; Lemuri-an survivals, II 779 ; giant continent, II 783
Lemurians,
II 263, 274, 286, 301, 331, 351
Lemuro-Atlanteans,
I 184 191, 668, II 10, 195, 221, 250, 316, 371, 426, 751, 772, 779
Lenoir,
II 386
Lenormant,
II 432
Leo,
I 213, II 407, 433
Leo
Isaurus, II 763
Leon,
Moses de, II 28
Leslie,
Sir J., I 515
Leto,
II 770
Leucippus,
I 2, 64, 117, 343, 518, 579
Leverrier,
II 441
Lévi,
Éliphas, I xlvi, 196, 243, 253, 259, II 74, 238, 268, 359, 377, 409,
506, 511, 545, 554, 589
Leviathan,
II 206, 268
Levites,
II 130, 211, 212
Lewes,
I 125, 528
Lewins,
Dr., I 484
Lewis,
I 650
Lha,
I 34, 238, II 15, 22, 63, 102, 110, 191
Lhamayin,
II 16, 63
Lha-ssa,
II 63 Liafail, II 342
Libraries, archaic, II 692 Life, I 2,
221, 365, 529, 624, II 383, 579, 589
Light,
I 40, 74, 81, 214, 481, II 33, 483, 562
Lîlâ,
II 53, 126
Lilith,
II 262, 285, 679
Linga-Purâna, I 256, 451, II 249, 307, 612
Linga-śarîra,
I 153, 242, II 241, 593
Lingam-Yoni,
II 465, 472
Linnaeus,
II 133, 287
Lipika,
I 118, 294
Lipika,
the Second Sev-en, I 31 ; produced by the Three, I 103 ; spirits of the
Universe, I 127 et seq. ; Karmic Lipikas, I 192
Lizeray,
II 355
Littré,
I 502, II 738
Lodge,
I 488
Lodur,
II 97
Logan
stones, II 342
Logoi,
I 59, 72, 246, 411
Logos,
I 8, 58, 113, 179, 273, 333, 380, 426, 446, 472, 537, 614, II 2, 29, 69, 162,
230, 318, 355, 400, 488, 515, 563, 579, 589, 621, 636, 669
Logos,
first cause, I 16 ; one ray, I 80 ; the De-miourgos, I 110 ; or
Îś-vara, I 130 ; Brahmâ, I 137 ; light of the, I 138 ;
Plato’s, I 214 ; “the Heavenly Man,” I 246, II 599 ; the
collective “creator” of the uni-verse, I 279 ; the crea-tive Deity,
I 349 ; the Second God, I 350 ; of Gnostics, I 350 ; the Su-preme Buddha, I 571
; mirror reflecting univer-sal mind, II 25, 38 ; Wisdom, II 230 ; Satan is, II
234 ; great un-seen, II 310 ; synthesis of, II 373 ; a bull with the Egyptians,
II 418 ; the interpreter, II 541 ; unknown light, II 703
Loka-Chakshus,
I 100, II 22
Loka-Pâlas,
I 128, II 577
xvi INDEX
Lokas,
I 204, II 44, 47,
234
Loki, I 402, II 283, 486 Lolos, II 280 Lords, II 60 Lotus, I 57, 184, 380, II
15,
44, 179, 327, 472,
546,
578 Lotus symbol, I 379 Lubbock, II 169, 314, 439,
722,
749 Lucae, II 646 Lucian, II 285, 603, 760 Lucianists, II 239 Lucifer, I 70,
436, II 45,
111,
237, 511, 540 Lucina, I 401 Lucretius, I 2, 7, 485, 568,
579,
594, II 521 Ludolf, II 531 Lundy, Dr., II 482, 561 Lung-shu, I 61 Lunus, I 228,
II 464 Lutaud, Dr., II 151 Luther, II 127 Luxor, II 430 Lydda, II 504 Lydus, II
541 Lyell, Sir C, I 323, II
676,
693, 721, 728, 778, 783 Lynceus, II 122
Ma,
I 384, II 368, 576 McClatchie, I 471 Mackenzie, Kenneth, I 113,
305,
568, II 556
Mackey,
I 654, II 357, 362, 408, 431, 433, 436, 768
Macrocosm,
I 128, II 573 Macroprosopus, I 60 Madagascar, II 177, 317,
789
Mâdhavî, I 384 Madhya, I 138 Madhyamâ, I 138, 534
Madhyamikas, I 44, 48 Mädler, J. H., I 501, II 551 Magas, II 322 Magendie,
II 131 Magi, I 654, II 6, 323, 756 Magian literature, I xxvi Magnes, I 344
Magnus limbus, I 283 Mahâ, I 461, II 282 Mahâbhârata,
I 90, 369,
397,
436, II 43, 47, 139, 214, 390, 495, 591 Mahâ-Buddhi, I 257, 334,
420,
451, 572 Mahâ-Chohan, II 220, 369 Mahâdeva, II 85, 548, 591
Mahâ-Guru, I 208 Mahâ-Kalpa, I 36, 40, 53,
368,
II 70, 565, 615 Mahâmanvantara, I 10, 289, 359, II 79, 602
Mahâmâyâ, I 278, 292, II 88, 100, 384, 446
Mahâ-Pralaya,
I 134, 140, 151, 172, 215, 369 373, 552, II 146, 310, 549
Mahârâjahs,
I 122, 294, 379, 408, II 427
Mahat,
I 16, 51, 74, 110, 216, 260, 285, 373, 430, 536, II 58, 230, 301, 378, 414,
599, 614, 638
Mahat,
universal intelli-gence, I 62 ; its num-ber is five, I 221 ; and matter, I 257
; in the Purânas, I 330 ; and Brahmâ, I 350 ; intel-lect, I 360 ;
the first manifested intellect, I 385 ; the divine mind, I 450 ; the first
creation, I 454 ; plane of, I 574 ; mind, I 602 ; element of, absent in
Barhish-ad Pitris, II 79 ; reflec-tion of, II 81 ; universal mind, II 88, 163 ;
sons of, II 103 ; emanates Logos, II 478 ; pure di-vine principle, II 513
Mahâtmas,
I 46, II 173,
423
Mahattattva, I 446, 450 Mahatoruvat, I 357 Mahâ-Vidyâ, I 169
Mahâyâna, I 39, 158, II 34 Mahâyogin, I 459, II 549
Mahâyuga, I 63, 375, II
69,
246, 307, 505, 624 Mahomet, I 254, II 203 Maia, I xxxii, 396, II 540 Maier, I
661 Maimonides, I 394, II 134,
205,
376, 455, 467 Maistre, de, I 484, 502 Maitland, Dr., II 441
Maitreya,
I 286, 377, 384, 456, 470, II 58, 155, 322
Makara,
I 219, 221, 233, 376, 384, II 93, 268, 354, 576, 579
Makara-ketu,
II 579 Malachim, I 442, II 375 Malcolm, I 649 Malebranche, I 631 Malkuth, I
200, 216, 239-
241,
II 595 Malthusians, I 229 Maluk, II 514 Mammals, II 180, 635 Man, I 106, 174,
241, 383,
II
66, 185, 257, 370, 635,
659,
675, 719, 751 Man, evolution of, II 257 Man, existence of, II 148 Manas, I 13,
75, 181, 227,
279,
329, 454, 619, II 20, 98, 162, 199, 231, 275, 495, 513, 576, 587, 608, 632,
637, 671, 737
Manas,
the human soul, I 153 ; fifth principle, I 220, II 88 ; and Neph-esh, I 242 ;
is dual, I 334 ; the higher, I 570 ; the agent of transmis-sion, II 57 ; and
Kâma, II 79 ; primeval man lacked, II 80 ; the en-dowment of, II 191 ;
the middle principle, II 241 ; union with Buddhi, II 247 ; is triple, II 254 ;
the Serpent of Know-ledge, II 283 ; of the Rishis, II 318 ; the seat of
Intellect, II 378 ; in the myth of Prometheus, II 414 ; human soul, II 596
Mânasa,
II 19, 89, 525 Mânasa-Dhyânis, I 181 Mânasaputras, I 180,
543,
II
48, 167, 374, 608 Mânasasarovara, I 357 Manas-Buddhi, II 638
Mandâkinî, I 385 Mandala, I 385, II 524 Mandrake, II 27 Mândûkya-Upanishad,I
6,
14,
83 Manes, I 227, II 143, 360 Manetho, I xxvii, II 334,
692
Mangala, II 124 Manomaya-kośa, I 157
Mantras,
I 94, 436, 464, 623
Mântrikâśakti,
I 293
Manu, I 186, II 67, 185, 259, 366, 573, 718,
748
Manu,
I 9, 385, 449
Manu,
the Manvantara, I 63 ; thinking entities, I 174 ; the undying Ego, I 248 ; the
Kings, his sons, I 376 ; created by Virâj, II 311
Manus,
II 102, 425, 609
Manus,
fourteen in every day of Brahmâ, I 63 ; thinking entities, I 174 ; the
Svarlokans seek re-fuge with, I 371 ; hier-archy of, I 453 ; beyond Great
Range, II 34 ; or minds, II 88 ; generic names, II 307 ; mixed up in numbers,
II 359 ; seven and ten, II 365 et seq. ; thinking beings, II 774
Mânushi-Buddhas,
I xliii, 52, 109, 436, 571
Manushya,
II 17, 103, 140
Manu-Svâyambhuva,
I 452, II 128
Manvantara,
I xliii, 41, 55, 80, 171, 207, 221, 250, 257, 263, 275, 290, 407, 428, 470,
545, 618, 624, 635, 653, 673, II 33, 48, 69, 74, 146, 186, 224, 263, 275, 434,
459, 500, 534, 572, 584, 590, 596, 624, 652, 703, 711, 747, 765
Manvantara,
or Manu, I 1 ; new Manvantaras, I 3 ; dawn of period, I 11 ; day of
Brahmâ, I 12 ; phenomenal world of, I 17 ; seven eternities, I 35 ;
cycles of being, I 63 ; primordial seven dur-ing, I 88 ; Manvantaric life, I
103 ; protectors of, I 119, II 611 ; mil-lions of worlds produced in, I 143 ;
humanity of, I 182 ; the “Flames” in, I 237 ; period of activity, I
281 ; Man-vantaric impulse, I 328 ; in the Purânas, I 369 ; and Pralayas,
I 370 ; night follows day, I 373 ; Manvantaric gods, I 390 ; pregenetic day, I
398 ; distinct Kalpas, I 454 ; rotatory motion during, I 505 ; ether unchange-able
during the Man-vantaric periods, I 527 ; primal matter of, I 582 ; commencement
of, II 24 ; new Manvantaras, II 57 ; series of, II 80 ; as-cending scale, II 88
; past Manvantaras, II 94 ; Manvantaric cycle, II 180 ; the great Man-vantara,
II 249 ; a Man-vantaric period, II 308 ; Vaivasvata-Manvantara, II 310 ;
meanings of, II 320 ; long hence, II 328 ; our present round, II 400 ; the
Phoenix, II 618 ; successive renova-tions, II 730
Mâra,
II 579
Marcellus,
II 408
Marcosians,
I 350, 448
Marcus,
I 352, 410, 449
Marîchi,
II 78, 132, 253
Mariette
Bey, I 75, 228
Mariolatry,
I 388
Mârishâ,
II 175
Marius,
II 277
Mars,
I 103, 153, 400, 593, 656, II 382, 462, 538, 549, 601, 619, 699, 707
Mars,
relation to Earth, I 163 ; with ancient Syrians, I 435 ; Seven Sons of Light, I
575 ; identical with Jehovah, II 43 ; the Hindû Man-gala, II 124 ;
physical conditions on, II 136 ; Egyptian Artes, II 143
Marsupial
types, II 7, 667
Martianus
Capella, I 650
Martinists,
I 348, II 409
Mârttânda,
I 448, II 210
Mârttânda,
our Sun, I 99 ; Bal-ilu is not satisfied, I 100 ; son of
Âkâśa, I 527 ; watches and threatens, I 529 ; evo-lution from
bosom of Aditi, I 625
Maruts,
II 280, 392, 498, 613
Mary,
I 91, 384, 410, 458
Mary,
Virgin, I 91, 384, 392, 401, 458, II 38, 463 Masonry, I xliv, 113, 314, II 39,
345, 581, 696 Maspero, I 91, 311, 353, 386, 436, 675, II 270, 432 Massey, C.
