Chapter 18

A Few Words About“Deluges”And“Noahs.”The accounts in the variousPurânasabout our Progenitors are as contradictory,in their details, as everything else. Thus while, in theRig Veda, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and theShatapatha Brâhmanashows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offspring ofhis sacrifice, and later on, his (Vaivasvata's)wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. In thePurânasshe is, again, Vaivasvata's daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter's (Brihaspati's) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.The story as told in theMahâbhâratastrikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in theBhagavad Gîtâ. It is theprologueto the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well-known Matsya Avatâra, the first Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon320of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the seven Rishis, according to theMahâbhârata; this, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the“Fall,”to both spiritual and physical, both cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female[pg 148]generative Principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the“Flood,”and the Moon for the“Mother,”from whom proceed all the life-germs.321But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,322and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the“Host”—or the Manu which saved the“seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Paurânic and other versions; while in theShatapatha Brâhmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as their creator's“daughters.”The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-Race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.This is shown very clearly in theBhagavad Gîtâ, where Krishna is made to say:The seven Great Rishis, thefour precedingManus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born) the human race and the world.323Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four[pg 149]Races324which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya, the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the“Seed of Life,”both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.The“Deluge”is undeniably a“universal tradition.”“Glacial Periods”were numerous, and so were the“Deluges,”for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half-dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 years ago.325But which wasourDeluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 yearsb.c., had nothing to do with either thesemi-universal Deluge, or Noah's Flood—the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with them only a moral connection.Our Fifth Race—the non-initiated portions of it—hearing of many[pg 150]Deluges, have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:The Incas,sevenin number, have repeopled the earth after the deluge.326Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still-preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentionstwice sevencompanions and the“divine bird”which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and translated“alive”to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao hassevenfigures which sail with him and which he will“animate”when he lands, and use for“human seed.”Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takessevenRays with him, etc.Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with Noah;327further, it is suspected that the name“Titan”is derived from Tit-Ain,—the“fountains of the chaotic abyss”328(Tit-Theus, or Tityus is the“divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who areseven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.329These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote:I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the family.330[pg 151]But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:The Hindoos, in their wildlegendshave variously perverted thehistoryof the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:331hence Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that,“perhaps, the seven Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same, and make only seven individual persons.332The seven Brahmâdicas wereprajâpatis, or lords of theprajas, or creatures. From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were ... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with inhabitants.”333The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident.334Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber refuses to identify with theimpiousTitans, their descendants—were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, andIapetus.Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.335But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for one of Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.336The Hindûs can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is thefemaleManu of theRâmâyana. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom“he begat the race of Manus.”Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females; Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the“female Virâj,”turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine Theogony,[pg 152]the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people's property, that the Pseudo-Berosus,337shows that Titæa—of whom Diodorus Siculus338makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was thewife of Noah. Faber calls him the“Pseudo-Berosus,”yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source ofGenesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and other older“Arkite”symbols. For, Berosus says that“Titæa Magna”was afterwards called Aretia,339and worshipped with the Earth; and this identifies Titæa, Noah's consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan-Kabiri. And Titæa-Aretia was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ Horchiam.340Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island. Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:[pg 153]From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isleStern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the wavesIts impious inhabitants.341Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers, in Theogony, topre-cosmic transformations, tospiritual correlations—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, andperishedin, the mysterious differentiation—a pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.342All this goes to show that thesemi-universal deluge known to Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period:i.e., about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to“an extreme eccentricity of the earth's orbit,”and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth's axis—a proof of which may be found in theBook of Enoch,343if the veiled language of thePurânasbe not understood—all this should tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the“modern discoveries”of Science. Enoch, when speaking of“the great inclination of the Earth,”which“is in travail,”is quite significant and clear.Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah,floating on the watersin his ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine Principle; Noah is the“Spirit”falling into Matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon,i.e., the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter ofGenesisis only another version of the first. Thus, while the[pg 154]latter reads:“And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said:“And the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit] upon the face of the waters.”Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out adovein search of dry land.344George Smith notes in the“Tablets,”first the creation of the Moon, and then that of the Sun:“Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.”If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm-even were this latter universal-why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth, the Moon, speak of thecreation of the sunafter the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the Sun; theBibleitself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of auniversaldeluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.345As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as agenericcharacter, under various circumstances and events, there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first“great flood”had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the“Age of Truth,”when the Second Root-Race,“the Manu with bones,”made its primeval appearance as the“Sweat-born.”The Second Flood—the so-called“universal”—which affected the Fourth Root-Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as“the accursed race of giants,”the Cainites, and the“sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account,“there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,”when Manu Vaivasvata lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and Cosmic Flood before the so-called“Creation,”the others treat, one of the[pg 155]Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In theShatapatha Brâhmana, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left—i.e.,the seed of lifealone remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, after a“Day of Brahmâ”; and theMahâbhâratarefers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:346as the“Root-Manu,”on Globe A, in the First Round; (b) as the“Seedof Life,”on Globe D, in the Fourth Round; and (c) as the“Seed of Man,”at the beginning of every Root-Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,347the destruction of the accursed sorcerers;Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of anotherlarge continent[America].It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the“White Island,”and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the“White Devil”of Colonel Wilford,348as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took[pg 156]place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.TheShatapathathen tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declaredherself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son,“the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.”Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those“contradictions and amazing nonsense,”as some call thePurânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a sub-race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then,“through the favour of the two deities,”hersex is changedand she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that“she should be a male one month and a female another.”This has a direct reference to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists349think and have declared that:Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.The“profane”are not told, however, the reason why“a libation of milk,”or“a stream of praise,”should bemaleandfemaleby turn: unless, indeed, there is some“internal evidence”which the Occultists fail to perceive.[pg 157]In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch-Shata-Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first“euhemerization”of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root-Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their ownPurânasa little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the“Sweat-born.”This allegory is regarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man,i.e., the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for theprimeval, etherealMan of the Occult Teachings.The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the Physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,350not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the[pg 158]modern“Spiritualists”and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.351This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a“boneless,”purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.352The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother-Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with[pg 159]successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, suchas is assigned by themto early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian Age itself.Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of“immetalization,”of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead-letter, form,“Lord-God”-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a“Living Soul”into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a“coating.”Pygmalion, who fails toanimate his statue, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct“a human soul in the creature,”are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or the biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to constructphysicalman only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic, model.This will again be objected to;“spontaneous generation”is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world-period and actual conditions—which the Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur's observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance,[pg 160]and, in fact, show that they have none. The question is so far leftsub judice, as well as the other as to when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel's Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the theory of the“Self-existent,”the“Self-born Heavenly Man,”represented as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it hasno ancestorsamong either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera aretheir own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was, nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the above enumerated“antediluvian”monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth,i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly-like Form, evolved by Gods or natural“Forces,”which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter toKnowledge(Dec. 23, 1881):[pg 161]