C., I 133 Massey, Gerald, I 219, 305, 387, 402, 435, 650, II 353, 546, 553, 586,
603, 630 Massorah, I 463, II 464 Mastodon, II 219, 352 Mas’udi, II 453
Materialism, I 50, 124, 518 Mathers, S. L., I 78, 242, 352, 619, II 543, 625
Mati, II 414 Mâtripadma, I 28, 57 Matsya, I 369 Matsya-Avatâra, II
139 Matsya-Purâna, I 378, II 47, 89, 550, 611, 766 Matter, I 10,
35, 246, 346, 450, 514, 633, II 24, 103, 179, 266, 377, 592, 732 Matter, Fohat
builds in, I 83 ; mind and, I 124 ; vanishing point of, I 138 ; laya centers, I
145 ; spir-it and, I 179, 258, 277, 481 ; physical man, I 189 ; is eternal, I
280 ; 545 ; aggregate of ob-jects of perception, I 329 ; the atoms, I 518 ;
pure and simple, I 587 Maury, II 363, 481, 497 Maxwell, Clerk, I 111, 143, 486,
513, 552, 607 May, month of, I 396 Mâyâ, I xx, 2, 58, 70, 145, 274,
332, 384, 396, 566, II 50, 96, 146, 614 Mâyâ, illusion of
ignor-ance, I 11 ; the lap of, I 28 ; enters all finite things, I 39 ;
delusions produced by, I 40 ; the outcome of Nidâna and, I 44 ; no
Mâyâ has influence in essence, I 45 ; has to die, I 54 ; a
manifestation, I 120 ; the waves of, I 237 ; seven worlds of, I 238 ;
Pra-kriti, or illusion, I 255 ; objective existence is, I 430 ; senses victims
of,
xviii INDEX
I
525 ; darkness of eter-nal, I 574 ; both matter and spirit are, I 633 ;
illusive appearance, I 638; as illusion, II 108
Mâyâmoha,
I 419, 422 Mayas of Yucatan, I 267,
390,
II 34, 50, 229, 506 Mâyâsabhâ, II 426 Mazdeans, I 113, II 92,
290,
358, 410, 476, 516 Mazdeism, II 607 Medea, I 253 Medhâtithi, I 333
Mediterranean, II 695, 752 Medusa, II 70, 119, 177 Megalosaurus, II 151, 713
Megatherium, II 218, 258 Melchizedec, II 392 Melha, II 34, 63 Melia, II 519
Memphis, I 311, II 334,
363
Mendeleeff, I 553, 586 Mendes, I 253, 385 Menelaus, II 276, 796 Menes, I 266,
II 91, 374 Mentone, II 749 Mercabah, I 214, 354, 363 Mercury, I 103, 338, 397,
410,
473, 549, 575, 593, 652, II 44, 208, 364, 455, 478, 498, 558, 601, 707
Mercury,
has no satellite, I 155 ; does not belong to our chain, I 163 et seq. ;
ibis, sacred to the God, I 362 ; the ap-pointed messenger, I 389 ; ruled by
“archangels,” I 435 ; Budha, II 27 ; Hermes and, II 48 ; phy-sical
conditions on, II 136 ; Sirius, the star of, II 374 ; the Greek, II 529 ; son
of Coelus and Lux, II 541
Mercury
Trismegistus, II
545
Mergain, II 398 Merian, Mme. II 440 Merodach, II 53, 210, 384,
456,
503 Merope, II 768 Meru, I 127, 204, 341, 398,
II
6, 203, 357, 401, 493, 547, 767, 785
Meru,
abode of Gods, I 127, II 357 ; guarded by serpent, I 129 ; the roots of, II 401
; countries north and south of, II 403 ; the Svar-loka, II 404 ; mountain of
gods, II 493 ; the celestial pole, II 785
Merz,
I 626, 629 Meshia, II 134 Mesmer, II 156 Mesmerism, I 297, II 156 Mesozoic, II
153, 676 Messengers, I 123 Messiah, I 385, II 23, 541 Metaphysics, I 96, 484
Metatron, II 216, 479 Meteorites, I 201, II 706 Metcalfe, Samuel, I 498,
524,
538, 580, 583 Methusaleh, II 195, 391 Metis, I 340, 384, II 130 Meunier, S., II
159 Mexican, II 36, 97, 160 Mexicans, I 267, II 213,
311
Mexico, II 182, 209, 424,
486,
745, 793 Miao-tse, II 280, 337, 339 Michael, St., I 42, 88, 127,
194,
242, 372, 434, 611, II 94, 114, 246, 498, 549, 614
Michael,
his army, I 418 ; the hidden Jewish God, I 437 ; “who is as God,” I
459 ; like unto Je-hovah, II 62 ; a Bud-dhist, II 63 ; and St. George, II 238 ;
the high-er terrestrial Wisdom, II 378 ; the Feruer of Christ, II 478 ;
equi-valent to Jehovah, II 508 et seq. ; watches over the Jews, II 538
Michelet,
I 676 Mico, I 364 Microcosm, I 128, II 573 Microprosopus, I 60, 215,
241
; II 625, 705 Midas, II 760 Midian, I 385, II 465, 755 Midrashim, II 461, 532
Milk, Sea of, I 67, II 321 Mill, John Stuart, I 588 Milne-Edwards, II 219, 723
Milton, I 148, 252, 481,
622,
II 62, 356, 484, 506 Mimir, I 402 Mimra, I 384 Mîna, I 376, II 579 Mind,
I 38, 345, II 513 Minerva, I 384, II 396 Ming-ti, I xxviii Miocene period, I
184, II
11,
155, 254, 266, 395,
676,
710, 727, 786 Miriam, I 384 Mirville, de, I 400, 465,
II
206, 278, 367, 415,
476
Misorte, II 338 Mitford, G., II 245, 514 Mithra, I 340, 384, 446,
II
28, 130, 419, 474 Mivart, II 680, 696 Mizpeth, II 409 Mlechchhas, I xxxv, 270,
377,
II 48, 405 Mochus, I 365, 461 Moksha, I 38, 132, 293 Moleschott, I 124, 297, II
244
Moloch, I 397, 463, II 304 Mon (Ammon) I 366 Monad, I 16, 21, 69, 107,
119,
139, 169, 216, 246, 246, 265, 275, 433, 453, 472, 489, 569, 668, II 42, 56,
123, 167, 247, 255, 275, 485, 599, 634 671
Monad,
the Pythagorean, I 64 ; Muktas or Jîvât-mâs, I 132 ; esoteric
philosophy on, I 171 ; hierarchy of Monads, I 173 ; Âtmâ-Buddhi, I
179 ; higher principles, I 233 ; Monads, mys-tery of, I 384 ; Monad, a point, I
426 ; genesis of Gods, I 548 ; Gods, Monads and Atoms, I 610 ; the universal,
II 80 ; and its conscious principle, II 110 ; is des-tined to animate future
races, II 150 ; and Jîvas, II 185 ; Monads, incar-nated, II 303
Monera,
II 151, 185, 653,
674
Mongolia, I xxxiv, II 586 Mongols, II 203, 425 Monier-Williams, Sir M., I
47,
380, II 570 Monism, I 124, 283, 528 Monkey kingdom, II 289 Montesquieu, I 676
Montfaucon, II 542
Moon
I 34, 163, 198, 210, 248, 360, 386, 412, 575, II 16, 31, 102, 181, 234, 291,
369, 384, 435, 462, 474, 583
Moon,
as earth’s satellite, I 155 ; a cold residual quantity, I 156 ;
trans-fers its energy, I 159 ; lunar chain, I 172 ; lu-nar monads, I 179 ;
re-volves round earth, I 180 ; intimately related with earth, I 305 ; Deus
Lunus, I 386 ; an occult mystery, I 396 ; Lords of the Moon, II 75 ; shell of,
II 115 ; “The Mother,” II 139 ; the Crescent, II 463 ; name of, II
464
Moon-god,
I 227, II 63
Moon-worship,
I 388
Moore,
Mrs. Bloomfield, I 556, 559, 564
Morbihan,
II 352, 750, 752
Morgana,
II 398
Mor
Isaac, I 435
Morning
Star, I 400, II 238
Mortillet,
de, II 678, 686, 710, 721, 748
Mosasaurus,
II 205
Moses,
I 73, 80, 313, 332, 364, 374, 422, II 3, 63, 115, 124, 208, 212, 336, 387, 426,
465, 477, 538, 557, 560, 566, 603, 691, 755
Moses
Chorenensis, II 597
Moses
de Leon, I 214, II 28, 461
Moses’
Tabernacle, I 347
Mot,
I 340, 451
Motion,
I 69, 141, 282, 509, II 80, 240, 450, 552
Movers,
I 348, 365, 366, 461, II 379
Mrida,
II 406
Muir,
I 422, II 269, 546
Mukhya,
I 446, 454
Mukta,
I 7, 132
Mukti,
I xx, II 532
Mûlaprakriti,
I 75, 179, 337, 445, 536, 582, 620, II 24, 65, 597
Mûlaprakriti,
and Para-brahm, I 10 ; pre-cosmic Root-Substance, I 15 ; Prakriti evolved from,
I 19 ; the soul, I 35 ; Vedântin idea of, I 46 ; noumenon, I 61 ; on the
highest plane, I 69 ; the veil of Parabrahm, I 130 ; the root of nature, I 136
; the essence of matter, I 147 ; primor-dial homogeneous mat-ter, I 176 ; the
root of all, I 256, 522 ; one with Parabrahm, I 273 ; the veil concealing
Absolute, I 346, 426 ; known to Îśvara, I 349 ; an in-visible
Presence, I 629
Müller,
Max, I xxiv, xxxviii, xlvi, 47, 69, 94, 212, 303, 360, 367, 378, 472, II 42,
73, 97, 194, 199, 225, 253, 392, 425, 442, 450, 566, 721, 754
Münchhausen,
II 441
Munis,
II 259
Murray,
II 753
Muslin
(Dacca), II 226
Muspel,
I 202
Mut,
I 91, 384, II 464
Myer,
Isaac, I 347, 374, 619, II 116, 457, 478
Mylitta,
II 43
Mystery
Language, I 309
Mystics,
I xxxvi, II 244
Myth,
I 425, II 122, 197, 218, 236, 293, 378, 517
Naasenian Gnostics, II 355 Nabathean
Agriculture,I 394, 401, 417, II 452
Nabhastala,
I 371
Nâbhi,
II 320
Nâchnîs,
II 463
Nadaillac,
de, II 338
Nâga,
I 408, II 181, 208, 378, 572
Nâga-dvîpa,
II 501
Nâgal,
II 213
Nâgârjuna,
I 49, 61
Nâgas,
I 364
Nâgas,
allegorical descrip-tions, I 126 ; demons, I 348 ; human, not rep-tile, I 404 ;
of Buddhism, II 26 ; a Race of men, II 132 ; Buddhist wise men, II 211 ;
Nâgals and Nâgas, II 213 ; in Ameri
ca,
II 214 ; Serpents or Seraphs, II 501 Nägeli, II 649 Nâgpur, II 501
Naguals, II 182, 209, 213 Nahbkun, I 472 Nahash, I 364, II 246 Nahuatls, II 35
Naimittika, I 370, II 69 Nanda, II 550 Nandi, II 408 Nannak, II 139
Nârada, I 413, II 48, 70, 140, 275, 323, 502, 566, 584 Nâradîya-Purâna,
II 82 Naras, II 65 Nârâyana, I 64, 231, 333, 458, 626, II 76, 495
Nargals, II 182, 213 Nasmyth, I 530, 541, 591 Naudin, II 119, 181 Nautch girls,
II 460 Nazarenes, I xxxvi, 195, 311, II 96, 243, 618 Neanderthal, II 193, 687
Nebo, II 210, 211, 455 Nebu, II 477 Nebuchadnezzar, II 453 Nebulae, I 84, 299,
587 Nebular theory, I 101, 587 et seq. Negros, II 193, 444, 780
Nehhashim, II 409 Neibban, I 38 Neilos, I 390, II 417, 583 Neith, I 393, 399,
II 135 Nemesis, I 641 et seq., II 305, 421 Neodymium, I 141
Neo-Platonists, I xliv, 281, 409, 675, II 279, 541 Nephesh, I 225, 242 et
seq., II 162, 315, 457 Nephesh chaiah, I 226 Nephilim, II 229, 279, 775
Neptune, I 101, 149, 444, 673, II 406, 578, 795 Nereus, II 578, 766 Nergas, II
2 Neros, I 655, II 619 Neshamah, I 242, II 315, 378, 457, 604, 633 Neumann, II
424 Newcomb, I 543, II 149 Newman, Prof., II 416 Newton, Sir I., I 13, 103,
325, 484, 490-8, 503, 544, 594, 601, 607, 652, II 485, 674, 706
xx INDEX
Nidâna,
I 44, 509
Nidâna,
cause of misery, I 38 ; cause of being, I 39 ; eternal Nidâna, I 93
Niflheim,
I 367, II 245, 774 Nights, I 103, 155, II 16 Nîlakantha, I 94, II 89
Nîlalohita, I 457, II 192 Nilsson, I 547, II 749 Nimi, II 524 Nimrod, I
319, II 453 Nimrods, II 272 Nimrod Epic, II 353 Nineveh, I 654, II 692 Nippang,
I 38 Nirguna, I 62, II 95 Nirmânakâya, I 132, 233,
II
201, 255, 615 Nirmânakâyas, II 94, 636,
652
Nirupâdhi, I 582 Nirvâna, I xx, 38, 140,
173,
245, 371, 635, II
57,
186, 246, 281, 532 Nirvânî, I 240, II 80, 232 Nitrogen, I 121, 626,
II
158
Nitya, I 69, 371, II 69 Nitya-Sarga, II 310 Niza, II 35 Noah, I xxxi, 68, 370,
654,
II
32, 69, 222, 353, 426, 463, 595, 655, 726, 768, 774
Noah,
ark of, I 360, II 270, 292, 543, 610 ; in Kabala, I 444 ; the Bib-lical Deluge,
II 4 ; Xi-suthrus, II 139, 397 ; floating on waters, II 145 ; formerly
inhabited Atlantis, II 265 ; Deu-kalion constructs ark, II 270 ; deluges, II
306 ; Hindû embodiment of, II 309 ; head-figures of deluge, II 335 ;
Kabirim, “Deluge-Gods,” II 360 ; a Kabir, II 390 ; pos-terity of,
II 453 ; com-putation of seasons, II 532
Nod,
II 286, 394 Nominalists, I 3, 274 Nonnus, II 144 Nordenskiöld, II 773
Norse Legends, I 211, II
97
Norse Mythology, I 427 Norway, I 297, II 399 Norwegians, II 424 Nott and
Gliddon, II 611 Noumena, I 15, 84, II 517 Noumenal Causes, I 109,
145
Novalis, I 212 Nox, I 110 Nuah, II 463 Numa, II 552, 620 Numbers, I 30, II 35
Numerals, I 89 Nuraghi, II 352 Nut, I 228, 353, 673 Nyam-Nyam, II 445, 754
Oannes,
I 263, 345, II 5,
54,
226, 366, 495, 578 Ob, I 76, 364 Obelisks, I 125, II 396, 430 Occultism, I
xxxviii et seq.,
150,
245, II 180
Occultism,
and Guptâ-Vid-yâ, I xxxix et seq., answer to Kabalists, I
245
Occultists,
I 6, 82, 139, 226, 235, 284, 374, 514, 600, II 3, 72, 106, 149, 187, 306, 423,
475, 587
Occultists,
assert the in-destructibility of sub-stance, I 147, II 180 ; calculate age of
humani-ty, I 150 ; distinguish stages of evolution, I 178 ; and science, I 479
Ocean,
I 29, 345, 417, II
7,
159, 223, 403, 571 Oceanus, II 143, 413 Od, I 76, 338, 555 Odin, I xxx, 402,
427, II
97,
100, 283, 423 Odyssey, I 648, II 7, 121,
605
Oeaohoo, I 29, 68, 93 Oedipus, I 161, II 540 Oersted, I 484, 589 Ogdoad, I 448,
II 358 Ogygia, II 769 Oi-Ha-Hou, I 93 Olaus Magnus, II 346 Olcott, H. S., I
xix, 635,
II
149 Oliphant, L., I 479, 560 Oliver, Rev. G., I 113, 613,
II
599, 640 Oliver, Prof., II 322, 727,
783
Olympus, I 658, II 404 Om, I 432, II 43 Omoie, I 214, 218 Omoroka, II 115, 135
Onech, II 617 Onokoro, I 218 Ophanim, I 92 Ophiomorphos, II 389 Ophis, I 459,
II 214 Ophis-Christos, I 413 Ophites, I 127, 403, 472 Orai, I 577, II 538
Orang, II 193, 263, 666 Organ, Mrs. M. S., I 566 Origen, I xliv, 387, 445,
448,
577, II 536, 538 Orion, I 598, II 70, 277 Ormazd, I 128, 429, II 358
Ormazd-Ahriman, I 412 Ormazd, Tree of, II 517 Orpheus, I 207, 362, 426,
II
142, 267, 529, 777 Orphic hymns, I 365, 461 Osiris, I 104, 202, 379, 436,
657, II 25, 93, 141, 217, 359, 374, 462,
481, 552, 565, 580, 601, 704, 769 Osiris, a male Deity, I 59 ; is
interchangeable with Isis, I 72 ; his ad-dress to the Sun, I 134 ; God
manifest, I 228 ; says he is Tum, I 312 ; brother to Horus, I 348 ; Ibis,
symbol of, I 362 ; Osiris-Sun, I 365, 387 ; born from an egg, I 366 ; crocodile
is sacred to, I 409 ; aspect of Logos, I 429 ; Spirits of the Earth, I 463 ;
represents Aether, II 130 ; his murderer, II 385 et seq. ; mysteries of,
II 419
Osiris-Horus,
II 588 Osiris-Lunus, I 228 Osiris-Ptah, I 231 Osiris-Typhon, I 412 Ossa, Mount,
II 754 Ostervald, II 537 Osymandyas, I 321 Oulom, I 336, 354, II 490 Ouranos,
II 65 Ourches, d’, II 476 Ovid, I 388, II 122, 270 Ovum, I 222, II 117,
188 Owen, Sir R., II 334, 646,
649,
681, 713 Oxus, I 462, II 200
Oxygen,
I 54, 121, 144, 249, 263, 546, II 114, 158, 592
Ozone,
I 82, 144, 260, 555
Pachacamac,
II 317, 337 Padma, I 57, 380, 454, II 53, 179, 578 Padmapâni, II 178, 637
Padma-Purâna, I 236, II 89 Palaeolithic men, I 208, II 193, 258,
522, 686, 718 Palaeolithic hatchets, II 439 Palaeozoic rocks, II 251 Palenque,
I 321, 390, II 35, 430, 557, 751 Pâli, I xvii, xxi, 313 Pan, I 358, II
510, 579 Pañchama, I 534 Pañchaśikha, I 457, II 319 Pandora,
II 270, 412, 519 Pânini, II 225, 253, 439, 522 Pañjâb, II
411 Panodoros, II 366 Pantheism, I 349, II 24 Pantheists, II 475 Pantheons, I
349 Papuans, II 168, 522 Parâ, I 82, 138, 432 Parabrahm, I 51, 54, 59,
62, 130, 214, 233, 256, 281, 340, 354, 428, 440, 445, 536, 571, 582, II 58, 98,
128, 233, 597 Parabrahm, Secondless Re-ality, I 6 ; supreme All, I 7 ;
equivalent to Mûla-prakriti, I 10 ; the Ab-solute, I 15 ; the root of
all, I 46 ; the un-conditioned reality, I 69 ; the Unknowable, I 113 ; Logos
of, I 136 ; the parâ form of Vâch, I 138 ; the one Life, I
226 ; substance-principle, I 273 ; unspeakable mys-tery, I 330 ; one in
es-sence with Mûlaprakriti, I 337 ; forms a veil for Itself, I 346 ;
smaller than smallest atom, I 357 ; Vedântic notion of,
I
390 ; Ain-Soph, I 423 name answering to, I 449 ; pervades every Jî-va, I
522 ; universal in-divisible substance, I 629 ; its manifestation, II 24 ; the
One Ever-Change-less, II 36 ; the All-Cause, II 108 ; the Uni-versal Soul, II
189 ; Je-hovah not a synonym for, II 245 ; definitions of, II 310 ; the Great
Extreme, II 553 Paracelsus, I xlvi, 51, 222, 297, 345, 514, 532, 538, 584, 611,
II 120, 349, 656 Paramapada, I 132 Paramapadâtmavat, I 420 Paramârtha,
I 27, 44, 53 Paramârthika, I 6, 356 Paranirvâna, I 42, 53, 135
Paranishpanna, I 27, 42, 48, 53 Parâśakti, I 292
Parâśara, I 286, 415, 456, II 163, 309, 322 Paratantra, I 48
Paravey, de, II 206 Parcha, Rabbi, II 375, 397 Parikalpita, I 48 Parker, J., I
313, II 544 Parkhurst, II 129, 313, 459 Pârsîs, I 121, 388, 479, II
398, 471, 607, 758 Parthenogenesis, II 177 Pâśa, II 548 Pasht, I
305, II 552 Pashut, I 374 Pass-not, Ring, I 32, 130 Pasteur, I 249, 262, II 150
Paśyantî, I 138, 432 Pâtâla, I 372, II 98, 132, 184,
214, 382, 558, 628 Pâtâla, nether or infernal regions, II 49, 357 ;
Śiva hurled Mahâsura into, II 237 ; the Antipodes, II 407, 446
Patañjali, I 158 Paul, I 235, 632, II 481, 513 Pauline Epistles, II 81
Pausanias, I 469, II 5, 122, 144, 278, 363, 419, 519 Pâvaka,
Pavamâna, I 521, II 57, 102, 247 Pavana, I 190 Pègues, II 279
Pelican, I 19, 80, 358
Pember,
G. H., II 229 Pengelly, I 567, II 72, 322, 696, 726, 778 Pentacle, I 91, 114,
320 Pentagon, I 219, II 576 Peripatetics, I 177, 343 Peris, II 394, 398, 776