The accounts in the variousPurânasabout our Progenitors are as contradictory,in their details, as everything else. Thus while, in theRig Veda, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and theShatapatha Brâhmanashows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offspring ofhis sacrifice, and later on, his (Vaivasvata's)wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. In thePurânasshe is, again, Vaivasvata's daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter's (Brihaspati's) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.

The story as told in theMahâbhâratastrikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in theBhagavad Gîtâ. It is theprologueto the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well-known Matsya Avatâra, the first Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon320of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the seven Rishis, according to theMahâbhârata; this, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.

We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the“Fall,”to both spiritual and physical, both cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female[pg 148]generative Principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the“Flood,”and the Moon for the“Mother,”from whom proceed all the life-germs.321But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,322and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the“Host”—or the Manu which saved the“seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Paurânic and other versions; while in theShatapatha Brâhmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as their creator's“daughters.”The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-Race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.

This is shown very clearly in theBhagavad Gîtâ, where Krishna is made to say:

The seven Great Rishis, thefour precedingManus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born) the human race and the world.323

Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four[pg 149]Races324which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya, the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the“Seed of Life,”both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.

The“Deluge”is undeniably a“universal tradition.”“Glacial Periods”were numerous, and so were the“Deluges,”for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half-dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 years ago.325But which wasourDeluge? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 yearsb.c., had nothing to do with either thesemi-universal Deluge, or Noah's Flood—the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with them only a moral connection.

Our Fifth Race—the non-initiated portions of it—hearing of many[pg 150]Deluges, have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.

We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:

The Incas,sevenin number, have repeopled the earth after the deluge.326

Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still-preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentionstwice sevencompanions and the“divine bird”which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and translated“alive”to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao hassevenfigures which sail with him and which he will“animate”when he lands, and use for“human seed.”Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takessevenRays with him, etc.

Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with Noah;327further, it is suspected that the name“Titan”is derived from Tit-Ain,—the“fountains of the chaotic abyss”328(Tit-Theus, or Tityus is the“divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who areseven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu.329

These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote:

I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the family.330

But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:

The Hindoos, in their wildlegendshave variously perverted thehistoryof the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:331hence Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that,“perhaps, the seven Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same, and make only seven individual persons.332The seven Brahmâdicas wereprajâpatis, or lords of theprajas, or creatures. From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were ... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with inhabitants.”333The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident.334

Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber refuses to identify with theimpiousTitans, their descendants—were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, andIapetus.

Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.335

Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,

Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.335

But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for one of Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.336The Hindûs can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is thefemaleManu of theRâmâyana. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom“he begat the race of Manus.”Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females; Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the“female Virâj,”turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine Theogony,[pg 152]the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.

Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people's property, that the Pseudo-Berosus,337shows that Titæa—of whom Diodorus Siculus338makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was thewife of Noah. Faber calls him the“Pseudo-Berosus,”yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source ofGenesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and other older“Arkite”symbols. For, Berosus says that“Titæa Magna”was afterwards called Aretia,339and worshipped with the Earth; and this identifies Titæa, Noah's consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan-Kabiri. And Titæa-Aretia was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.

Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ Horchiam.340

Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island. Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:

From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isleStern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the wavesIts impious inhabitants.341

From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isle

Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves

Its impious inhabitants.341

Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers, in Theogony, topre-cosmic transformations, tospiritual correlations—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, andperishedin, the mysterious differentiation—a pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.342

All this goes to show that thesemi-universal deluge known to Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period:i.e., about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to“an extreme eccentricity of the earth's orbit,”and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth's axis—a proof of which may be found in theBook of Enoch,343if the veiled language of thePurânasbe not understood—all this should tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the“modern discoveries”of Science. Enoch, when speaking of“the great inclination of the Earth,”which“is in travail,”is quite significant and clear.

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah,floating on the watersin his ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine Principle; Noah is the“Spirit”falling into Matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon,i.e., the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter ofGenesisis only another version of the first. Thus, while the[pg 154]latter reads:“And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said:“And the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit] upon the face of the waters.”Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out adovein search of dry land.344George Smith notes in the“Tablets,”first the creation of the Moon, and then that of the Sun:“Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.”If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm-even were this latter universal-why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth, the Moon, speak of thecreation of the sunafter the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the Sun; theBibleitself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of auniversaldeluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.345

George Smith notes in the“Tablets,”first the creation of the Moon, and then that of the Sun:“Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.”If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm-even were this latter universal-why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth, the Moon, speak of thecreation of the sunafter the deluge? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the Sun; theBibleitself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of auniversaldeluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.345

As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as agenericcharacter, under various circumstances and events, there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first“great flood”had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the“Age of Truth,”when the Second Root-Race,“the Manu with bones,”made its primeval appearance as the“Sweat-born.”

The Second Flood—the so-called“universal”—which affected the Fourth Root-Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as“the accursed race of giants,”the Cainites, and the“sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account,“there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,”when Manu Vaivasvata lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and Cosmic Flood before the so-called“Creation,”the others treat, one of the[pg 155]Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In theShatapatha Brâhmana, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left—i.e.,the seed of lifealone remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, after a“Day of Brahmâ”; and theMahâbhâratarefers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:346as the“Root-Manu,”on Globe A, in the First Round; (b) as the“Seedof Life,”on Globe D, in the Fourth Round; and (c) as the“Seed of Man,”at the beginning of every Root-Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,347the destruction of the accursed sorcerers;

Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of anotherlarge continent[America].

It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the“White Island,”and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the“White Devil”of Colonel Wilford,348as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took[pg 156]place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.

TheShatapathathen tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declaredherself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son,“the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.”Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those“contradictions and amazing nonsense,”as some call thePurânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a sub-race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then,“through the favour of the two deities,”hersex is changedand she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that“she should be a male one month and a female another.”This has a direct reference to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists349think and have declared that:

Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.

The“profane”are not told, however, the reason why“a libation of milk,”or“a stream of praise,”should bemaleandfemaleby turn: unless, indeed, there is some“internal evidence”which the Occultists fail to perceive.

In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch-Shata-Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first“euhemerization”of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root-Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:

From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.

From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:

By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.

But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their ownPurânasa little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the“Sweat-born.”This allegory is regarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.

But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:

COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?

To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man,i.e., the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for theprimeval, etherealMan of the Occult Teachings.The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the Physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,350not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the[pg 158]modern“Spiritualists”and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.

The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.351This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a“boneless,”purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.352

The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother-Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with[pg 159]successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, suchas is assigned by themto early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian Age itself.

Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of“immetalization,”of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead-letter, form,“Lord-God”-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a“Living Soul”into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a“coating.”Pygmalion, who fails toanimate his statue, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct“a human soul in the creature,”are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or the biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to constructphysicalman only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic, model.

This will again be objected to;“spontaneous generation”is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world-period and actual conditions—which the Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur's observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance,[pg 160]and, in fact, show that they have none. The question is so far leftsub judice, as well as the other as to when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel's Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the theory of the“Self-existent,”the“Self-born Heavenly Man,”represented as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it hasno ancestorsamong either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera aretheir own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.

If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was, nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the above enumerated“antediluvian”monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth,i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly-like Form, evolved by Gods or natural“Forces,”which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.

Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter toKnowledge(Dec. 23, 1881):

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