Perisprit, I 196 Permeability, I 251, 258 Péronne, II 375 Persepolis, II
398 Persia, I 198, II 114, 605 Persian traditions, II 393 Personal God, I 3,
139, 193 Peru, I 209, II 141, 365, 790 Peruvians, I 267 Pesh-hun, II 48
Pessimism, II 156, 304, 475 Peter, II 341, 377, 466 Peter the Hermit, I 357
Petrarch, II 207 Petrie, W. M. F., I 314, 315, II 226, 344 Petronius, I 358
Pfaff, II 87, 193, 522, 682 Pflüger, Dr., II 711 Pfoundes, Capt., I 241
Phaethon, II 535, 770 Phallicism, I xxii, 5, 264, 358, 364, 391, 471, II 4, 44,
104, 467, 544, 657 Phanes, I 452, 583 Pharaoh, I xxix, 319, 422, II 174, 426,
428, 465, 494, 542, 547, 632 Pharaoh Thothmes, I 400 Pherecydes, II 552, 775
Philalethes, Eug., I 260, 514 Philebus, I 426 Philo Byblius, II 129, 342
Philo Judaeus, I 72, 344, 350, 407, 649, II 111, 200, 471, 477, 490, 602
Philae, I 364, II 557 Philostratus, I 404, II 278 Philo-Theo-Sophia, I 533
Phlegyae, II 144, 265, 365 Phobos, I 165 Phoebe, I 386, II 122 Phoebus Apollo,
II 383 Phoenicians, I 110, II 3, 430 Phoenix, I 312, II 397, 617 Phorminx, II
529 Phoroneus, II 519 Phosphorus, I 551, II 244 Photius, II 342
xxii INDEX
Picardy,
II 738, 750 Pickering, II 331 Pierius Vale, II 552 Pierret, Paul, I 134, 228
Pigeon, I 81, II 595 Pikermi, II 723 Pilatus, Mons, II 207 Pindar, I 401, II
122, 270 Pippala, II 97, 98 Piśâchas, I 415, 571 Pisces, I 263, 651,
II 165 Pistis Sophia, I 410, 449,
II
556, 569, 604, 618 Pitara, II 45, 92, 322, 605 Pitar-Devatâs, II 94
Pithecoids, I 186, II 674 Pitris, I 86, 188, 264, 288,
371,
442, 521, 606, II 2, 6, 44, 75, 97, 120, 148, 163, 171, 212, 267, 303, 358,
487, 590, 620
Pitris,
form First Root-Race, I 160 ; the lunar Gods, I 174 ; seven classes of, I 179 ;
the Agni-shvâtta, I 181 ; the an-cestors, I 222 ; Elohim of life, I 224 ;
the low-er Dhyân-Chohâns, I 247 ; the lower Prajâpatis, I 457
; the term not used in original stanzas, II 34 ; fire of the, II 57 ; the
higher Pitris, II 80 ; various classes of the, II 89 ; Elohim, II 137: the
Seven Sons of God, II 142 ; the great, II 233 ; the flames, II 247 ; regents of
the moon, II 325 ; corporeal and in-corporeal Pitris, II 393 ; progenitors of
Fifth Race, II 394 ; the heavenly man, II 683
Placenta,
I 190, II 461,
650
Plaksha-dvîpa, II 321, 404 Planets, I 163, 478, II 22 Plato, I xxxvi, 2,
50, 123,
161,
201, 338, 340, 343, 348, 365, 425, 460, 491, 567, 588, 648, II 8, 96, 133, 141,
153, 159, 217, 263, 314, 322, 324, 367, 370, 395, 402, 405, 412, 429, 522, 545,
555, 589, 599, 693, 761, 767, 774, 791
Platyrrhini,
II 171, 193
Pleiades, I 435, 501, 647, II 407, 549,
618, 785 Plenum, I 148, 495, 615
Pleroma,
I 196, 406, 417, 449, II 25, 79, 506, 511
Plesiosaurus,
II 205, 676
Pliocene,
II 314, 710, 714
Plongeon,
Aug. le, I 267, II 34, 229, 506
Pliny,
I 117, 154, 655, II 5, 278, 342, 345, 552, 620, 756, 773, 777
Plutarch,
I 123, 348, 614, II 122, 278, 599, 620, 773
Pluto,
I 338, 463, II 26, 408
Pneuma,
I 96, 342, II 113
Pococke,
I 339
Poison,
I 262, 348, 538
Pollux,
I 366, II 121, 362
Polo,
Marco, II 441
Polyhistor,
Al., II 53, 65
Polynesians,
II 223, 332
Pompeii,
II 236, 441, 793
Popol
Vuh, I 345, II 35, 55,
96, 181, 222, 745
Porphyry,
I 360, 425, II 542
Poseidon,
II 356, 399, 578, 765, 775
Poseidonis,
II 265, 314, 407
Poseidon-Neptune,
I 464
Postel,
II 268
Prabhavâpyaya,
I 46, II 107
Prachetasas,
II 177, 475
Pradhâna,
I 176, 216, 370, 582, II 58
Pradhâna,
is Alaya, I 49 ; undifferentiated sub-stance, I 62 ; primeval matter, I 255,
256 ; pri-mordial substance, I 284 ; crude matter, I 445 ; chaos, I 452 ;
matter is eternal, I 545
Prahlâda,
I 420
Prajâpati,
I 132, 235, 248, 346, 426, 436, 442, 457, II 40, 60, 76, 82, 129, 140, 150,
176, 253, 318, 549, 569, 573, 611, 615, 624, 704
Prajâpati,
Brahmâ, I 81 ; the higher self, I 94 ; associated with Kwan-Yin-Tien, I
137 ; Rishis, I 349 ; Sephiroth, I 355 ;
Dhyân-Chohâns, I 375 ;
Prajâpati-Vâch, I 432 ; Rishi, I 571 ; Bhrigu, one of, II 30 ;
inform-ing intelligences, II 34 ; Lords of Being, II 163 ; Son of Brahmâ,
II 232 ; Flames, II 247 ; fathers of various beings, II 259 ; personnel of
Brâh-manas and Purânas, II 284 ; ten Prajâpatis, II 308 ;
seven and ten Pra-jâpatis, II 365 et seq. ; seven
Prajâpatis, II 768 Prajñâ, I 139, II 29, 597
Prakriti,
I 10, 178, 328, 373, 427, II 123
Prakriti,
and Purusha, I 51, 284, 552, II 42, 598 ; matter, I 81, 83, II 598 ; Spirit
mounts on, I 247 ; relation to Âkâśa, I 255 ; development of
matter, I 259 ; Aditi-Prakriti, I 283 ; male spirit of, I 452 ; both evolved
and unevolved, I 542 ; first form of, I 582 ; of Pu-rânas, I 602 ;
nature, II 65 ; infinite and subtle essence, II 527 ; the treble-faced prism,
II 635
Prâkritika,
I 371, II 309
Pralaya,
I 53, 69, 130, 159, 182, 199, 240, 265, 328, 347, 428, 470, 531, 613, 624, 656,
II 69, 98, 325, 504, 565, 617, 660, 768
Pralaya,
dawn of differ-entiation, I 1 ; changes at, I 12 ; great and minor, I 18 ;
re-awak-ening of Universe, I 21 ; night of Brahmâ, I 41 ; during Pralaya,
I 88 ; seven Laya centers, I 147 ; different kinds of, I 172, 370 ; hour of, I
255 ; passivity of being, I 281 ; the death of Kosmos, I 373 ; partial and
universal, I 552 ; intermediate period, I 570 ; conflagration of the world, I
649 ; general term, II 307 ; continent-al changes, II 404 ; cos-mic ideation
ceases dur-ing, II 598
Pralîna,
I 372 Pramantha, II 413, 524 Pramlochâ, II 171, 175 Prâna, I 95,
153, 157, 224, 526, II 567, 593, 632 Pranava, I 138, 432
Prânâyâma, I 95, 96 Pranidhâna, II 88
Prasanga-Madhyamika, I 43 Praseodymium, I 141 Pratisañchara, I 372
Pratisarga, II 106 Pratt, Henry, I 9, 194, 226, 342, 615, II 246, 508
Pratyâhâra, I 96, 257 Priapus, II 543 Primordial Substance, I 58,
203, 325, 594, II 24 Prithivî, I 237, II 385, 616 Prithu, I 398, II 259
Priyavrata, II 320, 326, 369, 406 Prjevalsky, I xxxiv Proclus, I 409, 426, 650,
II 143, 408, 552, 599 Proctor, I 314, 324, 650, II 352, 432 Prometheus, I 195,
643, II 44, 100, 244, 269, 280, 376, 411, 413 et seq., 420, 422, 519,
523, 768 Propator, I 214, 349 Proserpine, II 408 Protagoras, II 412
Protesilaus, II 278 Proteus, I 326, II 762 Protista, I 455, II 153, 594
Protogonos, I 70, 343, II 25, 490, 592, 704 Proto-ilus, I 283 Protoplasm, I 46,
II 151 Prototype, I 63, 638 Protyle, I 130, 283, 328, 582, 598, II 105, 737
Psyche, I 194, II 377 Psychometry, I 201, 293 Ptah, I 353, 365, II 365
Pterodactyl, II 151, 218 Ptolemy, I 658, II 150, 326, 367 Ptolemy Philadelphus,
II 200 Ptomaine, I 262 Pueblos, II 181 Pulaha, II 78 Pulastya, I 415, II 78,
181 Pums, I 256, 373, 445
Pundarîkâksha,
II 108
Purânas,
I 8, 19, 36, 46, 205, 255, 324, 348, 367, 376, 415, 436, 521, 545, 615, II 47,
73, 102, 146, 182, 214, 247, 275, 319, 381, 418, 483, 524, 565, 611, 658, 766
Purânic,
I 106
Purânic
astronomy, II 253
Purûravas,
I 523
Purusha,
I 16, 196, 284, 335, 344, 365, 428, 451, 461, II 108, 574, 598, 704
Purusha,
spirit and mat-ter, I 51 ; spirit, I 81, 83 ; mounts on shoul-ders of Prakriti,
I 247, II 42 ; aspect of Brah-mâ, I 542, 552 ; is dis-tinct from
Parabrahm, I 582 ; unrighteous but valiant monarch, II 225
Purushasûkta,
II 606
Pûrvaja,
II 107
Pushkara-Mâhâtmya, II 275
Pushkara-dvîpa,
II 321, 403
P‘uto,
I 72, 471
Pygmalion,
II 102, 150
Pymander,
I 63, 74, 230, 285, 417, II 2, 53, 96, 103, 107, 115, 213, 231, 236, 267, 270,
488, 491, 542
Pyramids,
I 115, 126, 264, 314, 317, 322, 424, II 276, 430, 466, 594, 750
Pyrrha,
II 270
Pythagoras,
I xxxvi, 64, 117, 361, 425, 432, 440, 449, 492, 495, 611 et seq. ; 649,
II 31, 35, 217, 463, 522, 573, 592, 599
Pythagorean
Decade, II 573
Pythagorean
Triangle, I 113, 613,
II 599, 640
Pythagoreans,
I 343, II 602
Python,
II 208, 383, 486
Qabalah,
I 78
Qabbalah, I 376, 438, II 116, 126, 315, 478, 538
Qaniratha,
II 607, 758
Quadrumana,
II 255, 661
Quain,
R., II 297 Quaternary age, II 157, 668, 710, 715, 749 Quatrefages, de, I 487,
540, II 56, 87, 119, 155, 157, 288, 315, 426, 444, 645, 650, 674, 681, 686,
711, 740, 746, 780, 790 Quatremère, II 453 Quichés, I 267, II 34,
96, 229, 506 Quinames, II 276 Quintus Curtius, II 620 Qû-tâmy, I
394, II 453
Ra,
I 231, 364, II 546 Rabbins, I 316, 450, II 397 Race, Fifth, II 316, 780 Race,
Fourth, II 227, 316 Races of Man, I 160, 225, II 227, 249, 443, 780 Races,
Seven, I 650, II 191, 309, 372, 565 Ragon, I 100, 363, II 574, 580, 591, 795
Raivata-Manu, II 89, 309 Râja-Yoga, I 95, 157, II 603 Rajas, I 335, 348,
535 Rajasas, II 89, 90 Râkshasas, II 70, 227, 274, 323, 347, 394, 752,
776 Râkshasas, tempters and devourers of man, I 415 ; created by Svabhâva,
I 571 ; evil spirits, II 163 ; preservers, II 165 Râmâyana,
I 380, 563, II 163, 289, 394, 570, 613 Rameses, II 368 Rameses II, II 559
Ram’s horns, II 213 Rao, T. Subba, I 15, 110, 157, 269, 292, 349, 428,
574, 620, II 318, 576, 597 Raphael, I 622 Rasit, II 313, 460 Raven, I 443, II
2, 100, 466 Rawlinson, G., I xxxii, II 130, 210, 305, 360, 722 Ray, I 80, 214,
II 24, 167, 273 Reade, T. M., II 10, 694 Realism, I 3, 251, II 459
xxiv INDEX
Red
Sea, I 410, II 426 Rees, II 392 Reincarnation, I 17, 39, 86, 132, 171, 182, 227,
238, 265, 293, 365, 386, 406, 440, 458, 568, 571, 601, 622, 636, 657, II 2, 6,
80, 110, 146, 164, 196, 232, 246, 255, 275, 302, 318, 359, 459, 480, 552, 584,
615, 634, 760 Reindeer, II 717, 720, 741 Rémusat, I 472 Renan, I xlvi,
II 194, 204, 334, 367, 452, 456 Renouf, le Page, I 303, 398, 402, 675 Rephaim,
I 345, II 279, 496 Resurrection, I 386, II 459 Retzius, II 740, 792 Reuchlin,
II 600 Reynaud, I 503 Reynolds, E., I 550, 585 Rhea, I 446, II 143, 269
Rhipaeus, Mount, II 7 Richardson, Dr. B. W., I 498, 524, 531, 537, 580, 603,
634, II 298, 654 Richet, I 640, II 156 Rig-Veda, I xxvii, 67, 112, 138,
195, 270, 426, II 45, 59, 92, 378, 450, 548, 605, 622, 758 Riksha, I 227, 453,
II 631 Rishabha, I 534, II 408 Rishis, I 8, 207, 346, 398, 430, 571, 641, II 32,
69, 94, 139, 176, 211, 253, 290, 313, 359, 425, 489, 534, 569, 611, 715, 766
Rishis, have synonyms in
S.
D., I 92 ; seven primitive, I 114 ; ema-nations or angels, I 198 ; in their
Avatâras, I 349 ; the Builders, I 355 ; the waters reach region of, I 371
; the husbands of Daksha’s daughters, I 521 ; and the Satanic myth, II
378 ; the pro-genitors of all living and breathing, II 605 Rivett-Carnac, II
346 Roc, II 617 Rochas, A. de, I 646 Rolleston, Prof., II 727 Romaka-pura, II
50, 67 Roman Catholics, I 235,
382,
441, 576, II 31, 230
Romanes,
G. J., II 426, 647, 681
Root-Races,
I xlii, 42, 160, II 172, 300, 433, 605, 766
Rosary,
II 38, 179
Roscellin,
I 3
Rose
Cross, I 19, II 601
Rosenroth,
I 117, 215, 391
Rosetta
Stone, II 464
Rosicrucians,
I 19, 283, II 202
Rosicrucians,
on Light, I 70 ; the pelican, I 80 ; their definition of fire, I 121 ; war in
Heaven, II 237
Rossmassler,
I 640
Rotae,
I 117
Rotation
of Earth, I 117
Roth,
II 605
Rougé,
M. de, I 134, 398
Rougemont,
F. de, II 278, 371
Rounders,
Fifth, I 162
Rounds,
I 231, II 300, 611
Ruach,
I 130, 225, 242 et seq., 466, II 83, 315, 378, 604, 633
Ruach
Hayyim, I 466
Rudbeck,
II 402, 773
Rudra-Kumâras,
II 255
Rudra
(Rudras), I 145, 445, II 69, 106, 164, 174, 382, 548, 576, 613
Rudra
(Rudras), Vedic Dei-ties, I 71 ; Janârdana, I 370 ; Brahmâ-Rudra, I
458 ; their septenary character, I 458 ; their classes, II 182 ; as a
Kumâra, II 192 ; divine rebels, II 246 ; the a-rûpa gods, II 318
Rûpa,
I 53, 242, 335, 373, 420, 453, II 318
Rûpa,
arûpa universe, I 31 ; with bodies, I 89 ; rûpa worlds formed, I
122 ; vehicle of monads, I 183 ; the atomic forms, I 218 ; rûpas
constructed by earth, II 17 ; Kâma filled from, II 18 ; de-struction of,
II 65 ; the body or element of form, II 632
Rüppell,
II 531
Russian
people, I 81 Ruta, II 222, 314, 710 Rutilius, II 358 Rütimeyer, II 789
Sabaeans,
I 10, 402, II 361, 453, 514 Sabao, I 577, II 538 Sabazians, II 415, 419
Sabbatical year, II 395 Śabda-Brahman, I 428 Sabhâ, II 426
Sacr’, I 5, II 465 Sacred Fire, II 80 Sacred Science, II 438 Sacy, II 533
Sadducees, I 321, II 472 Sâdhyas, II 90, 605 Sadik, II 392 Safekh, I 228
Sâgara, II 572 Sahagún, II 35 Saharaksha, I 521 Saint-Clair
Deville, I 544 Saint-Germain, I 611, II 156 Saint-Hilaire, I. G., II 206, 651
St. John, I 70, 226, 657, II 39, 356, 506, 566 Saint-Marc, de, II 491
Saint-Martin, de, II 511 St. Vincent, Gulf of, II 196 Sais, I 399, II 371, 396
Saitic Epoch, I 367 Śaiva-Purâna, I 458 Saka, I 73
Śâka-dvîpa, II 321, 404, 585 Śakra, I 376 Sakridâgâmin,
I 206 Śakti, I 136, 356, 618 Śakti, various powers, I 292 ;
symbolized by god-desses, I 390 ; the Logos and its, I 473 ; white side of, II
579 Śakyamuni, I 108, II 423 Śâlmali-dvîpa, II 404
Salverte, II 205 Samâdhi, I xx, 570, II 90, 339, 569 Samael, I 242, 417,
II 31, 111, 235, 378, 385, 420 Śambhala, II 319, 400 Sambhûti, II 89
Samothrace, II 391, 760
Samothracian
Mystery, II 4, 360, 362 Samvarta, II 307 Samvriti, I 44, 48 Sanaka, I 89, 457,
II 140 Sananda, I 89, 457, II 106 Sanandana, I 457, II 78, 140, 173, 579
Sanâtana, I 89, 457 Sanat-kumâra, I 89, 457, II 140, 319, 584
Sanat-sujâta, I 457, II 140 Śankha-dvîpa, II 407
Sanchoniathon, I 110, 340, II 129, 141, 342, 380, 490, 692, 761, 768 Sanctum
Sanctorum, I 462, 585, II 459, 470 Sandhyâ, I 206, 431, II 58, 239, 308,
587 Sandhyâmśa, II 308 Sandwich Islands, II 223 Sanjânâ,
D. D. P., II 758 Sanjñâ, II 101, 174 Śankara, I 18, 286, II
498 Śankarâchârya, I xliv, 6, 47, 68, 86, 162, 271, 457, 570,
573, II 637 Śankha-dvîpa, II 405-7 Śankhâsura, II 405-7
Sânkhya, I 55, 247, 284, 448, II 42, 253, 571 Sânkhya-kârikâ,
I 256 Sanskrit, II 222 Sanskrit language, I 269 Sanskritists, II 225, 450
Saphar, I 92 Sapta, I 29, 71 Saptaparna, I xxi, 34, 200, 231, II 574, 590
Sapta-rishis, I 198, 407, II 89, 318, 549, 631 Saptarshi, I 436, 437
Sapta-Samudra, I 348 Saptasûrya, II 239 Saqqarah Bronzes, I 367
Sarah, II 77, 174, 472 Sarai, I 422, II 76 Saramâ, II 28 Saraph, I 364,
II 212 Sarasvatî, I 95, 353, II 76,
Sarcode,
II 153 Sargon, I 319, II 428, 691 Śarîra, I 59, 335, 522
Sarîsripa, II 52, 185 Sarpa, II 19, 182, 501
Sarpa-râjñî, I 74, II 47 Sarvaga, I 451, 583 Sarva-mandala,
I 257, 373 Sarvâtma, I 90
Sarvavasu,
I 515
Sarveśa,
I 373
Sat,
I 14, 119, 556, II 58, 310, 449, 530
Satan,
I 71, 325, 403, 602, 612, II 45, 111, 162, 173, 205, 272, 283, 358, 375, 385,
409, 485, 497, 501, 530, 588, 776
Satan,
fall of angels, I 193 ; a divine man, I 198 ; the Serpent, I 410 ; and the
rebellious an-gels, I 418 ; roaring to devour, I 442 ; is Venus-Lucifer, II 31
; with fall-en angels, II 60 ; the clerical, II 209 ; Son of God, II 229 ;
subjective divinity, II 234 ; glory of Satan, II 235 ; the Serpent of Genesis,
II 243 ; dethroned on the great day, II 420 ; and evil, II 476 ; the Old
Dragon, II 506 ; a Sun-God, II 507
Satanic,
I 221, 325, 417, II 45, 228, 341, 478, 641
Śatapatha-Brâhmana, I 67, 431, 436, 447, II 138, 253
Śatarûpâ,
I 94, 431, II 128
Satellites,
I 101, 234, 593
Sati,
I 367
Sattâ,
I 373
Sattva,
I 68, 348, 535
Saturn,
I 102, 153, 253, 417, 502, 642, 662, II 127, 235, 453, 538, 601, 765
Saturn,
and Seven Sons of Light, I 575 ; Father of the Pharisees, I 578 ; the planet of
God, II 23 ; the planet, II 63 ; and the seven planets, II 360 ; withheld
power, II 373
Saturn-Kronos,
II 766
Satya,
I 69
Satya-Yuga,
I 67, 235, 377, II 69, 146, 201, 493, 572
Satyas,
II 90
Sayce,
I 320, II 54, 203, 226, 456, 477, 691
Scandinavians,
I 202, 297, 404, II 346, 523, 754
Schelling,
I 50, 52, 510
Scherer,
Christofer, II 207
Schindler,
II 212 Schlegel, I 658 Schliemann, Dr., II 101, 236, 440, 586, 723 Schmidt, J.
F. J., I 596 Schmidt, Oscar, II 8, 166, 172, 184, 646, 716, 779 Schwartze, II
566 Schopenhauer, I 96, II 156, 304, 528 Schott, I xxxvii Schwegler, I 51
Science, I 479 Sclater, P. L., II 7, 171 Scorpio, I 648, II 129 Scriptures, I
xxvi, II 410 Seb, I 358, 437, II 374 Sebakh, I 219 Sebti, I 408 Secchi, I 541 Secret
Doctrine, I 355, II 441 Seemann, II 288, 333, 779 Sefekh, I 408 Sekhem, I
220 Seldenus, I 394 Seleucus, I 117 Self, I 94, 129, 334, 534 Self-redeemed, II
420 Semele, I 400, II 362 Semite, I xxvi, 115, 383, II 53, 126, 200, 470, 543
Seneca, I 649, II 757, 767 Senses, I 87, 432, 605, II 61 Sentient life, I 33,
II 22 Senzar, I xliii, 9, II 439 Sepher, I 92, II 39 Sepher Jezirah, I
xliii, 92, 130, 299, 337, 447, II 37, 39, 234, 537 Sephira, I 355, 357, 431
Sephiroth, I 90, 128, 215, 241, 356, 361, 375, 579, 619, II 1, 36, 97, 234,
293, 388, 544, 595, 704 Sephiroth Elohim, I 130 Sepp, Dr., I 654, II 619
Septenary element, II 605 Serapeum, I 385 Seraphim, I 92, 126, II 63, 238, 501
Seraphs, II 501 Serapis, II 396, 501 Serpent, encircling Tau, I 253 ; brazen
serpent, I 364, 472 ; tree of life, I 405 ; exemplar of Wis-dom, I 442 ;
serpents, I 549 ; Edens and Dragons,
xxvi INDEX
II
202 ; serpent of Moses, II 208 ; fallen from on high, II 230 ; of Genesis,
II 234 ; identity of serpent and dragon, II 356 ; meaning of dragon, II 504 ;
serpent of Eden, II 528 Serpent poison, I 262 Serpents, I 65, 194, 339, 422,
674, II 20, 94, 179, 243, 346, 385, 409, 433, 501, 552, 700, 785 Śesha, I
73, 372, II 49 Sesostris, I xxix Set, II 213, 366, 380, 385 Seth, I 648, II 26,
82, 125, 315, 361, 380, 391, 469 Set-Typhon, II 213 Sevekh, I 219, 408 Seven,
number, II 618, 747 Seven angels, I 335 Seven governors, I 480, II 97 Seven
keys, I 325 Sex, I 136, 346, II 197 Seyffarth, II 143, 464, 502 Shaddai, I 438,
618, II 509 Shadga, I 534 Shaitan, I 295 Shakespeare, I 17, 386, II 27, 117,
312, 655, 761 Shakya Thüb-pa, II 423 Shaw, I 317 Shekinah, I 53, 109, 355,
430, 618, 629, II 106, 215, 293, 527 Shell, II 111, 115, 303 Shelley, I 386
Shelley, Mrs. II 349 Shemesh, I 397 Shetland, II 752 Shiloh, II 460 Shinto, I
213, 241 Shu, I 75, 360, 364, II 546 Shuckford, II 264 Shu-king, I
xliii, II 280 Siamese, I 366, II 339 Sibac, II 181 Sibree, I 52 Siddhas, I 372,
539, II 382, 401, 549, 636 Siddhis, I 97 Sidereal glyphs, II 356 Sidereal year,
I 314, II 330 Si-dzang, I 271 Siemens, Dr. C. W., I 102 Sien-Tchan, I 32, 137-9
Sige,
II 573-4 Sigurd, I 404 Silenus, II 760 Silik Muludag, II 477 Siloam, II 558
Simeon, I 651, II 211 Simeon Rabbi, I 356, 450, II 626 Simorgh, II 397, 564,
617 Simplicius, I 650 Simpson, Sir J. Y., II 346, 547 Sinai, I 444, II 76, 466,
692 Sinhalese, II 286, 407 Sinnett, A. P., I xvii, II 293, 308, 434, 436 Siphrah
Dzeniouta, I xliii, 239, 375, II 2, 54, 292, 504, 624 Sipur, I 92 Sirius,
II 374, 708 Śishta, I 182, 248, II 150, 531 Śiśumâra, II
549, 612 Śiva, I 286, 455, 538, II 115, 237, 515, 548, 578, 591, 613
Śiva, Eye of, II 302 Śiva-Rudra, II 615 Sivatherium, II 218 Skanda, I
367, 457, II 382 Skanda-Purâna, I 367, II 182 Skinner, Ralston, I
91, 308, 313, II 36, 125, 216, 388, 465, 542 Skrymir, II 754 Skulls, II 168,
272, 522, 624, 677, 721, 790 Slack, H. J., I 600 Slaughter, Rev. W. B., I 97
Smith, George, I xxvi, 319, 357, II 2, 61, 104, 145, 248, 282, 353, 383, 691
Smyth, P., I 115, 314, II 466 Socrates, I 611, II 522 Sod, I 463, II 212, 395,
626 Sodales, II 212 Solids, I 142, 434 Solomon, II 156, 553 Solon, II 217, 266,
767 Solus, II 575 Soma, I 34, 210, 392, 523, II 23, 101, 175, 378, 456 Soma,
father of Budha, I 228 ; fish, sin and, I 238 ;
King,
I 386 ; male I 395 ; the moon, II 139 ; the Hindû Deus Lunus, II 466 Sons
of God, I 10, II 220 Sons of the Fire-Mist, I 86, 207, II 212, 319 Sopatros, I
469 Sophia, I 72, 353, 434 Sophia-Achamoth, I 449, II 43, 570 Sophia-Achamoth,
lost in waves of Chaos, I 132 ; daughter of Sophia, I 197 ; origin of spiritual
principle in early man, II 215 ; mother of Ilda-Baoth, II 244 Sophocles, II 674
Sorcerers, II 272, 427 Soshiosh, I 87, II 420 Soul, II 74, 298 Sound, I 28,
137, 205, 296, 521, 554, II 107, 400, 563 Source of Measures, I 59, 308,
II 37, 560, 597 Soyuti, II 361 Space, I 2, 4, 55, 199, 229, 277, 366, 427
Sparśa, I 372 Speech, I 93, 293, 430, II 20, 107, 198, 542 Spencer,
Herbert, I 12, 14, 54, 79, 96, 125, 281, 496, 528, 600, 615, 622, 675, II 156,
348, 451, 490, 786 Spermatozoon, I 222 Speusippus, II 555 Sphere, I 65, 359, II
24, 400 Sphericity of earth, I 117 Sphinx, II 403, 618 Sphinxiad, II 408
Spiller, I 493, 508 Spinoza, I 629, II 1 Spirit, I 83, 176, 232, 235, 326
Spirits, I 133, 174, II 370 Spiritualists, I 233, II 86, 229 Spiritus, I 195,
248, II 113 Spontaneous generation, II 116, 150, 286, 718 Śrî, I
380, II 76 Śringa-giri, I 272 Śrotâpanna, I 206 Sruti, I 269
Stallo, I 482, 508, 544
Stanley,
II 600 Stars, I 16, 289, 583, II 352 Statues, II 94, 132, 294, 328, 369, 391,
558, 586, 692 Stauridium, II 177 Stauros, II 587 Stirling, J., I 634, 637
Stewart, Balfour, II 651 Stewart, D., II 442 Sthûla-śarîra,
physical body, I 153, 157, 222 ; the human body, I 260, 522, 619, II 242, 596
Stobaeus, I 281, II 137, 555 Stockwell, II 141, 144 Stoicheia, I 461
Stonehenge, II 70, 343 Stone monuments, II 752 Strabo, II 5, 368, 390, 781
Subjectivity, I 189 Sub-races, I 113, 397, II 78, 171, 249, 395, 614, 768
Substance, I 121, 145, 326 Śuchi, I 521, II 57, 247 Śuddhasattva, I
132, 522 Sudyumna, II 135, 143 Sufis, I 199, 288, II 431 Suidas, I 286, 340,
362, 655, II 342, 619 Śukra, II 29-33, 45 Sûkshma-Śarîra,
I 132, 138 Sulimans, II 396 Sun, I 99, 100, 227, 479, 524, II 66, 361, 558,
575, 588 Sun, central, I 13, II 240 Sun, temperature, I 484 Sunday Schools, I
228 Sung-ming-shu, II 215 Sura, II 237 Surâranî, II 527 Suras, I
92, 419, II 86 Sûrya, I 112, 376, 449, 527, II 67, 101, 211, 323, 559
Sûrya, primordial Vedic, I 90 ; a prototype, I 100 ; the sun, I 289 ; II
605 Sûryamandala, I 132 Sûrya-Siddhânta, II 324, 326,
401-4 Sûryavanśas, I 388, 397 Sushumna, I 132, 515, 523
Sûtrâtman, I 222, 236, 610 Svabhâva, I 571 Svabhavat, I 3,
46, 53, 634, 671
Svabhavat,
in darkness, I 28 et seq. ; concrete as-pect of Mûlaprakriti, I
60, 61 ; the one sub-stance, I 83 ; universal plastic root, I 98 ;
mo-ther-space, II 115 Svâbhâvikas, I 3, 4 Svâhâ, I 521,
II 247 Svapada, II 52 Svarâj, I 515 Svarga, II 203, 498 Svar-loka, I 371,
II 404 Svasamvedanâ, I 44, 54 Svastika, I 321, 433, 619 Svastika,
Thor’s Hammer, I 5 ; the mystic, I 90 ; and the serpent of eter-nity, I 411
; the Jaina cross, I 657 ; a double sign, II 29 ; most philo-sophically
scientific sym-bol, II 98 ; an instru-ment for kindling sacred fire, II 413 ;
Fylfot, II 546 ; and Egyptian Tau, II 557 ; and ancient cross, II 586
Svayambhû, I 52, II 128 Svâyambhuva, I 80, 248, 398, II 128, 321,
369 Svâyambhuva, the four-teenth Manu, I 375 ; union with his daugh-ter,
II 148 ; Manu, the son of, II 307 ; the self-born, II 310 et seq. Śveta-dvîpa,
I 236, II 6, 264, 319, 327, 402, 584 Swan, I 357, II 18, 122, 465 Swanwick, A.,
II 411, 521 Sweat-born, I 456, II 117, 131, 176, 197, 329, 604 Sweden, II 346,
402, 775 Swedenborg, I 118, 623, II 33, 42, 701, 797 Syene, I 209 Symbols of
Deity, I 461 Symbology, I 389 Syncellus, I xxvii
Taaroa,
II 194 Tabernacle, I 125, II 110 Tad, I 77, 545 Tahmurath, II 397 Taine, II 334
Tairyagyonya,
I 446, 455 Tait, I 501, II 10 Tall men, II 749, 777 Talmud, I xliii, 350, 417,
438, 459, II 262, 388, 454, 477, 504 Talmudists, I 320, II 118 Tamas, I 330,
348, 535 Tanaim, I 202, II 469 Tanais, II 773 Tanhâ, II 109 Tanjur,
I xxvii Tanmâtras, the rudimen-tal principles, I 256, 335, 452, 536, II
639 ; types or rudiments, I 572 Tântrikas, I 156, 169, 521
Târâ, II 45, 138, 497-9 Târadaitya, II 403, 407 Târaka,
II 382, 550, 619 Târakâ war, II 497 Târaka-Râja-Yoga, I
157, II 593, 603 Târakâmaya, II 43, 63, 384 Târâmaya, I
419 Tarija, II 754 Tarim, I xxv, xxxiii Tartars, I 658 Tasmania, II 195, 221,
725 Tathâgata, II 339 Tatios, I 286 Tau, I xli, 5, 253, 364, II 30, 214,
543 Tasmanians, II 725 Tauris, I 395 Taurus, I 651, 656, II 133, 407, 551, 693,
759 Taygeta, II 768 Taylor, Thomas, I 425, 453, II 599 Teakwood, II 226
Teiresias, II 381 Telchines, II 391 Tell, William, II 761 Tel-loh, II 226, 692
Temple, F., II 24, 645 Teneriffe, II 408, 727, 763 Teraphim, I 394, II 455
Tertullian, I 331, II 278, 313, 476 Tethys, II 65 Tetrad, I 351, II 599
Tetragrammaton, I 60, 215, 240, 438, II 57, 128, 361, 557, 582, 596, 621
Tetragrammaton, Jehovah, I 72 ; the Kabalistic Logos, I 99 ; in the Sephiroth,
I 344 ; the heavenly man, II 25 ;
xxviii INDEX
sacred
name of deity, II 312 ; composed of ten dots, II 463 ; the He-brew JHVH, II 625
Tetraktys,
I 88, 99, 134, 344, 440, 614, II 24, 36, 312, 463, 582, 598, 626
Teutobodus,
II 277 Thackeray, II 424 Thalamencephalon, II 297 Thalassa, II 65, 115 Thales,
I 77, 345, 385, II
591
Thalatth, II 61, 65 That, I 77, 89, II 34, 80 Thebes, I 311, 675, II 379
Themis, II 305 Theodolinde, II 587 Theodoret, II 129, 465 Theodosius, I 312, II
485 Theon, II 600 Theopompus, II 371, 764 Theos, I 342, II 545, 602 Theos ek
petras, I 340 Theosophical Society, mot-
to
of, I xlii, II 798
Theosophists,
I viii, 151, 186, 296, 669, II 229, 631, 798
Theosophy
and Darwinism, I 186 Thessaly, I 156, 462, II
762
Thetis, I 467 Thevetata, II 222 Third Race, I 113, II 30,
122
Thomson,
Sir W., I 117, 366, 478, 482, 485, 492, 501, 505, 513, 579, II 10, 64, 154,
258, 694, 719
Thorah,
II 462 Thor’s Hammer, I 5, II 99
Thoth,
I 362, 397, 577, II 210-1, 267, 380, 385, 529, 540, 558, 581
Thought,
I 61, 108, II 486 Thraetaona, II 390 Tia-Huanaco, II 317 Tiamat, I 357, II 61,
104,
384,
477, 503 Tiaou (Tuat), I 227 Tíbet, I 72, II 178, 586 Tíbetan, II
408 T‘ien, I 356, 366, II 766 Tikkun, II 25, 704 Timaeus, I 340,
567, II 8,
94,
132, 314, 402, 519, 743 Timaeus Locrius, II 463 Time, I 36, 44, 251, 583 Tirukkanda
Pañchanga II
51,
67 Tiryaksrotas, I 446, II 162 Titan, II 9, 70, 224, 383,
411,
519, 550 Titanosaurus, II 218 Titans, I 114, 415, II 31,
141,
265, 293, 344, 493,
755
Titans-Kabirim, II 144, 363 Tohu-bohu, II 477 Tooke, W., II 343 Topinard, II
249 Torricelli, I 623 Torquemada, II 70 Tortoise, I 441, II 75, 253
Toyâmbudhi, II 319, 402 Tree, I 405, II 215, 588 Tree, Holy, II 97 Tree
of Life, I 58, II 97 Tretâ-Yuga, II 308, 520 Tretâgni, I 523 Triad,
I 128, 668 I 591 Triangle, I 131, 612, II 24 Triassic mammalia, II 684
Tridaśa, I 29, 71 Trilochana, II 295, 502 Trimorphos, I 387
Trimûrti, I 355, 381, II
313
Trinity, I 58, 384, 387, 668,
II
35, 105, 355, 446 Triśûla, II 548 Trisuparna, I 210, II 590
Trithemius, I 453, II 512 Triton, II 578 Troy, II 101, 236, 440, 586,
796
Tsien-tchan, I 32 Tsi-tsai, I 356 Tubal-Cain, I 415, II 390 Tum, I 312, 673, II
580 Turamaya, II 50 Turanians, I 113, II 425 Tushitas, II 90, 182 Tvashtri, II
101, 615 Twilight, I 144, 431, II
6
Tycho Brahe, I 493, 590, 667, II 486
Tyndall,
I 249, 324, 483, 507, 584, 633, 637, 669, II 150, 673, 719
Tyndareus,
II 121 Typhoeus, I 466 Typhon, I 202, 388, 399,
II
380, 385, 420, 549 579 Tzaphon, I 466 Tzelem, II 137, 378, 503 Tzyphon, II 216
Uhlemann,
II 464
Ulug-beg,
I 659
Ulûpî,
II 214
Umâ-Kanyâ,
I 92
Upâdhi,
I 101, 181, 329, 375, 470, 594, II 34, 90, 157, 593, 670
Upâdhi,
a vehicle, I 35 ; material basis, I 153 ; three aspects of, I 157 ; a physical
basis, I 158, 280 ; the germ becomes, I 291 ; Âkâśa, the
upâ-dhi of Divine Thought, I 326 ; of ether, I 515 ; hydrogen the, of air
and water, II 105
Upadvîpas,
II 404
Upanishads,
I 7, 47, 62, 94, 138, 165, 269, 432, 522, II 26, 484, 563, 590
Ur,
I 376, II 139, 226
Uraeus,
I 227, 437, 674
Uranides,
I 418
Uranus,
I 149, 418, 593, II 283, 762, 765
Uranus,
Hindûs knew of, the seventh planet, I 99 ; receives 390 times less light
than earth, I 575 ; a modified Varuna, II 268 ; children of Gaia, II 269
Urdhvasrotas,
I 446, 453, 456, II 162
Uriel,
I 609, II 115, 483
Uśanas-Śukra,
II 31, 498
Uterus,
rudiments of in male, II 118, 187
Uttara-Mîmânsâ,I 46
Uxmal,
II 430, 751
Vâch,
I 94, 427, 430-4, 523, II 43, 107, 143, 472
Vâch,
the female, I 9 ; one of the halves of Brah-mâ, I 89 ; the Hindû, I
137 ; or Sarasvatî, I 353 ; Aditi-Vâch, I 355, 431 ; daughter of
Brahmâ, II 128 ; Brahmâ and Vâch, II 147 ; as
Deva-senâ, II 199 ; the melo-dious cow, II 418
Vâchaspatya, I 378 Vâch-śata-rûpa,
II 148 Vâhana, I 34, 80, 153, 214,
265,
527, II 172, 241,
564
Vaidhâtra, I 89, 457 Vaidyuta, I 521 Vaikharî, I 434
Vaikharî-Vâch, I 138, 432 Vaikunthaloka, I 522 Vaikunthas, II 90
Vairâjas, II 90 Vaiśvânara, II 311, 496 Vaivasvata-Manu, I
xliii,
369,
523, II 4, 35, 135, 222, 290, 597, 693, 774
Vaivasvata-Manu,
his “del-uge,” I 68 ; the post-diluvian period, II 69 ; and Vishnu,
II 139 ; the Great Rishi, II 211 ; a generic name, II 306 ; the seventh Manu,
II 308 ; head figure of “Deluge,” II 335 ; a great ancient Adept,
II 425
Vajradhara,
I 52, 571 Vajrasattva, I 52, 571 Valentinus, I 310, 349, 410,
446,
568, II 458, 566 Valentinians, II 569 Vallabhâchâryas, I 335
Vallancey, I 642, II 264,
759
Vâmadeva Modelyar, I 376 Vara, II 6, 163, 291, 610 Varâha, I 368,
II 53, 321 Varâha-Kalpa, I 368 Varnas, I 419 Varshas, II 264, 320, 403
Varuna, I 463, II 92, 147 Varuna, the West, I 128 ;
the
crocodile his vehicle, I 220 ; Varuna Oura-nos, II 65, 268 ; an Asu-ra, II 500
; the ocean god, II 577 ; lord of na-tural phenomena, II 606
Vasishtha,
I 415, II 78 Vastubhûta, II 612 Vâsudeva, I 286, 420, II
48
Vasus, I 71, II 48 Vâyu, I 90, 190, 463, II
114 Vâyu-Purâna,
I 50, 256,
369,
454, 521, II 57, 89,
182,
381, 524, 572, 613 Vedânta, I 269, II 484 Vedântasâra,I
7 Vedântin, II 158 Vedântins, I 226, 330 Vedas, I 89, 165, 271,
330,
385,
415, 523, II 191, 209, 335, 384, 400, 450, 483, 526, 548, 579, 605, 723
Veda-Vyâsa,
I 313, II 483 Veddahs, II 287, 421, 723 Vega, de la, II 338, 345 Vendîdâd,
II 60, 270, 290,
476,
480, 517, 609 Ventricles, II 297 Ventus, I 342 Venus, I 103, 155, 164, 380,
435,
575, II 28, 33, 43,
65,
418, 462, 501, 707 Venus Aphrodite, I 458 Venus-Lucifer, I 305, II 31 Verbum, I
93, 137, II 515 Vergil, I 331, 401, 658, II
28,
417, 594, 602 Vertebrata, II 184, 295, 595 Vibhâvasu, I 372 Vibriones, I
249 Vibhûtayah, I 8, II 611 Vidyâ, I xviii, 199 Vidyâ, four
Vidyâs, I 168 ;
paths
of knowledge, I 192 ; the esoteric Vidyâ, I 241 ; the sacred sci-ence, II
438
Vidyâdharas,
I 539 Vijñânamaya-kośa, I 157,
570
Villalpandus, I 649 Villiers, I 262 Vimânas, II 427-8
Vimâna-vidyâ, II 426-8 Vinatâ, I 366 Virâj, I 59, 137,
449, II
143,
472, 606
Virâj
and Vâch, I 9, II 143 ; That is Virâj, I 89 ;
Brahmâ-Virâj, II 43 ; cre-ates man, II 308
Virâja-loka,
II 89 Virchow, II 440, 650, 752 Virgin Mary, I 91, II 38 Virgin-Mother, I 460
Virgo, I 292, 413, 651, II
115,
208, 368, 431, 502,
785
Virgo-Scorpio, I 413, II 502 Visha, I 348 Vishnu, I xxxi, 10, 73, 87, 236, 263,
333, 394, 433, 452, 522, 653, II 6, 31, 48, 69, 76, 89, 98, 107, 139, 215, 323,
381, 402, 465, 504, 546, 572, 765
Vishnu,
etymology of, I 8 ; first Avatâra of, I 18 ; connected with Sûrya
and Fohat, I 112 ; sym-bol of, I 215 ; praise to, I 286 ; energy or reflec-tion
of, I 290 ; mover of waves, I 345 ; the ideal Cause, I 349 ; Garuda his
vehicle, I 366 ; the Avyaya, I 370 ; the First Logos, I 381 ; prayers to
Vishnu, I 419 ; uni-versal Soul, I 420 ; strid-ing with three steps, II 38 ;
energy of God, II 115 ; the many-formed Brahmâ, II 146 ; Fish
Avatâra of, II 307 ; the incarnated Sun, II 407 ; Avatâras of
Vishnu, II 408 ; the everlasting king, II 483 ; Wittoba, a form of, II 560 ;
the sign of Vishnu, II 591 ; Agni-Vishnu-Sûrya, II 608
Vishnu-Purâna, I 36, 205, 255, 284, 373, 376, 416, 423,
445, 452, 521, II 58, 162, 174, 276, 320, 495, 548, 616, 624, 658
Viśishtâdvaita,
I 59, 132, 233, 451, 522
Viśvakarman,
I 268, 470, II 101, 345, 559, 605, 615
Viśvarûpa,
I 452
Viśvatryarchas,
I 515
Vitatha,
II 572
Vitruvius
Pollio, I 208
Vivien,
II 175
Vîvanghat,
II 609
Vogt, C, I 134, 539, 637, II 193, 646,
682, 716 Volcano, I 524, II 150, 408
Volger,
II 154
Volney,
I 658, II 436
Voltaire,
II 89, 442, 702
Völuspa,
I 367
Vormius,
II 346
Vortical
movement, I 117
Vossius,
I 123, II 28, 480
Votan,
II 35, 379
Vril,
I xxxv, 563
Vritra,
I 202, II 378, 384
xxx INDEX
Vritra-han,
II 382, 384 Vulcan, I 578, II 390, 620 Vyakta, I 10, II 46
Vyâvahârika, I 356 Vyse, II 362, 366
Wagner,
Prof., I 251 Wake, C. Staniland, I 314, 317, II 26, 32, 82, 352, 362, 432
Wallace, A. R., I 107, 339, 520, 585, II 7, 193, 646, 651, 661, 677, 778, 789
War in Heaven, I 68, 194, 418, II 45, 103, 237, 268, 379, 386, 492, 505 Ward,
Robert, I 484 Wassilief, I 39, 43 Water, I 64, 141, 257, 384 Water of Life, I
81, II 400 Waterson, I 511 Watson, Dr. J., II 344 Watts, Dr., I 154 Web, I 28,
83, 639, II 614 Weber, A., I 47, 365, 436, 461, 647, II 49, 165, 320 Weismann,
I 223, II 711 Welcker, II 363, 392 West Hoadley, II 343 Westminster, I 303, II
342 Wheels, I 127, 144, 206, 440, 633, II 15, 114, 324 Whewell, I 607, II 149,
622 Whirling soul, I 568 Whiston, II 395 White Devil, II 147, 403 Wigred, I 202
Wilder, A., II 25, 133, 135, Wilford, I xxxi, 370, 654, II 147, 320, 402, 409
Wilkinson, J. Gardner, II 432 Wilkinson, W. F., I 490 Will-power, I 293, II 173
Williams, W. Mattieu, I 102, 585, II 136 Wilson, H. H., I 19, 36, 255, 360,
373, 522, II 89, 155, 225, 307, 320, 401, 427, 565, 629, 658 Wilson, Dr. A. ;
II 152, 674, 729 Winchell, A., I 84, 102, 155, 494, 500, 505, 528, 543, 592,
607, 638, II 9, 72, 149, 324, 694, 715 Wisdom of the Ages, I 272
Wiseman,
Cardinal, I 607, II 704 Wittoba, II 560 Wolf, C, I 500, 590, 596, 601 Wolf of
Darkness, II 386 Woodward, II 726 Wordsworth, Bishop, II 127, 558 Wuliang-sheu,
I 356 Wundt, I 513
Xenocrates,
II 555 Xenophantes, II 535 Xenophon, I 652 Xerxes, I 467 Xisuthrus, II 222,
265, 314, 454 Xisuthrus, the Chaldean deluge, II 4, 139, 309 ; same as
Vaivasvata, II 335 ; Noah, II 397 ; the Chaldean, II 774
Yaçna, I 437, II 772 Yajña-Vidyâ,
I 168 Yakshas, II 90, 165, 182 Yama, I 128, 463, II 44 Yamabushi, I 67, 173
Yâna, I 39 Yang, I 471, II 554 Yard, II 597 Yezod, I 200, 240 Yggdrasil,
I 344, 427, II 97, 520 Yi-King, I 440, II 35, 374 Yima, II 270, 291, 609
Yin, I 471, II 54, 554 Yliaster, I 283 Ymir, I 367, 427, II 97 Yod, I 347, II
129, 468, 551 Yoga, I 132, 207, 378, 456, II 58, 172, 199, 275, 319, 382, 436,
501, 559, 593 Yoga, lower form of, I 47 ; regulation of the breath in, I 95 ;
sons of Will and, II 19, 281, 394 ; a Yoga rite, II 32 ; the eye of, II 89, 296
; the sons of, II 109, 117 ; Sons of Passive, II 165 Yogâchâryas, I
42, II 637
Yogîs
(Yogins), I 86, 158, 288, 413, 458, II 78, 164, 411, 502, 576, 613 Yogîs,
Sushumna ray and, I 516 ; of past Man-vantaras, II 94 ; piety of, II 243 ;
celestial Yo-gîs, II 246 ; conquer the heavens, II 516 Yong-Grub, I 42
Yoni, I 264, II 125, 463 Young, C. A., I 541 Young, E., I 276, 578 Yttrium, I
141 Yü, I 271, II 302 Yucatan, I 390, II 793 Yudhishthira, I 369 Yugas, I
xliii, 206, 378, II 58, 146, 307, 520, 614 Yurbo-Adonai, I 463
Zalmat-qaqadi,
II 5 Zarathustra, I 464, II 6, 292, 385, 480, 610, 757 Zarpanitu, II 210, 456 Zend
Avesta, I xxxviii, 307 II 35, 60, 270, 356, 384, 476, 607, 757 Zeno, I 76,
II 159 Zeruan Akarana, I 113, II 233, 488 Zeus, I 72, 338, 672, II 177, 269,
294, 391, 481, 766 Zeus, reverences Night, I 425 ; the father of gods, II 122 ;
his curse against Prometheus, II 244 ; de-sires to quench human race, II 412 ;
the demi-god delivered to Zeus, II 414 et seq. ; commands Prometheus and
Athena, II 519 ; Pater Zeus, II 574 Zeus-Zen, I 340, II 130 Zipporah, I 385, II
465 Zodiac, I xxxviii, 79, 105, 219, 263, 320, 384, 400, 577, II 49, 112, 200,
268, 403, 502, 580, 750 Zodiac, alterations in, I 376 ; its antiquity, I 647 ;
signs of, II 23 ; know-ledge of, II 332 ; posi-tions of, II 357 ; the Den
dera,
II 431 et seq. ; an-
tiquity
in Egypt, II 438
Zohac,
II 398
Zohar, I 10, 53, 112, 338, 374, 391, 424,
439, 447, 506, II 2, 9, 38, 43, 120, 137, 162, 262, 290, 315, 359, 461, 490,
503, 528, 545, 704, 773
Zohar, shows the symbolic circle, I 19 ;
contrasted with the Hindû esoteri-cism, I 115 ; arranged by Moses de
Leon, I 214 ; contains ancient doctrine, I 230 ; as to the earth, I 241 ; on
the Logos, I 346 ; En-Soph, I 349 ; emanations, I 356 ; on the planets, II 28 ;
speaks of primordial worlds, II 53 ; cosmogonical tablets, II 54 ; First became
Second Race, II 84 ; light of that light, II 112 ; flying camel of, II 205 ;
Metatron united to She-kinah, II 215, the Tree, II 216 ; right interpreta-tion
of, II 247 ; the Soul, II 290 ; Azaz-El, the sacrificial victim, II 376 ;
explanation on magic, II 409 ; narratives are cloak of doctrine, II 447 ; God
and Satan, II 479 ; and book of Enoch, II 535 ; masterpiece of Western occult
science, II 536 ; glossary of Solomon, the Kabalistic Preacher, II 553 ; the
Septenary, II 603 ; Tetragrammaton, II 625
Zöllner,
I 251, 520
Zones,
I 257, 373, II 264
Zoroaster,
II 6, 356, 442
Zoroastrianism,
I 196, II 93, 204, 416, 480, 608
Zoroastrians,
I 235, 577
Zuñi
Indians, II 628